LITMIR.BIZ

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six years ago. He had no idea she’d recognized him from his famous photo. Which meant, if God was kind, he had no idea about the list.

      So maybe Rosemary was going to survive the week after all.

      “ROSEMARY, WHAT DID YOU get me mixed up in?”

      Rosemary Chilton smiled at the sound of Dex’s voice, her body going warm and soft. She always had that reaction when it came to this man who’d come out of nowhere and changed her world a year ago. “Well, hello to you, too, Detective Delaney.”

      “Nick just called.”

      “Really?” Rosemary murmured. “And how is his day going? As fine as mine? What about yours…you feelin’ okay after your, um, hard workout on Sunday?”

      He cleared his throat. “This isn’t a social call.”

      Rosemary leaned back in her chair, swiveling it around to look out her blinds into the back garden behind her house. A beautiful, sunny day from this angle. If only it were about twenty degrees cooler, she’d love to be rolling around in that thick green grass with Dex the way she’d been rolling around in her bed with him for much of the previous weekend.

      “Rosemary, tell me what you did this morning.”

      “Well,” she murmured, her tone sultry, “I got up and took a long shower. I rubbed a soft sponge all over my body. It was real soapy, with that lilac-scented soap you like to smell on my skin. And I noticed these red marks on the inside of my thighs…I think they’ve been there since Sunday, when you, um, decided to put maple syrup on more than your pancakes.”

      Those were lies. Actually, she’d slept late and had woken up feeling like the inside of a dog’s mouth. She just wasn’t used to late nights with girlfriends anymore. Either that or she was getting old. Because she was having a really hard time getting motivated to do much of anything today.

      She practically heard his face pull into a frown. “You’re not going to distract me.”

      “I’d like to,” she purred, knowing that in spite of his stiff tone, Dex liked it when she played sexy games with him.

      “Stop it. Did you send Nick on a wild-goose chase?”

      “Wild-goose chase?” She laughed softly. “Oh, no, honey, I sent him on a fantasy quest.”

      Dex was silent for a moment, that heavy, disapproving silence he could use to leave her squirming like a naughty girl.

      Hmm…sounded like that could be fun some night.

      Knowing she couldn’t tease her way out of this one, she admitted, “I sent him to meet my friend Melody.”

      “I know. He called me and told me she’s disappeared into the ladies’ room, obviously pretty upset.”

      Rosemary frowned, though she wasn’t really surprised. Melody had run out on her fantasy guy, obviously unable to get past her shock to grab the chance she was being offered. Hopefully her friend wasn’t too mad. Though she knew Melody would probably be a bit embarrassed, Rosemary had figured the excitement of coming face-to-face with her hunky hero would make her forget all that.

      Oh, honey, give yourself a chance.

      God, she hated the way Melody had come out of her six-year stint in hell. If she could get her hands around Bill Todd’s throat, she’d cheerfully strangle the man for crushing her best friend’s spirit, leaving her unsure of herself and so unhappy.

      “How did Nick sound when he called?” she had to ask.

      “I dunno…anxious? A little confused.”

      “Interested?”

      Dex sighed, knowing better than to try to keep it from her. “Yeah. I’d say he was interested.”

      Excellent. She’d known he would be.

      Hopefully Mel would get over her cold feet, because Nick was exactly the man to warm them up. If Rosemary hadn’t met and fallen for Dex first, she might have considered giving Mel a serious run for her money for the Time magazine hero. But she had met Dex first. And wow had she fallen…for the first time in her life.

      Besides, deep down, she knew she wouldn’t have stabbed Melody in the back by stealing her number-one guy. Not that she’d even realized he was her number-one guy at first. When she’d first met Dex’s partner, Rosemary hadn’t recognized him right away. It wasn’t until Dex mentioned that his new partner had been a fifteen-minutes-of-fame war hero that she’d begun getting the whole picture. That had been right around the time Melody had been talking about coming back to Savannah after her divorce.

      It had seemed like an omen.

      But it wasn’t going to go anywhere if Mel didn’t have the guts to go after what she’d always wanted. Self-confidence was among the things her bastard of an ex had stolen from her, along with her money. When she closed her eyes, Rosemary could still hear the raw pain that had been in her best friend’s voice over the past year, when Melody had let her rotten marriage undermine her belief in herself as a woman. She needed that confidence back. And a hot man was a good place to start getting it.

      As for whether Nick would go for it? Well, he was…unpredictable. She had the feeling, however, that he was going to like Melody Tanner just fine. That the two of them were somehow meant to come together. Figuratively and literally.

      Rosemary was a superstitious woman—most people born and raised in Savannah were. So she fully believed in fate. And it seemed like fate had fixed this up. That Melody had seen Nick’s face that night and fantasized about him for a long time for a reason. That a house Rosemary had been brokering had been robbed, requiring her to call the police—which was how she’d met Dex—for a reason. And that Nick had become Dex’s new partner for a reason. That her sweet friend was gullible enough to believe in the plausibility of a cockamamie murder idea for a reason.

      Fate. Who was she to argue with it? And if she had to nudge it along a little by concocting murder plots? Well, so be it.

      “Don’t be mad, sugar,” she told Dex. “Nick’s not gonna be.”

      He quickly figured out what she’d done. “Your friend Melody, is she one of the ones who did those silly lists with you? The one you wave at me when you don’t get your way?”

      She chuckled because there was no real anger in his voice. The man did react so nicely when she teased him to try to make him jealous. Telling him about her sexual-fantasy list last winter had inspired a delightfully powerful reaction. That night had been one of the sexiest she’d ever experienced. “Uh-huh.”

      “And Nick’s name is on hers?”

      “Right again.”

      Dex tsked into the phone. “When are you going to learn to stop meddling? She’s not going to thank you for embarrassing her.”

      Not now, maybe. But someday she would. Rosemary was absolutely sure of it.

      CHAPTER THREE

      WHEN MELODY FELT she’d pulled herself together as much as she was able, she emerged from the ladies’ room and returned to the table in the café. Nick was watching her closely, his expression serious. “Are you all right?” he asked when she sat down.

      Oh, great. She’d been in the ladies’ room having a meltdown, and he’d been sitting here thinking she was throwing up. Lovely.

      “I’m fine.”

      As for whether or not she was really okay? No, she wasn’t. She was losing it. She’d been spinning whimsical fantasies in her mind about this poor, wonderful, wounded soldier she’d met this morning, when, in reality, he’d been dressed like a criminal, hanging around doing heaven-knows-what in her neighborhood.

      The possibilities had filled her mind during her time-out in the bathroom. She’d gotten past his hero qualities enough to wonder what the heck he’d been

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