She's Got the Look (23 page)

Drake frowned, wanting her to leave.

“I'm wondering,” she continued, “what her relationship is with Detective Walker.”

“The nobody?” He didn't bother to hide his sarcasm.

Her eyes narrowed, as did her lips. “For your information, my main concern is what, exactly, Jonathan might have said to that woman. Since she is obviously acquainted with Detective Walker, and he's investigating the murder, it might be worth finding out what she knows about your…
arrangement
with Jonathan.”

Drake didn't blink, didn't move a muscle. He just stared at Angie, who continued to fidget around with the zipper on her tight skirt. She finally noticed his lack of response and looked over. “What?”

“I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.”

She gave him a sly, catlike smile. “Jonathan did like his pillow talk. I know now why you killed that story on his money-laundering client. And why you did the exposé on the council member who was fighting so hard against the gambling legislation.”

Son of a bitch. Jonathan had talked to Angie about their arrangement.

“Don't worry, I don't plan on telling anyone. If that perverted bastard hadn't gotten himself killed, believe me, I would have wanted in on the action.”

Yes, he suspected she would have.

“So you see, don't you, why I'd like to find out what this Melody Tanner knows. Strictly for
your
sake, of course.”

Oh, right. His sake. If it would get her an anchor slot or bring her to the attention of CNN, Angie would serve his weak heart up on a platter without a second's hesitation. “Well, maybe you should cozy up to the cop and see what he knows,” he suggested, knowing his taunt would piss her off.

It did. “Fine. Forget it. You can laugh all you want and I'll sit back and watch when that woman leads the cops right to your door. Maybe they'll want to know how ‘close' you and Rhodes really were…in a business sense of course.”

They stared at each other across the expanse of the bed and, for a second, Drake considered lunging across it and smacking her. But he somehow managed to offer her a smile of truce instead. “Thanks for the suggestion. Maybe it
is
worth checking out this photographer…just to make sure she doesn't know anything.”

Though he hated to admit it, he realized, as he said the words, that Angie might be right. In order to get close to the Tanner woman's underwear drawer, there was no telling what Jonathan Rhodes might have let slip.

“Now, why don't you let yourself out?” he asked, not trying to hide his boredom. She walked to the door, pausing only when he said, “And, Angie? Leave the key.”

Her eyes flashed and she fisted her hands at her sides, knowing what he meant. But at least she left without a scene.

Which was good. Because Drake had some damage control to do. And the place he needed to start was with the woman: Melody Tanner.

N
ICK HADN'T BEEN SURE
how Melody would react after they'd made love on her couch Tuesday night. But the woman had surprised him, as usual. There'd been no embarrassment. She hadn't expressed any regrets, didn't blame herself or him.

No. Instead, after they'd both recovered enough from their passionate encounter to at least breathe normally again, she'd simply pulled her dress on over her naked body and invited him to stay for dinner, which he had.

Her pasta sucked. But the sex more than made up for it.

Funny, he would have expected their intimacy to make things more strained between them. But they'd laughed through dinner, talking, sharing sips of wine and opening up a little more about silly things. Movies. Pets. Her lousy cooking and his bad temper.

They'd talked about everything from the heat wave to the play-offs to Rosemary and Dex. She'd asked about Joyful and he'd given her the
Reader's Digest
version of his childhood there…leaving out a few details. Like what it had meant growing up the younger son of the town's meanest drunken bully.

He'd asked her whether she'd really been the Oscar Mayer kid and she'd confirmed it by introducing him to Oscar…one of her cats. Her cats liked him, though he still hadn't figured out who C.C. was named for.

She'd told him what it had been like to “come and play” on
Sesame Street
as a five-year-old. And he'd told her about Johnny and Emma, their upcoming wedding, and even, just a bit, about the scandal that had brought the two of them together.

Somehow, it seemed that making love had let them completely remove the stress and expectation of her list, of the way they'd met. Of the murder. Everything else had been left at the door…everything except Nick and Melody and their overwhelming chemistry.

By the end of the evening, he'd been absolutely sure of one thing: Melody Tanner was a funny, vivacious woman who had a wicked sense of humor and a laugh that deserved to be bottled and sold as a drug. Because he felt high whenever he heard it.

When he'd left at around ten, he felt they'd completely eliminated the wall of embarrassment and mistrust she'd erected between them shortly after they'd met. That she'd let down her barriers and allowed herself to be the real Melody…charming, funny, happy and confident. And sexy enough to stop his heart.

It had been about the finest evening he'd ever spent with a woman. Which made
this
so much harder to take.

“Good God, Mel,” he mumbled as he looked over the newspaper photos he'd tracked down on the Internet Wednesday afternoon. “No wonder you needed a list…even then you must have suspected you were marrying a bastard.”

He hadn't wanted to do it, but the thought that Melody's infamous list might actually have something to do with Jonathan Rhodes's murder made it necessary to look into Melody's past. And what an awful past it had been.

The media coverage of the spurned-wife scandal had been brutal. The Atlanta papers seemed to have delighted in taking potshots at the former model who'd come up with such flamboyant revenge against her cheating husband last year. The pictures had been grainy and black-and-white, but in spite of that, the images of a paint-smeared Melody being rescued by a fireman on an extension ladder were quite shocking.

He had to hand it to her, the billboard thing had been inspired. It was just too damn bad she'd gotten caught.

“I hate this,” he mumbled as he shut down his computer.

He hated what he had to do. Absolutely hated that he had to go back over to Melody's place and question her about her ex-husband, letting on that he knew all about her ugly divorce. What she'd done. What it had cost her. Everything.

He needed to know one thing from her, the one thing the papers hadn't been able to report: how had Dr. Bill Todd reacted? With perhaps
murderous
anger?

Figuring he'd at least try to recapture the good vibes from the previous night before he hit her with what he knew, he decided to wait until dinnertime to talk to her. So, without calling to give her any warning, he knocked on her door at six o'clock Wednesday night with a large pizza in one hand and a bottle of wine tucked under his arm.

This time, she asked who it was. “Good girl,” he replied. Then, louder, he added, “It's the pizza guy.”

“I don't open the door for strange delivery men unless they work for Cartier.”

He laughed. “No diamonds. Will anchovies do?”

Opening the door, she raised a brow as she saw the pizza and the wine. “Anchovies? I thought you had a thing about fish.”

“I was kidding. Pepperoni and green pepper. It was the least I could do since you supplied dinner last night.”

“Did we see each other last night? I can barely remember. Must not have been that memorable.”

Striding through the door, he set the pizza and wine on a table by the door and caught her around the waist. Planting a deep kiss on her laughing mouth, he mumbled, “Ringing any bells?”

“Hmm. Might need more reminding.”

He kissed her again. Deeper, hotter, the little whimper in her throat telling him just how much she liked it.

That whimper also reminded him he had to stop. Going further with Melody—going to bed with her again—wasn't an option until he admitted that he'd spent much of the day digging into her past, prying into her most painful, private moments.

Letting her go with a regretful shrug, he stepped back and picked up the pizza. “So, what do you say?”

“How do you know I haven't already made something?”

“It's pizza.
Is
there anything else?”

“Ah, yes, the perfect comfort food for every pathetic single woman who doesn't want to eat canned tuna fish with her cat every night,” she said as she followed him.

He put the pizza on the counter, and set the bottle beside it before turning around to give her an incredulous look. “Pathetic doesn't come close to describing you, darlin'. I don't think you'd have to spend one evening alone for the rest of your life if you didn't really want to.”

“Maybe I do want to.”

With a half smile he asked, “You want me to go?”

She hesitated for maybe the length of one slowly inhaled breath, then shook her head. “No.”

Good thing. Because he wasn't going anywhere. Not only because he wanted her with the desperation of a man who'd had only one incredible night with her. But also because he had to figure out a way to question this woman about what must have been the most humiliating time of her entire life. Other than the thing with the dead guy in her underwear, of course.

This still wasn't exactly dating, he reminded himself. Coming to her house with pizza and wine, or pulling up a plate for some extra pasta, or having crazy hot sex on her living-room couch was not dating. So he wasn't feeling the least bit tense or uptight, the way he normally did whenever he considered actually jumping back on the stupid relationship bandwagon.

What he and Melody had, other than a hot-enough-to-melt-the-arctic-shelf attraction, was a sort of friendship. At least, as much of a friendship as you could have with someone you wanted to smother in chocolate and then lick clean.

“This is the kind you like, right?” he asked, gesturing toward the bottle of red wine.

“Yeah. Though pizza goes better with beer, doesn't it?”

He certainly thought so. But Melody didn't seem like a beer-drinking kind of woman.

She put that supposition to rest by reaching for an open bottle that had been sitting on her small kitchen table. “There's more in the fridge.”

He didn't need to be told twice. Grabbing a bottle of beer, he untwisted the cap and drank gratefully from it. The wine he'd save for later—Melody might need it when they got around to talking business.
His
business.

But not now. For now, he simply wanted to enjoy talking to her the way he had last night after they'd…well, just
after.

“So, you never did answer my question last night about your mother,” he said as he leaned against the counter and watched her open the pizza box, bending over to sniff appreciatively.

“Did you ask me a question about my mother?”

“Having a hard time remembering our conversation?” he asked, knowing what
he
most remembered about the previous evening.

She stretched a little, a lethargic smile on her face. “I remember a lot of questions…mostly involving the word
where.
”

Heat washed through him. “You know, I was asking where in your
apartment
you wanted to go.”

Nibbling her lip and looking sheepish, she replied, “Sorry. I didn't realize that.”

A bit of color spotted her cheeks and Nick marveled at how utterly adorable this woman could be. A paradox, really…one minute strong and confident. Then intensely sexual. Then uncertain and nervous. And now, so cute and embarrassed.

Clearing her throat and getting out some plates and silverware, Melody said, “What was it you asked about my mother?”

Knowing she was intentionally changing the subject, steering clear of anything more intimate—for
now
—he answered, “I asked if she was happy with this rich new guy you said she married.”

Swiping a thick lock of auburn hair away from her forehead, Melody shrugged. “Well, that's not a question. That's a given. My mother, money and men. Three
M
's that just seem to go together.”

“What about Melody?” he asked. “That's another
M
word.”

She put a slice of pizza onto a plate and carried it over to him. “We get along fine…now that she's on another continent.”

“Does she know you're back in Savannah?” he asked as he sat down at her small kitchen table, pushing the chair to make room for his legs beneath it.

“Nope. As far as she knows, I'm still happily burying my head in the sand about my marriage and living among the rich and bored in Buckhead, right outside Atlanta.”

She'd said something similar last night, when talking about her mother/manager. “Hasn't your ex said anything like, uh, ‘Your daughter found out I'm a cheating, gutless slug and divorced me' when she's called?”

She snickered, then replied, “She hasn't.” Sitting down opposite him, she continued, “Hasn't called, I mean. I phone every other week or so, and remind her that if she needs me to call my cell. So far there's been no need.”

Glancing down at his plate so she wouldn't see the sudden flash of sympathy in his eyes, he asked, “What if
you
need her?”

She lifted her beer. “I haven't needed her for a long time. Not since I was sixteen and had myself legally emancipated.”

“Ouch.”

“Oh, yeah. Ouch is right. She wasn't happy at first, but, believe it or not, our relationship improved once the issue of money wasn't standing between us. I paid her a salary, and only rarely let her make decisions for me regarding my career.” She sighed heavily. “Though, honestly, I did let her talk me into one doozy of a mistake there at the end.”

He somehow knew what she meant. “The peacock set?”

She nodded.

“Was it such a mistake? It sure made you famous.”

“Infamous. Imagine my delight in being recognized for that.”

He didn't have to think very hard. Because, yeah, he knew firsthand how much attention she'd gotten. He'd been one of the lechers making raunchy jokes about the Peacock Feather Girl, like so many of the guys in his unit.

A bitter taste of shame rose in his month, as well as indignation for the crap Melody had endured. At the instigation of her own mother, who should have been protecting her teenage daughter. Not exploiting her.

“Anyway, that was the beginning of the end for me. I decided to quit and eventually my mother realized she wasn't going to be able to talk me out of it.”

“Yet you gave up all the emancipation and freedom to get married a couple of years later.” Nick wasn't purposely trying to turn the topic of conversation to Melody's ex. They'd get to that soon enough. Right now, he really was just interested in hearing why she'd made some of the choices she had.

She rolled her eyes as she bit into her pizza. A few moments later, she mumbled, “I think I was trying to live a commercial.”

He didn't follow. “Okay…”

“You've got to understand, I grew up in front of the camera. On TV, I was always one of the happy, smiling members of some happy, smiling family.” Wiping her mouth with her napkin, she explained, “Whether I was sneaking a dog into the house and giving it a bath, or squeezing the toilet paper or naming my bologna, I had this glimpse of what other people's family lives might be like. And they were very different than mine.”

Made sense, he supposed. In the same way he used to imagine everybody else's family life back in Joyful had to be much better than his own. Of course, in his case, he'd probably been right.

“So I guess when I met Bill, I somehow thought I was going to end up like one of the families in the commercials I'd made as a kid.” She sipped her beer, then shook her head. “I guess if I'd ever appeared in an ad for a horror movie, or a safe-sex campaign, I might have been more prepared.”

Nick lifted his own beer, focusing on the bottle, which his hand tightened around. Melody was opening the door he'd needed to get through. Discussing the end of her marriage. A topic his job required him to delve into…but damned if he wanted to do it.

It was such an invasion. He'd already invaded her so much by digging up her most ugly secrets. Having to admit it—and to dig even deeper, in person—made it that much worse.

Damn, sometimes he really hated his job. And right now there were no bullies or cowards he could bust to make it all worthwhile. He wished that he could.