Nodding with unmistakable satisfaction, she balanced her plate and cutlery in her left hand and extended her right to him. “Melody Harrison. Great to meet you.”
He frowned. “Doctor Melody Harrison, isn’t it?”
She shrugged that away, flushing. “No need to be pretentious. My title isn’t who I am.”
Whoa. Had truer words ever been spoken?
He blinked, fighting the sensation that he’d received a mild shock from an outlet. He also battled the urge to look up and ask God if he could possibly be serious by sending Melody across his path, or whether He was just messing with Anthony the way He had during the holidays when Anthony was thirteen. That was the year his beloved mother had seemed to suffer no ill effects following a rough fall on the slopes in Klosters, then died the next morning from a brain bleed.
Melody couldn’t possibly be the spectacular woman she appeared to be.
Could she?
Somehow Anthony shook off the dazed sensation. Then he shook this remarkable woman’s soft hand for the second time that night, praying that some of the tightness in his throat would ease up a bit, at least enough for him to continue talking to her.
As for the prickling nerve endings in his nape and the goose bumps still flaring up and down his arms?
Nothing to be done about that.
“Melody Harrison.” He said her name with relish. “It’s a great pleasure to meet you.”
She stared up at him, her smile fading as that indefinable thing arced between them again, twice as strong as before.
He held her hand, lingering in the moment—
“Excuse me,” the woman behind him said in her harsh New York accent, “but the line’s moving.”
Sure enough, behind Melody’s back, the line had moved ahead a meter or so, and the chef was serving the man in front of Melody.
Melody blinked and flushed, dropping Anthony’s hand and hastily closing the gap.
He flexed his fingers, feeling deliciously scalded.
Good God. Electrified and scalded. What on earth had got into him tonight?
“Do you have a rare piece?” Melody asked the chef as he sliced for her. “That’s perfect. Thanks.”
And she stepped away from the carving table with her dinner, lingering several feet away as she searched the ballroom for an empty place to sit without ever looking back over her shoulder at Anthony.
“Rare for me, too,” he quickly told the chef, wishing the man would hurry up a bit and not daring to hope that Melody might be waiting for him, let alone that she might feel the chemistry between them as acutely as Anthony did. “Great. No, that’s plenty. Thanks.”
Good fortune was with him. A couple walked away from one of the high-top tables surrounding the dance floor just then, giving him the opportunity he needed.
He hurried over to Melody. “I’ve found a table. Now that we’re practically best friends, I feel certain you’ll want to share it with me.”
Melody looked round, her expression brightening. Perhaps the whisky he’d drunk had begun to distort his reality, but he could swear she looked excited to spend more time with him.
Almost...pleased.
“You’re finished being an arse for the night? Because we’ve still got a fair amount of gala to go,” she said very seriously.
“I’ll do my best.” He steered her to the table, deciding there was no time like the present to make sure she was single. The Internet and Baptiste had already told him that she wasn’t married, but that didn’t mean she had no significant other. “And are you here with someone? Do you want to go find him and let him know where you are?”
Repressed laughter made her eyes gleam as she set her plate down. “I’m good.”
There was only one response to this nonanswer: a doleful look.
“You’re sure you’re not a barrister or a politician?” he wondered. “I’ve rarely heard such an evasive reply.”
“And I’ve rarely heard such a poorly veiled question.” Her lips twitched at the corners. “If you want to know something, why not ask a direct question?”
Anthony tried to look innocent. “I thought I did.”
“No, you didn’t—Baptiste. What’s wrong?”
Baptiste hurried over to their table, looking pale and worried.
“There you are. I’ve been looking for you,” he told Melody.
“What’s wrong?” She put a hand on Baptiste’s forearm. “Where’s Samira?”
“She is, ah...” Baptiste ran a hand through his hair, making the waves stand on end. “She’s not feeling very well all the sudden. It’s her, ah, stomach.”
“Oh, no,” Melody said. “There’s a nasty virus going around. Do you want me to take a look at her, or...?”
Shaky laugh from Baptiste. “I would love for you to take a look at her, but she’d have my head for suggesting it. She insists she’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure she will be fine in a couple days. As long as she gets some rest and keeps pushing clear liquids so she doesn’t get dehydrated. Are you taking her home?”
“Yes, but she’s insisting on staying until after the remarks on the winery merger.”
“Well, she works for the winery,” Melody said. “It’s her job.”
“Yes,” Baptiste said shortly, looking distracted.
Melody and Anthony exchanged concerned glances. Anthony was about to say something when Melody took the words out of his mouth.
“Baptiste, is there something else going on? Do you think it’s something other than a stomach bug? You look so worried.”
Baptiste blinked and came out of it, dividing his attention between them and trying to give them a reassuring smile. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“Will you be fine?” Melody asked, squeezing Baptiste’s arm. “That’s the question.”
Baptiste frowned. Shot a wary glance over his shoulder at Anthony.
“I’m not going to tease you, Bappy,” Anthony said quickly. “We’re not in school anymore, and even I’m not that big a prat.”
Baptiste’s tense face eased into the beginnings of a smile to accompany his nod of thanks. Then he turned back to Melody, sobering.
“The thing is, Samira’s everything to me.” He swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple bob, and if Anthony didn’t know better, he’d almost think he saw tears in his mate’s eyes. Which would be the first time ever. “Everything. If anything happened to Samira—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to her,” Melody said firmly. “And she can’t take care of herself if she’s worried about you falling apart. You need to get it together, okay?”
Baptiste took a deep breath and stood a bit straighter. “Yes, of course. You’re right. I’m okay now. I’ll take good care of her.”
“I know that.” Melody beamed at him and patted his face. “Why do you think I’ve been your biggest supporter, Bappy?”
“Merde.” Baptiste scowled over his shoulder at Anthony, who tried to look apologetic, before leaning down to give Melody a double-cheeked kiss and big hug. “If I’d known we were using school nicknames tonight, I would have told Melody yours earlier, Stocky.”
Anthony froze, wishing he’d kept his fat mouth shut. He shot Baptiste a warning glance as threatening as he could make it. Baptiste had the decency to look somewhat chagrined, but the damage was already done.
Melody looked at the both of them with keen interest and open amusement. “Stocky? I can figure out where Bappy comes from, but what’s Stocky about?”
“Old family name,” Anthony said quickly, before Baptiste revealed any further information that Anthony preferred to keep quiet for now. “Please give Samira my best. She’s very lovely. I can see why you’re so taken with her.”
“Indeed.” Baptiste’s eyes narrowed with speculation, which was never a good sign. “Melody is also very lovely. But you seem to have already noticed that.”
Anthony’s face and ears burned white hot. He tried to look politely puzzled and regretted that they w
ere out of school, where it would have been more acceptable for him to lunge for Baptiste’s throat and wrestle him to the ground.
“Don’t let us keep you,” Anthony told Baptiste through gritted teeth.
Chuckling now, Baptiste clapped him on the back and hurried off through the crowd, leaving Anthony to wish he had a fire extinguisher to put out the flames of his embarrassment as he faced Melody again.
“I’ve never seen him like that over a woman,” he said, jerking his head in Baptiste’s direction. “I’d had the impression that things between him and Samira are quite serious. This proves it.”
“I think you’re right. I’ve heard people talk about feeling like they got zapped by electricity or lightning or something—”
Anthony tensed, his hand hovering over his silverware.
“But this is the first time I’ve ever seen it in action. I probably shouldn’t speak out of turn, but I’d be surprised if they don’t wind up getting married.”
Ah, marriage.
As the child of divorced parents who’d scorched most of the earth beneath his feet leading up to and following their split back when Anthony was ten, he’d spent a lot of time alternately insisting that he wasn’t ready to get married and/or feigning deafness when people like Mrs. Carmichael or, God forbid, his grandmother raised the topic.
So it was with a great deal of surprise, on what had already been a surprising night, that he found himself loosening up enough to spread some horseradish sauce on his meat and say the following:
“Well, we’re all in our mid-thirties, Baptiste, Nick and I. I’ll be thirty-five next year. Probably long past time for us to settle down and start families.”
She glanced up from her careful arrangement of prime rib on her bun. “You like children?”
“’Course. What about you? Do you want to get married one day?”
“Nope. I’ve sworn off men,” she said blithely. “I’ve decided to embrace my old maid status.”
“Excuse me?” He choked on his bite and had to cough. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”
“I’m serious. I work roughly a million hours per week. When I’m not working, I’m too tired to play online dating games with men who may or may not want a real relationship and may or may not even bother to show up on time for coffee or drinks after I’ve gone to the trouble of putting makeup and a nice outfit on. I’m over it. I’d rather stay at home and catch up on my medical journals. I’ve been married to my career for years. Now I’ve accepted that that’s the way it’s going to be. In fact, my dream house might be hitting the market soon—it’s a gorgeous Colonial about a mile from here—and I’m hoping to buy it. I’m damn sure not going to hold off on that while I wait for a man to show up in my life. I might even get a cat or two. I’ve always wanted one.”
Anthony had a great deal of difficulty getting his lower jaw off the floor. The idea of this intriguing woman rattling around in some lonely house with only a couple of cats and a stack of medical journals to occupy her because of a lack of worthwhile male companionship struck him as every bit as wasteful as tearing down Sandringham House because it had so many windows to clean.
Just in case his head hadn’t completely exploded off his shoulders, she went back in to finish the job.
“It would take a great guy to make me jump back into those waters,” she said, slathering more horseradish sauce on her sandwich and completely unaware of the consternation she’d just caused him. “A really. Great. Guy. Cheers.”
With that, she took a bite of her sandwich with relish.
He put down his fork, appetite ruined.
“And what about children?” he demanded. “Don’t you like children?”
“Me? I hate children.” She wiped her mouth. “That’s why I became a pediatric surgeon. Now I can cut on them all day and hear their little screams.”
He burst into startled laughter that helped dissipate some of the clouds that had just settled over him.
Melody watched him as her own smile slowly faded.
“What?” He rubbed his mouth with his napkin. “Don’t tell me I have food in my teeth. I’ve barely eaten anything.”
She blushed, all that golden skin taking on a rosy glow that seemed to steal all the ballroom’s light from other sources and concentrate it on her face.
“You have great smile. I’m just wondering why you keep it on such strict lockdown.”
Most of the air whooshed out of his lungs. She’d sworn off men, yet she complimented him like that? Was this a mixed message, or had he let his ego run away with him? And why did it feel so important to get the bottom of the matter?
He cleared his throat, determined to stay on topic. “And how do you expect to have children if you’re single at the ripe old age of...?”
He already knew her age, of course, but he waited for her to supply it. They were almost the same age. That seemed like an important fact.
“Thirty-five,” she said.
“Thirty-five. What’s your plan, then?” he asked, recovering some of his appetite and taking a bite of potato.
She shot him a disbelieving look. “You may not realize this, but in the twenty-first century, women can adopt or use sperm donors.”
The potato turned to rancid roadkill in his mouth. This just got worse and worse.
He dropped his fork with a clatter.
She looked up from her food, frowning at him.
“Children need a father,” he said flatly.
She shrugged. “Plenty of children of divorce turn out just fine.”
He was Exhibit A on that point, he supposed. Still, he felt the inexplicable but powerful urge to take up arms and vigorously defend this point.
“Nevertheless, a male presence in the household—”
“I’m too busy to think about that now,” she said, waving a hand. “And there’s a bit more to my story. I wouldn’t care if I never dated again, but Samira got a bee in her bonnet about wanting me to find someone and not be a single mom. So she signed me up for Doctor Love dot com. We’ll see what happens.”
“Doctor Love dot com?” he blurted on a surge of outrage. “What, some crackpot page for online hookups?”
A cold front swept into the ballroom. The eye of the storm centered over Melody’s face. She put her sandwich down.
“It’s not a crackpot page for online hookups,” she said slowly, icicles trailing spiky points from every word. “It’s a well-respected dating website where doctors are matched with other doctors. Their statistics on successful matches are well above industry standards. Samira thinks I should check it out.”
Successful matches?
What a disaster. This woman planned to either never date or only date men from the Internet. He couldn’t think when he’d heard a more ridiculous idea. And what about him? A decent looking real-world man with a credential or two sitting right in front of her! What, was he no better than spoiled haggis?
She had him so flustered that he couldn’t think straight. Or at all.
Which perhaps explained why he didn’t pick up on social cues and keep his fat mouth shut.
“Yes, but why would a glorious woman like you need to stoop to such nonsense?” he cried. “Now every unworthy man with a medical degree and a computer with Internet access gets a go at you? And what if your best match isn’t a doctor? You’d miss him entirely, wouldn’t you?”
Melody’s expression closed off.
“Does it even occur to you that you’re complimenting me and insulting me in the same breath?”
He leaned in, his words clipped and his face hot.
“Does it even occur to you that your plan is illogical nonsense?”
She stiffened. “And the insults just keep on coming.”
He belatedly realized that he’d veered into awkward territory again and winced. Impatiently flapped a hand.
“I obviously don’t mean to insult you. If I did—”
“If?”
“It’s purely by accident�
��hang on. Why are you taking your plate? Where’re you going?”
“I’m leaving.” She stood, her face the vivid red of the guards’ jackets during their changing ceremonies outside Buckingham Palace. “And thank you for only wasting ten minutes of my time while you show me that you are, in fact, an unmitigated arse. And for us Americans in the crowd, you’re also a jackass.”
Hurt and anger at himself—because he was always his own worst enemy, wasn’t he? —made him sharper than he needed to be.
He also stood. “And you, Dr. Harrison, are a judgmental hothead.”
Another humorless laugh. “Yeah, okay. Screw you.”
She moved so abruptly as she turned to go that the one side of her hair shifted away from her face.
That was when he saw them:
The raised and mottled marks that ran over her cheek and down the side of her neck like the fingers of a hand.
The sight of the pink and brown striations next to her radiant golden skin was so jarring and unexpected that he couldn’t hold back the words as he put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“My God, what’s happened to your face?” he said, even though he’d spent more than enough time in overseas war zones to recognize scars like this when he saw them. He’d seen his men alight. Heard their screams in the field, their moans in the hospital and smelled the sizzle of their flesh. And Melody had…? He couldn’t even let himself finish the thought. It was far too painful. “Were you burned?”
Once again, he wanted to yank the words back. Especially when he glimpsed the bright red patches staining her cheeks. Her flashing eyes and flaring nostrils.
But then he saw the hint of steel and realized that he’d angered rather than humiliated her.
She looked as though she wanted to take his head off.
He could hardly blame her for that.
Hell, if there’d been a block nearby, he’d have laid his head down on it for the big chop.
As the wave of her quiet fury rolled over him, he took a moment to put down the shovel he’d used to dig himself this massive hole and admire her all the more. It would take more than the bumbling likes of him to humiliate the beautiful, intriguing and proud Dr. Melody Harrison. Oh, yes, it would.
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