Bedeviled Angel (15 page)

"It must be me. You've been avoiding me."

"No I haven't."

"Have."

"Have not."

Her rude noise made him smile in the darkness. "You most certainly have," she snapped. "For the last four days."

Five. "Why? Does it bother you?"

"No. Yes. Maybe a little."

Melody felt the warmth from his body radiate through her clothes and stroke at her core. He touched her hair—oh God—moved it from her brow, his breath warm at her temple. Had she moved closer? Had he?

She closed her eyes, her sigh of contentment so obvious in the silence, she was grateful he couldn't see her flaming cheeks.

The elevator whirred to life then stopped again, so fast, the lights barely flickered.

"Damned electricians. I hope your office is finished soon."

"Anxious to get rid of me?"

"Anxious to get back to normal," he said. "Nothing personal."

Nothing personal
, Melody thought, wishing he'd kiss her. "You don't think this is another initiation, do you?"

The silence lasted long, pulsed, as did she. Logan's hand at her jaw both startled and enervated her, his torso touching hers turned her molten, as if the missing electricity shot through them both.

Logan's breath fanned her lips, made them tingle as if he'd caressed them. Melody sighed as his mouth came for hers, a whisper of breath, promising more, promising… everything.

The lights came on, blinding in their intensity, and the elevator arrived in day care in two sobering beats.

SHANE chattered like a magpie on the way home, which relieved Logan considerably, as it eased the sexual energy sparking between him and Melody. He didn't want to dwell on what had not happened in the elevator, what should never happen.

"Dad, Dad, in the road. Stop the car! Dad!"

Logan caught his son's terror in the rearview mirror, and pulled right over.

"What's wrong—"

"I saw it, too," Melody said as she opened her door and bolted. Even as Logan called her back, she stepped into a stream of two-lane traffic moving at a fair clip.

Horns honked. Cars stopped. The tour trolley screeched to a halt. One guy drove his truck up on the curb and ended nose-down in a holly hedge.

Only the women drivers seemed miffed; the men were too busy watching Mel move. Man, she really did have a figure that could stop traffic. She looked like an ad for rainbow sherbet in her raspberry spikes, sexy lime Capri pants, and lemon chiffon top, traffic frozen around her, as if she were true north.

Logan looked at his son then, and swore inwardly at the pure adoration Shane directed her way. There she stood, teaching him to play in traffic, and he looked as if she had just saved the world.

Two men got out of their cars and started toward her, then a police car pulled up beside her. Logan wanted to go to her rescue, but he didn't want to drag Shane into what might become a scene, and he couldn't leave him alone in the car.

Reduced to watching from a distance, Logan felt as if he were letting Mel down.

He'd probably end up dropping Shane at Jessie's, though, so he could go and bail her out. Honest to Pete that woman could get herself into trouble.

To Logan's surprise, however, not two minutes later, she made her way back to the car with a full male escort—two cops and two civilians. Logan didn't appreciate the way one of the cops guided her with a possessive hand to her back, as if she couldn't make it on her own. She'd gotten out there by herself, hadn't she?

Watch it, buddy, Logan thought as he stepped from the car, waited, then opened the passenger door for her to get in. "Bozos," he said beneath his breath as he shut it and watched them walk away. He'd give Mel a piece of his mind later, he thought belting himself back into the driver's seat. For now, he'd get her the hell out of there and away from the ogling hordes.

Mad at her for jumping into traffic, madder still at the men who drooled on her, it took Logan a minute to focus on the kittens she and Shane were cuddling. Then he saw the small brown paper bag in her lap. "Jeez," he said. "Is that what you saw in the road? A bag of kittens?"

Shane's eyes spilled over tears as he nodded. "They were gonna get squished, Dad. Mel had to save 'em."

Logan looked at Melody, and she looked back, daring him to deny it. He shrugged, and she nodded. "Pet store," she said. "Now. We need kitty formula and an eyedropper, or maybe a baby bottle. A little one. I'll ask the clerk."

Logan started the car, while Melody wrapped both kittens in Shane's sweater and handed them to him. "Hold them, but be gentle, and keep them wrapped so they're warm. Your dad is going to stay in the car with you while I go in the pet store and get what they need. Okay?"

Shane nodded. "Mel?"

"What, baby?"

"Where's their mother?"

"Pet store," Logan announced as he pulled into the lot, and dropped Mel at the door, glad they'd been so close, she hadn't had a chance to answer Shane's question. "Go ahead, Mel," he said. "We'll be watching for you when you come out."

She nodded and left, looking as relieved as he felt.

"Dad?" Shane said a minute later. "Where's their mother?"

ON Logan's coffee table, Melody spread an assortment of baby formula and rice cereal, eye droppers, mini baby bottles, kitty vitamins in a tube, pet blankets and warmers, not to mention kitty litter, a scooper big enough for the kittens to sleep in, and a litter box.

"Did you get enough?" Logan asked.

"Stuff it, Kilgarven," she responded dryly.

"I want to call them Ink and Spot," Shane said.

"Good names, sport," Logan said.

One kitten mewled incessantly, while the other looked terrifyingly near to giving up the fight. If they lost one, his son would never get over it. "What can I do to help?" Logan asked as he followed Mel into his kitchen.

"I need a bowl and the smallest funnel you can find."

Logan swore and started rummaging. "You shouldn't have—"

Melody slammed a can of formula on the counter. "You think I should have left

them there to die?"

"No, but stepping into traffic with—"

"Screw the traffic. We've got to keep them alive."

Logan shut his mouth and ran a hand through his hair in concerned, and wholehearted, agreement. Between them they silently mixed a miniscule amount of baby cereal with the formula and enlarged the holes in the nipples. Melody took the sluggish kitten to feed, the one with a white spot on the tip of its stub tail, and she let Shane feed Ink, its frenetically starving sibling.

It took a while to coax Spot into suckling, but Melody didn't give up. She sat on the sofa and rubbed its throat and crooned forever, before being rewarded with a first tentative pull on the nipple. She looked at Logan then, letting her relief show. He felt the same, perhaps more so, and they shared a moment of complete communion

—gratitude, relief, with an underlying contentment that smacked dangerously of domesticity.

"Ink drank it all," Shane said, snapping Logan back to a safe reality.

He leaned over and kissed his son's head. "She's had enough for now. She's purring in her sleep."

Shane beamed. "You saved 'em, Mel!"

Logan straightened and frowned. "Melody acted without thought to the consequences, son."

Melody's head snapped up. "Excuse me?"

"Your actions were reckless and dangerous," he said. "You do realize that your life is more important than a—"

"Don't even say it."

"You
know
I'm right."

"I know you're a narrow-minded suit, with a… necktie where your heart should be."

"I know that
you
taught my son to run into a street full of speeding cars."

THE realization took Melody's breath away, but she knew the minute Logan said it that he was right. She had taught Shane a dangerous lesson. "Oh my God."

The small wide-eyed boy watching them looked worried… because they'd been arguing in front of him, of course. She hadn't realized that either. "Your dad is right,"

she said, as Shane came over and stopped in front of her. She took his hand and tugged him closer. "I should never have rushed headlong into moving traffic like that.

It was reckless and dangerous."

"But you had to save Ink and Spot."

"I should have gone about it differently," she said. "More carefully."

"Different, how?" he asked.

Melody stumbled over her answer. She couldn't think what she should have done different.

"Mel could have found a policeman to stop the traffic for her," Logan said, giving Melody a sidelong glance before hunching down in front of his son, there at her knee. "You have to promise me, sport, that you'll never, ever, step into traffic."

"Not even when I'm like, twelve, and grown up?"

Logan smoothed his son's cowlick with a depth of fatherly affection that made Mel's chest ache. "Cars going that fast are deadly," he said, his gaze intense, "and I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you. I need you, son, and not like Mom, either. I mean, I
really
need you."

Shane's eyes widened, and he stepped into his father's ready embrace.

Melody bit her lip and swallowed, focusing on the drowsy kitten in her lap, aware that something significant had just passed between father and son, something she did not understand, a soul-deep kind of connection that she yearned to experience, though it frightened her to the pit of her belly.

"When I'm sixteen," Shane said, as he pulled from the embrace, "then can I? If another baby animal without a mother needs help."

Melody placed the half bottle of formula on the end table. "Don't ever do what I did today, sweetheart. Please."

"Maybe when he's thirty," Logan said, petting the kitten in her lap with his index finger. "Thirty is old enough."

"Right," Mel said, amazed at how tiny the kitten appeared in proportion to Logan's large, well-shaped hand, glad Logan no longer seemed angry with her.

"But what if I see a baby animal in the road before I'm thirty?"

"I'll rescue it for you," Logan said.

"Or Mel can. You and Mel can do it 'til I'm old enough, right?"

Logan and Melody regarded each other, the knowledge that their paths would diverge years before, heavy and unspoken between them. They nodded tentatively, both to appease a wide-eyed boy who had a great capacity for love and to keep him out of danger.

DRESS-REHEARSAL day arrived at four in the morning for Melody. She'd told Logan she was so nervous, she wanted to go to work a couple of hours early, to make sure everything was all set, which was true… as far as it went, but she had essential errands to run on her way, so she fired up her vintage VW.