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“Nothing.”
“What’s Nothing’s last name? I’ll go beat him up for you,” he said teasingly.
“You’re going to coldcock my mother?”
Pete winced. “Okay, maybe not. So what did she do, honey?”
Mel expelled a long, quivering breath.
He waited for her to take another and blow that one out, too, staying quiet, not pressuring her to share. Pete knew how to listen. He was a pro. He listened to litanies of complaints from picky customers all day long. He then listened to staff complain about the complaints, as a matter of fact. So whatever Melinda had to say wasn’t going to faze him.
“My mother.” Mel laughed softly. “My stick-thin mother and her backhanded compliments …”
Uh-oh.
“She told me how lovely the cake looked—the wedding cake I did for Mark and Kendra. And in the same breath she said my life would be so different if I did something outside the ‘realm of temptation,’ the ‘calorie-rich’ environment of my bakery.”
Pete hissed in a breath. Ouch.
“Yeah, 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 hot.
Smiling from ear to ear, she put an extra wiggle in her step, just to torture him a little.
She reached the glass French doors of the hotel, pulled one open and ran smack into her mother.
“Melinda! Where have you been?” Jocelyn Edgeworth, elegant and pristine in a powder-blue suit and taupe heels, swept her gaze over Mel, stopping first on her tousled hair, then at the drops of perspiration that dotted her neck and cleavage and finally at her sand-encrusted bare feet. True to form, she flattened her lips and said nothing critical aloud. She let her steel-blue eyes do the talking for her.
Because she didn’t voice her opinion, Melinda couldn’t possibly make a rude retort. “Walking on the beach,” she said.
Jocelyn sighed. “Your brother and Kendra haven’t even cut the cake yet!”
“I needed some air. And I’ve seen the cake. Up close. For hours. I don’t need to see it again.”
“Wouldn’t you like to mingle with the guests? Great-uncle Ernie was just asking about you.”
“Great-uncle Ernie is a sweetie, but he’s getting senile. I spent half an hour talking with him at the rehearsal dinner last night.”
“Well, don’t you want some food? There are several low-calorie options …”
“Mom, I’m actually not feeling so well,” she lied. “My stomach is upset. I’m going to go up and lie down for a little while.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Jocelyn reached for her hand, but since it was clutching Pete’s room key, Melinda tucked it into her skirts and gave her mother a peck on the cheek instead.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll take a couple of antacid pills and come down to the reception again soon, okay?”
“Well, all right.” The steel-blue eyes held motherly concern, but also a bit of irritation. In Jocelyn’s book, a little tummy-upset was something to be swallowed and tolerated with a social smile, not indulged or complained about.
If her ancestors hadn’t come over on the Mayflower, then they’d arrived shortly afterward, probably swimming in relays behind it. They were all angular, lean, fast-muscle-twitch sorts of people; tennis-players, skiers, marathon runners.
Melinda took after her father’s side of the family. “I’ll see you in a little while,” she said, her brief euphoria and champagne buzz fading fast. She made for the elevator. A glance backward found Jocelyn staring with disapproval at the sand trail made by her bare feet.
As the doors closed and the car carried her upward toward room 817, Melinda no longer felt sexy. She felt like a human sausage squeezed into the two pairs of Spanx. She felt windblown and sticky and hopeless. How could a brief encounter with her mother and her prominent, Anglo-Saxon hip bones do this to her?
The elevator reached the eighth floor with a ding and Mel had to decide whether or not to get out. Whether or not to go to Pete’s room. Whether or not to wriggle out of the horrible Spanx and expose herself to his gaze.
Just as she hit the button for her own floor, five, the doors opened to reveal a bellhop with a large cart and three other waiting people. Clearly they all wanted to get into the elevator, and equally clearly, if they did there would be no room for her.
“Ma’am?” The bellhop smiled at her and held the door open. Reluctantly, Mel got out, and everyone else got in.
Slowly she made for room 817 and what was probably a huge mistake. Had she really reached out and put her hand on Pete Dale’s equipment?
She had.
And squeezed it?
She winced.
And unzipped his pants?
Oh, God. What had she been thinking?!
She stared at the innocuous wooden door as if it were the gates of hell, waiting to swallow her whole into fiery torment. She clutched the key card in her hand so tightly that it cut into her palm.
Melinda turned to run and then had the awful thought that she might hurt Pete’s feelings if she did that. He was such a nice guy; the only person who’d been truly wonderful to her lately. He’d have danced with her. He’d come looking for her.
He wanted her. And Melinda wanted so badly to be wanted.
Oh, that’s pathetic.
Really? There’s a song about it. I want you to want me …
Forget it.
Mel turned around and marched three steps from the door. Then she heard the familiar ding of the elevator again, cheerful whistling, and Pete’s hearty laugh.
