Mother, Please! - By Brenda Novak & Jill Shalvis & Alison Kent Page 0,56
a picture of a smiley face, making him grin like an idiot.
See you later.
I hope.
Melissa
He read the note again, then plopped back onto his bed and studied the ceiling. She hadn’t ditched him. She’d just gone to work.
She’d drawn a smiley face.
Slowly his smile faded.
He hadn’t told her the truth. He’d made love to her without telling her the truth. Why had he done that?
Because she’d taken off her clothes. Because she’d kissed him, because…because nothing. No excuse was going to work here, and he knew it.
He pulled a pair of loose sweats over his hips and opened his laptop. At least his hero now had a clue.
He just wished he did, as well.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MELISSA PRACTICALLY SKIPPED into the clinic. She couldn’t believe how good she felt, or the silly smile she knew was all over her face.
Leftover from last night, and what a night it’d been.
In Jason’s arms, she’d glowed, she’d laughed, she’d cried. She’d felt alive. For so long she’d been on her own, and for so long, she had thought that’s how it had to be. Without a lot of experience letting people in, without a lot of trusting, she’d convinced herself that was just the way.
Now she’d let this town in. She’d let Rose in, at least for a job.
And she’d let Jason in.
It felt good.
Curiously enough, the lights were already on in the clinic, as was the music. Rose sat behind the front desk in a bright green sundress today, with a matching visor and sparkly lipstick. She was clicking away at the computer, the desk neat as a pin around her. Melissa had the sudden urge to both laugh and cry.
On Rose’s shoulder sat a parrot that looked an awful lot like the parrot Jason had brought in, which come to think of it, she hadn’t seen at his house.
It couldn’t be the same one.
“Rose,” the parrot squawked.
Rose laughed. “Rose, hush.”
It was the bird from Jason’s visit. Melissa moved closer, noting in some distant recess of her mind, which was still reeling, that the floor had been cleaned, the countertop reorganized. Even the windows sparkled. “You and the bird are both named Rose?”
“Well, I had the name first, but she just kept calling herself Rose, from the moment I first got her a couple of years back. Hard to argue with a parrot. Honey, I have a stack of billings ready to go out. Do you want to look them over?”
“The parrot belongs to you?”
“Since the moment I walked into the shop where she was for sale, singing her little heart out to the elevator music playing there.” Rose laughed in memory, and without looking up, pointed to the printer, which was spitting out paperwork. “Now I know you don’t think you need my help, but I intend to make myself so useful you can’t turn me away. I want to do this, Melissa, please let me do this—”
“I thought the bird was Jason’s. He said it was his.”
Rose went still, her finger in the air pointing toward the printer, which fell silent suddenly.
The entire world went silent.
“Rose,” squawked the parrot, and bobbed her head to some beat only she could hear.
Or maybe she was rocking to Melissa’s heartbeat, which was roaring in her ears. “You live on his street,” she said to Rose. “I noticed that last night when I went to his house. You live only a few houses away.”
“Melissa—”
“Do you by any chance own a cat named Bob and a dog named Bear?”
“Well, I—”
“Or a potbellied pig named Miss Piggy?”
“Uh—”
“Do you?”
Rose dropped her hand to her side. Looked away. “I knew it would come to this, I just couldn’t help myself.”
Melissa sat in one of the patient waiting chairs, mostly because her legs had gone weak, but also because she’d just realized something else.
Her natural high on life was gone. Crash and burn.
Back to normal.
“Honey.” Rose came around the front desk, crossing the floor in her fancy little sandals with a natural grace and elegance Mel had never achieved. “I was going crazy. You wouldn’t let me in, I had to find a way in.”
“So you bribed a guy to make me—” She couldn’t even say it out loud. Her mother had bribed a guy to make her fall for him, sneaking past her defenses, opening her heart, ripping it in two.
And it had worked.
“I can see what you’re thinking, and stop it. Stop it right now. It’s not true, any of it.” Rose kneeled before Melissa and took her hands