by Leslie Kelly
His pride. His money. His job. His life.
What about her life? Hers and the baby’s?
“Well,” he said, still standing there so rigid and strong, as if he’d rehearsed this whole thing in his mind a dozen times and was afraid to deviate from the script, “what do you think?”
He lifted the ring again. No dropping to one knee. No embracing her, pressing kisses all over her stomach to welcome their child into their lives. No assurances that he didn’t care where they lived or what they lived on, as long as they were together.
Not her lover. Not her love. Not the man she wanted to be her baby’s father.
No. Just a harsh, inflexible cop.
“What I say…” she murmured as she walked back to the door, her heart breaking with every step “…is no.”
He looked stunned for a second—the first completely genuine reaction she’d seen since the minute he’d arrived. But it quickly disappeared. “You’re just emotional.”
Nodding, she admitted, “Yes, I’m very emotional. But I’m also sure of what I want. And it isn’t to start a life with someone who coldly plans out our future without a single thought about what I want. Not with someone whose pride is so great he can’t see a wife as his partner, in all ways, accepting what both of us can bring to the table. Figuratively and literally.”
Opening the door, she stepped out of the way and gestured him toward the exit. “So I’m sorry, my answer is no. I’m not accepting your terms.”
He remained silent, shocked.
“And now I think it’s time for you to leave,” she said, wondering where she’d gotten the strength to say that with such conviction, when deep inside she knew it was the last thing she wanted.
Somehow, she found one more deep reserve of strength. Enough for two more words.
“Goodbye, Dex.”
MELODY HADN’T ever imagined meeting Nick’s family this early in their, uh…whatever they had. Knowing the Walkers didn’t live nearby, and that she and Nick hadn’t even yet figured out what kind of a relationship they were caught up in, she’d assumed any family introductions were a long way off. But here she was, sitting in his car, not far from a Georgia town called Joyful, about to meet the Walker clan.
Nick had assured her he’d planned to ask her to come with him anyway, but the camera incident made it that much more important to him that she did. He didn’t want to leave her alone after what had happened.
She wondered if Nick’s family would take one look at her face and see the rage there.
Because, oh, rage was what she felt. What she’d been feeling for hours since they’d left her apartment, dropped her cats off with Paige and gone by Nick’s place to pick up Fredo, who was sprawled in the back seat. And the anger had built throughout every hour of their drive across the state.
She’d done a pretty good job disguising her feelings when Nick had first revealed the Internet camera someone—oh, wouldn’t she love to know who—had hidden in her bedroom. Keeping the sheet around her, as he’d suggested, she’d calmly gotten up, gone into the bathroom, puked, then put on some clothes. By the time she’d come back out, Nick had already put the camera into a plastic bag and was on the phone with someone. From the sound of it, another cop.
He’d tried to get her to stay in her kitchen while he and the other detective who showed up scoured the rest of her apartment—and her studio downstairs—for any additional disgusting spy devices. She hadn’t. Instead she’d followed them into every room, watching as they pried off grates, searched behind switch plates and carefully examined her telephones.
The fact that they’d found nothing else beyond that one camera on the plant ledge in her bedroom, which had apparently been positioned just perfectly for spying on her when she was undressing or sleeping—oh, God, how utterly revolting—didn’t make her feel better.
So the pervert hadn’t wired her whole building. That didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten an eyeful, watching her in the privacy of her bedroom. Changing, crying, thinking, sleeping.
Making love with Nick last night.
She felt nauseated again. But she didn’t figure Nick would appreciate her getting sick in his new-looking car.
“How much longer?” she asked, seeing by the road signs that they’d skirted past Atlanta by about sixty miles. That was as close to that city as she ever wanted to be again for the rest of her life.
“Another half hour at most,” Nick said.
They were the first words they’d exchanged in a while, both of them quietly absorbing what had happened this morning. But now that they were near their destination—near his family, where they’d have to put on a happy face for his brother’s engagement party—she needed to talk. Needed to understand and to unload. To vent and to speculate.
“Okay, so tell me,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. “Who could have done it?”
Nick’s jaw tightened. “I have my suspicions.”
“Beyond that,” she said, immediately knowing he was thinking of Bill, who was first on her list, too. “I want to know, in technical terms, who may have had the capability and the opportunity to do it.”
He told her. “The camera was a small, wireless one that had to have been networked to a router somewhere close to your place…but maybe as far as several buildings away. From that router, whatever was being filmed could have projected to an Internet site.”
She gasped at that implication. “The Internet…”
“Don’t think that way,” he muttered, knowing exactly where her thoughts had gone. “I’m sure whoever it was set up his own private little Melody address for his viewing pleasure.” His hands were white on the steering wheel, as if he was gripping someone’s throat, reminding Melody of the man’s temper. “We searched online, and nothing came up.”
Small comfort. But she chose to grab on to it like a life-line. “And the camera didn’t need a computer of its own? Every one I’ve seen is connected to its own system.”
“A computer’s not necessary with this wireless type. These things sell for a couple hundred bucks. All you need is a power source—which was up there for a plant light, most likely. And a wireless system to network it to.”
Spying had gotten so simple. Made her rethink her long-held belief that the Internet was the greatest thing since control-top panty hose. “Pretty easy to do, then, huh?”
“Yeah. But we’ll find him, Mel. Your part of town has a lot of businesses, so there could be a lot of wireless networks, served by a lot of ISPs. But we’re already looking. Sooner or later, we’ll track down the right one and find out who set this up.”
She trusted him. How could she not, given the confidence in his voice? “It shocks me how easy it must have been for someone.”
“Yeah. It could have been installed there and hidden in the leaves of that plant within a matter of minutes.”
Minutes for someone to invade her privacy and put her up for public consumption. As if she hadn’t had enough of that in her lifetime.
“Meaning,” Nick added, “that it could have been your ex, the day he came to harass you. Was he ever alone?”
She sighed heavily. “I don’t know how long he was in the building before he found me up on the third floor that morning.”
“Bastard.” Shaking his head, Nick continued, “It also could have been Jonathan Rhodes, when he was stealing your underwear.”
They were the most likely suspects, she knew. But they weren’t the only ones. “There were workers in and out of the apartment for days while I was living upstairs.”
“Did any of them stand out as suspicious?”
“Not really. Other than the foreman, most of them spoke Spanish, so I couldn’t understand them.”
He didn’t look the least bit relieved. Without another word, he reached across the console and took hold of her hand. Lifting it, he brought her fingers to his lips and kissed the back of them.
Her heart flipped a little.
“You didn’t have to whisk me out
of town, you know,” she said softly. “Once you made sure the apartment was secure, I would have been okay there.”
Ignoring the road in front of them, Nick looked over, his expression incredulous. “Are you crazy? You think I would have done that?”
His vehemence was nice, but she’d meant what she said. She was tired—damned tired—of reacting instead of acting. Of basing her choices on the actions of other people.
Maybe she was finally recovering. Finally regaining her nerve and her strength. Because the last thing seeing that camera had made her want to do was run. No. It had made her want to fight.
Only one thing had caused her to agree to come with Nick to his hometown. She wanted to be with him.
“You’re sure your brother and his fiancée won’t mind me crashing their party?” she asked, still feeling funny about it.
“Positive.”
Considering Nick had flat-out said he wasn’t going unless she came with him, she suspected he was right. “And you can afford to be away from work?”
“One day’s all right,” he admitted, though she sensed his concern. Nick wasn’t the kind of man to bail on his responsibilities. Which said a lot for how much he cared about his older brother, who she was going to be meeting in a very short time.
When they pulled into Joyful, Melody was struck by two things. First, the town was incredibly pretty—the picture postcard she’d imagined the first time she’d heard its name. And second, the streets were darn near empty. It was nearly dinnertime on Saturday, yet only a few cars chugged up the main road through town, and no one walked along the sidewalk outside the cute shops dotting the street.
“Where is everyone?” she asked, looking around in confusion.
Nick sighed audibly. “At the party, I guess.”
“The party? The party we’re going to?”
He nodded. “I expect so.”
She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it, having lived in big cities for most of her life. But when Nick pulled up in front of a small café shaded by some huge, beautiful pecan trees, she realized he might be right. Because the parking lot was overflowing. Cars, trucks, motorcycles. They were jammed into every corner.
Unless Emeril had made a pit stop here to do some cooking, she suspected that Nick’s brother and his fiancée were a very popular couple.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” she whispered. “I expected to meet your family. Not your whole town.”
Nick shook his head. “I do believe most folks here in Joyful would say they’re one and the same thing.”
And a few minutes later, inside the café, Melody realized the man was right. The pretty restaurant, with fixtures and furniture that looked brand-new, was filled with laughing, talking people, whose voices all seemed to unite to call out, “Nick!” when they walked in.
He was immediately surrounded, and Melody stayed back, watching every person, trying to figure out which one was his mother, and which was Johnny.
She immediately ruled out the pudgy guy with dark hair, who bore a slight resemblance to Nick but was much shorter. Hearing him called Virgil, she realized this was a cousin—the one Nick and his brother had gone to spend time with during their summers.
When they were scared to be home with their father.
That was a conversation she was going to have with Nick Walker one of these days. And soon. Having revealed everything to him about her own life, she realized she knew darn little about his. At least, the life he’d lived before his time in the military.
She was still thinking about it when a very pretty woman with short, platinum-blond hair appeared at Nick’s side and threw her arms around his neck. Nick hugged her back.
Melody’s whole body grew stiff, taut with tension. Her breathing slowed as a pounding began in her temples. She didn’t know who the woman was, but she was beautiful and she was in Nick’s strong arms.
So much for thinking she was fine, that she’d recovered from the emotional garbage left over from her marriage. Because obviously, judging from the sharp stab of pain in her stomach, she’d been fooling herself. Not if seeing Nick hug another woman, probably in complete and total innocence, could make her so instantly tense. Panicky, almost.
She nearly took off. Her feet edged backward, toward the door, but she barely got a few inches before she bumped into something big. Something hard. Something human.
A pair of hands dropped onto her shoulders to steady her. “Whoa there.”
Spinning around, she looked up into a pair of twinkling green eyes and a face that looked very familiar. It was Nick’s face, but a little different. Not only in the color of the eyes, but the laugh lines beside them. His smile was broad, his whole body relaxed and laid-back. Unlike his brother.
For that’s who this had to be. She was looking at Johnny Walker. The groom. Who’d just caught her trying to bolt out of his engagement party. “You’re Johnny,” she managed to say.
“Uh-huh. Don’t think we’ve had the pleasure,” he replied, never losing that open, welcoming expression.
“She’s with me.”
Melody closed her eyes for a second, not knowing whether to be relieved that Nick had walked up behind her or not. She wasn’t ready to turn around and face him, that was for sure. Not when she was still all jumpy and jittery because he’d been hugged by another woman.
Johnny Walker’s smile broadened, emphasizing the lean lines of his face, which was almost as nice as his brother’s. Stepping around Melody, he threw his arms around Nick’s shoulders and hugged him. “’Bout time you showed up, I was getting worried. Have you seen Emma Jean?”
“He has, but he neglected to tell me he brought a friend,” a woman’s voice said. “Nick, you big dope, she looks exhausted from that long drive. Did you even offer to get her a drink?”
Melody couldn’t muster up any surprise that Emma Jean, Johnny’s bride, was the blonde Nick had been hugging. The realization didn’t make her feel better about how badly she’d responded when she’d first seen her. It merely reinforced what she’d already suspected.
She hadn’t reacted out of jealousy but rather out of habit.
A habit she needed to break if she wanted her relationship with Nick to have any chance whatsoever of working.
“Em, this is Melody Tanner. I kidnapped her and brought her along for the ride,” Nick said.
Emma Jean’s smile was wide and genuine. “I’m so glad to meet you.” She sounded as if she meant it. The other woman’s voice wasn’t a soft, Southern drawl like her groom’s, but instead held almost a European accent. “Is this your first visit to Joyful?”
Melody liked the other woman’s face, which looked like it’d reveal every feeling Emma Jean ever experienced. When the woman stepped closer to Johnny and slid an arm around his waist, there was no denying the expression of absolute joy.
“Yes, it is. And I’m glad to meet you, too,” Melody murmured. “Sorry to crash in unannounced.”
“It’s not a problem, not at all. In case you haven’t noticed, we expected a crowd,” Emma Jean said, laughing as she looked around the full-to-exploding restaurant.
Melody was about to reply when she felt a hand squeeze her butt. Sucking in a shocked breath and hoping no one had seen Nick’s inappropriate gesture, she turned around to glare at him. And found herself nose to nose with a cackling old man.
“Who…did you just…”
“Mr. Terry,” Johnny said with a forbidding frown. “You’d better keep your hands to yourself.”
“Is she one of your friends?” the old man asked Emma Jean. He wagged his eyebrows, which were in desperate need of a pair of hedge trimmers. “From your movie days?”
Movie days? Melody didn’t quite understand the reference, since from what Nick had said, Emma Jean worked as a financial advisor. And a partner in this restaurant.
Emma Jean rolled her eyes and sighed. “Mr. Terry, you know that story wasn’t true. By the way, that’s Nick Walker’s lady friend you groped.”
<
br /> The old man’s eyes widened and he looked over to see Nick, watching him like a hawk, all simmering energy and dangerous heat. Lord, Melody hungered for the man.
Nick would never in a million years lay a hand on an old fellow who looked like a stiff wind would blow him over. But Mr. Terry obviously didn’t know that. “I thought she was a bridesmaid,” he said, sounding plaintive.
“Are you pinching my bridesmaids?” Emma Jean said, her fists on her hips.
“Just a bit,” the old man said with a deep sigh. “Used to be I could pinch a lady’s behind and she’d slap my face. Now they only laugh.” He looked almost mournful.
“Do you want me to slap your face?” Melody asked dryly, hearing Emma Jean snort.
Mr. Terry nodded, looking so hopeful Melody was tempted to do as he asked. But with her luck, the old guy would keel over and die. And she’d had her fill of dead guys this week.
Johnny shook his head. “You’d better be careful, Mr. Terry. Claire Deveaux will do more than slap your face, she’ll knock your teeth out.”
The old man responded with a phlegmy chuckle. Clamping his lips shut, he made some slobbery sound in his mouth. After a second, he pushed a full set of dentures out from between his lips, shook them at the crowd, then sucked them back in. “Too late for that,” he said once his teeth were back in place. He sounded terribly pleased with himself. “Now, where is Ms. Deveaux? We’ll see how good her aim is.” And he went off to look for Claire, whoever that was.
Melody couldn’t help laughing, despite the fact that some toothless, dirty old man had just felt her up. Somehow, the unexpected moment had eased her tension, letting everything else slide away for the first time all day. All the questions and uncertainty she’d had on her shoulders for so long had somehow lightened in this place where there were no ex-husbands, no shaky businesses, no corpses, no hidden cameras.
