A Match Made by Cupid (Harlequin Special Edition) (6 page)

“That would be really helpful.” Covering her mouth, Melanie yawned. “Where are we meeting and when?”

“Just give me a call whenever you’re set tomorrow, and we’ll take it from there.” He opened the door and shivered at the blast of cold wind that met him face-first.

“Will do. And Jace? Thanks for hanging out tonight. It was nice.” Her voice, sleepy and warm, forced him to turn around. To look at her.

“Welcome,” he said, his voice strangely tight. “Your mom whispered something to you right before she left. What was it?”

Hesitating, Melanie sucked her lower lip into her mouth. One second was all he’d need to pull her to him for a kiss. As if she could read his thoughts, a slow, sensual smile emerged. The fire returned, both in her eyes and on her skin.

“Normally,” she said in a slow, sultry tone that he’d never before heard from her, “I wouldn’t tell you this, but you’ve been a nice guy tonight. Nicer than I expected. So, if you promise never to bring this up again—”

“I promise. Cross my heart. Hope to die. Whatever it takes.”

“Okay, so here goes.” She did that lower-lip suckle again, and he ceased to take in air. “My mother seems to think I need a night of great sex. And she seems to think you’re the man to give it to me.”

With that, she gave the door a solid push, it slammed shut, and Jace somehow managed to stumble to his car. For a parting shot, it was a damn good one. So good, he’d be awake all night thinking about the possibilities. His groin tightened as one possible image came to mind.

Hell. He might never sleep again.

Chapter Four

M
elanie strode up the steps to her duplex and stabbed her key into the lock. Without intending to, she’d stayed the night at her mother’s. Worry had kept her there, and fatigue had put her to sleep somewhere around three-ish. She hadn’t awakened until Loretta finally decided to come home at six.

Twisting the key, Melanie pushed the door open with far more force than necessary and nearly tripped over a red gift-wrapped present that had been left on her front porch. Over the past month, she’d received two gifts wrapped in the same paper and delivered in the same way. Most likely, this one wouldn’t have a card attached, either. Intrigued and annoyed, she swore under her breath, swept the package into her free arm and entered her living room.

Soft, buttery-cream-painted walls surrounded her, giving her a shot of serenity she desperately needed. Home. Finally. She loved being here more than anywhere else. Tossing the present on her secondhand, slip-covered sofa, she went to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, hoping the caffeine would dull the pounding headache her mother’s news had created.

Engaged.
Her mother had agreed to marry the man who’d dumped her less than a week ago. The entire situation was ludicrous and in all likelihood would end in heartbreak. Of course, Mom didn’t see it that way. No, she’d fluttered around in excitement, full of wedding plans as she showed off her diamond ring and waxed poetic about her romantic evening. When Melanie’s response hadn’t lived up to Loretta’s expectations, mother and daughter had one of their rare arguments.

Maybe that was where the headache came from, Melanie admitted. She hated fighting with her mom. But come on…like she was supposed to believe the lame story Mr. Wade Burlington fed her mother? In his words, he’d only broken up with Loretta over fear at the depths of his feelings. Once they spent five miserable days apart, he realized how much he loved her. Hence the proposal.

All hogwash, in Melanie’s opinion. Or, even if Wade spoke the truth, what was to stop him from becoming overwhelmed by fear again? Perhaps, Melanie thought with horror, at the wedding altar? Oh, God. This was absolutely going to end badly, but she couldn’t do a damn thing but wait for the inevitable.

She paced the kitchen while the coffee brewed. How long would it take her mother to recover from a broken engagement? None of Loretta’s other relationships had made it to the engagement stage, though a few had gotten close. What if Wade held firm until all the wedding plans were complete and then decided he couldn’t go through with it? Then Mom’s heart wouldn’t only break: it would shatter.

The second the coffee was ready, she filled her cream-and-sugar-prepared mug, returned to the living room and collapsed on her sofa. It wasn’t yet nine, so she had time to wake up and take a long, hot shower before phoning Jace.

Ugh. Collaborating on the love article wasn’t going to help her current mood any. She swallowed a large gulp of coffee and sighed. She was wrong. There wasn’t enough caffeine in the world to wake her up or lift her spirits today, let alone get rid of a headache.

Jace would likely have questions about her behavior last night; questions she didn’t care to answer. What with her coolness at the door and the way she’d shut down after her mom had left, she was surprised he’d even stuck around. A small trickle of pleasure warmed her on the inside. He
had
stuck around, though, when he didn’t have to, and he hadn’t pushed even one of her buttons.

She’d enjoyed herself, she realized with a shock. Even with her anxiety over her mother, she’d found Jace’s company soothing and…somehow, exactly what she needed.

It didn’t mean anything, naturally. The guy knew how to be nice when the situation called for it. So what? She’d never thought of Jace as cruel. Maybe he was a little—okay, a lot—free with his affections, but he’d never been mean to her. So why did she feel unbalanced, as if the tempo of their relationship had altered into something more meaningful than before?

She didn’t want meaningful with Jace. She didn’t want him in on the personal beats of her life. Distance was what she wanted. She should’ve sent him home last night when he offered. If there was a next time, she wouldn’t make the same mistake.

Her stomach clenched when she caught sight of the red-wrapped gift resting on the other side of the sofa. This was the third such present that had shown up on her front porch over the past several weeks. If this gift was like the others, it wouldn’t have a card attached, and the item would be something that only a person who knew her could’ve chosen.

The first present, which arrived a week or so before Christmas, had been an antique doll dating from the 1920s. Melanie didn’t exactly collect antique dolls, but she had a few her mother had given her when she was a child, from before her dad left, and she liked them. But who knew that other than her mother and maybe Tara, she couldn’t say.

Then, last week, the second gift appeared: a signed copy of
Charlotte’s Web,
one of her favorite books from her childhood. When she’d checked online, she found that both the doll and book were valued in the one-to-two-hundred-dollar range. At that point, she didn’t know if she should be flattered, annoyed or worried.

And now this. She eyed the package, downed another large swallow of coffee, and tried to decide if she wanted to open it now or wait until later. Opening the presents always gave her a strange mix of emotions: pleasure that someone had thought of her and knew her well enough to choose an item she’d appreciate, worry about who that someone was and if she should be looking over her shoulder for a potential stalker, and, not that she’d admit it to another living soul, but a tingling sense of excitement at the possibility that the gifts came from a man who found her attractive but, for whatever reason, was too shy to approach her one-on-one.

That bothered her, the fact that a bit of potential romanticism gave her a zing. It shouldn’t. She had no plans of combining her life with a man’s. Ever.

After draining the rest of her coffee, she set the mug on the end table and picked up the present. Might as well open the dang thing now. Procrastinating wouldn’t change what the gift was or how she would feel upon opening it.

As always, she weighed the present in her hands, trying to guess what the contents might be. It felt like a book. Another signed copy of one of her favorites? Again, the odd combination of emotions overtook her. She sucked in a deep breath and ripped off the paper. Nope, no card. One look at the gift—it
was
a book—brought forth a hard tremble.

Alice in Wonderland,
a book from which her father had read a few pages a night to her, nearly every night, before he’d taken off.

With a trembling hand, she flipped through the opening pages looking for a signature, because a signed copy of
Alice in Wonderland
would likely be worth megamoney. She expelled a sigh in relief when she didn’t find the author’s scrawl. If some anonymous person had spent thousands of dollars on her, she’d be seriously creeped out.

Still, the book was in fairly good condition and seemed to be rather old. Not a first printing, thank goodness, but probably worth a decent chunk even without the signature.

Clasping the book tightly, Melanie closed her eyes and leaned against the couch cushion. In the snap of a finger, she saw herself as a child snuggled up in bed with her tall, strong father sitting next to her. His voice, so long absent from her life, whisked into her memory as she recalled him reading
this
story to her. A story her mother had argued wasn’t really a children’s story at all, but Melanie had loved it, anyway. Had loved the time spent with her father each night before sleep.

Her heart thumped hard against her breastbone. She’d been wrong. These gifts weren’t from a secret admirer, and they weren’t about romancing her. They had to be from her father. Nothing else made sense, based on the fact that the presents all reflected periods from her childhood. But why? Was he trying to soften her up before attempting a reconciliation? That thought sent another series of trembles skittering through her, along with the hot flash of anger.

If David Prentiss somehow thought reconciliation was possible, then he had another think coming. Nothing would propel her to forgive him, to let
him
slither back into her life twenty years after he’d dumped her and her mother as if they were nothing more than trash.

Oh, God. What if he decided to approach Mom? She’d always said David Prentiss had been the great love of her life. Would she take him back now? Probably not, seeing how she was currently engaged to someone else. But her father might see that as enough reason to get in touch, if he somehow learned about the engagement. Melanie couldn’t allow that. It would hurt her mother far too much.

Somehow, she was going to have to deal with this.

Later that afternoon, Melanie entered the coffee shop in downtown Portland that she and Jace had agreed to meet in. A quick search of the busy room told her he hadn’t yet arrived. She settled herself at a table in the back corner to wait and pulled out her laptop and notepad.

She’d looked her father up in the Portland telephone directory, with no luck. Which meant he was either unlisted or had moved out of the city. Unlisted was more likely. He wouldn’t be able to consistently drop off gifts if he lived too far away. Unless whatever he did for a living involved frequent travel to Portland. Hmm. That was a possibility worth considering.

What type of jobs had he held before he left? Melanie searched her memory, trying to bring those hazy days into focus, but failed. All she truly recalled was her mother’s frustration with the sporadic paychecks. Maybe, if Melanie was careful, she’d be able to question her mother without offering an explanation as to why she wanted the information. She could also check one of those online, people-finding sites to see what came up.

The chair across from her scraped against the floor, startling her. “You look tired,” Jace said as he dropped into his seat. “I take it you didn’t get much sleep?”

“I’m fine,” she said shortly. A light, almost fluttery sigh escaped as she drank in his appearance. With his slightly tousled hair and unshaven jaw, he looked sexy as hell in that rough-and-tumble, just-crawled-out-of-bed sort of way that most men couldn’t quite pull off.

He appraised her with doubt in his expression and concern in his eyes. “You’re sure? Everything turn out okay with your mom?”

“No. Yes.” She blinked and aimed her vision away from his. “Remains to be seen.”

“Ah. I see,” he said, though his tone clearly said he didn’t. “Well, then I suppose we should get started. I’d like some coffee first. You want any?”

Relieved he wasn’t pushing for more information, she reached for her purse. “Sure, let me give you some money—”

“On me.” He stood and offered her a grin that softened the sharp features of his face. “What’s your pleasure?”

“Surprise me,” she said. “Since you’re buying.”

He ambled off, and her gaze fixated on his retreating form. Had she ever seen him wearing anything but a pair of jeans? She didn’t think so, but she knew she’d never seen another man who looked as delicious in denim as Jace did. That annoyed her.

He was, after all, just a man.

But she couldn’t stop herself from watching, from fantasizing, from wondering—all dangerous pastimes where Jace was concerned. She was a professional, dammit. She had no business lusting over anyone she worked with, but most especially not a womanizer like Jace.

The man in question returned with their coffees. He slid hers over to her and retook his seat before unbuttoning his thick, charcoal-colored flannel shirt. He tugged the shirt off, revealing a short-sleeved, black T-shirt beneath. “It’s a little warm in here.”

“Yes,” she murmured, trying not to stare. “Warm.” His arms were firm and muscular. Not bulging, but lean and strong. If she had to guess, she’d say he’d earned his physique the old-fashioned way—from working and playing hard, and not from hours spent in a gym.

Her fingers curled around her cup in defense of the want to reach over and touch him. To feel the smooth strength of his biceps, the hard plane of his chest beneath the softness of his shirt. Dear God, she was in trouble. Her eyes fastened on to his, and she gulped for air.

“You’re just a man,” she blurted in an echo of her earlier thoughts. Embarrassment, rich and thick coated the back of her throat. “Like—um—any other man.”

Surprise caused him to blink. “I am a man,” he agreed cautiously. “But I’d like to think I’m unique. Special in my own way.”

“Well, yeah. I can see that,” she said, deadpan, in the dual hope of recovering her balance and pulling herself out of the hole her loose tongue had dug. “You’re a Snuggie guy. I’d definitely say the term
special
applies.”

Shaking his head in frustrated humor, Jace opened his laptop and powered it on. “You’ll never let me forget about the damn Snuggies, will you?”

“With the photo shoot I have planned? Never.” Pleased that they were on somewhat normal ground, she grinned and held up her takeout cup. “Thanks for this. What’cha get me?”

“Welcome. It’s a cinnamon something or other.” He cleared his throat and combed his fingers through his black-as-night hair. The combined actions spoke of a nervous vulnerability that didn’t make sense. “I thought we could nail down a couple of loose ends.”