Melanie smiled at the stranger with the clipboard in his hand. A wish list perhaps? It wouldn’t be the first time someone came into the store clutching one. Maybe Joyce was upset because they didn’t have any of the items on it. She wouldn’t put it past Joy.
“Can I help you with anything?” Melanie asked engagingly.
There was a dimple appearing and disappearing in her cheek, as if unable to decide whether to remain, as she smiled at him. Lance Reed watched for a moment in fascination despite himself. A snappy answer to her question, which several of the guys at the firehouse would have easily uttered, played across his mind, never making it to his lips. And with good reason. It was largely unrepeatable.
He took quick measure of the petite blonde who’d blown in his way like a sweet, cool breeze on a warm spring day. Unlike the woman he’d been talking to, she didn’t appear to have a care in the world. She also didn’t seem to be aware of the errors she was guilty of committing. Or, if she was, she didn’t care. He guessed that the latter seemed more likely.
That innocent look on her face was probably purely calculated for effect, he decided. Beneath the wide smile and wider eyes lay a devious mind. Lance Reed was well acquainted with the type. Hell, he’d been engaged to the type.
The blonde opened her mouth. The dimple set up housekeeping, calling forth a twin in her other cheek. She was going to flirt with him, he realized. Well, she could flirt until she was completely out of breath, wiles and charm. It wasn’t going to do her any good. She wasn’t going to talk her way out of a citation. Which would be for her own good. Or at least the public’s.
Certainly liked to stretch things out, didn’t he? Melanie thought. She raised a questioning eyebrow in Joyce’s direction, but Joy looked positively spooked. What was going on here?
“I’m sorry, maybe you didn’t hear me. I said, ‘Could I help you with anything?’ ” Melanie repeated.
“I heard you,” the deep voice rumbled. But before answering her question, Lance checked off several items on his clipboard.
He’d only taken on the job of fire inspector a little less than two months ago, helping out until someone permanent could be hired to take the place of John Kelly, who had just retired. He wore two hats these days, one as a fire inspector and his regular one, that of an arson investigator. It wasn’t easy, juggling the two, but there wasn’t much else to fill his hours the rest of the time since Lauren was permanently out of his life.
Thoughts of Lauren, of the way she had just turned and walked away when he had needed her most, dragged sharp, rusted nails through wounds he’d thought he’d finally managed to cordon off so that they could heal.
Showed how much he knew, Lance thought ruefully, disgusted with himself. His mood was not the best as he focused on the blonde standing before him and tapped the clipboard. “It’s not me you’re going to need to help, Ms. McCloud.”
“Melanie,” she corrected, trying to put him at ease with her smile. Being addressed by her surname put much too formal an edge on things. Tutored by her freespirited mother and equally uninhibited great-aunt, formality was something that had never taken root in Melanie’s life.
From the way the stranger looked, it had obviously not only rooted, but flourished in his. He made her think of a soldier, standing just at the line of battle a moment before going into the fray.
An extremely good-looking soldier, she noted. If Aunt Elaine were still around, she’d have been drooling, Melanie thought fondly. Aunt Elaine had always had an eye for good-looking men. It never waned, not even when she was in the hospital. Melanie liked remembering her that way. Aunt Elaine had flirted with a young intern moments before permanently closing her eyes. She died with a smile on her lips.
“And who is it that I’d need to help?” Melanie asked, wondering if she was going to have to coax every word out of this man’s mouth.
Her voice was low and melodious, Lance thought. He wondered if that was a put-on. Probably. The next moment she’d be batting her lashes at him. It seemed in keeping with the old-fashioned decor in the shop. When he’d first walked in, he’d had to take a minute to adjust. Not his eyes, but his orientation. Crossing the threshold had been like walking in through a time warp. Outside, in the bright California sun, it was the nineties; in here, it was like being thrown headfirst into the early fifties. Or maybe even earlier than that.
Retro wasn’t his thing. It obviously seemed to be hers. There was an old record player in the corner, its spindle laden with a stack of what looked like long-playing albums, the type that had been made when vinyl records were the only kind available. The music floated along the perimeter of his mind, vaguely familiar, even though he thought that wasn’t possible.
It was the theme from an old movie, he realized, before he shut the sound out. Something he’d probably heard as a kid.
He wasn’t here to play “Name that Tune,” Lance reminded himself, he was here to do his job and move on.
“You’re part owner of this store,” Lance nodded at the shop, “aren’t you?”
Just what was this about? Melanie exchanged glances with Joyce, whose lips seemed to have lost the ability to form words.
“Yes.”
Though she had owned all of the inventory before she’d decided to open up the shop, Melanie had insisted that Joyce become equal partners with her. It seemed only fair, seeing how many hours they both put in. Besides, it felt right, and Melanie always went with what felt right. Like her friendship with Joy. Living on the same street, they’d been friends since before kindergarten. Actually, only Joyce had gone to kindergarten. Melanie had remained home, to learn at her mother’s elbow. Her mother’s and Aunt Elaine’s, as well as several tutors her mother had brought in.
Melanie was firmly convinced that she’d learned far more from the two women, about life and surviving as well as the usual subjects, than she ever would have in a school where knowledge was contained within four walls and within the pages of books. Her classroom had been the world in general and the movie set in particular. Or rather, behind the movie set, where drama and magic, make believe and truth played equal parts.
“Then these citations belong to you.” Removing the sheet from the clipboard, Lance handed it to her. It listed five direct violations of the fire code, and he knew he could have given her more.
Melanie glanced down at the sheet, then back up at the man who had given it to her. She shared a little of Joy’s confusion. “You’re a fire inspector?”
“Yes, and your shop, Ms. McCloud, is a fire waiting to happen.” Disapproval was etched on his chiseled, rigid features. Though some might find a place like this charming, Lance didn’t care for small, cluttered places. He liked wide-open spaces. The less people allowed junk to pile up, the less fuel there was for a fire and the less likely it would be for a fire to break out.
With the tip of his pen, Lance pointed toward the four huge boxes that had been delivered this morning. “Do you even realize that you’re blocking an exit with that stack of crates? If there was a fire, someone could be hurt because of your carelessness.”
The delivery man who’d brought in the shipment had looked and sounded as if he was coming down with a cold. Taking pity on him, Melanie had sent him away after he’d dropped off the crates right inside the rear of the shop rather than in the storeroom. Customers had arrived, and she just hadn’t gotten around to putting the crates into the storeroom.
Melanie eyed the inspector. The complaint seemed minor enough to her. Rules, except for the very basic ones, were meant to be a little flexible. Surely he could cut her a little slack. John Kelly always had. A kind, jovial man in his late fifties, the other fire inspector and she had hit it off the first time he’d walked into her shop. But then, he was an old movie buff, and they’d found a great deal to talk about even before he’d discovered that she’d practically grown up in movie studios.
“Yes, but—”
If she thought she could talk her way out of this, she was in for a sur
prise. He wasn’t a pushover, the way the recently retired inspector had been. Lance had seen the power of fire, watched it as it licked its way through a lifetime’s worth of possessions in less than ten minutes. There were no second chances with fire, no time to bargain or talk your way out of the havoc it brought.
Lance shook his head. “There is no ‘but,’ Ms. McCloud. Something is either a fire hazard or it isn’t. And that,” he tapped the pile of crates nearest him for emphasis, “is a fire hazard. If you had a fire,” he repeated pointedly, “and the people in your store tried to get out this way, they could be burned to death.” Glancing around, he judged that the whole place could go up like a tinderbox.
There was no reason to feel a fire would start here, Melanie thought. No one was allowed to smoke in the shop, and she’d just had the wiring checked, although, she noticed, according to the stone-faced inspector’s findings, the light switch in the storeroom was suspect.
“They could use the front door,” she suggested, trying her best to remain cheerful.
He knew better. Firsthand. “What if that way was inaccessible?”
He made Melanie think of someone who’d had what he believed to be an epiphany and now knew the “right” way when everyone else around him was still groping around in the dark. Rather than become irritated, she felt rather sorry for him. Inflexibility was a cross.
“Then I’d push the crates aside,” she responded easily to his question, still hoping to coax him into a smile.
Lance’s eyes narrowed until they were two gleaming points of a very sharp sword. “Fire isn’t a joke, Ms. McCloud.”
“I never said it was.” Melanie glanced at his name written in small, precise letters on his badge and cocked her head. “Do you have a hearing problem, Lance?”
Annoyance deepened the tiny furrow between his brows. He didn’t care for the way she made the leap from being a stranger to someone who was on a firstname basis with him. “No, why?”
“Well, you didn’t hear me when I asked you to call me Melanie, and you obviously thought you heard me say that fire was a joke when I didn’t.” She raised and lowered one slim shoulder. “I just thought that perhaps you had trouble hearing things.”
Melanie glanced over her shoulder. The woman she’d left standing before the wall of photographs was still there. Reading her body language, Melanie knew she was ready to make her purchase. Momentarily ignoring Lance, Melanie placed her hand on Joy’s arm.
“I think that lady’s about to buy something, Joy.” She nodded toward the customer. “Why don’t you go over there and wait on her?”
There was nothing Joyce wanted to do more than to get as far away from the man with the dark, accusing eyes as possible. He made her feel guilty even when she hadn’t done anything. But she didn’t want to leave Melanie to cope with him by herself, either. Though she was younger than Melanie by several months, Joy felt very protective of her. Walking away right now would be tantamount to tossing a babe to the wolves.
Chewing her lower lip, Joy weighed obligation against self-preservation. “I don’t know, Mel—”
Melanie placed both hands on Joyce’s shoulders and turned her around toward the woman. “Never keep a customer waiting, remember?” She gave Joyce a little push in the right direction. “It’s okay,” Melanie assured her with confidence. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”
Melanie turned toward Lance as Joyce made her escape. “Isn’t it?”
He shrugged noncommittally. “After you pay your fine, that’s up to you.”
Stubborn, that was the word for him, she thought. Still, she was nothing if not optimistic. Melanie approached the offending stack. “Why don’t you just let me move these crates, and then you can erase the check marks on that line? I was planning to put them in the storeroom, anyway, after I close up tonight.”
Yeah, right, Lance thought. He’d heard that excuse before.
There was a dolly standing against the wall. Melanie began to scoot it under the bottom of the stack, but Lance laid a hand on her arm to stop her.
Fool woman was going to get a hernia, or have her head cracked open with a flying crate Lance thought in disgust. Not his problem, he reminded himself, releasing her. His job was to cite fire code violations, not poor judgment.
When she raised eyes the color of crystal spring water in January and looked up at him, it took Lance a moment to remember what he was saying.
He cleared his throat. “That’s not how I operate, Ms. McCloud.”
Melanie moved the dolly back into place and sighed. He was going to be a tough nut to crack, to use one of Aunt Elaine’s favorite sayings. He seemed determined to keep this on a cold, impersonal level. Okay. For now.
Melanie tried her best to be cooperative. “Just how do you operate, Lance?”
When she called him by his first name, she mysteriously seemed to take away some of his leverage. He meant to get it back.
“That’s Inspector Reed.” An efficient movement of his hand drew her eyes to his badge.
He could almost feel her eyes scanning his name and absorbing only the part she wanted to. The woman clearly had selective vision. You’d think that with eyes like that, he mused, she could see everything. Not only were they the lightest shade of blue he’d ever seen, they were also the most intense.
So intense that they looked capable of seeing straight into a man’s mind.
Now there was a stupid thought, Lance upbraided himself. Where the hell had that come from? He wasn’t here to scrutinize eyes; he was here to judge whether or not her premises were safe for the public that entered them. If they weren’t, he had the power to shut her down. If they were, he was to move on. Simple.
“And the way I operate,” he continued, rousing himself, “is by the book.”
A “by-the-book” man. She’d already guessed that part herself. Melanie wondered just how long he’d been on the job and what it would take to make him smile. She bet he had a really nice smile if he made the effort.
Her mouth curved, as if to coax a mimicking response from him. Maybe he just needed some encouragement and an example to follow. “And the book says you can’t erase a check mark after you made it?”
His eyes narrowed again. “Only if I made it in error.”
She placed her hands on the dolly’s red handles, her indication clear. All it would take was a few minutes, the time to juggle a little space. “Well?”
Lance knew if he bent the rules for her, he’d have to bend them for everyone. He wasn’t about to do that. Besides, in the long run, he was doing her a favor. She couldn’t afford to be haphazard when it came to the possibilities of a fire. No one could.
He shook his head. “No error. The check stays. As do these.” Moving closer to her, he pointed out several other lines he’d marked off. The scent of something light and airy wafted around him. Was that her, or something in the store, he wondered. There was something very old-fashioned about the scent. It nudged at a memory that was too far removed to catch.
“Where’s John Kelly?” Melanie asked suddenly.
“Not here,” was the only answer Lance felt she needed to know. “But I am, and you’re going to have to deal with the consequences of your flagrant disregard for your customers’ safety—and make amends.”
He made it sound like an ultimatum. She almost expected him to add, “Or get out of Dodge.”
Something egged her on to ask, “Or else what?”
She was challenging him, he thought. Not a smart move. “People who don’t follow fire ordinances find themselves shut down.”
Melanie stared at him in disbelief. Was he actually saying what she thought he was saying? “You’d shut me down?”
“Not personally, but that would be the upshot.”
It wouldn’t go that far. Confident that she could handle this to everyone’s satisfaction, Melanie indulged the burst of curiosity she was experiencing. It wasn’t often she encountered someone so solemn and self-righteous. What was his story? E
veryone had a story, and she found herself wanting to know his. He wouldn’t give it up easily. He was the type to guard his privacy zealously. She’d always been a sucker for the forbidden.
“Tell me, Lance,” Melanie began, and saw a wary look entering the fire inspector’s eyes, “what does it take for you to do something personally?”
Chapter Two
The question took him aback.
Was she making him an offer she thought he couldn’t refuse in exchange for eliminating the violations? His first answer to himself would have been yes, but there was something in her eyes that made him unsure. Lance didn’t know exactly what to make of the woman in front of him, then decided it didn’t matter one way or the other. His job description was clear.
In one smooth movement he signed his name to the bottom of the report. Finished, he spared her a glance.
“A lot more than anything I find here,” he said tersely, in response to her question. Pulling the sheet from his clipboard, he handed it to her. “I’d see to this fine if I were you.”
She was still looking at him as if the fine and the violations that generated them were secondary to her. As if there was something else on her mind, something that, for whatever unfathomable reason, had to do with him. Maybe it was childish of him, but he’d be damned if he was going to look away first.
“That is, if you don’t want to be closed down,” Lance emphasized again.
Two women in separate parts of the store turned around immediately. Lance had no idea that he’d raised his voice until one of them asked, “Closing?” Her eyes were almost glowing as she looked around the cozy setting. “Does that mean you’re going to be having a closing sale?”
“No, and we’re not closing, either.” Melanie offered the woman an easy smile. Turning, she shared the smile with Lance. The look he returned was grim. “The gentleman was talking about closing time. We plan to stay right here for a very long time.” She gave that assurance to Lance as well as to the customers in the store.
One Plus One Makes Marriage Page 2
