She's Got the Look

by Leslie Kelly

  Swiping a thick lock of auburn hair away from her forehead, Melody shrugged. “Well, that’s not a question. That’s a given. My mother, money and men. Three M’s that just seem to go together.”

  “What about Melody?” he asked. “That’s another M word.”

  She put a slice of pizza onto a plate and carried it over to him. “We get along fine…now that she’s on another continent.”

  “Does she know you’re back in Savannah?” he asked as he sat down at her small kitchen table, pushing the chair to make room for his legs beneath it.

  “Nope. As far as she knows, I’m still happily burying my head in the sand about my marriage and living among the rich and bored in Buckhead, right outside Atlanta.”

  She’d said something similar last night, when talking about her mother/manager. “Hasn’t your ex said anything like, uh, ‘Your daughter found out I’m a cheating, gutless slug and divorced me’ when she’s called?”

  She snickered, then replied, “She hasn’t.” Sitting down opposite him, she continued, “Hasn’t called, I mean. I phone every other week or so, and remind her that if she needs me to call my cell. So far there’s been no need.”

  Glancing down at his plate so she wouldn’t see the sudden flash of sympathy in his eyes, he asked, “What if you need her?”

  She lifted her beer. “I haven’t needed her for a long time. Not since I was sixteen and had myself legally emancipated.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Oh, yeah. Ouch is right. She wasn’t happy at first, but, believe it or not, our relationship improved once the issue of money wasn’t standing between us. I paid her a salary, and only rarely let her make decisions for me regarding my career.” She sighed heavily. “Though, honestly, I did let her talk me into one doozy of a mistake there at the end.”

  He somehow knew what she meant. “The peacock set?”

  She nodded.

  “Was it such a mistake? It sure made you famous.”

  “Infamous. Imagine my delight in being recognized for that.”

  He didn’t have to think very hard. Because, yeah, he knew firsthand how much attention she’d gotten. He’d been one of the lechers making raunchy jokes about the Peacock Feather Girl, like so many of the guys in his unit.

  A bitter taste of shame rose in his month, as well as indignation for the crap Melody had endured. At the instigation of her own mother, who should have been protecting her teenage daughter. Not exploiting her.

  “Anyway, that was the beginning of the end for me. I decided to quit and eventually my mother realized she wasn’t going to be able to talk me out of it.”

  “Yet you gave up all the emancipation and freedom to get married a couple of years later.” Nick wasn’t purposely trying to turn the topic of conversation to Melody’s ex. They’d get to that soon enough. Right now, he really was just interested in hearing why she’d made some of the choices she had.

  She rolled her eyes as she bit into her pizza. A few moments later, she mumbled, “I think I was trying to live a commercial.”

  He didn’t follow. “Okay…”

  “You’ve got to understand, I grew up in front of the camera. On TV, I was always one of the happy, smiling members of some happy, smiling family.” Wiping her mouth with her napkin, she explained, “Whether I was sneaking a dog into the house and giving it a bath, or squeezing the toilet paper or naming my bologna, I had this glimpse of what other people’s family lives might be like. And they were very different than mine.”

  Made sense, he supposed. In the same way he used to imagine everybody else’s family life back in Joyful had to be much better than his own. Of course, in his case, he’d probably been right.

  “So I guess when I met Bill, I somehow thought I was going to end up like one of the families in the commercials I’d made as a kid.” She sipped her beer, then shook her head. “I guess if I’d ever appeared in an ad for a horror movie, or a safe-sex campaign, I might have been more prepared.”

  Nick lifted his own beer, focusing on the bottle, which his hand tightened around. Melody was opening the door he’d needed to get through. Discussing the end of her marriage. A topic his job required him to delve into…but damned if he wanted to do it.

  It was such an invasion. He’d already invaded her so much by digging up her most ugly secrets. Having to admit it—and to dig even deeper, in person—made it that much worse.

  Damn, sometimes he really hated his job. And right now there were no bullies or cowards he could bust to make it all worthwhile. He wished that he could.

  One thing was sure—if he ever found Melody Tanner’s ex-husband lurking around here, stalking and harassing her, he was going to make the man wish he’d never set foot in Savannah.

  “So marriage wasn’t what you thought it’d be, huh?” He sure could understand that, since his had been a nightmare, too.

  “Oh, no.”

  “He cheated?” he managed to ask.

  A snort preceded her answer. “Only with anything that walked. Or blinked.”

  Remembering Melody was caught up in this case in some way, and figuring the sooner they found Jonathan Rhodes’s killer the better, he swallowed hard. Keeping his voice even and his tone relaxed, he said, “Hence the barnyard animals remark.”

  Her quick, shocked gasp told him she’d instantly grasped his meaning. Which was what he’d wanted—to be honest with her. But it still felt like a huge betrayal.

  She froze, staring at him with confusion in those blue eyes before lowering her slice of pizza to her plate. “You’ve been investigating me?”

  “I’m sorry, Mel.”

  “How could you?”

  “I had to.”

  She rose from the chair. “I can’t believe you did this.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.” Hoping she’d hear the regret in his voice, he added, “I wish I hadn’t had to do it. But I did. Your…situation could be important to the Rhodes case.”

  She threw her arms into the air and glared at the ceiling. “My humiliating, horrible divorce could be related to a murder?” Stalking across the kitchen, she smacked her hand on the countertop, keeping her back to him. “So that’s what this was all about? This ‘something’ that you wanted to start…it was all part of your investigation, wasn’t it?”

  Low blow. Very low. Nick followed, walking over to stand right behind her. Close, but not touching.

  It didn’t matter. Even without touching her, he was suddenly flooded with the sensual memory of what had happened last night. Just twenty-four hours ago they’d been wild and crazy. Sweet, hungry, intense passion had erupted between them when he’d said he wanted to start something.

  So how she could think he’d only said it to get her to let her guard down so he could investigate her cut him deeply. “You don’t mean that. You know it’s not true.”

  He lifted his hand, wanting to touch her, to reassure her that he wasn’t the lying, using prick she was imagining him to be. His palm hovered above her shoulder, one inch above her warm, bare skin. But he didn’t lower it, knowing he couldn’t cloud the issue with their physical attraction right now. Not until she cleared her head and accepted what they had to do: talk about her ugly past in Atlanta.

  Oh, there were so many things he’d rather do. Like put his hands on her shoulders, bend down and kiss the side of her neck. Slide his fingers over her shirt and delicately stroke the sweet curves of her breasts. Make her wet and hot and hungry and take her—fast and wild—bent over the kitchen counter just like this.

  Somehow, Nick managed to thrust the image away.

  “Last night was exactly what we both intended it to be,” he said in a thick whisper. “An end to the wondering and a start to something else. Whatever that is, I don’t know and I don’t think you do, either. And I don’t think either of us really needs to know anything more than it wasn’t about a damn list or famous underwear or anything else.”

  She didn’t turn around, didn’t acknowledge his words in any way. But her p
ulse wasn’t beating so wildly in the side of her neck, so he continued, “One thing is for sure, Melody. I didn’t make love to you so I could get you to trust me with your secrets. I didn’t begin to look into your past until today. And then…” Knowing it wouldn’t be easier to hear, he concluded, “Well, it wasn’t too difficult to get the details. I didn’t need to seduce them out of you.”

  She turned around, but he didn’t back off to give her more room. They were standing only an inch apart, practically nose to nose. He silently urged her to trust him, to know that he hadn’t intentionally set out to hurt or humiliate her.

  When she spoke again, he knew he hadn’t succeeded.

  “I want you to leave.”

  THOUGH SHE’D HOPED her welcome-home party for Melody would break the ice between her father and Dex, Rosemary now knew it hadn’t worked. With a house full of people, there had been no real reason for the two of them to talk. Definitely no opportunity for any of that silly male bonding that men seemed to think was so important.

  She wanted them to bond. Dex was an amazing man and for some absolutely unfathomable reason, he loved her. Really, truly, honest-to-God loved her. He’d said so, just a couple of weeks ago. And as crazy as she thought he was for loving her, someone who was almost as shallow as she was selfish—which was exactly what she’d told him—she’d also realized he meant it.

  She hadn’t said it back. Rosemary Chilton might have ice in her veins when negotiating a high-end real-estate deal. But she had chicken’s feathers on her backside when it came to admitting her feelings.

  That didn’t mean she didn’t feel them, however. She greatly feared she’d gone and done it but good…she’d fallen in love with a strait-laced, serious, hard-nosed cop. Which meant she wanted everyone else she loved to love him, too.

  Especially now. When things looked like they were about to get very…complicated.

  “I’m so glad you all could make it tonight,” she said to everyone seated around her dining-room table Wednesday evening, not wanting to think about the phone call she’d gotten from her doctor yesterday.

  “Thanks so much for having us all over,” Patty, her stepmother, said with a bright smile. She knew Rosemary was trying to work on Daddy, and was doing everything she could to help.

  Of course she would. Patty had been a lot like Dex once upon a time. A Northerner, an outsider, a working middle-class person. Also a widow with a young son, who’d instantly treated Deidre and Rosemary like her own daughters.

  She’d been wonderful for Daddy, who’d been crushed by his divorce from Rosemary and Deidre’s mother. Rosemary didn’t even like to think of how her father had retreated into himself after Mother had run off with her tennis instructor. But he’d recovered, thanks to Patty. So why her father couldn’t see that Dex was just as wonderful for his younger daughter, she had absolutely no idea.

  He’d better start seeing it quick, though. Because Dex was going to be around for a long, long time. Especially once he found out what Rosemary had been too nervous to tell him.

  “This was a sweet surprise honey. I’m sorry Carl is out of town,” her sister said, obviously also feeling the tension in the quiet room.

  Rosemary wasn’t particularly sorry. Deidre’s husband, Carl, was a boring, strait-laced, smooth-talking businessman who happened to be their father’s golden boy. If he’d been here, the differences between him and streetwise, plain-speaking Dex would have been all the more obvious. Not to mention that Brian would retreat into his silent shell, or stutter helplessly, as he always did when their brother-in-law was around.

  Thankfully, Carl was a snob as well as a financial guru, so he had no designs on Brian’s job as their father’s “rent collector.” He had once joked that if he’d wanted to be a landlord, he wouldn’t have bothered going to college.

  The prick.

  “Don’t you want wine with your dinner, Rosemary?” her father asked, glancing at the sweet tea she was sipping.

  “No, this is fine,” she said softly, wishing she’d never come up with this family dinner idea. She’d been feeling queasy enough without adding an excruciating get-together to the mix.

  “So, Dex, are you working on that awful murder case involving that former congressman?” Deidre asked. “I can’t believe we all saw that man just a week and a half ago. Bet Melody is really mad at you for inviting him, Rosemary.”

  If her sister had been close enough to kick under the table, Rosemary would have done it. She settled for a glare, instead.

  “Melody Tanner?” her father asked. “What does she have to do with Jonathan Rhodes?” Then he frowned. “I can’t imagine she was friends with him. I was surprised enough that you invited him to your home, Rosemary. He wasn’t a very nice man.”

  “W-wasn’t much of a man at all,” Brian mumbled, as usual fading into the background when the family was all together.

  Rosemary almost grinned, knowing her brother was referring to the women’s panties thing. But it wasn’t exactly a good topic of conversation for the dinner table.

  “I am on that case,” Dex said evenly as he sipped from his water glass. “But I can’t talk about open investigations.”

  Her father didn’t react one way or the other.

  “Melody’s almost like one of our own girls,” Patty said with a smile. “She and Rosemary were an incorrigible duo.” Giving Brian a fond look, she added, “Brian didn’t know what to do with himself when Rosemary’s friends were around.”

  Her brother flushed. The last thing Rosemary wanted was for poor Brian to start stammering that he hadn’t followed Rosemary and her friends around whenever they all came over because of his infatuation with Paige, so she quickly changed the subject.

  “Dex is from a long line of police officers, did I tell you that?” Rosemary said to fill the silence.

  Her father nodded, cutting his roast beef. Stubborn man.

  “His father is the police commissioner in their hometown in Pennsylvania, and one of his uncles is chief of detectives.”

  “So why did you move here?” her father asked, finally looking directly at Dex instead of at the wall, the floor or his plate. “Why didn’t you stay there to go into law enforcement?”

  Not good. There was a belligerent note in the question, as if he were saying he wished Dex had never come to Savannah at all.

  Please be patient, sugar.

  “I wanted to do things my way,” Dex replied. “Completely on my own, without any family influence paving the way.”

  Oh, Lord have mercy, that was the wrong answer.

  Her father lowered his fork. “You’re saying you don’t have respect for your family, for your father?”

  Dex met his stare evenly. “I’m not saying that at all. I simply didn’t want anything handed to me by virtue of my last name. I don’t want anything I didn’t earn on my own.”

  Since Daddy could trace his money back three generations to his great-grandfather, who’d started his fortune with a lumber mill up the river, that wasn’t a great answer, either.

  “Rosemary, these potatoes are just delicious. I must have the recipe,” Patty said brightly, obviously seeing the train wreck about to happen, too.

  “And do your father and uncle appreciate your rejection of their way of life?” her father asked.

  Rosemary covered her eyes, suddenly wishing the roast beef had been a little more well-done, because she really felt sick to her stomach.

  “They respect me,” Dex said, his tone as stiff as his set-in-granite jaw. “If my father doesn’t like the choices I made, he still knows they were my choices to make.”

  “And the green beans!” Patty chirped.

  “The rolls are wonderful, too,” Deidre said, obviously realizing things were heating up.

  Daddy’s silverware was on his plate, his hands flat on the table, and a hint of steel sparked in his gray eyes. Rosemary knew the look.

  Hell.

  “It’s hard enough being a parent without having your child throw e
verything you value into your face.” Now he was looking at her. “Rosemary, for instance, chose to go into real estate of all things and insisted on buying this house when I wanted to give it to her.”

  She’d be paying for it for the next four decades, too, but she didn’t regret that decision.

  “I would’ve taken it,” Deidre mumbled into her wineglass.

  God, Rosemary wished she could have a glass, too.

  “You have a husband who provided you with a nice house,” their father said, never taking his eyes off Dex.

  Oh, that was a dig. Now the vinegary taste of salad dressing was churning around with the too-rare roast beef. Rosemary sipped some tea, praying for an earthquake or something to end this miserable gathering. Never again…she was never going to try to force people together ever again. She’d learned her lesson.

  “That’s one of the things I admire most about your daughter,” Dex said. “In spite of being somewhat…meddlesome, she has a keen business sense and is very independent.”

  Rosemary felt a little better because of the warmth and hint of admiration in Dex’s voice. But she was going to get him for the meddlesome comment…once she stopped feeling as if she was on board a boat being tossed about by twenty-foot waves.

  “Young people nowadays don’t comprehend the importance of family tradition,” her father continued, his face now red.

  “When tradition comes at the expense of free thinking and independence, I’d say that’s a good thing.”

  Rosemary moaned, her body aching as much as her head. Her tummy was rolling around and she dropped a hand to her lap, wondering how rude it would be if the hostess upchucked all over the platter of mini fruit tarts about to be served for dessert.

  “I feel sorry for your father,” Daddy snapped.

  And Dex pushed his chair back from the table, not red faced but pretty tense nonetheless. “I think I’ve had enough to eat. It was wonderful, Rosie.”

  “Rosie?” her father snapped. “You call my daughter Rosie?”