Bedeviled Angel (5 page)

"On your own six o'clock news," she stressed, "your anchor reported that I did such a good job, one man swore I had actually bewitched him, and he sued the tour company." She placed her hands on her luscious little hips and gave them a slight quarter turn, just enough to raise the testosterone level in the room to dangerous proportions. "Is that talent, or what?"

"It's a load of crap is what it is," Logan muttered.

"What did you say, Kilgarven?" Gardner asked.

Logan ignored the militant spark in Melody's eyes. She'd heard him clearly enough. "She should be able to cook, too."

"Of course," Melody said, shocked that anyone could doubt her. "Or I could cast a spell." She zapped them with her smile and moved her hands and hips in a swami-like fashion, as she turned in a slow, seductive circle, wielding the wand she'd pulled from her purse.

"Abracadabra Melody Bright

Will do what it takes to spice the sauce right

Rosemary, allspice, brandy, and wine,

Do, Mr. Gardner, make the cooking show mine!"

The wily witch ended in a flourishing bow, cleavage at half mast.

Rattled, Logan ran a hand through his hair.

Gardner gave her a standing ovation. "You'll make a great cooking show host."

"But she can't cook," Logan said, certain that bringing in a noncooking witch to interview for a cooking show was going to come back and bite
him
in the butt.

"I will?" Melody said, as Gardner's words registered. "I got the job?"

Gardner chuckled. "Who could do it better?"

"A cook!" Logan repeated, but who was listening to him?

"I thought about ways we might advertise," Melody said, throwing Logan a chiding look for his last-ditch effort at bringing her cooking skills, or lack thereof, to Gardner's attention. "And I think we could utilize any number of magical phrases, such as: "Culinary Saucery with… or Magic in the Kitchen with…
The Kitchen
Witch".
"

With dollar signs in his eyes, Gardner grinned and rubbed his hands together in agitated anticipation. "I can practically taste syndication.
The Kitchen Witch
out of Salem, Massachusetts." He turned on Logan. "Why didn't you come up with something like this, Kilgarven? Shame on you."

Logan came out of shock with a jolt, as Gardner took Melody's hands, stepped back, and gave her a salivating once-over. "You certainly came well prepared," he said, shaking his head. "But suppose I'd had in mind to cast you as something other than a witch?"

Melody gave him a feline smile, stepped back, pulled a few fan-like combs from her hair, and let the entire mass of black magic tumble in waves to her waist. "Jag,"

she purred. "I can be anything you want me to be."

Logan could practically see the boss's pupils dilating while the blood in his system took a U-turn.

Ice Man in heat.

After that performance, they'd be nuts to cast Melody as anything but a witch.

"A witch, definitely," Gardner unknowingly echoed. "I'll have your contract drawn right up."

"Before you do… Jag," Melody said, with another efficient sweep of her long, dark lashes. "Since the idea is mine, I'd like to retain the rights to the show's name and format, and my persona." She fluffed her hair with laughing exhilaration. "We're gonna make an awesome team."

For a moment, Gardner was struck dumb. "Uh, um… the contract." He had so much trouble pulling his gaze from Melody's Rapunzel-like tresses, he nearly walked into the wall.

Three Mile Island had nothing on Melody Seabright.

When the door shut behind Slush-Man, Logan stood.

Melody gave him a smile that turned part of him to pulp, the rest to rock. "I got the job!" she screamed and threw herself into his arms.

Oh, this was nice. This was fine. Logan stroked her back and skimmed a possessive hand along her hip.

She leaned back in his arms, her smile still dazzling. "Well? Say something."

"I'm… in shock?"

Melody lost her smile and stepped from his arms. "Especially since you tried to screw me."

Logan wanted her back and despised himself for it. "If I had tried, I'd have succeeded."

"Why Mr. Kilgarven, I do believe you're hiding a streak of wild behind those predictable pinstripes of yours."

If you only knew
. "While the soul of a hustler beats beneath your turn-of-the-century prim." Shane's mother was exactly the same—a sexy shell of coy charm over an empty, hard-as-nails core. Melody was more of a threat, however.

Because she had the mesmerizing ability to appear so disarming, one tended to forget her missing heart. "Don't look now," Logan said. "But you just took a job under false pretenses."

"Bull. I conceived the show myself, every detail, and I earned the job with pure showmanship. Hot damn, I'm good."

"What happens when you can't cook?"

"I'll be such a magical cook, I'll have you begging to taste what I make."

Logan scoffed. "Save the smoke and mirrors for your audience." But she was right. In front of the cameras, showmanship would get her further than cooking skills any day. Except that, when her first meal went down the disposal, and Gardner remembered exactly who recommended her for this interview, Logan's job, and his son's secure future, could end up in the sewer as well.

When Gardner came back with the contract, he named a salary and benefits package that made Melody squeak with joy. And well she should, Logan thought.

The package was damned near as good as his own.

Maybe she was a sorceress, after all. Melting an Ice Man was no easy task.

"Just one more thing," Melody said, after she read the contract, and before she signed.

Here comes the deal-breaker, Logan thought. She got away with the rights, but now she was getting greedy and she'd blow the bankroll.

"I'll need Station Day care for my little guy." Her smile went soft. "His name is Shane, and he's four. I checked out your day care center yesterday, teacher credentials and all, so I know it's a top-notch facility."

Logan's jaw went slack, as did Gardner's.

"And will your… little guy be coming and going with you?" Gardner asked tightly.

"Or with Mr. Seabright?"

"There is no Mr. Seabright," Melody said. "Except my father."

Gardner's tension vanished. "Fine, fine. Let me show you your office."

Humble pie tasted a lot like crow, thought Logan, reeling, blindsided by Melody the quick-change artist, sexiest witch in Salem, as he followed her and Gardner down the hall.

"This is the office," Gardner said. "Even without windows, I don't think it's too bad. What do you think?" Gardner asked Melody, while Logan remained dazed and astonished over the fact that she had arranged day care for Shane.

"Awesome," Melody said.

Logan focused on the office—butterscotch camel-back sofa, honeyed oak tables… "Wait, this is my office."

Gardner grinned. "Until the one next door is refurbished, you'll share."

FOUR and a half hours later, Logan watched Melody limp into "their" office.

"What happened?" he asked, rising from behind his desk.

"I just took a hundred-mile tour of the station in spikes." She moaned and dropped into the overstuffed, comfortable as hell, butter-soft leather chair, to which he silently bid a fond farewell.

"I must have met every single person who works at WHCH," she groaned. "I even met some guy from one of our affiliates. Westmoreland, I think his name was."

Logan got her a Perrier from the fridge beneath the wet bar and twisted off the cap.

"You're a doll," she said, accepting it and taking a parched sip.

"I'm a man whose been cut off at the… office," he responded dryly.

"Your office, I know. Logan, I'm sor—"

He held up a hand. "I'm kidding." He sat across from her and leaned forward.

"Lose the heels."

She pushed her spikes off, with a groan for each new ache, and rubbed one foot with the other. "Thanks."

"Give 'em here," Logan said, liking the fact that he'd surprised her. But when he took her feet into his lap to massage them, he was caught off guard, seduced by lavender toenails and a gold toe ring. Damn. Feet were not supposed to be sexy, and his reaction only got worse as he massaged them, because she moaned, and wiggled, and sighed… in ecstasy, damn it. She even squeaked a couple of times from somewhere deep in her throat, a sound that sent sparks straight to "the big guy."

Logan imagined that she might sound something like that if he were deep inside her and—

"Lord, I'm in heaven," she said, closing her eyes, in rapture once more. "I may never move from this spot."

In heaven himself, or maybe it was hell, Logan wouldn't be moving anytime soon either, but for a different reason. If he hadn't been sure before, he knew now that having Melody around twenty-four/seven would make for the kind of stimulation he'd once lived for, sought out at every turn, the kind he should be running from, far and fast.

"I can't wait to tell Shane I got the job," she said, rushing Logan up for air as quick as she'd dragged him under, giving him a good case of the bends with the jolting reminder of his goals and responsibilities. Damned straight, she'd be a distraction, the kind he did not, repeat, did not, need, a sizzling, confusing disturbance with both an enervating and an energizing effect on him. Hell, she was a regular bunny with boundless batteries as far as his libido was concerned.

But just when he thought he had her pegged, when she'd proved that, like Heather, she'd use sex for her own selfish benefit, she'd gone and got Shane into day care.

Did she knowingly use sex? Even now, with her eyes closed and her features serene, she seemed oblivious to everything around her. Yet he was caught, immobilized, captured by the sight of her—body riding low, skirt riding high, bare feet in his happy lap, proving, without question, the existence of stockings and a garter belt… a navy one.

In a bid for sanity, Logan called her name and waited for her to look at him before speaking. When she did, her topaz eyes guileless and wide with innocence, he took a breath to keep from drowning in their seductive depths and tried to remember what he wanted to say.

Oh, yes. "Sharing my office is nothing compared to what you did for me and Shane," he said, rubbing a thumb over her toe ring. "I can't believe you got him into day care, even researched it. I honestly don't know how to thank—"

"Don't thank me until we figure out what to do about him calling me Mel, and you Dad."