Mother, Please! - By Brenda Novak & Jill Shalvis & Alison Kent Page 0,45
here?”
“A picnic.” He came around to help her down from the truck, then grabbed a blanket and the bag of food.
She looked at the blanket, and then at him. “You’re not going to need that.”
He laughed. “We’re going to eat on it.”
“That’s all we’re doing on it.”
“Right. No wild animal sex. I remember.”
They sat on the blanket at the water’s edge. Melissa just as far from him as she could get. In her neat black trousers and crisp white blouse, surrounded by the brilliant blue of the calm water and the wild green of the hills lining the lake, she looked beautiful. Her face was shaded by the three oak trees they sat beneath, and her dark short hair, cut in neat little layers that flipped up so adorably they made his fingers itch to touch them, lifted lightly in the breeze.
He poured the wine and took out the food, which they ate while she asked him about his work. “I should tell you, I’m a novelist,” he said, smiling at her surprise. “At the moment I’m trying my hand at a psychological thriller.”
She set down her piece of chicken and licked her fingers, the little sucking sound her mouth made being the most erotic he’d ever heard. “What does a laid-back, easygoing guy like you know about terror?”
The memory of his car accident flickered through him: fierce rain, a wild storm, slippery roads, a damn deer in the way, brakes not responding… The moment of stark horror as his car careened out of control toward the huge tree at the end of his driveway. Then being dragged from the wreckage by a wet, trembling Rose…and waking up days later in the hospital.
What did he know of terror? Plenty. But he gave her an easy smile. “It’s fiction, Mel.”
She laughed at herself, and he loved the sound of her amusement, getting the feeling that she didn’t do it very often.
“What does your family think of what you do?” she asked.
“My mom and dad are gone, and my brothers are in the army. They’re a little mystified by the fact I’d rather use a pencil than a gun, but they’re proud.” He brought out the cookies. “What about you? Where’s your family?” He hated himself for asking when he already knew.
She busied herself cleaning up her trash. “I grew up in foster homes. It was okay,” she said quickly, probably used to being defensive about that.
“And your real parents?”
“I don’t know my father.” She shrugged. “And my mother…she’s around. That’s why I was never put up for adoption. The social workers kept hoping my mother would eventually take me back. Just so happens she didn’t get around to wanting to do it until I was already grown.”
He handed her a cookie. “In the name of being bad.” Their fingers brushed, and she pulled away.
“Why do you do that?” he asked quietly. “Shy away from my touch?”
“I don’t know you very well.”
“And if you did…would that change? You not liking to be touched?”
She looked away. “I’m not much of a people person. I’d have figured if you’d learned anything about me in the past few days, it’d have been that.”
“Mel…”
He waited until she looked at him and gave her a slow smile meant to charm. He handed her another cookie. “Why did you think I came back with that damn parrot?”
She sighed. “I knew there was nothing wrong with that parrot. I thought you came back with it simply to—” She let out a little laugh and sipped her wine.
“To…?”
“To see me.”
“I did.” And that was the truth. He didn’t want this to be just for Rose anymore. He wanted to do it for himself. He wanted to get to know her because she was the real deal. A real woman, who was into her job, who really cared about what she was doing with her life.
And then there was something else. Unlike everyone else he’d come across in the past six months, she hadn’t mentioned the scar rolling down the right side of his face. There’d been so many questions, from both strangers and friends, all of which drove him nuts.
But not from Melissa.
Bottom line, she threw him off-kilter. More than his looming deadline, more than his promise to Rose, more than anything.
And he had no idea what to do with that.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NEXT DAY at the clinic was hectic for Melissa. Her waiting room was constantly full, and though she did the best she could, and everyone was extremely polite