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Giggling, Melanie shook his hand as she answered.
“Melanie Stewart, no age and definitely no weight.”
“Okay.” He dragged the word out. “So, Melanie, what’s your favorite food?”
She joined in the game easily enough. Mitch appeared to hold no ill feelings, and she had more than paid him back for his high-handedness.
Besides, she was a little embarrassed at her behavior. Her temper had always been a sore spot. Whenever she lost it, she invariably regretted her lack of control. Maybe she could redeem herself. She focused on the conversation.
“Chinese, especially the vegetables. What’s yours?”
Mitch lounged comfortably beside her, his long legs stretched out. Dark head tipped back, he thought for a few minutes before answering. “Food.”
Melanie frowned. “Pardon?”
“I like just about everything as long as someone else cooks it.” His mouth slanted mockingly as he leered at her. “I can make a mean raspberry punch, though.”
“Oh. Well, good,” Melanie answered lamely, refusing to acknowledge the spark of awareness that flew each time he brushed against her.
It was the heat, she told herself. She should never have remained in the Jacuzzi for so long. The reason she had, of course, was her swimsuit.
It had been a lapse in judgment. She knew that. Her bust was too full and her hips too round to wear something this defining. Nevertheless, the heat was unbearable, and she had to leave. Now!
“Excuse me, I have to get out.” Melanie moved slowly and calmly up the stairs, aware of his eyes on her legs. Once out of the heat, she could draw cooling air into her lungs. She reached for her towel and quickly tugged it over her shoulders, trying to ignore him as he sat there watching her.
“Did I drive you out?” His eyebrows tipped downward.
“Oh, no.” Melanie cinched her towel a little tighter across her shoulders. “I just can’t take the heat.” Her face flooded with pink. She rushed to correct herself.
“Of the pool. I mean, the Jacuzzi. After a few minutes, the heat really gets to me.”
Mitch knew what she meant. The heat was getting to him, too. He could feel it frying his brain to mush as he admired the lovely Melanie.
He’d seen far skimpier suits on many of the local beaches, but nothing that looked as elegantly attractive as this. Mitch decided he much preferred it over the pink uniform she had worn the other day. Her long auburn hair was curling wildly around her shoulders and face, hugging the wide cheekbones and delicately arched brows.
Flushing brightly, Melanie turned her back to him to gather her belongings. As she did, her towel slipped to the floor.
What was wrong with the men in town, he wondered, watching her. The woman was gorgeous, and apparently had brains, too. Yet here she was, spending her evening alone. Idly, he wondered if there was someone special in her life.
Mitch watched her pull on a white terry covering that just grazed her thighs. When the heat began to addle his brain, he moved out of the swirling hot tub to tug on the baggy jogging pants he had tucked into his sports bag. Something was definitely going on between them, he decided, some spark of interest he’d noticed from the first. And despite his best intentions, he was going to investigate the fiery redhead.
“How about going to dinner with me?” The phrasing wasn’t the greatest, he decided, but it was hard to make sense when your brain was the consistency of mashed potatoes.
She was slipping on shorts, and at his question, Melanie stood stock-still, perched like a startled flamingo on one leg. Her tousled hair tumbled around her face, huge green eyes questioning. She had a fresh, clean-scrubbed look he found very attractive.
“I don’t—”
He cut her off before she could refuse.
“Please,” he cajoled, tugging on a shirt. “You would really be doing me a favor.” He tried to look forlorn and alone. “I just moved the last of my stuff in and I can’t possibly do any more hard work today. I deserve a break. Please?”
She looked at him steadily, obviously gauging just how reliable he was. He was surprised himself at how anxious he was to get to know her better.
“All right,” Melanie agreed finally. “But I think you’d better come with me. I agreed to have dinner with my mother tonight.” If she thought she would turn him off by introducing her mother, she had been dead wrong.
“Is she a good cook?” Mitch asked warily, watching her gather her belongings.
“The best. You may need to do a few more laps when you’re finished.”
He looked affronted as he pulled on his clothes. One hand patted his washboard-flat stomach experimentally.
“I could stand to gain a few pounds. You think?” He cocked his head with that little-boy grace she was coming to recognize.
“No comment.” Melanie giggled and went out. “I’ll meet you downstairs in half an hour. Don’t be late.”
He wasn’t late, but she was there before him, tapping one foot impatiently against the marble floor.
“I wondered if you’d changed your mind,” she murmured, tossing her hair over her shoulders. Melanie stepped through the door and began to stride down the street. Mitch was forced to hurry to keep up with her.
“A woman who’s on time,” he muttered, huffing as he marched beside her. “Who would believe it?”
“Quite a few people, actually. It’s just one of my failings.”
“Why are we running when we could have taken the car?” Mitch panted, half-walking, half-jogging across the street.
“We’re not running, we’re walking. My mother lives only three blocks away. There’s hardly any point in driving. Besides—” she grinned at him pointedly “—it’s good exercise.”
“I prefer swimming.” He breathed, trying to look macho while his lungs burned. To his disgust, Melanie seemed totally unaffected by the speed race.
“Most out-of-shape people do prefer exercise that isn’t weight bearing,” she murmured without losing a step.
“Now just a minute! I am not—” Mitch felt himself collide with the pavement at the same moment his temperature hit boiling. There was a web of stabbing pain radiating from his left knee, and his pants were torn.
“Now look what you’ve done,” he said furiously as he stood with some difficulty, pushing her helping hand away. “I’m not going out for dinner looking like this.”
Her green eyes flashed with something he might have thought was sympathy. Except for her next words.
“Mm, lack of coordination, too. Don’t ever take up jogging, Mr. Stewart. You’re not the type.”
“I don’t think we have to worry about that,” he said through clenched teeth as he brushed bits of gravel from his palms. “And I am not uncoordinated! If you didn’t insist on making this the Indy 500…”
“Oh, now it’s my fault! If that isn’t just like a man! Blame it on me because I keep in shape and you don’t. As if I or anyone else could make you exercise more. Men!” She spat the word with a telling glance that relegated him to one of the lower subspecies in the universe.
Mitch smiled grimly.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, limping at a pace that was still far too fast but considerably slower than her former fifty knots. “But I am a man. I wouldn’t have come with you if I had known you hated men.”
“I don’t hate men,” she said in exasperation. “I quite appreciate them.” Her eyes flickered and he wondered if he could call that stretch of her lips a smile. “Some of you are even quite useful.”
It was a put-down, sure as anything, and Mitch refused to let it pass.
“I think I understand why you’re not, er, out tonight,” he murmured under his breath. “You’re a man-hater.”
She stopped so quickly he crashed into her, the breath wheezing out of his chest at the contact. Melanie Stewart was mad. He could see it in her glinting green eyes. He could feel it in the tingle of electricity that pulsed through the air around them. But what really gave away her emotional state were the small, pointed fingernails buried in his arm.
“I am not stupid,” she enunciated. “You think that if you make all these ridiculous accusations, I’ll forget you’re trying to swindle me out of that money, don’t you? Well, Mr. Mitchel Stewart, or whatever your name is—” she snorted in pretended amusement “—it’s not going to work.”
Carefully, with extreme patience and not a little wincing, Mitch removed her talons from his shirtsleeve.
“I don’t know why you keep saying that,” he muttered fiercely. “My name is Mitchel Stewart. And I am not trying to swindle anyone out of anything.” He peered at her, noting with interest the high spots of color on her cheeks. “Why is getting this money so important to you, anyway? Do you need cash that badly? I know the bank manager,” he said, frowning at her rising color. “There’s no need to be embarrassed about needing some help.”
Melanie flushed more deeply. Her hands were balled into fists, but she raised her chin defiantly while her eyes hardened to cold intense chips of emerald.
“I don’t want it for myself,” she enunciated clearly. “I want to use it for some friends. They deserve to have some comfort in life, and this is my one chance to give it to them. If you hadn’t interfered, I would have the money by now and I’d be able to take care of them.”
“I might have a perfectly good use for that money myself,” he told her angrily. “Someone I care about very much could use that cash right about now.”
“May the best woman or man win, then.” Melanie snapped open a black wrought-iron gate with one hand and stepped through. “Well, are you coming or not?”
“Yes.” He sighed. “I’m coming. And I still think you dislike men.”
“No, she doesn’t,” a bright voice chirped. “Piffle! Melanie is just one of those modern career girls who put most of their energies into their work. When she gets married, she’ll bury herself in that, too.”
Mitch glanced up to see Faith Johnson’s beaming face.
“Oh, hello. I didn’t know you’d be here tonight.” He grinned happily, pleased to see the beaming older woman. “Melanie didn’t tell me.”
“Melanie didn’t know,” his companion muttered. She glanced from one to the other. “Do I take it you two know each other?”
“Of course we know each other. I was here for dinner last week with my grandfather. Wait a minute!” He stared at her as the pieces began to fall into place. “You mean Mrs. Flowerday is your mother? But your names—”
“Are different because Melanie is adopted. My own very special daughter.” Charity hugged the slim form to her ample bosom and patted Melanie’s back. “I’m so glad you could come, darling. And you brought Harry’s grandson! How marvelous. Do come in.”
“Actually I’m her foster daughter. Harry’s grand—” Melanie whirled to stare at Mitch, her eyes wide with dismay. “You mean you’re Judge Conroy’s grandson?”
Mitch bowed at the waist.
“The one and only.”
“Oh, no.”
No one else heard the softly breathed moan, Mitch was sure, but he did. And he didn’t like it. The female of the species generally appreciated his company. But Melanie Stewart was looking at him as if he was a worm crawling out of the woodwork.
“You knew all about this, didn’t you,” she asked angrily. “You’d think you would know better than to fall in with the fearsome threesome’s plans.”
“I don’t have a clue—”
“That’s for sure,” she said, her eyes shooting daggers at him. “Try to act normally. And if you don’t make any waves, we may just get out of this early enough to nip their matchmaking in the bud.”
She stomped away to talk to the two other women seated in Charity’s living room. Mitch shook his head in confusion and headed for the nearest easy chair, only remembering as he sat that this particular chair had a bad spring.
“Oof!”
“Did you say something, boy?” His grandfather emerged from the kitchen chewing on a bit of meat.
“No, Gramps. Well, yes, actually, I said it was good to sit down.” Mitch watched as everyone turned to face him. “I meant after the walk over. You know, in the heat and everything.” Why were they all staring at him as if he had two heads?
His grandfather looked at him pityingly, eyeing the tear at his pants with some disfavor.
“Practice not doing too well, son?” He reached in his pocket, and Mitch cringed, remembering the habit from long ago. Before the older man could pull out his wallet, Mitch launched into speech.
“No, it’s going really well. The hospital was a good start, and I’ve found a number of new clients this week.”
Judge Conroy shook his head.
“Then why wear those things? Doesn’t look too good for an up-and-coming young lawyer.”
Melanie laughed her light, bubbly laugh, which Mitch hadn’t heard for ages.
“He kissed the pavement on the way over here. Tore his pants and cut his knee.” She grinned at the judge and winked. “Out of shape, I suspect.”
“I am not out of shape.” Mitch glared at her, gritting his teeth. “I tripped. It happens to lots of people.”
“Oh, my dear! Let me see,” Hope murmured, scurrying over to check the skin of his knee. “Come along, Mitchel. That needs cleaning.”
The older woman had him firmly by the arm, and there was nothing Mitch could do but follow meekly. She plunked him on a chair and rolled up his pant leg efficiently.
“I remember this from my teaching days.” Hope smiled. “How many Band-Aids did I use during those thirty years, I wonder? And the iodine!”
“I, er, I don’t think I need iodine,” Mitch murmured, trying not to remember his past and how that stuff stung. “Really, it’s fine.”
Hope looked at him with a knowing smile. “It’s all right,” she whispered, patting his hand. “Nowadays, the new stuff doesn’t hurt nearly as much.”
Mitch subsided, feeling a fool. He sat meekly as she dabbed and cleaned and bandaged him until he looked like a trussed-up turkey. His pant leg wouldn’t go over the massive bandage she had applied, so Hope Langford carefully cut it off, leaving him with one short and one long leg.
He stared at his legs, aghast at the sight of his mutilated trousers. He had never been so thoroughly humiliated in his entire life, and the evening hadn’t even begun yet.
“Well, you couldn’t very well wear them to work with a patch in the knee,” Hope told him kindly, her blond head tipped. “This way you can get the other leg cut off and make shorts out of them.” She waved the scissors thoughtfully. “Would you like me to do it?”
“No, thanks anyway,” he said, backing out of the room. “You’ve done a wonderful job, though.” Of ruining his only pair of designer pants, he added under his breath.
Mitch turned carefully to go to the living room and found Melanie in his path, her gaze wide with disbelief as she studied him. Her mouth tilted in a slash of amusement, and her eyes sparkled with delight.
“Don’t say a word,” he warned her menacingly. “And if there’s anyone who’ll be leaving early, it’s going to be me.”
“How the mighty are fallen.” She giggled, walking behind him as he limped to his chair. Her face cracked up when he jerked upward as the metal prong stabbed him in the rear again. “Shall I call Aunt Hope for you, Mitch?” She chortled.
“Oh, go away,” he told her miserably. His eyes moved to the seniors huddled over the pictures on the coffee table. “What’s going on there?”
