Jones took the serving bowl filled with steaming rice that Brittany handed to him. “Thanks. This looks delicious. What’s up with Andy Marshall?”
“The little fool was caught trying to get his hands on beer and cigarettes,” Melody told him.
Jones paused as he dished out the rice onto his plate, stopping to look up at her. “Shoplifting?”
She shook her head. “No. He paid Kevin Thorpe to buy them for him.”
Jones nodded, passing her the heavy bowl. “At least he wasn’t stealing.”
Their fingers touched, and Melody knew damn well it wasn’t an accident. Still, she ignored it. Her heart could not leap when he touched her. She simply would not let it. Still, she had to work to keep her voice even. “He shouldn’t be drinking or smoking. Whether or not he stole the beer and cigarettes is a moot point.”
“No, it’s not. It’s—”
The phone rang, interrupting him.
Brittany excused herself and stood up to answer it. “Hello?”
Jones lowered his voice. “I think the fact that Andy didn’t simply go into the store and walk out with a stolen can of beer in his pocket says a lot about him.”
“Yeah, it says that he wanted more than one can of beer. He wanted an entire six-pack.”
“It says he’s not a thief.”
“I’m sorry,” Brittany interrupted. “That was Edie Myer son up at the hospital. Both Brenda and Sharon called in sick with the flu. I’m going to have to go over and cover for at least two hours—until Betty McCreedy can come in.”
Melody looked up at her sister in shock. She was leaving her alone with Jones? “But—”
“I’m sorry. I’ve got to run.” Brittany grabbed her bag and was already out the door.
“Where’s Andy now? Do you know?” Jones asked, barely missing a beat in their conversation, as if the situation hadn’t just moved from embarrassingly awkward to downright impossible to deal with. He took a mouthful of the stir-fry. “Man, this is good. After a week of Burger King and KFC, my body is craving vegetables.”
Melody set down her fork. “Did you and Brittany plan this?”
He washed down his mouthful of food with a sip directly from his bottle of beer. “You really think I’d stoop to lying and subterfuge just for a chance to talk to you?”
“Yes.”
Jones grinned. “Yeah, you’re right. I would. But that’s not what this is. I swear. Your sister invited me for dinner. That’s all.”
The stupid thing was, she believed him. Brittany, on the other hand, had probably planned to leave right from the start.
Melody picked up her fork but couldn’t seem to do more than push the food around on her plate as Jones had a second helping. Her appetite had vanished, replaced by a nervous flock of butterflies that took up every available inch of space in her rolling stomach.
“So how’s work?” he asked. “Are you always this busy?”
“It’s going to get frantic as the election gets closer.”
“Are you going to be able to keep up?” He gazed at her steadily. “I got some books about pregnancy and prenatal care out of the library, and they all seem to agree that you should take care not to push yourself too hard these last few months. You know, you look tired.”
Melody took a sip of her milk, wishing he would stop looking at her so closely, feeling as if she were under a microscope. She knew she looked tired. She was tired and bedraggled, and this dress she had on made her resemble a circus tent. How had Andy described her? Fat and funny-looking. “I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe I could come to work with you—act as your assistant or gofer.”
Melody nearly sprayed him with milk. Come to work with her? God, wouldn’t that be perfect? “That’s really not a very good idea.” It was the understatement of the century.
“Maybe we should compromise,” he suggested. “I won’t come to work with you, if you stop ignoring me.”
He was smiling, but there was a certain something in his eyes that told her he wasn’t quite kidding.
“I haven’t been ignoring you,” she protested. “I’ve been practicing self-restraint.”
He leaned forward, eyebrows rising. “Self-restraint?”
She backed off, aware that she’d already slipped and told him too much. She had to get out of here before she did something really stupid—like throw herself into his arms. “Excuse me.” She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up, then carried her plate to the kitchen sink.
Cowboy took another long sip of his beer, hiding the relief that was streaming through him. He could do this. He could actually succeed in this mission.
He’d been starting to doubt his ability to get through to her, starting to think she just plain disliked him, but in fact the opposite was true. Self-restraint, she’d said.
Hell, she liked him so much she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him, for fear she wouldn’t be able to resist his attempts to seduce her.
Yes, he could win this war. He could—and he would—convince her to marry him before his leave was up.
His relief was edged with something else. Something sharp and pointed. Something an awful lot like fear. Yeah, he could take his time and make her see that marrying him was the only option. But then where would he be?
Saddled with a wife and a baby. Shackled with a ball and chain. Tied down, tied up, out of circulation, out of the action. A husband and a father. Two roles he’d never thought he would ever be ready to play.
But he had no choice. Not if he wanted to live with himself for the rest of his life.
Cowboy took a deep breath. “Mel, wait.”
She turned to look warily back at him.
Cowboy didn’t stand up, knowing that if he so much as moved, she’d run for the stairs. Damn, she was that afraid of him—and that afraid of the spark that was always ready to ignite between them.
Still, he’d made her trust him before, under even more difficult circumstances. He could do it again. He had to do it again, no matter how hard, no matter how much fear of his own he felt. This was too important to him.
He took a deep breath. “What if I promised—” What? That he wouldn’t pull her into his arms? Wouldn’t try to kiss her? He needed to do both of those things as much as he needed to keep breathing. Keeping his distance from this woman was going to be hard to do. Nevertheless, he had no choice. It was gonna hurt, but he’d done hard and painful things before. “What if I swore I wouldn’t touch you? You pick a distance. Two feet, three feet, six feet, whatever, and I promise I won’t cross that line.”
She wasn’t convinced. He could see her about to turn him down, but he didn’t give her a chance to speak.
“I also promise that I won’t say a single word tonight about weddings or obligations or responsibilities or anything heavy. We’ll talk about something entirely different. We’ll talk about—” he was grasping at straws here, but she hadn’t left the room yet “—Andy Marshall, all right? We’ll figure out what we’re going to do about him.”
She turned to face him. “What can we do?”
Cowboy already knew the best way to deal with Andy—directly, ruthlessly and mercilessly. He’d been intending to call on Vince Romanella later tonight and ask his permission to spend part of tomorrow with the kid.
But why not teach Andy his lesson tonight?
“There’s a place in the woods, up by the old quarry,” he told Melody, willing her to sit back down at the table, “that’s always littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts. My guess is that’s where Andy was going to go with his six-pack.”
Melody actually sat down, and Cowboy used all of his self-control to keep from reacting. He had to play it really cool or she’d run.
“I know the place you mean,” she said. “It was a popular hangout spot back when I was in high school, too. But Andy’s only twelve. He wouldn’t exactly be welcome there.”
“He would if he showed up with a six-pack of brew under his arm.”
<
br /> “Why on earth would Andy want to make friends with high school seniors?” Melody wondered.
“That kid he’s always fighting with,” Cowboy said. “What’s his name? Parks?”
“Alex Parks.”
“He’s only a freshman or a sophomore, right?”
Melody nodded. She was actually looking into his eyes. She was actually sitting there and talking to him. He knew it was only a small victory, but he’d take ’em where he found ’em.
“Well, there you go,” he concluded. “It seems like a pretty sound strategy to me. Make friends with people who can crush—or at least control—your enemy. Andy’s not stupid.”
“Then the six-pack was really just an offering to the gods, so to speak. Andy wasn’t really going to drink it.”
Her eyes begged him to tell her she was right. He wished he could agree so that she would smile at him, but he couldn’t.
“I’d bet he wasn’t planning to drink all of it,” he told her, “but he was certainly intending to drink some. Probably enough to give him a good buzz. And to come out of it thinking the entire evening was a positive experience. Which would leave him wanting to go back and do it again.”
Melody nodded, her face so serious, her eyes still glued to his as if he held all the wisdom and knowledge in the universe.
“So what we’ve got to do,” Cowboy continued, “is make sure his first experience with a six-pack of beer is a nightmare.”
She blinked. And then she leaned forward. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Remember Crash?” Cowboy asked. “William Hawk? My swim buddy?”
“Of course.”
“To this day, he doesn’t drink. At least I assume he still doesn’t. He didn’t during the time we were going through BUD/S training. Anyway, he told me he wasn’t much older than Andy when his uncle caught him sneaking a beer from the downstairs refrigerator.” It was one of the few stories about his childhood that Crash had told Cowboy. And he’d told it only to convince Cowboy that no, he didn’t want a beer, thank you very much. “Crash’s uncle taught him a thing or two that day, and we, in turn, are going to run the same drill with Andy.” He smiled ruefully. “It’s a lesson I could’ve used myself, but the admiral wasn’t around enough to know what kind of trouble I was getting myself into.”
She was watching him. “I thought you told me your father was really strict.”
“He was—when he was home. But after we moved to Texas, he was hardly ever home. There were a few years he even missed Christmas.”
He had her full attention and he kept going. She claimed they didn’t know each other. And as hard as it was to talk about his less-than-perfect childhood, it was important that she understood where he came from—and why walking away from her and this baby was not an option for him.
“You know, I used to be like Andy,” he continued, “always making excuses for my old man. He had to go where he was needed. He was very important. He had to be where the action was. Even though—during the Vietnam conflict—he’d more than earned the chance to sit back and relax, he wouldn’t ask to be assigned to a cushy post like Hawaii. Hawaii wasn’t exactly what my mother wanted, but she would have settled for it. But old Harlan wanted to keep moving forward in his career.
“I always used to think he had such a tough job—going out to sea for all those months, being in charge of all those men, knowing that if an aggressive action started, he’d be right in the middle of it. But the fact is, that stuff was easy for him. We were the hard stuff. A wife who honestly didn’t understand why he didn’t retire from the Navy and take a job selling cars with her uncle Harold. A kid who needed more than constantly being told that B’s and B-pluses weren’t good enough. You know, I could work my butt off, cleaning my room for him, making it shipshape, and he would focus on the one spot of dust I’d missed. Yeah,” he repeated softly, “we were the hard stuff, and he ran away from us.”
She didn’t say anything, but he knew she read his message loud and clear. He wasn’t going to run away.
Cowboy pushed back his chair, still careful to move slowly. “Mind if I use your phone?”
She shook her head, distracted, as if she were still absorbing all that he’d told her. But then she looked up. “Wait. You haven’t told me exactly what Crash’s uncle did that day.”
“Do you have Vince Romanella’s number?” Cowboy scanned the list of neighbors’ and friends’ numbers posted on a corkboard near the kitchen phone. “Here it is. And as for Crash’s uncle…” He smiled at her. “You’re just going to have to wait and see.” He dialed Vince’s number.
She laughed in disbelief. “Jones. Just tell me.”
“Hey, Vince,” he said into the phone, “it’s Jones—you know, from the Evanses next door? I heard about the trouble Andy got into this evening. Is he there?”
“He’s probably in his room, grounded for a week and writing a twenty-page paper on why he shouldn’t drink beer,” Melody said, rolling her eyes. “Vince’s heart is in the right place, but something tells me all the essay writing in the world isn’t going to have any impact on a kid like Andy Marshall.”
Across the room, Jones smiled again. “You’re right,” he mouthed to her, shaking his head as he listened to Vince recount the evening’s excitement—and the subsequent ineffective punishment.
“Yeah,” Jones said into the phone, “I know he’s grounded, Vince, but I think I know a way to make sure he doesn’t drink again—at least not until he’s old enough to handle it.” He laughed. “You heard of that method, too? Well, a friend of mine told me that when he was a kid… Yeah, I can understand that. As his official foster parents, the state might not approve of… But I’m not his foster parent, so…” He laughed again.
The way he was standing, leaning against the kitchen counter, phone receiver held easily under his chin, reminded Melody of Paris. He’d stood the same way in the hotel lobby, leaning back against the concierge’s desk as he took a call. Except back then, he’d been wearing a U.S. Navy uniform, he’d been speaking flawless French and he’d been looking at her with heat simmering in his eyes.
There was still heat there now, but it was tempered by a great deal of reserve and caution. In Paris, the idea of an unwanted, unplanned pregnancy had been the furthest thing from either of their minds. But here in Appleton, the fact that they’d made an error in judgment was kind of hard to avoid. She carried an extremely obvious and constant reminder with her everywhere she went.
And as much as he was pretending otherwise, Melody knew that Jones didn’t really want to marry her.
“Okay,” he said into the telephone now. His slightly twangy Western drawl still had the power to send chills down her spine. “That’d be great. There’s no time like the present, so send him over.” He hung up the phone. “Andy’s on his way.”
Melody forced the chills away. “What are you planning to do?”
Jones smiled. “I’m going to wait and tell you at the same time I tell Andy. That way, we can get a good-cop, bad-cop thing going that’ll sound really sincere.”
“Jones, for crying out loud…”
His smile turned to a grin. “I thought pregnant women were supposed to be really patient.”
“Oh, yeah? Guess again. With all these extra hormones flying around in my system, I sometimes feel like Lizzie Borden’s crazier sister.”
“One of the books I was reading said that during pregnancy most women feel infused with a sense of calm.”
“Someone forgot to give me my infusion,” Melody told him.
Jones opened the door to the pantry. “I’m ready with a back rub at any time. Just say the word.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Hey, you promised—”
“I did, and I’m sorry. Please accept my apology.” He pulled the string and the pantry light went on. “Do you have any beer that’s not in the fridge?”
“Brittany keeps it in there, on the bottom shelf,” Melody directed him. “Why?”
“Yu
p, here it is.” He emerged from the pantry with a six-pack of tallboys. “Nice and warm, so the flavor is…especially enhanced. Tell your sister I’ll replace these. But right now, Andy needs it more than she does.”
“Andy needs…? Jones, what are you—”
“We better go out on the patio.” He flipped the light switches next to the kitchen door until he found the one that lit the old-fashioned stone patio out back. “This will get messy. It’s better to be outside.”
“Please just tell me—”
Melody broke off as she saw Andy standing defiantly at the bottom of the porch stairs. “Vince said you want to see me.”
“Yes, we certainly do.” Jones held open the back door for Melody.
“He said to give you this.” The boy spoke in a near monotone as he held out a half-empty pack of cigarettes. “He said they’re from three months ago, when his brother came to visit. He said to tell you that they’re probably stale but that he didn’t think you’d mind.”
Andy tossed the pack into the air, and Jones caught it effortlessly in his left hand. “Thanks. Heard you were hoping to do some partying tonight.”
Melody grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door and slipped it on as she went out into the cool evening air. “Hello, Andy.” The boy wouldn’t meet her gaze. He wouldn’t even glance up at her.
“So what? It’s not that big a deal,” Andy sullenly told Jones.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured you’d say.” Jones set the beer down on the picnic table that sat in the center of the patio. He brushed a few stray leaves from one of the chairs for Melody. “You just wanted to have some fun. And it was only beer. What’s the fuss, right?”
There was a flash of surprise in Andy’s eyes before he caught himself and settled back into sullen mode. “Well, yeah,” he said. “Right. It’s only beer.”
Melody didn’t sit. “Jones, what are you doing?” she whispered. “Are you actually agreeing with him?”
“All I’m saying is that people get uptight about the littlest things. Sit down, Andy,” Jones commanded. “So you’re a beer drinker, huh?”
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 89
