by Kristin Cast
Melody grabbed her purse and then hooked her arm through Dean’s, pulling him to the door. “Sounds good. See you later.” She waved absently at her cousin as they hurried outside.
Chapter Nine
“Sorry about Harmony. She is a little too interested in my—” Melody began, but Dean cut her off.
“Let’s make a deal. You’ll stop apologizing about your family, no matter how badly they embarrass you, if you don’t hold me responsible for whatever embarrassing thing my family does or says when you meet them, and that includes stories about my short-lived, unfortunate baseball phase.”
Her stomach flip-flopped. “When I meet your family?”
“Sadly for you, I think that’s inevitable.”
“I don’t know, Dean.” She considered, following his lead down the sidewalk. “That sounds pretty serious.”
“Then we’ll talk about it when we feel like being serious, but right now how about we focus on lunch?”
“Deal, but does that mean we can’t talk about your unfortunate baseball phase?” she snickered.
“Let’s leave the embarrassing details to my family, okay?”
“Hmm, well, okay, but I think I might enjoy embarrassing details—when they’re not about me.”
He took her hand and kissed the back of it lightly. She contained the cacophony of excited giggles pressing against her throat.
“I hope you’re hungry,” he said.
“I am. I didn’t eat breakfast this morning.” She couldn’t. Not after everything that happened at home the night before. She let out a ragged sigh.
“I couldn’t eat this morning either. All I could think about was seeing you again.” Dean kept her arm wrapped through his and cut across several streets, heading the shortest way to Lombard Street.
“So, you really wanted to see me again even though I ran away from you last night,” she finally said.
She didn’t phrase it as a question, but Dean answered it anyway. “I really wanted to see you again.” He guided her across Lombard Street, and headed up Fillmore. “If I hadn’t been such an oaf, you wouldn’t have had to run away.”
“I didn’t think you were an oaf. At least, I don’t think I thought you were an oaf.” She made a mental note to look up the word.
“What did you think?” he asked.
Between the haunting visions and voices and the way her chest fluttered when she was around him, she wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about anything. She shrugged. “I thought you were a good kisser,” she said, remembering the surge of excitement he’d unleashed when his lips locked on hers.
“Thank you, miss.” Dean beamed as he guided her across the street to the welcoming entrance of Books, Inc.
Melody pursed her lips questioningly. “Is this a restaurant and a bookstore?”
“No, it’s just a bookstore—my favorite bookstore in town, actually. Nana and I have been coming here since it opened. I thought you might like to pick out a book and take it to lunch with us.”
“A book? Really? I love books!” Without waiting for him to open the door for her, Melody hurried inside.
Dean let out a deep sigh of relief and followed her.
“Hey there, Dino! Good to see you again,” called the tall, studious man who was sitting on a stool behind the front register.
Dean waved. “Hi, Lester. How’s business?”
“Good and bad, good and bad—like life in general.” Lester cleared his throat, and Melody pulled her attention from the first table of books she’d stopped to browse through. “Well, hello there, gorgeous!” he said, tipping an invisible hat to Melody. His eyes flicked to Dean. “Boy, that’s not your Nana.”
“Nope, definitely not.” Dean smiled proudly.
“Show some sense and introduce me. I may be old, but I’d have to be dead not to want to meet a beautiful woman.”
Bashfulness heated Melody’s cheeks as she fought to keep from slipping into one of the many aisles.
“Miss Melody Seirina, I would like to present you to the best bookseller I know, Mr. Lester Johnson.” Dean stepped back and motioned for Melody to approach the desk.
Cautiously, she left the table of books and held out her hand, which the old man took, and with a smoothness that belied his advanced years, he bent over it with a neat and surprisingly courtly bow.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Johnson.”
Lester’s smile had the charm that came from a lifetime of appreciating women. “It is entirely my pleasure, Miss Seirina. Please, call me Lester. Any friend of Dean’s will need all the allies she can get.”
Melody’s stomach dropped until she caught a glimpse of his mischievous smirk.
“Lester! I didn’t bring her in here so you could scare her away from me,” Dean said with mock frustration.
“No, no, no, let me clarify. Melody, I meant you’ll need allies to withstand Officer Kent’s prodigious charms, and I can definitely help you with that.”
Melody giggled.
“I’m not sure that’s an improvement from your first statement,” Dean muttered.
“I’m not helping?” Lester said.
Dean shook his head before turning to Melody. “Okay, now it’s your choice. Pick any book in the store, and it’s my gift to you.”
“Nice gift, boy,” Lester said. “You might be growing some sense under all that hair.”
Melody snorted as she left Dean’s side to move through the store, running her fingers reverently down the spines of hardback books, picking up one and then another before moving to another section.
Nothing in Tartarus was truly hers—everything was shared or borrowed, but not this. She would have her very own book. Her sisters would be so jealous. She stilled, her fingers lingering on a smooth cover. She couldn’t tell the others about this gift or any romantic details. Harmony expected today to be the end of their relationship. The end of Dean.
Panic roared to life, making her fingers tremble. “It’s okay,” she whispered, checking to make sure Dean hadn’t seen her trepidation. She didn’t have to tell them. She wouldn’t tell them. She would let Harmony believe she’d done her duty, and she would keep Dean to herself. She peered over at him, seeing him chuckle as he flipped through the pages of a children’s book. It would be better this way. And she would finally have something of her very own.
Taking a calming breath, she ran her hands through her hair and focused on the world of unread stories. A slick, cobalt cover caught her attention from across the store.
“Wow! Books about the ocean!” Melody shook off her worries and made a beeline to the oceanography section. Stretching her arm overhead, she lifted herself onto her tiptoes to reach the shiny book.
“Hey, let me help you.” With ease, Dean plucked the hardback off the shelf.
Melody cooed and gasped over the glossy, full-color pages filled with ocean life. “This is the one I want.”
Dean glanced at the title. “San Francisco Bay: Portrait of an Estuary,” he read aloud. “Will you be turned off if I tell you I have no clue what an estuary is?”
She shrugged, not understanding how he could manage to achieve such a thing. “Will I turn you off if I tell you that I do know what it is?”
“Turned off? Hell, no! Brains are always a turn-on, Miss Melody.”
“Glad to hear it, Officer Dean.” She nodded.
“Let’s take it to Lester and make it yours.” He snagged her hand and whispered, “But what is an estuary?”
“It’s where the mouth of a river meets the ocean—a brackish tidal inlet, really.”
Dramatically, Dean clutched his chest over his heart. “Be careful, I can only take so much of your sexy brainpower in public.”
• • •
Melody was beaming at him, full wattage, as they left the store. With each look, Dean’s heart did a funny little jumpy thing. Warm happiness took firm root within him and branched through his core.
“Okay, next stop is across the street,” Dean said, pointing to
the little restaurant called Seed & Salt. They entered, and he watched Melody’s forehead furrow in concentration as she read through the vast chalkboard menu. “Will you trust me?” he asked her.
Her hands balled, then she relaxed a little and shrugged. “Okay, but I don’t like to eat fish. Or shellfish. Or really anything that swims. And, um, I don’t like blood. At all.”
“I remember. Trust me. You won’t find anything with blood here. It’s a vegan restaurant.”
“Vegan?”
“Yeah. You know, no meat of any kind. Also no dairy. Nothing in here comes from killing any living animal.”
“Really?” Exuberance lifted her to the balls of her feet. “There are restaurants like that?”
It was strange how new the concept was to her, especially since it was right up her alley. But hell, he wouldn’t have known either if he hadn’t Yelped it the night before. She was new to the area, and probably new to the lifestyle too. He filed it away to ask about later.
“Really,” said a tall waiter who approached Dean. “As my girlfriend says, nothing we eat in this restaurant ever had a face.” He handed Dean an old-fashioned picnic basket—the kind that was made of wicker and looked like something his Nana would have carried to picnics in Italy in her youth, mostly because the ancient picnic basket had, until last night, belonged to Nana. “Here ya go, Officer Dean. Enjoy.”
“Thanks, Evan,” Dean said. Then he crooked his arm for Melody again. “Shall we?”
She took his arm, saying, “Shall we what?”
“Shall we go on our picnic?”
Her nose wrinkled with excitement. “A picnic?”
“If you want,” Dean said.
“Oh, I want! I want!”
Feeling better and better about Nana’s advice, Dean walked arm-in-arm with Melody, cutting through the beautiful neighborhood that made up the Marina District. As they passed a wine bar, Dean ducked in, buying a chilled bottle of pinot grigio that was the color of moonlight. From there it was a quick walk to the Marina Green, where he spread out a red-and-white checked blanket.
“If you put out the food, I’ll open the wine,” Dean suggested.
Melody began to go through the basket, making happy noises as she discovered the cutlery, wineglasses, and neatly wrapped sandwiches.
Soon they were chewing enthusiastically as Melody propped her new book on the basket between them, and started thumbing through the glossy, full-color photographs, pausing to comment on the pictures of sea lions, dolphins, and otters.
Dean mostly listened to her talk about the sea life, impressed by the depth of her knowledge. For every question he asked she had an answer, even though some of her answers seemed more in jest than in earnest—still, he was having a great time.
“How do you know so much about ocean life?” he asked, using his hand to shield his face from the sun.
“Classes, mostly. But also stories passed down from our elders. They’re the ones with real experience.” Her lips twitched with melancholy as she flipped through the pages.
“So, is your family full of marine biologists, or teachers, or—”
“Oh, Dean!” she interrupted, her excitement almost palpable. “You have humpbacks here! I’ve never talked with a humpback before. There are mostly just sperm whales in Greece. At least, that’s what my mom used to tell me.”
Intrigued by her sudden enthusiasm, he chuckled, “Do they talk, too?”
“Of course. All whales talk,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Did your mom ever tell you what they would say?” Dean asked.
“Sperm whales sing songs to each other—males and females, entire families, talk and sing in clicks and squeaks. What do they say?” She grinned. “They talk about the same things we do when we talk to our families. Only they can say it at a depth of three thousand feet, and can stay underwater for ninety minutes.”
“Does that book say all of that?”
“No,” she laughed. “The whales say all of that. And my mom told me they’re amazingly friendly. Young sperm whales like to have their heads rubbed. I love swimming,” she mused. “And it would be amazing to swim with a whale.”
“I guess it figures that as much as you love the water, you’d be a diver,” Dean said.
“Oh, sure, I dive, but I’ve never gone down three thousand feet.” She skimmed the last page before closing the book. “Or at least, not yet I haven’t. The water at home doesn’t get that deep.”
“I hope you’re kidding,” Dean said as he refreshed her glass of wine.
Then, taking Dean by complete surprise, she leaned into him and kissed him softly on his cheek. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked.
“For doing all of this.” Melody made a gesture that took in their picnic lunch and the Marina. “It makes me feel special. So, thank you.” She leaned into him again, and Dean sat very still as she gently kissed him on the mouth.
“That is the perfect thank you.” Dean inhaled the sugary perfume floating from the gardenia nestled above her ear. “And you are special.” He took her hand carefully in his.
“I’m glad you gave us another chance,” Melody said, her lips brushing against his.
“You’re worth it.” The words came out shaky as his pulse thrummed under his skin, and he tensed against the urge to envelop her.
“Dude, I thought it was you!”
He bolted upright, almost knocking his head against Melody’s. “Kait?” He squinted, his attitude sobering.
“And WTF with all of this?” She adjusted her bike and leaned over the handlebars. “A picnic?”
He could’ve throttled her for destroying whatever might have happened in the delicious moment he and Melody had just shared. “Melody Seirina, this is my oblivious partner, Kait Lesnek. She likes to think of herself as my better half. Most of the time, I tend to agree with her.”
“Wow, you must be special if Dean’s already admitting my superiority in front of you.” She leaned down, extending her hand to Melody.
“It’s really nice to meet you. Dean’s told me a lot about you,” Melody said.
“Well, as of our next shift, Dean’s going to be telling me a lot about you, too.” Kait winked.
“Okay, well, sorry you have to take off and leave us to return to our really romantic picnic all alone here by ourselves,” Dean said, shooing Kait away.
“No worries, Romeo. I’m going, I’m going. Oh, but first I’ll give you my plus-one RSVP to your sis’s wedding. Raquel said yes!”
Dean reached up to return the high five. “Congratulations! Raquel is one hot babe.”
“Uh, I know, and I’m planning on making her my one hot babe. Hey, speaking of hot babes, you should bring Melody to your sis’s wedding. It’s going to be entertaining, if nothing else. Nice to meet you, Melody! I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon!” Kait hopped on her bike and sped away.
“She seems nice,” Melody said, twirling strands of her long hair.
“She is—nice and smart.” He paused for a moment, his glance flicking between Melody and Kait’s quickly vanishing figure. “Melody Seirina, would you please be my date one month from tomorrow at my sister’s wedding? It’s going to be a big dress-up affair, open bar, lots of dancing and family shenanigans.”
His throat tightened as Melody chewed her lip, looking like he’d just asked her to visit a slaughterhouse with him.
“Hey, it’s just a date,” he said, angst softening his voice.
“It’s your sister’s wedding. That’s important. And all of your family is going to be there. That’s important, too.”
“Well, sure. Yes. That’s why I’m inviting you.” He took both of her hands in his and caressed them gently. “Because you’re important.”
She pulled away, shoving her fists into her lap. “Can I give you an answer later?”
“Absolutely. Don’t let it cause you any stress.” Embarrassment warmed his cheeks and made him instantly regret asking.
Melod
y blew out a long breath and picked at the edge of her frayed jeans. “I want to explain about why I ran away last night.” She stared out at the bay as she continued. “You weren’t moving too fast. I liked your kisses. I liked them a lot. But then I started to feel, well, like I wanted more than that from you, and that scared me.”
“Why?”
Still not looking at him, she blurted, “Because sex means bad things to me. Really bad things. Like, so bad that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to let myself have sex with you and now that you know, you probably won’t want to keep seeing me and I completely understand because it’s not normal and I wish it was different—I wish I was different—but I’m not.”
Dean’s heart squeezed. “Please look at me.”
Melody reluctantly turned her gaze from the water to him. He saw her then—really saw her—afraid and vulnerable. Her chin trembled, and he stiffened with the realization that he’d made her feel that way.
That’s why she ran.
Slowly, gently, he touched her cheek. “You’re perfect just the way you are, and I’ll make you a promise, right here, right now. I promise that I will never do anything again that makes you scared or uncomfortable. Melody, you always have the right to tell me to stop—no matter what. And I will.”
“You want to keep seeing me?”
Dean wanted to tell her that he wanted to see only her, forever, but he knew he had to move slowly, carefully. So, he simply said, “Yes, Melody, I do. Would you go to dinner with me tomorrow night?”
“There’s nothing I’d like more.”
“Not even talking to whales?” he teased.
“Is it really that bad to come second to a whale?” She grinned and kissed him quickly, softly, on his cheek.
Dean thought his heart might explode. “When you put it like that, nope, it’s not bad at all.”
Chapter Ten
It’d been almost a month since he’d started dating Melody, and Dean hadn’t been by Siren Tours since he’d met up with her for their picnic. Melody had alluded to some intense family drama, and instructed him not to speak to Harmony or even come near the store, so he hadn’t. Not because he didn’t want to—he was itching to find out what Harmony’s issue was with him and his relationship with her cousin—but because he wouldn’t betray her trust—something Melody didn’t seem to give out freely.
