Maybe, she mused, she already had been.
“So,” she let out a breath that was decidedly shaky. “I’ll see you.”
Anything to make her leave now, before he embarrassed himself even further. “Yeah.”
Just at her car door, she turned to look at him. “At the party?”
He nodded, knowing he shouldn’t let her come. Knowing it was futile to tell her not to. The worst of it was that he wanted her there. So he could see her again without asking to.
“I don’t know where Bess lives,” she suddenly realized.
It was his opportunity to be flippant and turn on his heel, cutting the tie. He didn’t do it, which just proved to him that he was a bigger damn fool than he thought. “I’ll pick you up.”
Melanie smiled.
“Nice little piece of work, isn’t she?” Able commented. He came out from around the fire truck just as Melanie pulled away. He saw the warning look come into Lance’s eyes and decided to go ahead, anyway. “I guess I was wrong about you.”
Lance raised a brow that cautioned the other man to weigh his words. “Meaning?”
“The guys and I thought you were a cold bastard.” Able laughed. The deep, rumbling sound saved him from a scathing comment. “I guess you’re not so cold after all. Couldn’t be if Melanie’s interested in you.”
Lance looked at the other man sharply. “You know her?”
“Been to her shop a couple of times. Kelly took me,” he explained, in case Lance attached a certain meaning to a man browsing through the kind of things she had on display. “My wife likes that sort of stuff,” he added before he admitted, “kinda found it interesting myself. Wouldn’t want to see someone like her hurt.”
Able looked a little too broad to make it as a guardian angel. He was more suited to being someone’s idea of The Hulk. In any case, Lance didn’t like being warned. “She’s old enough to take care of herself, don’t you think?”
Able’s wide shoulders rose in a half shrug. “A woman like Melanie makes a guy feel protective.”
It was on the tip of Lance’s tongue to tell Able what he, and any of the others who felt compelled to tell him how to behave, could do with their warnings. But then he let it go. Why pick a fight over something he didn’t intend to do, anyway? He didn’t intend to get close enough to Melanie to necessitate being warned away.
All he had to do, he thought, was maintain a safe distance from her.
Like in another country.
Had there been a rug in front of the window, Melanie was sure she would have worn a path in it by now. As it was, she was going to have to buff that section of the floor if it was going to match the rest. She’d been crossing to the window every few minutes to watch for Lance for almost an hour.
Admittedly she had begun early, but she couldn’t help herself. She was always ready early.
And Lance arrived late.
Relief and pleasure flowing through her, Melanie was opening the door for him before he had a chance to press the bell.
He looked at her in surprise, his hand poised to ring. What, did she intuit doorbells now, too?
She stepped back only to reach for her purse. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to come.”
“I considered it.”
Well, at least he was being honest with her. That was something. She pulled the door closed behind her. The soft “click” told her it was secured. One hand wrapped around the gift she’d selected for Bess, she threaded her other hand through his arm.
Her fingers wound around the hard muscles. “But you came.”
“Yeah, I came.” He opened the passenger door for her, knowing it wasn’t considered politically correct these days and not giving a damn. He waited for her to get in, then closed the door. “I decided that bringing you with me was easier than listening to Bess lecture me all evening.”
She laughed. Certainly couldn’t accuse him of turning her head with his silver tongue. “Anyone ever suggest you get a job with the welcoming committee? You seem to have a certain natural flare for it.”
He wasn’t in the mood to be teased. He’d just struggled long and hard with himself over this, over something that shouldn’t have even come up as far as he was concerned.
“This can’t go anywhere.” Muttering under his breath, Lance rounded the hood.
Melanie waited until he got in before looking at him innocently. “You mean there’s something wrong with the car?”
He was sure she knew what he meant. But he wanted to go on record so everything was perfectly clear to her. Then, no matter what happened, she wouldn’t be on his damn conscience. “No, I meant that this... this ‘thing’ between us.” He jabbed his key into the ignition. “It can’t go anywhere.”
Melanie picked up on something he hadn’t realized he’d let slip. “Oh, so now you’re willing to admit that there is something between us.”
He drove the car into traffic and turned on the radio, He needed something to compete with the noise she was making.
“I’m not admitting anything,” he said stubbornly. He caught the glance she gave him and mentally threw up his hands. “All right, yes, I’m admitting there’s something there. What, I don’t know, but I do know what it can’t be.”
She waited for him to tell her. When he didn’t, she pressed, “And that is—”
“Permanent.”
Had she given him the impression that she wanted to bag him and run off to the nearest all-night chapel? He very obviously needed to have a few things set straight.
“You’re taking some giant leaps here, Lance, but for now, I’ll leap with you. Just for the sake of argument, mind you, why can’t it be permanent?” she asked gamely.
He thought of the old woman. Of his father. And his mother. Lauren wasn’t even part of the equation anymore. “Because nothing is.”
Because he was facing the road, she couldn’t read his eyes. “Are we speaking metaphorically or from experience?”
Since when had they become a “we”? “Both,” he said with exasperation.
Everything pointed to a woman, she figured. A woman who’d left scars. “Who left you, Lance?”
He wove around a truck and waited until they came to a stop at a red light before answering. “You want the whole list or the condensed version?”
He wasn’t going to scare her off with that Big Bad Wolf routine of his. She could be just as stubborn as he was. “The unabridged one.”
He wasn’t about to tell her about Lauren. A man had his pride. “Nobody.”
She watched the muscle in his cheek tighten. “I don’t believe you.”
He didn’t care if she did or not. He wasn’t admitting to anything. “That isn’t my problem.”
“No, it’s not. Your problem is that you don’t trust anyone, even yourself.”
That sounded like a lot of psychobabble. She hadn’t struck him as someone who went in for that sort of thing. “Me?”
“You don’t trust your feelings. You think that if you let them get out of the neat little cage you’ve shoved them into, something bad is going to happen.”
“It is.” He stared straight ahead, even though they were at a red light. “I’m going to care.”
She laid her hand on his. How could there be such comfort in such a small gesture? He tried to detach himself from it, from her.
“And that’s bad?”
“Only if you don’t mind having your teeth kicked down your throat.” That’s how he’d felt watching Lauren walk away from him—as if his teeth had all been knocked down his throat. He hadn’t been able to talk or make a sound. All he could do that entire night was just listen to himself breathe and wonder why he still did.
It had been really bad for him, she thought, moved. But she knew that the last thing he wanted from her was pity. “I’ve never kicked anyone’s teeth down their throat, Lance. It’s much too messy.”
He curbed the desire to laugh. “That’s what you say now.”
Melanie sh
ook her head. He was pulling up in front of a Victorian house complete with a white verandah that looked almost eerie in the moonlight. Perched on an incline, it was the last house on the block. Melanie was struck by its grace and poise. Like its owner, she mused.
“That’s what I say always.” Her eyes begged for a smile as they teased him. “I have references to that effect.”
“Former lovers?” And why that should bother him so much when he didn’t care was completely beyond him.
“No...present friends,” she countered.
He was beginning to believe that maybe that was a very large club. So why was it so important to her to have him included in it?
The laugh was short and without humor. “Yeah, I think one of them warned me the other day about being nice to you. McCarthy,” he said in reply to the question he saw in her eyes. “You got yourself some network there, lady.”
“And there’re no annual dues to join.” Laugh, Lance, I’m only teasing you.
“What do you want with me, McCloud? You’ve obviously got so many other friends hanging around.”
“Always room for more.” Her voice lost its teasing note. “And, like I already told you, I think you need a friend.”
He didn’t need a friend. He didn’t need anything, except to be left alone. That included by her. Especially by her, he thought.
Lance pulled up the emergency brake and switched off his lights. “And you’re volunteering.”
Melanie nodded. He wasn’t about to scare her off with ridicule. She’d endured worse for less. “Waving my hand so hard it’s making a breeze.”
The seat belt snapped back as he pressed the release. Lance turned in his seat to look at her. The gifts, the philosophy, the way she seemed to want to give of herself and mean it—it all baffled him. She baffled him.
“I don’t know what to make of you, McCloud. I’m not sure if I’ve ever met anyone like you.”
She didn’t want to be unraveled. That would just be wasting time. “Don’t make anything of me. Just take me as I am, Lance.”
“What—” his mouth quirked “—a pain in the neck?”
Melanie refused to take offense. “Hey, it’s a beginning.”
He laughed then, and it felt good to laugh. Almost as good to laugh again as it did to kiss her. “You really are one of a kind, McCloud.”
She never thought of herself as being unique in any way. “I am if you want me to be.”
He knew what she was saying—that she wasn’t different from everyone else. And that everyone else was a lot nicer than he was allowing himself to believe. But she was wrong. He’d seen the world for what it was, and it wasn’t all pink roses the way she painted it.
Or all yellow roses, either.
But there was something irresistible about her. Something that kept drawing him in. Like a fish stuck on a hook. “You’re going to regret getting mixed up with me, McCloud.”
He sounded as if he was giving her a guarantee. But she had a feeling, a very strong feeling, that he was wrong. “I never regretted taking Petey in.”
Maybe a little of her story had gotten to him. “Where’s the mutt now?”
“Gone.”
That, he thought, just underscored his point. “Finally ran away?”
She shook her head. There was an ache in her heart as she told him. “No, he died in my arms. He was pretty old by then. Old and tired. But he died warm and loved.”
He saw the tears in her eyes and couldn’t help marveling at the compassion she seemed to have for everyone and everything.
If he loved someone—if he could have loved someone, Lance amended, it would have been her.
But he couldn’t, so it was all a moot point.
Chapter Nine
She blended in.
Leaning against the wall, sipping a beer that wasn’t really cold enough, Lance watched Melanie in quiet awe. She appeared to be talking to several people at the same time. From where he stood, she didn’t miss a beat. It hardly surprised him.
Melanie seemed to blend in with people as well as he didn’t. It didn’t seem to matter to her that, up until a couple of hours ago, she didn’t know anyone gathered here at Bess’s house except for Bess and him. Anyone walking into his aunt’s house right now would have sworn that Melanie had known these people all her life. She certainly acted that way. And they all responded in kind, warming to her instantly.
Lance took another long pull from the dark amber bottle. No, it wasn’t his imagination. The beer was much too warm. He was going to have to take a look at Bess’s refrigerator. The temperature gauge was probably off again.
Melanie’s laughter floated to him above the conversation.
His eyes found hers, and he lifted his bottle in a silent salute. He realized that he was smiling. Maybe she was finally working a little of her magic on him, as well.
He’d been that happy once, Lance thought, still watching her. Oh, not to the point where he could make people feel as if he was friendship in a box, wrapped up with a bright ribbon the way McCloud could, but he’d been happy. For him. There was a time when he’d actually enjoyed having conversations with people, instead of just wishing they’d go away and leave him the hell alone.
And then his mother had died and his father had left. Things had just fallen apart from there.
Lance set the bottle down on a side table. He had a bad taste in his mouth.
And just when things looked as if they were finally pulling themselves together, just when he’d found what he wanted to do with his life, found the woman he wanted to spend his life with, everything had exploded. Leaving him with shreds of a life. Teaching him that the only stable thing was emptiness.
His eyes shifted back to Melanie. She was trying to ease herself out of the circle that had gathered around her. Away from them and toward him.
What the hell was he doing, standing here in his aunt’s living room, watching her? Wanting her. Wondering what it would be like to be with her. Maybe even for more than just a little while...
He should have his head examined.
“I’m glad you brought her.”
Lance felt Bess’s hand on his shoulder. The hand that had so often tried to soothe away his boyhood problems. She deserved better than him for a nephew, he thought ruefully.
And Melanie deserved a man who could make her happy. And that wasn’t him.
He reached for the bottle again. Might as well not let it go to waste, he thought philosophically, wishing for something stronger. He knew better than to ask. To Bess beer was hard liquor.
“Didn’t have much choice,” he told her, still watching Melanie. She hadn’t made all that much progress in extricating herself. Served her right for being so damn cheerful all the time. People wanted cheer in their lives, even if they had to borrow it. Most people, he amended, but not him. “She would have hunted me down if I didn’t.”
Bess laughed. He could make up all the excuses he wanted to, but she wasn’t about to be taken in by any of them.
“You always have a choice, Lance. I’m glad you made the right one for a change.”
“Yeah, well...” He shrugged, letting the rest of the sentence fade away. He didn’t want to get into it right now.
In her own subtle way, Bess had been after him for quite some time to find “a good woman,” as she liked to put it, and settle down. As if there was some game preserve somewhere that stocked women like that. She just couldn’t make her peace with the fact that he was going to remain unattached. He’d had different thoughts once, but that just wasn’t supposed to happen for him.
He nodded toward the kitchen where he had glimpsed a very pretty, very large cake. “Isn’t it about time you try to blow out the candles on that cake of yours?” He leaned over and whispered, “I’ve got the station on alert.”
Bess swatted him away from her ear and heard him laugh. Bess glanced at her watch, then at the door.
“Not yet.” Her eyes shifted toward him accusingly. “And I’ll have
you know, you impudent young pup, I’m not that old.”
Impulsively, because she was the only one he still willingly allowed into his heart, Lance brushed her cheek with a kiss.
“You’re right. You’re probably a lot younger than I am, Bess. You just need a young man to bring it out, that’s all.” He saw the look she gave him and met it with an innocent one as he raised one hand in a gesture of surrender. “Never said a word.”
He was behaving like the old Lance, Bess thought. The boy she remembered. She silently blessed the woman he’d brought with him. It was because of her; there was absolutely no doubt in Bess’s mind. She’d seen the two of them together, and though Lance tried to remain distant, the distance wasn’t quite as pronounced as before.
He just needed to come around a little more, that was all.
She turned to him abruptly. “Get some more cider and soda cans out of the spare refrigerator for me, will you, Lance?” She pointed to the table that she’d stocked before guests had begun arriving. “We seem to be running out.”
Having dispatched him to the garage, Bess beckoned for Melanie and waited until she reached her.
Bess shifted her position until she could slip her free hand around Melanie’s shoulders. “I sent Lance on a quick errand. I wanted to get you alone for a second so I could tell you how grateful I am to you.”
Melanie flushed with pleasure. She knew Bess would like the scarf she’d selected. It had once belonged to Greer Garson. The two women had similar coloring. But she regretted having missed out on seeing Bess’s face when she’d unwrapped the present.
“You opened my gift already?”
It took her a second to realize what Melanie was saying. Bess laughed. “Not the one with the pretty paper around it.” Her gift was still on the side table, sitting jauntily atop the others where everyone could see its unique wrapping paper. Caricatures of movie stars from the thirties and forties vied for space on the robin’s egg blue paper. “The bigger one.” She nodded toward the garage. “Lance.”
Melanie slowly shook her head. “I’m not quite sure I follow you.”
Bess smiled at the display of modesty. The girl would never take credit for it. It wasn’t in her nature. “You don’t have to follow me. Just promise me that you’ll stay around.”
One Plus One Makes Marriage Page 11
