Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He’d had the wind knocked out of him and he struggled to regain his breath as tears of pain and humiliation filled his eyes.

  “Go away,” he growled. “Just leave me alone!”

  “I can’t do that,” Melody told him evenly. “Because we’re neighbors. And here in Appleton, neighbors look out for each other.”

  She sat down in the grass, crossing her legs tailor-style, fighting a familiar wave of nausea, thankful they were sitting in the shade.

  He was checking the watch he wore on his skinny left wrist, examining the protective surface over the clock face and holding it to his ear to be sure it was still ticking.

  “Did they break it?” Melody asked.

  “What’s it to you?” he sneered.

  “Well, you seem more concerned with your watch than with the fact that you’re bleeding, so I thought—”

  “You’re the unwed mother, right?”

  Melody refused to acknowledge the tone of his voice. He was being purposely rude so that she wouldn’t know he was on the verge of dissolving into tears. She ignored both the rudeness and the threatening tears. “In a nutshell, yeah, I guess I am. My name’s Melody Evans. I live next door to the Romanellas. We met last week, when Vince and Kirsty brought you home with them.”

  He sat down, still catching his breath. “You know, they talk about you. They wonder exactly who knocked you up. Everyone in town talks about you all the time.”

  “Except when they’re talking about you,” Melody pointed out. “Between the two of us, we’ve got the gossips working full-time, haven’t we? A foster child from the big, bad city who blows up lawn mowers. There’s probably a betting pool guessing how long it’ll be before the police become involved in your discipline.”

  Her bluntly honest words surprised him, and he actually looked at her. For a brief moment, he actually met her eyes. His own were brown and angry—far too angry and bitter for a twelve-year-old. But then he looked away.

  “The hell with them,” he said harshly. “I won’t be here long anyway.”

  Melody feigned surprise. “Really? Vince told me you were going to be staying with him and Kirsty at least until next September—that’s almost a year.” She fished in her handbag for some tissues. She wished she had a can of ginger ale in her bag, too. She was trying to make friends with this kid, and God knows throwing up on him wouldn’t win her big points.

  “A year.” Andy snorted. “Yeah, right. I’ll be gone in a month. Less. A week. That’s all most people can take of me.”

  She handed him a wad of tissues for his nose. “Gee, maybe you should try a different brand of mouthwash.”

  There was another flash of surprise in his eyes. “You’re a laugh riot,” he said scornfully, expertly stemming the flow of blood. He seemed to be a pro at repairing the damage done him in fistfights.

  “You’re a sweet little bundle of charm and good cheer yourself, munchkin.”

  He held her gaze insolently. He was James Dean and Marlon Brando rolled into one with his heavily lidded eyes and curled lip. He’d successfully concealed all of his pain and angry tears behind a “who cares?” facade. “I broke your window yesterday.”

  “I know.” Melody could play the “who cares?” game, too. “Accidents happen.”

  “Your sister didn’t think it was an accident.”

  “Brittany wasn’t born with a lot of patience.”

  “She’s a witch.”

  Melody had to laugh. “No, she’s not. She’s got something of a volatile temper, though.”

  He looked away. “Whatever.”

  “Volatile means hot. Quick to go off.”

  “Duh. I know that,” he lied.

  She handed him more tissues, wishing she could pull him into her arms and give him a hug. He was skinny for a twelve-year-old, just a narrow slip of a little boy. His injuries from the fight—and probably from the battles he’d been fighting all of his life—went far deeper than a split lip, a bloody nose and a few scrapes and scratches. Still, although he may have looked like a child, his attitude was pure jaded adolescent, and she gave him a smile instead.

  “You’re prettier than what’s-her-name, the witch,” he said, then snorted again. “But look what being prettier got you. Preggo.”

  “Actually, being careless got me…preggo. And to tell you the truth,” Melody said seriously, “not using a condom could’ve gotten me far more than just pregnant. These days, you have to use a condom to protect yourself against AIDS. But I’m sure you already know that. Smart men never forget—not even for a minute.”

  Andy nodded, acting ultracool, as if sitting around and talking about condoms was something he did every day. It was clear he liked being spoken to as if he were an adult.

  “What was the fight about?”

  “They insulted me.” He shrugged. “I jumped them.”

  “You jumped them? Andy, together those boys weigh four times more than you.”

  He bristled. “They insulted me. They were making up stories about my mother, saying how she was a whore, turning tricks for a living, and she didn’t even know who my father was—like I was some kind of lousy bastard.” He glanced down at her belly. “Sorry.”

  “I know who the father of my baby is.”

  “Some soldier who saved your life.”

  Melody laughed. “Gee, you’re up to speed on the town gossip after only a few days, aren’t you?”

  Another shrug. “I pay attention. My father’s a soldier, too. He doesn’t give a damn about me, either.”

  Doesn’t give a damn. Melody closed her eyes, fighting another wave of nausea. She hadn’t exactly given Harlan Jones a chance to give a damn, had she?

  “So you gonna keep it or give it away?”

  The baby. Andy was talking about the baby. “I’m going to keep it. Him.” Melody forced a smile. “I think he’s a boy. But I don’t know for sure. I had an ultrasound, but I didn’t want to know. Still, it just…he feels like a boy to me.”

  As if on cue, the baby began his familiar acrobatic routine, stretching and turning and kicking hard.

  Melody laughed, pressing her hand against her taut belly and feeling the ripple of movement from both inside and out. It was an amazing miracle—she’d never get used to the joy of the sensation. It made her sour stomach and her dizziness fade far away.

  “He’s kicking,” she told Andy. “Give me your hand—you’ve got to feel this.”

  Andy gave her a skeptical look.

  “Come on,” she urged him. “It feels so cool.”

  He wiped the palm of his hand on his grubby shorts before holding it out to her. She held it down on the bulge close to her belly button just as the baby did what felt like a complete somersault.

  Andy pulled back his hand in alarm. “Whoa!” But then he hesitantly reached for her again, his eyes wide.

  Melody covered his hand with hers, pressing it down once again on the playground-ball tightness of her protruding stomach.

  Andy laughed, revealing crooked front teeth, one of which was endearingly chipped. “It feels like there’s some kind of alien inside of you!”

  “Well, there sort of is,” Melody said. “I mean, think about it. There’s a person inside of me. A human being.” She smiled. “A little, wonderful, lovely human being.” And if she was lucky, that little human being would take after his mother. Her smile faded. If she was really lucky, she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life gazing into emerald green eyes and remembering….

  “Are you okay?” Andy asked.

  It was ironic, really. He was the one who looked as if he’d been hit by a train. Yet he was asking if she was all right. Underneath the tough-guy exterior, Andy Marshall was an okay kid.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Melody forced another smile. “I just get dizzy and…kind of queasy sometimes.”

  “You gonna barf?”

  “No.” Melody took a deep breath. “Why don’t we go get you cleaned up?” she suggested. “Maybe I should take you over to th
e hospital…?”

  He pulled away, slipping instantly back into surly James Dean mode. “No way.”

  “You’ve got dirt ground into your knee.” Melody tried to sound reasonable. “It’s got to be washed. All of your scrapes have to be washed. My sister’s a nurse. She could—”

  “Yeah, like I’d ever let the Wicked Witch of the West touch me.”

  “Then let me take you home to Kirsty—”

  “No!” Beneath his suntan and the dirt, Andy’s face had gone pale. “I can’t go there looking like this. Vince said…” He turned abruptly away from her.

  “He told you no more fighting,” Melody guessed. Violence wasn’t in her next-door neighbor’s vocabulary.

  “He said I got into another fight, I’d get it.” Andy’s chin went out as he pushed himself to his feet. “No way am I gonna let him take his belt to me! Hell, I just won’t go back!”

  Melody laughed aloud. “Vince? Take his belt to you?”

  “I’m outta here,” Andy said. “It’s not like anyone’s gonna miss me, right?”

  “Andy, Vince doesn’t even wear a belt.” Vince Romanella might’ve looked like the kind of guy who would react with one of his big, beefy fists rather than think things through, but in the three years he and his wife had been foster parents, he’d never raised a hand to a child. What Andy was going to “get” was a trip to his bedroom tonight, where he would sit alone, writing a five-page essay on nonviolent alternatives to fighting.

  But before she could tell Andy that, he was gone, walking quickly across the field, trying his best to hide a limp. “Andy, wait!”

  She started after him. He glanced back at her and began to run.

  “Shoot, Andy, wait for me!”

  Melody broke into a waddling trot, supporting her stomach with her arms.

  He had to stop at Main Street and wait for a break in the traffic before he could cross.

  “Andy, Vince isn’t going to hit you!”

  But he didn’t hear her. He darted across the road and started running down the street.

  Melody picked up her own pace, feeling like one of the running dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. With each step she took, the sky should have rumbled and the earth should have shook.

  “Andy! Wait! Somebody stop Andy Marshall—please!”

  She was light-headed and dizzy and within nanoseconds of losing what little breakfast she’d forced down earlier this morning. But no one seemed to notice her calls of help. No one seemed to be paying one bit of attention to the gigantically pregnant woman chasing the twelve-year-old boy.

  No one except the exceptionally tall, exceptionally broad-shouldered man on the corner. Sunlight gleamed off sun-streaked brown hair that was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He was dressed similarly to just about all the other Saturday-morning antique shoppers who crowded the quaint little stores that surrounded the common. He wore a muted green polo shirt and a pair of khaki Dockers that fit sinfully well.

  Seemingly effortlessly, he reached out and grabbed Andy around the waist. He moved with the fluid grace of a trained warrior, and as he moved, Melody recognized him instantly. He didn’t have to come any closer for Melody to know that his shirt accentuated the brilliant green of his eyes.

  Lt. Harlan “Cowboy” Jones had come to Appleton to find her. Blackness pressed around Melody, taking out her peripheral vision and giving her the illusion of looking at Jones through a long, dark tunnel.

  “Is this the kid you wanted, ma’am?” he called across the street to her, his voice carrying faintly over the roaring in her ears. He didn’t realize he’d found her. He didn’t recognize her new, extralarge, two-for-the-price-of-one size.

  Melody felt nausea churning inside of her, felt dizziness swirling around her, and she did the only thing she could possibly do, given the circumstances.

  She carefully lowered herself down onto the grass of the Appleton Common and fainted.

  “WHAT’S WRONG WITH you?” Cowboy scolded the squirming kid as he carried him across the street. “Making your mama chase after you like that.”

  “She’s not my mother,” the kid spit. “And you’re not my father, so let go of me!”

  Cowboy looked up and blinked. That was odd. The woman had been standing right behind the blue Honda sedan. She was blond and hugely, heavily pregnant, but somehow she had managed to vanish.

  He took a few more steps and then he saw her. She was on the ground, on the grass behind the parked cars, lying on her side as if she’d stopped to take a nap, her long hair hanging like a curtain over her face.

  The kid saw her, too, and stopped struggling. “God, is she dead?” His face twisted. “Oh, God, did I kill her?”

  Cowboy let go of the kid and moved fast, kneeling next to the woman. He slid his hand underneath her hair and up to the softness of her neck, searching for a pulse. He found one, but it was going much too fast. “She’s not dead.”

  The kid was no longer trying to run away. “Should I find a phone and call 911?”

  Cowboy put his hand on the woman’s abdomen, wondering if she was in labor, wondering if he’d even be able to feel her contractions if she was. He knew quite a bit about first aid—enough to qualify as a medic in most units. He knew the drill when it came to knife wounds, gunshot wounds and third-degree burns. But unconscious pregnant women were way out of his league. Still, he knew enough to recognize shock when he saw it. He brushed her hair out of her face to check her eyes, glancing up at the kid. “Is the hospital far away?”

  “No, it’s right here in town—just a few blocks north.”

  Cowboy looked back to check the woman’s eyes, and for several long, timeless seconds, he couldn’t move.

  Dear, dear God, it was Melody. It was Melody. This immensely pregnant woman was Melody. His Melody. His…

  He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, could hardly even think. Melody. Pregnant?

  The implication nearly knocked him over, but then his training kicked in. Keep going, keep moving. Don’t analyze more than you have to. Don’t think if it’s gonna slow you down. Act. Act and react.

  His rental car was on the corner of Main Street. “We can probably get her to the hospital faster ourselves.” His voice sounded hoarse. It was a wonder he could speak at all. He handed his car keys to the kid with the split lip. “I’ll carry Mel, you unlock the car door.”

  The kid stared at him as he lifted Melody up and into his arms. “You know her?”

  A hell of a question, considering he’d gone and gotten her pregnant. “Yeah. I know her.”

  She roused slightly as he carried her down the street toward his car. “Jones…?”

  “Yeah, honey, I’m here.”

  The kid dropped the keys twice but finally managed to get the passenger door open.

  “Oh, God, you are, aren’t you?” Melody closed her eyes as he affixed the seat belt around her girth.

  Cowboy felt light-headed himself. She looked as if she were hiding a watermelon underneath her dress. And he’d done that to her. He’d sent his seed deep inside of her and now she was going to have his baby. And if he didn’t hurry, she was going to have his baby in the front seat of this car.

  “Hang on, Mel. I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  Cowboy turned around to order the kid into the back seat, but the kid was gone. He did a quick sweep of the area and spotted the boy at ten o’clock, running full speed across the common. Melody had no doubt been chasing him for a reason, but no matter what that reason was, getting her to the hospital had to take priority.

  The kid had left Cowboy’s car keys on the front seat, thank God. Cowboy scooped them up as he slid behind the wheel, then started the engine with a roar. Melody was pregnant and the baby had to be his. Didn’t it? Had it truly been nine months since the hostage rescue at the embassy? He did a quick count but came up with only seven months. He must have counted wrong. He pushed all thoughts away as he searched the street for a familiar blue hospital sign. Don’t think.
Act. He’d have plenty of time to think after he was certain Mel was going to be okay.

  The kid had been right—the hospital was nearby. Within moments, Cowboy pulled up to the emergency room entrance.

  He took the shortest route to the automatic E.R. doors—over the hood of the car—and helped the sliding doors open faster with his hands. “I need some help,” he shouted into the empty corridor. “A wheelchair, a stretcher, something! I’ve got a lady about to have a baby here!”

  The startled face of a nurse appeared, and Cowboy moved quickly back to the car, opening the door and lifting Melody into his arms. Even with the added weight of her pregnancy, she still felt impossibly light, improbably slender. She still felt so familiar. She still fit perfectly in his arms. God, how he’d missed her.

  He was met at the door by a gray-haired nurse with a wheelchair who took one look at Mel and called out, “It’s Melody Evans. Someone call Brittany down here, stat!”

  “She’s unconscious,” Cowboy reported. “She’s come out of it once but slipped back.”

  The nurse pushed the chair away. “She’d only fall out of this. Can you carry her?”

  “Absolutely.” He tossed his car keys to a security guard. “Move my car for me, will you, please?”

  He followed the woman through a set of doors and into the emergency room where they were joined by another woman—this one a doctor.

  “She’s preregistered, but we will need your signature on a form before you go,” the nurse told him as they moved briskly toward a hospital bed separated from a row of other beds by only a thin, sliding curtain.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Cowboy said.

  “Can you tell me when the contractions started?” the doctor asked. “How far apart they are?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted as he set Melody on the bed. “She was out cold when I found her. She must have just keeled over, right by the side of the road.”

  “Did she hit her head when she fell?” The doctor examined Melody quickly, lifting her eyelids, checking her eyes and feeling the back of her head for possible injury.

  “I don’t know,” Cowboy said again, feeling a surge of frustration. “I didn’t see her fall.”