nice, huh?”
“It probably just came out wrong,” he said, trying to make her feel better.
She rounded on him. “Oh, so there’s a right way to say that?”
“Noooo, maybe not.”
“I’m really good at what I do! I’m proud of it!” Two angry tears overflowed Melinda’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
“Of course you are.” Pete wrapped his arms around her and tucked her head under his chin. He rubbed her back and tried very hard not to notice how good her hair smelled—like camellias—or how her breasts mounded solidly against his chest, or how his body reacted to her dangerous curves.
“Then why doesn’t my own family take me seriously?” She sniffled against his tuxedo jacket. “My dad still asks me if I need money. My mom treats me like a wayward teenager, and she recently subscribed me to Weight Watcher’s online without permission. And Mark only let me do his wedding cake because it was free.”
“That cake is stunning,” Pete said with honesty, but also because he needed to distract himself. Part of him was hardening, and unfortunately it wasn’t his heart.
He prayed that Melinda wouldn’t notice. They’d been kids together. She was Mark’s baby sister. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, pop a woody. Not here, not now.
He cleared his throat as she lifted her face from his tuxedo jacket. “Thanks, Pete. You’re such a good guy.” She hugged him wholeheartedly. “Just for that, you get a free birthday cake.”
How about a free birthday suit? Yours?
His body loved that idea.
Oh, hell. Pete closed his eyes.
Houston, we have a problem: the missile has launched.
Melinda stiffened, staring fixedly at the third button on his starched shirt for a beat too long.
She’d noticed. Of course she had.
As if to make sure she’d actually felt his wayward cock pressing into her abdomen, she shifted against him again.
Heat climbed Pete’s neck and burst into his cheeks. He took a deep breath. His instinct was to shove her away from him, but it might hurt her already wounded feelings … not to mention that it would leave him exposed, with a telltale tent at his crotch.
So Pete babbled instead. “Absolutely gorgeous, that cake. You made it yourself? How do you get the icing so smooth? How do you make those perfect roses?”
He knew he was asking too many questions, and asking them too fast.
Mel raised her eyes from the oh-so-fascinating button and met his gaze. Then she moved a hand down his side, trailing it downwards to his upper thigh.
Pete swallowed hard.
No way. Mel had been brought up in a conservative household, and she wouldn’t … unfortunately … act on this. It wasn’t going to happen, no matter how eager his trouser snake was. She’d had a lot of champagne, true, but—
Nah. Forget it. Not gonna happen.
Then Melinda stepped back two inches and wrapped her fingers around his colossal erection, squeezing it lightly through his trousers.
His mouth fell open.
“Do you really want to hear about how I make roses out of icing, Pete? Or would you like me to help you with this, instead?”
3
SOMETHING DEEP INSIDE Mel exulted, as she stood there on the beach with the wind making a mess of her hair. The tight fit of her satin bridesmaid dress felt sexy now, instead of confining, uncomfortable and embarrassing. She felt … voluptuous.
Pete wanted her. His body had betrayed him. He didn’t think of her as a stupid kid anymore, as Bug-Eyes, Mark’s little brat of a baby sister. He didn’t think of her as fat.
After the week she’d had, after her experience with Franco Gutierrez and a revisit of all her teenage emotional scars, Mel viewed this as a gift.
Curiously enough, she didn’t ask herself if she wanted him. She just exulted in the power of him wanting her.
She had a red-blooded man in a tuxedo with a raging erection—and they had a beach all to themselves … except it wasn’t so private, what with the hundred-odd windows looking down at them from the vast, modern hotel.
And then there was the question of the two pairs of Spanx she’d donned under the turquoise dress: an instant mood killer.
Mel brushed those concerns aside for the moment—she’d just have to get him to his hotel room. For now, she had her hand on the prize. She squeezed gently and Pete groaned.
“Mel,” he said hoarsely, “you really shouldn’t be doing that.”
She peered up at him from under her lashes. “Why not?”
“Because you’re playing with fire, little girl.”
An old-fashioned line, but she liked it. Nobody had called her a little girl for a long time. She considered the width of Pete’s shoulders and the breadth of his chest. He was only about five-eleven to her five-five, but he was built like the linebacker he’d been in high school. They’d called him Fozzie, since even back then he’d been a big teddy bear of a guy.
Mel used her other hand to ease down his zipper. “Show me what you’ve got.” She pushed aside the fabric of his boxers and cupped him, running her fingers up and down the satiny skin of his cock.
Pete made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. “Melinda, you’re killing me!”
She smiled. “I know. But you’ll die happy.”
He gritted his teeth and looked down at her, shaking his head. “Last chance to run, honey. Last chance to rethink this, before—”
She rubbed the underside of him with her thumb. “Before what?”
“Before you get a whole lot of Pete.”
“I think I’d like that.”
“Then get your hand out of my pants and take my room key.” He dug into his pocket and produced it, sliding it into her palm. “Meet me upstairs. I’m going to use my jacket as a shield, if you know what I mean, and I’ll stop to get us another bottle of champagne. Okay?”
She nodded.
He stuffed himself back into his pants and zipped up, carefully.
“If you change your mind, Mel, it’s okay.”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him full on the mouth, drinking in the outdoorsy scent of his aftershave, sliding her hand along the slight bristle of his cheek. “I won’t change my mind,” she said.
“I sure as hell hope not.” Pete eyed her as if she were a cupcake and he a starving diabetic.
She started to turn, but he caught her arm.
“Do me a favor and stand there for a second.” He shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and folded it strategically over his arm. “I don’t want to run into any other guests with this battering ram extended out in front of me …”
Melinda laughed at the image. “Does that mean you really want to get inside my castle?”
“Honey, you have no idea,” he muttered. “Now go, before I throw you down right here in the sand and have my way with you.” Pete winked at her.
Mel picked up the shoes she’d dropped and made a bee-line for the hotel, picking her way over the beach barefoot. She was conscious of the fact that Pete was staring after her with lust in his eyes, and a strange, unaccustomed joy bubbled up within her.
Pete thought that she, Melinda, was