The Kitchen Witch (2 page)

"Maybe."
Nevertheless, Logan felt the bite of her words with an uncomfortable surge of guilt and regret. "Just for the record, I'm trying to do better by Shane."

Jessie nodded. "I know. Go for it, give Shane a break. He deserves it. You do, too. And so does Melody
Seabright
."

"Damn it, Jess. You're the one who taught me to think of somebody other than myself, and I do now—I think of my son—so you'll excuse me if I hesitate here."

"Look, I can't sit with Shane tonight, but Melody likely can. Ask her. She's great with kids, a regular nurturer, if you ask me, though she's only ever had me to practice on."

Logan sighed. Did he have a choice? He needed to get to work, and Melody
Seabright
came with the highest recommendation. "Okay. You win." He kissed her cheek and left her to finish prepping for her
four o'clock
"
Boneyard
Tour."

When he hesitated and looked back, Jess shooed him toward his house and the small foyer where Melody
Seabright's
door shared a landing with the stairs to his apartment above. "Shane," he called on the way. "Go upstairs and wash your hands."

In less than a minute, his son was racing past.
Fortunately for both of them
, Logan thought as he watched Shane dash up the stairs,
Jessie was the best judge of character he'd ever come across
. Nevertheless, Logan stopped short, not for the first time, at the sight of that purple door with its sprinkle of stenciled yellow stars.

This time, he knocked anyway.

Bracing himself as a series of clicking footsteps escalated behind the kooky portal, Logan still lost his breath upon sight of the goddess in stilettos who opened it. Hers was the kind of face that jumped out at you from the cover of a fashion magazine, though you knew in real life that she was flawed and imperfect.
Except, she wasn't.

She had a body that cut him off at the knees, draped in a black fishnet tunic over red Capri pants and a matching halter top, but her black floor-length cape, lined in red satin, really threw him. Then she tossed her long, lush mane of ebony waves over one shoulder and gave him a hundred-watt smile. "Can I help you?"

The answer that came to Logan's mind had nothing to do with baby-sitting, and everything to do with the bad boy he used to be. Realizing it, shocked by it, Logan blanked.
"Uh… nice door."

Her smile was spectacular, and the twinkle in her topaz eyes revealed a kaleidoscope of facets. "Thanks!"

Funny how Jessie had failed to mention that Melody
Seabright
was exactly the kind of woman who might once have knocked him on his bad-boy ass.
Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to let Jess and his mother
find
him an apartment, because his hot new neighbor had "flammable" written all over her.

She must have realized then that all the blood had left his brain and headed south, because she took the initiative and extended her hand.
"Melody
Seabright
."

Logan's smile grew without permission, and as then-hands met, and held, he could have sworn that a surge of pure electricity shot through him. "Logan
Kilgarven
," he said.
"From upstairs."

"Logan. Hello. Welcome to the building. Come in, please—though only for a minute, I'm sorry to say. I've got an appointment at the Castle, and it's clear across town."

"The Castle?" he asked.

"
Drak's
place.
Drak's
Castle?
You know, one of those grisly spook tours, Salem style. If you haven't been there, you have to go. I'm auditioning tonight as a female vampire for the fall tourist season."

"Thank God. For a minute there, I thought I'd rented in the red-light district."

"Hey!"

"No offense," Logan said, taking in the converted Victorian's original kitchen as he shut the door on the wings of a crisp fall breeze. "But have you looked in a mirror?"

"I don't have one in my bedroom, so I haven't had a chance." She opened a broom closet and regarded herself in the full-length mirror inside the door. She laughed, charming Logan, welcoming him in a way her words had not, as if they were… friends, a notion he dismissed in a quick bid for self-preservation.

"You think I might have a shot?" she asked.

"If you don't, they're nuts."

"Thanks." She sighed in relief and snatched her keys off the table. "Look, I
gotta
' go. Did you need something?"

MELODY watched the man's killer smile vanish as he stepped farther into her kitchen, despite her cue for him to go. A pity about his smile, though, that he didn't use it much. This was the first time she'd seen him as anything but a stuffed suit with a briefcase, and the view was fine.

He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, as if he'd had plenty of frustrated practice, and let out a long, slow breath, and Melody got this rare image of herself softening his hard edges and relieving his stress by pushing him into an easy chair and draping something warm over him… her. She took a step back and wiped the picture from her mind.

"The thing is," he said, a plea in his look, "I
really
need somebody to watch my son for a couple of hours. I've been called unexpectedly back to work."

"I wish I could help," Melody said, "but I
really
need this job. Why don't you try Jessie, next door?"

"She's got a cemetery tour tonight." They shared a smile over their neighbor's new profession, and Melody found herself caught in the hidden depths of a stranger's eyes.

"I would never have asked you," he said, "if Jessie hadn't recommended you so highly."

"I'll have to thank her, but I can't help you tonight. I'm sorry."

"I'd be happy to pay you."

"Look, if a night with your kid's worth a month's rent, you've got a deal." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, honestly, but I've got some serious problems here. My roommate moved out without paying her share, I lost my job, and the owner of this place is a
pri
—pretty nasty guy who'd throw me out in a blink."

"You
wanna
talk serious?" An irked glint entered the man's startling blue eyes. "My son's mother decided she'd rather hang with a motorcycle stuntman than raise her son. So I've finally got him—and I couldn't be happier—but I've also got this new job with a boss who either doesn't understand single male parenting or disapproves of it."

"You're kidding?"

Logan slipped his hands into his pockets, jingled the contents, and grimaced. "He didn't come out and say so, but I got his message. Real men don't keep children in the workplace.
So company day care is shot to hell—for the moment, at least."

"That's just not right. But didn't Jessie say you were born in Salem? I mean, don't you have any relatives?
Someone who could baby-sit?"
Melody inched her way toward the door.

"My mother's working tonight, not that she needs to, but that's a problem for another day. No, I'm flat out of good prospects. You're all I've got."

"Gee, thanks."

"Wait a minute," he
said,
a new spark in his eyes. "If you watch Shane tonight, I'm sure I can find you some kind of job at the station.
Wha'd'ya
say?"

"I'm sorry, but pumping gas is really not my style."

That fast, his killer smile was back, and so was Melody's lap-warming fantasy.

"Not a
gas
station," he said.
"A TV station."

Melody's keys slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a tinkling thud. "What?"

"WHCH, down the street."

"What kind of job are we talking here?"

"I'm only the executive producer, but—"

"Only?"

"Look, TV stations are always looking to hire somebody. Keep
Shane,
and I'll check tonight, I promise, though I can't guarantee you a position as exalted as a vampire."

Melody raised a disgruntled brow, even as her
dishy
new neighbor raised a placating hand.
"Joke."

She knew for a fact that WHCH was looking for somebody to host a cooking show—their previous chef had been a real yawn. She loved cooking shows, though she'd practically slept through that one. "How long will you be gone?"

Logan checked his watch. "Say yes, and I'll be your slave forever."

Oh, the possibilities
. Melody took another step back. His eagerness was as much of a turn-on as his pique. "How long?" she repeated.

"Two hours, three at the most," he said.

Melody mentally calculated the time it would take her to prepare one dynamite dinner, the kind that would make the man beg her to do his cooking show. "Sold, and take your time. I talked to your son out in the yard the day you moved in. Cute as a button, polite, too, but he doesn't smile much.
How come?"

"He hasn't been with me long, and we're still getting to know each other."

"Better. You mean
,
you're getting to know each other better."

Logan ran that impatient hand through his hair again. "Can you baby-sit without the whole rotten story, or not?"

Melody snapped to attention and saluted.
"Aye, aye, Sir.
Send him down, Sir. I'll make us dinner, Sir, and we can eat when you get back…
Sir."

The handsome devil rolled his eyes, turned on his heel, and ran up the stairs, calling for his son to "hop to it."

MELODY got the "whole rotten story" out of Shane with nary a question or thumbscrew in sight. Four-year-old boys sang like canaries with chocolate chip cookies and milk before supper.

Shane talked nonstop, while Melody put a roast in the oven and turned the temperature up high, because the meat was still frozen. Though she watched cooking shows, she'd never had time to put any of the lessons to use. Takeout was quicker, but how hard could cooking be?

It took Shane a while to warm up to her. She didn't think he was naturally shy; his reticence seemed almost like a form of self-preservation. According to him, he hadn't lived with, or even known, his father for very long, which would account for his reserve around strangers.

Fortunately, he was a great kid, naturally friendly,
and
he knew how to measure dry ingredients, which helped a great deal when they started dessert.

After they put all the ingredients into the bowl, Melody turned on the mixer. "Don't get too close," she said, making a pinch-bug with her fingers and catching Shane's nose, "or you'll get caught in the beaters, and then what would your dad say?"

The boy giggled and flashed the smile Melody had been going for.

Unfortunately, the mixer didn't seem to be working right. The pokey beaters went
therrrrump
,
therrrrump
, while chunks of solid ingredients, clumped with butter, clung to them as they turned.

"Is it supposed to do that?" Melody asked.

"It's usually mushier," Shane said.

"Eggs!
I forgot the eggs." Melody got the eggs out of the fridge, cracked one against the side of the mixing bowl, and dropped it in. Almost immediately, the beaters turned more smoothly, and the blending ingredients began to resemble a thick batter.

Shane grinned.

Melody wasn't so lucky with the second egg, and a few pieces of eggshell went in with it. "Drat! Catch that piece of shell. No, don't! You'll catch your fingers. Wait." She lifted the beaters so she and Shane could grab the shells before they were folded into the batter.

But the beaters took to spinning at warp speed, splattering batter all over, and Shane took to screaming.

Melody screamed, too, when she saw another slab of batter hit him in the face. Then the poor kid was crying, really crying, for her to turn it off.

By the time she pulled the plug, Melody was crying as well. "Where are you hurt, baby? Tell Melody where."

Shane kept shaking his head, and
hiccuping
, and swiping at his face, then he opened his eyes, and two dark little caverns swimming in tears stared accusingly up at her through a mask of yellow batter.

"I'll never forgive myself," she said.

He had batter in his hair, his ears. He was sneezing batter! After Melody carried him into the bathroom and washed him up, he admitted that the slap of batter had stung, and she cried again, in pure relief, because he was okay.

Shane patted her elbow. "
It's
okay, Mel. I'll take care of you."

Melody blew her nose. "How about we take care of each other," she said on a laugh.

"Okay, Mel."

After they went upstairs for Shane to change his clothes, they made friends with the mixer from hell, and during their second attempt, the batter actually looked like the picture in the cookbook. "Success," Melody said, as she poured it in a pan and placed it in the oven.

They got the hot fruit glaze right on the first try, another success, until Shane dipped a finger in for a scalding taste.

Melody applied a burn cream to the tip of his finger and covered it with one of her favorite cartoon Band-Aids. Then she wiped a few more tears and took him on her lap to cuddle. "Here," she said, bringing the wounded finger to her lips. "Let me kiss it better."

For a minute, Shane looked dumbfounded, then he buried his little face in her neck, and she stroked his baby-fine hair. "You all right, buddy?"

"I'm sorry, Mel."

"
You're
sorry?" She cupped his cheek and pulled his head back so she could look into his sad little face.
"For what?"

"Being bad.
Don't send me away."

"Send you… I might follow you home. Besides, you could never be bad. You're the best little boy that ever taught me to cook.
Er
, but don't tell your dad about the cooking, not until I'm better at it, okay?"