said I know it was a joke,” he said with an unrepentant shrug. “Not that I’m glad it was.”
Her shoulders stiffened again, and Nick almost chuckled at how easy she was to rile. So unlike the sad-looking, life-weary woman he’d met a few weeks ago, struggling to be strong but unable to hide the truth of her desperation.
He much preferred this Melody, the one whose eyes were sparkling, not tearing up.
“Are you the type of guy who’d do something like that?”
“You don’t have to sound all judgmental,” he said, not denying it, even though her accusation wasn’t true. “You were the one who wrote the list in the first place. What’d you call it? Your Men Most Wanted? I gotta say, I’d really like to hear more about how I was lucky enough to win first place.”
This time, he thought he heard her spine snap as she straightened up. Good. Definitely no more quivering lip, no more lowered eyes, shaking hands or sad expression. Now her mouth was moving a little, as if she were telling him off under her breath. Her whole body was so stiff and indignant, as if she were ready to pound him…or jump on him. Yessir, he was definitely enjoying seeing another glimpse of this redhead’s temper. “So how about we sit back down and talk about this list of yours?”
“How about you take your breakfast and shove it up your—”
“Ahem!”
This time the throat clearing came from a frazzled-looking mama with a toddler in a high chair and a wide-eyed preschooler beside her. Tsking, he murmured, “Not very ladylike.”
Melody didn’t reply. Instead, giving a quick, apologetic look to the woman with the little ones, she swung around, her purse smacking him in the arm on the way by. She didn’t say another word as she stalked through the restaurant.
“Nice meeting you, Melody,” he called after her, unable to keep the laughter out of his voice.
Her response made him laugh even more. Without turning around—without a word—she lifted her hand up and shot him the finger over her shoulder as she blew out the door.
Apparently the mama with the little ones didn’t mind non-verbal insults, because she was grinning, too, once Melody was gone. “I don’t think that went well,” she said.
“I think that went just fine,” he replied, still chuckling.
Yeah. It’d gone very well. He’d say their relationship was off to a rousing start. They’d talked and flirted, taunted and argued. Most of all, they’d pushed each other’s buttons.
She had awakened something in him—something he hadn’t felt in a good long time, if ever. It wasn’t merely lust. The sex-list thing had been a joke, he knew that. He’d simply liked teasing her with it to see the way her eyes snapped with fire, her chin jutted out and her sexy mouth turned mulish.
No, it wasn’t because of any list that he couldn’t wait to seek out Miss Tanner again. It was because for the first time in a number of years, he’d met a woman who’d gotten in the last word and left him practically begging for more. That, and because he was genuinely interested in getting to know her.
“Don’t you think you should go after her?” the waitress said as she came by with his check.
He shook his head. “Too soon.”
“Suit yourself,” the woman said as she walked away.
The young mother apparently agreed with the waitress. “No, it’s not too soon.” She kept on talking even while doing that nasty spit-on-a-napkin-to-wipe-the-kid’s-face thing all mothers did. “You need to strike while the iron is hot.”
Nick caught the kid’s resigned look and winked. “Oh?”
“She’s all flustered now. Once she gets home and thinks about it, she’s going to forget how charming you were and only remember how you yanked her chain about that list of hers.”
Nick winced. The woman had heard every word they’d said.
“Listen, when you have babies you develop ears like a hawk. And your conversation was a mite bit more interesting than ours.”
He laughed, dropping his hand to the pre-schooler’s head to rustle his soft hair. “You got a smart mama, you know that?”
The little boy nodded. Then, lifting his hand, he said, “What does this mean?”
Nick knew the middle finger was gonna pop up about two seconds before it actually did. “Yikes, sorry,” he muttered.
The mother sighed heavily and waved a hand, shooing him off while she dealt with the child.
Nick didn’t plan to act on the young woman’s advice. He had a feeling Melody wouldn’t take kindly to being followed down the streets of Savannah. Besides, he didn’t need to follow her. He knew where she lived.
Glancing at the table they’d shared, he spied Mel’s half-empty cup. It was smeared with a bit of her lipstick, the rosy color shining brightly against the white mug. Strange, he could still almost see her slim hand curled around it and the way her lips pursed as she blew on it to take off some of the steam.
Crazy. He’d never been so focused, so aware of a woman before. Of her every movement, the way she lifted her hand to brush back an errant strand of hair. The hitchy little sound she made in the back of her throat when she was upset. That brilliant, full-lipped smile.
Still looking at the mug, he started to chuckle as he realized something. Even though she’d blown him off with a resounding silent hand gesture, he’d obviously gotten under her skin. Melody had been so flustered she’d forgotten to even pay for her coffee, leaving him stuck with the bill. His and hers.
He didn’t mind, he’d have wanted to pay anyway. But he’d bet anything she wouldn’t have wanted him to.
When he actually looked at the check, his chuckle turned into a full laugh. Because Melody hadn’t only walked out without paying for a cup of coffee. “Biscuits and gravy,” he read aloud.
Mel had left him with the bill for her breakfast, and she’d had his favorite. Somehow that made him like her even more.
And reaffirmed just how much he couldn’t wait to see her again.
AFTER HER SILENT parting shot, Melody hadn’t been able to get out of the restaurant fast enough. She’d almost tripped over a couple of people as she’d made her escape, but she didn’t think she’d have been able to stop if someone who’d eaten one too many cholesterol-laden scrambled eggs keeled over of a heart attack right in front of her.
“Too much,” she muttered as she stood outside in the hot Savannah morning a few moments later. She’d had to pause to make her heart stop pounding and to regain her calm.
Nick Walker was too much. She just couldn’t take him today. Or tomorrow. Or next year. Maybe when she was fifty she could handle a man like Nick, but until then, uh-uh.
Why, oh why had Rosemary done this to her? Setting her up, telling him about that stupid list? She’d thrown Melody to the wolves…at least one Big Bad Wolf…when Rosemary, better than anyone, knew how deeply Bill’s betrayals had hurt her.
A product of a home broken by infidelity herself when she was very young, Rosemary had been the one Mel had confided in during the last miserable months of her marriage. Before she’d gone to the billboard, before she’d made a laughingstock of herself, Melody had poured her heart out to Rosemary.
And this was how her friend had repaid her.
“Maybe that’s why she did it,” she admitted under her breath. Because on one or two occasions when the self-doubt had been overwhelming, she’d told her best friend about her deepest fear—that Bill’s description of her as a pretty, lifeless, sexless doll was true. Rosemary had been a quiet, comforting voice of support. But she’d also wanted to go find a voodoo priestess and have some juju