She's Got the Look (7 page)

Now she was completely lost. “What?”

He put his hands up, palms out. “Sorry. I shouldn't have asked that. It's none of my business.”

The hands-off gesture seemed familiar. It tugged something in her memory, but she was too focused on his odd words. Was he talking about furniture, when she was talking about orphans?

Suddenly he laughed. “I guess it's a good thing you started out with the mattress. I don't think that box spring would have been as comfortable to land on face-first.”

“The mattress…”

The word dying on her lips, Melody froze. In a second everything clicked into place. Somehow managing to keep her mouth from falling open in utter shock, she stared at him, finally seeing what she
should
have seen the minute he'd sat down.

Add a rough beard and some dark glasses, mess up his hair and throw him in filthy clothes, and he became the stranger from the street. The one who'd kept the cop from towing her truck. Who'd hauled her furniture up several flights of stairs. Who'd stepped in when she'd been ready to collapse in exhaustion and fear that Bill was never going to let her get on with her life, since he'd come to harass her in Savannah that very morning.

“Um, will you excuse me for a minute?” she mumbled, already rising to her feet. Without waiting for his answer, she beelined straight to the ladies' room, went inside and locked the door behind her. Leaning her forehead against the doorjamb, she sucked in a few deep breaths and took it all in.

The guy she'd wanted so desperately at first sight all those years ago wasn't simply a gorgeous fighting man, not just a war hero. No, he was also her
personal
one. At least, the closest thing to a hero she'd had in her life lately.

Then something else dawned on her. “He doesn't know,” she whispered. He thought she recognized him from the day he'd helped her move in. Not from his brief bout of celebrity six years ago. He had no idea she'd recognized him from his famous photo. Which meant, if God was kind, he had no idea about the list.

So maybe Rosemary was going to survive the week after all.

 

“R
OSEMARY, WHAT DID YOU
get me mixed up in?”

Rosemary Chilton smiled at the sound of Dex's voice, her body going warm and soft. She always had that reaction when it came to this man who'd come out of nowhere and changed her world a year ago. “Well, hello to you, too, Detective Delaney.”

“Nick just called.”

“Really?” Rosemary murmured. “And how is his day going? As fine as mine? What about yours…you feelin' okay after your, um, hard workout on Sunday?”

He cleared his throat. “This isn't a social call.”

Rosemary leaned back in her chair, swiveling it around to look out her blinds into the back garden behind her house. A beautiful, sunny day from this angle. If only it were about twenty degrees cooler, she'd love to be rolling around in that thick green grass with Dex the way she'd been rolling around in her bed with him for much of the previous weekend.

“Rosemary, tell me what you did this morning.”

“Well,” she murmured, her tone sultry, “I got up and took a long shower. I rubbed a soft sponge all over my body. It was real soapy, with that lilac-scented soap you like to smell on my skin. And I noticed these red marks on the inside of my thighs…I think they've been there since Sunday, when you, um, decided to put maple syrup on more than your pancakes.”

Those were lies. Actually, she'd slept late and had woken up feeling like the inside of a dog's mouth. She just wasn't used to late nights with girlfriends anymore. Either that or she was getting old. Because she was having a really hard time getting motivated to do much of anything today.

She practically heard his face pull into a frown. “You're not going to distract me.”

“I'd like to,” she purred, knowing that in spite of his stiff tone, Dex liked it when she played sexy games with him.

“Stop it. Did you send Nick on a wild-goose chase?”

“Wild-goose chase?” She laughed softly. “Oh, no, honey, I sent him on a fantasy quest.”

Dex was silent for a moment, that heavy, disapproving silence he could use to leave her squirming like a naughty girl.

Hmm…sounded like
that
could be fun some night.

Knowing she couldn't tease her way out of this one, she admitted, “I sent him to meet my friend Melody.”

“I know. He called me and told me she's disappeared into the ladies' room, obviously pretty upset.”

Rosemary frowned, though she wasn't really surprised. Melody had run out on her fantasy guy, obviously unable to get past her shock to grab the chance she was being offered. Hopefully her friend wasn't too mad. Though she knew Melody would probably be a bit embarrassed, Rosemary had figured the excitement of coming face-to-face with her hunky hero would make her forget all that.

Oh, honey, give yourself a chance.

God, she hated the way Melody had come out of her six-year stint in hell. If she could get her hands around Bill Todd's throat, she'd cheerfully strangle the man for crushing her best friend's spirit, leaving her unsure of herself and so unhappy.

“How did Nick sound when he called?” she had to ask.

“I dunno…anxious? A little confused.”

“Interested?”

Dex sighed, knowing better than to try to keep it from her. “Yeah. I'd say he was interested.”

Excellent. She'd known he would be.

Hopefully Mel would get over her cold feet, because Nick was exactly the man to warm them up. If Rosemary hadn't met and fallen for Dex first, she might have considered giving Mel a serious run for her money for the
Time
magazine hero. But she had met Dex first. And wow had she fallen…for the first time in her life.

Besides, deep down, she knew she wouldn't have stabbed Melody in the back by stealing her number-one guy. Not that she'd even realized he
was
her number-one guy at first. When she'd first met Dex's partner, Rosemary hadn't recognized him right away. It wasn't until Dex mentioned that his new partner had been a fifteen-minutes-of-fame war hero that she'd begun getting the whole picture. That had been right around the time Melody had been talking about coming back to Savannah after her divorce.

It had seemed like an omen.

But it wasn't going to go anywhere if Mel didn't have the guts to go after what she'd always wanted. Self-confidence was among the things her bastard of an ex had stolen from her, along with her money. When she closed her eyes, Rosemary could still hear the raw pain that had been in her best friend's voice over the past year, when Melody had let her rotten marriage undermine her belief in herself as a woman. She needed that confidence back. And a hot man was a good place to start getting it.

As for whether Nick would go for it? Well, he was…unpredictable. She had the feeling, however, that he was going to like Melody Tanner just fine. That the two of them were somehow meant to come together. Figuratively
and
literally.

Rosemary was a superstitious woman—most people born and raised in Savannah were. So she fully believed in fate. And it seemed like fate had fixed this up. That Melody had seen Nick's face that night and fantasized about him for a long time for a
reason.
That a house Rosemary had been brokering had been robbed, requiring her to call the police—which was how she'd met Dex—for a
reason.
And that Nick had become Dex's new partner for a
reason.
That her sweet friend was gullible enough to believe in the plausibility of a cockamamie murder idea for a
reason.

Fate. Who was she to argue with it? And if she had to nudge it along a little by concocting murder plots? Well, so be it.

“Don't be mad, sugar,” she told Dex. “Nick's not gonna be.”

He quickly figured out what she'd done. “Your friend Melody, is she one of the ones who did those silly lists with you? The one you wave at me when you don't get your way?”

She chuckled because there was no real anger in his voice. The man did react so nicely when she teased him to try to make him jealous. Telling him about her sexual-fantasy list last winter had inspired a delightfully powerful reaction. That night had been one of the sexiest she'd ever experienced. “Uh-huh.”

“And Nick's name is on hers?”

“Right again.”

Dex tsked into the phone. “When are you going to learn to stop meddling? She's not going to thank you for embarrassing her.”

Not now, maybe. But someday she would. Rosemary was absolutely sure of it.

W
HEN
M
ELODY FELT
she'd pulled herself together as much as she was able, she emerged from the ladies' room and returned to the table in the café. Nick was watching her closely, his expression serious. “Are you all right?” he asked when she sat down.

Oh, great. She'd been in the ladies' room having a meltdown, and he'd been sitting here thinking she was throwing up. Lovely.

“I'm fine.”

As for whether or not she was really okay? No, she wasn't. She was losing it. She'd been spinning whimsical fantasies in her mind about this poor, wonderful, wounded soldier she'd met this morning, when, in reality, he'd been dressed like a criminal, hanging around doing heaven-knows-what in her neighborhood.

The possibilities had filled her mind during her time-out in the bathroom. She'd gotten past his hero qualities enough to wonder what the heck he'd been doing that day. Who he really was…a real cop? Or had that been another one of Rosemary's embellishments. “Why were you parked by my building that week?” Keeping her anger—and her concern—in check, she leaned in. “Did my ex-husband hire you to spy on me? Is
that
why you were in a disguise? Are you one of
those
detectives…guys who get a badge off the Internet then go out and spy on people?”

It was his turn to look shocked, even a little indignant. “No, of course not. It had nothing to do with you.”

“So what did it have to do with?”

He leaned in over the table, as well, until their faces were only a few inches apart, right above their cups. His coffee was hot, steamy and fragrant, recently freshened up. Her cup was still empty. She could have hit him just for that.

“I'm with the Savannah-Chatham PD's Crime Investigation Unit. Didn't Rosemary tell you why I was undercover? Didn't you hear about your neighbor, the drug importer?”

A
real
undercover cop. And she had heard something about an arrest near her home. The relief flooding through her couldn't be denied. “I'm sorry.” She tugged her ball cap off her head and tossed it onto the table, suddenly feeling a headache coming on. “I didn't know for sure who you were.”

“So who did you
think
I was when we were talking a few minutes ago?”

She sighed, wondering what to say. About him, the list, his fifteen minutes of fame. Before she had to decide, he spoke again.

“It's okay, I think I get it. Rosemary spun some kind of story to get you here, right?” He shook his head. “That woman sure loves to pull people's strings, doesn't she?”

Melody seized on the explanation. “Rosemary. Yes, of course.” Forcing a laugh, she added, “She is rather outrageous.”

“How do you know her?” he asked. Waiting for her to respond, he leaned back in his chair, kicking his legs out in front of him and crossing one foot over the other.

Those long legs. Those big feet. Which instantly had her trying to remember what they said about big feet.

Then he crossed his arms in front of his chest.

Those thick arms. Those big hands. Which also got her wondering about the whole big-hands, long-fingers thing.

God, she had to get out of here. Because now he was even more dangerous to her peace of mind than he'd been before, when she'd thought he was
just
the guy from her list.

Now he was the guy who'd helped her move into her new place. The one who'd risked his own undercover assignment, somehow seeing the desperation Melody had thought she'd been doing a pretty good job of hiding, and helped her when she was most in need.

He was gorgeous. He was sexy. He was a hero. And
she
was in way over her head.

Because even if she did something unthinkable, like go for it with a man she'd once named on a list,
he
wouldn't be one she could do it with. Nick wasn't the kind of man a woman could have and then forget. He was completely unforgettable; she knew that already after their two brief interactions. Which kind of defeated the purpose of the list, didn't it? Joke or no joke.

“You still breathing over there?” he asked, a teasing look in his twinkling brown eyes.

Before she could respond, the waitress came over to their table. “He took the dregs, and said to get you a nice fresh pot,” the woman said, giving Melody an impersonal smile.

Oh, no. He'd done something kind again. Something thoughtful. She really needed him to stop doing that if she was going to be able to maintain any willpower at all around the man.

Once the waitress had filled her cup and left, Mel answered Nick's question. “Rosemary and I met as kids. She and Paige, the woman who was helping me move in that day, were my best friends from fourth grade on.” She smiled, remembering how it had felt to have a normal kid life for the first time. “Then Tanya burst into our lives. A strong-willed, feisty black girl who had no idea the kind of crap that could go on in the genteel South. The three of us rallied around her because some of the stuck-up white kids in our private school were so rotten to her.”

“Rosemary wasn't one of them?” He sounded skeptical.

“Rosemary's spoiled and is from a rich Southern family, but she's definitely
not
a racist.” Chuckling, she added, “The two of them love to harass each other. They're a riot when the one-liners start flying—the pampered Southern belle and the tough, proud, African-American woman. They are a perfect foil to each other. I guess, when you think about it, all of us complemented one another pretty well, which is why we got along from day one.”

His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “So are you like Rosemary? A real-live Southern belle?”

“I was born in Florida. My mother and I moved here when I was ten and we rented a place in this area.”

She didn't elaborate. He didn't need to know that they'd moved to Savannah precisely so her mother could play Southern belle. Or that the place they'd rented had been a gorgeous estate a few blocks from the river. Or that the money Melody had been making as the most popular kid on just about every TV commercial on the air and almost every kiddie show on PBS had paid for it.

That was all on a need-to-know basis. And this man didn't need to know anything more than the three spots on Melody's body that could give her an almost-instant orgasm.

In five-and-a-half years of marriage, Bill had found
one
of them. Sort of. But she'd bet this guy could zone in on all three in under five minutes if they ever got naked.

It's not happening. The list was a joke!

“You're not a native,” he said. “Me neither.”

“You're not from Georgia?” she asked, surprised since that's about all she'd ever known about her
Time
magazine hero.

“Yeah, but not here. I moved here after high school. I'm from the northwest part of the state, a place called Joyful.”

Joyful, Georgia. “Sounds quaint and sweet, like a picture-postcard small town.”

“It's hell with white picket fences,” he replied matter-of-factly, indicating that subject was closed. “Now, come on, tell me. How'd Rosemary get you here?” he asked. “And
why?
”

Uh-uh. No way was she going into detail on either of those questions. “Doesn't matter. She was obviously playing a joke on both of us, so I think I'll get my check and go.”

His eyes narrowed. “Not so fast. I think it does matter. She got me here with some story about you knowing of a link between a murder in Atlanta and the death of a local restaurant owner.”

Though her heart skipped a beat, Melody managed to keep her expression serene. “Really? How strange.”

He stared for a moment, then slowly asked, “So you're saying you don't know anything about the death of Charles Pulowski in the kitchen of his own restaurant?”

She gaped. “Pulowski? His last name was Pulowski? And he owned a restaurant named Chez Jacques?”

“So you
do
know him.”

Shaking her head, she said, “No, but I've heard of him. I lived on his chocolate volcano cake during finals in college.”

He didn't react at all. Some men would have made a comment about the cake not hurting her figure. Some women might have been fishing for such a comment. But he wasn't such a man. And she wasn't even going to
think
about whether she was such a woman.

“You didn't answer my question,” Detective Walker murmured, his voice steady, that soft drawl low and warm but strictly business…as if he wasn't the least bit distracted by any thoughts of her appearance.

This man was so different from most of the men she met. So completely the opposite of her ex-husband, whose smooth delivery back when they were dating had made his incessant compliments and comments about her looks seem almost charming, instead of piggish. Now she knew better.

Detective Walker seemed to have flipped a switch. From self-deprecating charmer when he'd arrived, to no-nonsense cop now.

His current disinterest was…unsettling. Not that she was drop-dead gorgeous or anything. She'd always been more of a fresh-faced, wholesome, big-smile model rather than a classically beautiful one…which was why the Luscious Lingerie thing had been such a fluke. And an embarrassment.

She'd put on a few pounds after she'd quit modeling. And she'd
eaten
her way through her divorce, needing to sample every form of chocolate ever invented. So she was nowhere near her size-four model days. Several sizes from it, in fact.

But she still turned heads on occasion when she made the effort. Then again, she hadn't made much of an effort this morning, doing nothing more than yanking her hair into a ponytail and scraping some lipstick across her lips. So maybe that explained it.
Mental note: start making an effort. You never know when you're going to run across somebody from your sex list.

Realizing he was still waiting for an answer, Mel finally said, “I can say with perfect honesty that I have never met this Charles Pulowski, and unless he disguised himself as a waiter and delivered my chocolate volcano cake, I have never even laid eyes on him.” Perfectly truthful. And as much as he needed to know.

“I don't think he'd have gone incognito as a waiter without you noticing him.” He sipped his coffee, then added, “He was seventy years old and weighed almost four-hundred pounds.”

Gulping, Melody sent up a quick thanks that she hadn't met the man and that the list had been a joke. Besides, even if Rosemary thought it hadn't been, the list was still only a guideline…she was
allowed
to hop into bed with any of the men on it. That didn't mean she was required to. At least, that's how she interpreted it.

She wasn't so sure Rosemary would say the same. Especially after today. Then again, Rosemary might still be dead by the end of the week, depending on how much she groveled over this ambush, so who cared what she thought?

“Well, then I definitely never met him,” she replied.

He didn't appear entirely convinced, but didn't press. “So it was a scam. Why is Rosemary trying to set you up?”

Again, no flattery. No smarmy comment like Bill might have made when trying to pick up a woman he'd just met about how ludicrous it was to think she'd
need
someone to set her up.

A part of her wondered briefly if he wasn't flirting simply because he wasn't interested in her. But she quickly put that thought under a sharp stiletto heel in her brain and ground it out of existence. Considering she'd wanted him with every molecule in her body at first sight, she'd have to get violent if she thought he felt absolutely
nothing
in return.

She doubted that. He might not be flirting or sizing her up, now, but he had earlier. Besides, there was an intensity about the way he watched her that made her think he was every bit as aware of her as she was of him.

“She have some idea that you need to hop back on the horse because you fell off the marriage wagon?” he asked.

“Something like that, I guess,” she admitted. “She's determined to throw me kicking and screaming into—”
your bed
“—the dating pool. But one thing I do not need is a date.”

No, she merely needed an orgasm. Or a hundred.

“So why does Rosemary think you do? Or is it just her being her spoiled puppeteer self, deciding to pull your strings the way she tries to pull everyone else's?”

Ooh. He didn't like Rosemary. There was a point against the man. If he said he hated cats, she'd have to scratch him off her list altogether. That'd been her first real indication that Bill was a jerk—he'd hated her cat. Which was why she'd gotten another one a couple of years ago.

Since this guy was destined to be delisted, anyway, given her way-too-unmanageable-and-dangerous response to him, she considered mentioning her two felines, Oscar and C.C. Instead, she answered his question with a pointed stare. “Rosemary is my best friend. She was my maid of honor.”

“How long were you married?”

“Almost six years. The divorce was final a few months ago.”

“That's tough. I went through it several years ago.”

“Is that why Rosemary's trying to set
you
up?”

Nick—she was mentally calling him Nick now, instead of Detective Walker, which probably wasn't too smart but she couldn't help it—rolled his eyes. “No, she's doing that because she's a pain in the ass.”

Sharing his rueful grin, because it was
true
and because his voice held a hint of amusement rather than dislike, she murmured, “She can be.”

“And,” he continued, “I suspect she thinks if I get distracted by someone, I won't have as much time to corrupt Dex.”

“Dex?”

“My partner.”