The Kitchen Witch (26 page)

"Fine."
Tiffany shrugged and covered his hand with her own. "I have no objection to a long engagement."

"I object to
any
engagement," he said, louder this time.

"Then we'll get married tomorrow."

Logan ran a hand through his hair and decided he was getting nowhere. He'd have to settle this with Max to keep the damage to a minimum, because Tiffany just wouldn't hear what she didn't want to.

Shit! When had he lost control?

He'd tell Max in the morning, explain where he went wrong. Another man would understand, right? When it was settled between them, Logan would… quit his job, to save Max the trouble, and get his resume into the mail. Shit!

Tiffany pouted when Logan dropped her at her door and refused to stay the night, but when he said he had to pick up Shane from Melody's, Tiffany thought that was best and urged him on his way. "Bring the boy over tomorrow night," she said, "and the three of us can have dinner together. He and I need to get to know each other."

Logan waved and got into his car, his heart pounding, his palms sticking to the wheel. "The boy's name is Shane," he snapped into the silence. "I only mentioned it twenty times." He started the car. "Dead meat," he said. "
Kilgarven
, your ass is toast."

In his garage, he turned off the engine and rested his brow on the wheel. "My life is crap." He got out, slammed the car door, and noticed that Jessie's parlor lights were still on. He ran over. Jess would know what to do. If she could help him beat a theft charge, she could help him beat a life sentence.

She tried to slam the door in his face.

"Hey! Hey, what's up?" Logan kept the door from
clos-ing
, but she fought him. "Jeez, why do you hate me all of a sudden? I need a friend, Jess."

"No kidding, Bozo."
She opened the door enough for him to step in, but kept him standing in the entry. "What's new, shark bait?"

"You've been talking to Melody."

"Ever since we saw the news."

"Wait. I'm confused."

"Once you marry that black widow shark, she's gonna eat you alive."

Logan's stomach flipped. "Marry?"

"Your engagement was just announced on the local news. The station is celebrating. They interviewed Peabody. He promised a hell of a public exhibition of a ceremony, by the way, and nothing less than a full partnership as a wedding gift."

"Damn!" Logan ran a hand through his hair.

"Why do you look so sick? This can't come as a surprise to you?"

"It's a mistake."

"I'll say. Wait… it's a mistake? You're not engaged to Tiffany?"

"The announcement's not a mistake. The engagement is." Logan gave her an abbreviated explanation.

Jessie finally showed a bit of sympathy. "Come in and sit down."

Logan's shoulders fell as he followed her into the living room and sat on her sofa.

"I don't know why you dated that woman in the first place, with Melody right there—"

Logan's head snapped up. "You and my mother have been matchmaking from the beginning, haven't you?" He made an exclamation of disgust.

"Wait a minute. Don't get your knickers in a knot. It's not like your mother and I didn't talk before you came home about what a nice couple you and Mel would make, but frankly ever since you got here, Melody's been so vocal about not wanting you that we"—Jess shrugged—"sort of gave up."

Logan ran a hand through his hair. "See," he said, annoyed all over again that Mel didn't want him, though he didn't want her, either.

Jess furrowed her brow. "While I can see why Mel wouldn't want you, I can't figure out why you wouldn't want her."

"Who
are
you?" Logan said. "Thanks a freaking bunch."

Jessie laughed. "I mean, 1 understand that you seem to have turned into a tight ass with a briefcase, like Mel says, and she's had enough of that with her father. But why wouldn't you want her?"

"Jeez," Logan said, his elbows on his knees, as he rubbed the throbbing in his brow with the tips of his fingers. "Glad I have friends in this town."

He looked up when Jess nudged his arm. She was holding a cup of water and a bottle of aspirin. "Thanks," he said taking the bottle and popping a couple.

"So…" Jess sat beside him. "Care to tell me why?"

"Why what?"

"Melody loves Shane; he loves her. I even think you care for each other. Why the hell wouldn't you ask her out and let her see the real you? You're not really the stuffed suit she thinks you are."

Logan sat back. "When I date someone, I think of them as potential mothers."

Jess raised her hands in a gesture of incomprehension. "So… Melody would make a wonderful mother." She smiled. "Mel thinks it's funny, by the way."

"What's funny?"

"That Tiff sprung the engagement trap and you fell in 'dumb ass over thick head.'
Her words."

Logan shot from the sofa. "Melody knows? Jess, I
gotta
go."

"I thought you wanted to talk."

"Can I have a rain check? I want Mel to understand what happened, and Shane… I want him to hear it from me, so he knows the truth—"

"Right, go.
First things first.
See you tomorrow."

Before Logan made it across Jessie's yard, his mother and Melody's father pulled into the driveway.

Melody came out to greet them. His mother folded Melody into her arms, and they walked inside arm in arm, followed by Mel's father. If any of them had spotted him, and Logan thought his mother had, they didn't acknowledge his presence.

Damn. He hung back a minute, squared his shoulders, went to Melody's door, and rapped it open. The three of them sat at her table, as if waiting for him, their faces set like a hanging committee.

Melody's father stood, his stance protective, and Logan chuckled. "If Mel needs defending from one of us, it's not me," Logan said.

Actually, after the coatroom incident, she did need defending from him, Logan thought, but he hadn't considered that before he spoke. Damn, he had it coming anyway.
"Sorry, sir.
Do your worst," Logan said.

"Don't 'sir' me. You're despicable."

"Daddy, stop it. Logan and I have no understanding. We've made no promises. He's free to marry any shark he wants."

"It's a mistake," Logan said. "I didn't ask her. She assumed I meant—"

Melody laughed. "She didn't assume; she manipulated you, again, the same way she did at the ball when you asked me to dance and she accepted. You simply played into her hands… as always."

"At the ball?"
Logan said. "At the ball, she… You're right."

"Right," Melody said. "She
acted
as if she thought you asked her. Looks like a case of the shark bites twice."

"Hard to believe anybody can be that—"

"Conniving, spoiled, calculating, controlling," Melody supplied. "Guess again, Sherlock."

Logan sat. "I plan to end it tomorrow." He looked at his mother. "Shane and I might have to move, though."

"It can't be that bad," his mother said.

"Can't it?" Melody said. "The station owner
giveth
, and the station owner
taketh
away. Tiffany's daddy is used to giving his girl whatever her cold little heart desires."

"I don't know how you got yourself into this," his mother said to Logan, "but I do know that you and Shane deserve someone who loves you."

"I know, Ma."

"I think you should be horsewhipped," Melody's father said, "for leading my daughter on."

"I never—" Logan and Melody looked at each other, and Logan shut his mouth.

"Has Tiffany told you that she'll be a good mother to Shane?" Melody asked. "Because, take it from me, she'll send him to boarding school first chance she gets."

Melody's father regarded her for one enlightened minute, and they seemed to understand each other, perfectly—perhaps for the first time, judging by the surprise, and sadness, on their faces.

"It won't come to that," Logan said. "I won't let it."

"Right," Melody said, shoving him, literally, out the door and slamming it in his face.

"You're mad at me, aren't you?" Logan said from the wrong side of the door.

"Jerk," Melody said, her lock clicking into place.

"I'll take that as a yes."

Chapter Twenty

LOGAN guessed his son was staying over again, because he was pretty sure he was standing in the cold alone.

Upstairs in his apartment, he paced. He could fix it with Max, he thought, but Tiffany was going to be pissed when she got it through her thick head that they weren't getting married. If she also figured out that he honestly, hopelessly, cared for Melody, she would do her vindictive worst to make Melody's life a living hell.

Tiffany
was
conniving and manipulating. Mel had been right about her all along. She was a pampered, spoiled brat. Damned early childhood degree had thrown him—probably why Tiff chose it in the first place—man freaking bait.

But why had Tiffany played that game at the ball, unless she already knew he was attracted to Melody. Shit! Maybe he should try and turn the tables before he approached Max, and manipulate Tiffany into breaking up with him.

He might start by not letting her have her own way all the time. Max would likely embrace that maneuver, plus it would drive Tiffany crazy. He'd have to stop paying attention to Melody, though, to throw Tiffany off Mel's scent.

THEY worked on Melody's "Plymouth Plantation Thanksgiving" on-site for the better part of the following week, which gave Logan a good excuse not to be available for Tiffany to parade him to every fund-raiser and society event she could find. It also kept him and Melody away from Tiffany's scrutiny.

Since Melody had never cooked over an open hearth, her Thanksgiving show became a liberating experience for her. In a thatched roof cottage with a kitchen garden, hideaway loft, and cooking fire, she could admit that she didn't understand how the pilgrims cooked anything, much less the first Thanksgiving. She could be herself, ask questions, and allow her pilgrim guides to teach her.

In costume.
Melody gave the word
pilgrim
new meaning. Logan guessed that if any of the original pilgrims had looked like Melody
Seabright
, the "goodwives" would certainly have considered
her
a witch, if only because their "
goodhusbands
" would have followed wherever she went.

The following Monday, after wrap-up and editing, the entire crew watched a preliminary screening of the show.

Because Melody knew how to play to a camera, they had kept an unplanned scene where a lamb wandered into the cottage and stole the show. Mel made it work by kneeling and whispering into the lamb's ear—loud enough for the mikes—that perhaps
lamby
-pie was not what he'd like them to serve for Thanksgiving dinner. Lo and behold, the lamb had bleated and trotted back out.

They'd kept most of the tourist segments as well. At Melody's suggestion, they had invited some of The Keep Me Foundation's proud successes to tour the plantation during the shoot.

In one scene, a set of three-year-old twins dressed as Indians had taken to Melody, and she to them, and they'd helped her stir the cauldron suspended over a banked fire in the huge walk-in fireplace, while she chanted a spell for giving thanks.

Mel suggested the video editor add a Thanksgiving request for donations to The Keep Me Foundation to the screen credits at the end of the show. The request rolled over a scene with the girls tasting Indian
Pudding
and zooming in on their smiles.

When the tape ended, everyone in the viewing room applauded and raved, especially Gardner and Peabody, who called it "magic"—no surprise to anyone. Even Tiffany smiled, though she lost her composure somewhat, Logan thought, when her father praised Mel to the stars in front of everyone, and asked her to do a New Year's Eve special with a larger market in mind.

THE day before Melody's Thanksgiving show was set to go out, Logan got one of those evening calls from the station that he hated so much, but this time the break-in was real. Gardner wanted him there as soon as possible.

"Anything missing?
Any damage?"
Logan asked, as he pulled a pair of slacks off a hanger in his closet.

"Yeah," Gardner said. "See if you can track Mel down and get her to come, too. We have a problem. I can't find a single copy of her Thanksgiving show.
Looks like they've been stolen.
Come as soon as you can. I have to get out of here."

Logan went downstairs for Melody. Ice Man didn't seem to know they lived in the same house. Office gossip must be slipping, or the loyalty the staff showed Mel had paid off.

Logan didn't tell Melody that her Thanksgiving show seemed to have gone
missing,
because he hoped he'd find a backup on the server.

"Who's going to stay with Shane?" she asked from the bedroom side of her closed door.

Logan paced her kitchen, dialing and redialing his cell phone looking for an answer to that very question. "Nobody's answering anywhere," he said.

"Our parents went to the Keys for the week. Didn't your mother tell you?"

"Yeah, I guess she did, and I think maybe Jessie's doing a sleepover with the D.A."

Melody's hoot made Logan grin. Leave it to her to be happy for Jess, though she hadn't acted so excited over their parents.

"Try Vickie or
Kira
," she suggested.

"What's Vickie's number?"

Melody came out of her room, turned her back on him, and held her hair aside, revealing the unzipped back of an electric blue wool dress, figure-hugging and sexy as hell. "What's wrong with
Kira
?" she asked.

"I don't know. You tell me."

"No, I mean why not ask her to sit?"

Logan zipped her dress, and Melody turned to face him, still waiting for an answer.

"She's… a witch?"

"Not the kind that will shove Shane in an oven and bake him."