LITMIR.BIZ

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of a fresh-faced, wholesome, big-smile model rather than a classically beautiful one…which was why the Luscious Lingerie thing had been such a fluke. And an embarrassment.

      She’d put on a few pounds after she’d quit modeling. And she’d eaten her way through her divorce, needing to sample every form of chocolate ever invented. So she was nowhere near her size-four model days. Several sizes from it, in fact.

      But she still turned heads on occasion when she made the effort. Then again, she hadn’t made much of an effort this morning, doing nothing more than yanking her hair into a ponytail and scraping some lipstick across her lips. So maybe that explained it. Mental note: start making an effort. You never know when you’re going to run across somebody from your sex list.

      Realizing he was still waiting for an answer, Mel finally said, “I can say with perfect honesty that I have never met this Charles Pulowski, and unless he disguised himself as a waiter and delivered my chocolate volcano cake, I have never even laid eyes on him.” Perfectly truthful. And as much as he needed to know.

      “I don’t think he’d have gone incognito as a waiter without you noticing him.” He sipped his coffee, then added, “He was seventy years old and weighed almost four-hundred pounds.”

      Gulping, Melody sent up a quick thanks that she hadn’t met the man and that the list had been a joke. Besides, even if Rosemary thought it hadn’t been, the list was still only a guideline…she was allowed to hop into bed with any of the men on it. That didn’t mean she was required to. At least, that’s how she interpreted it.

      She wasn’t so sure Rosemary would say the same. Especially after today. Then again, Rosemary might still be dead by the end of the week, depending on how much she groveled over this ambush, so who cared what she thought?

      “Well, then I definitely never met him,” she replied.

      He didn’t appear entirely convinced, but didn’t press. “So it was a scam. Why is Rosemary trying to set you up?”

      Again, no flattery. No smarmy comment like Bill might have made when trying to pick up a woman he’d just met about how ludicrous it was to think she’d need someone to set her up.

      A part of her wondered briefly if he wasn’t flirting simply because he wasn’t interested in her. But she quickly put that thought under a sharp stiletto heel in her brain and ground it out of existence. Considering she’d wanted him with every molecule in her body at first sight, she’d have to get violent if she thought he felt absolutely nothing in return.

      She doubted that. He might not be flirting or sizing her up, now, but he had earlier. Besides, there was an intensity about the way he watched her that made her think he was every bit as aware of her as she was of him.

      “She have some idea that you need to hop back on the horse because you fell off the marriage wagon?” he asked.

      “Something like that, I guess,” she admitted. “She’s determined to throw me kicking and screaming into—” your bed “—the dating pool. But one thing I do not need is a date.”

      No, she merely needed an orgasm. Or a hundred.

      “So why does Rosemary think you do? Or is it just her being her spoiled puppeteer self, deciding to pull your strings the way she tries to pull everyone else’s?”

      Ooh. He didn’t like Rosemary. There was a point against the man. If he said he hated cats, she’d have to scratch him off her list altogether. That’d been her first real indication that Bill was a jerk—he’d hated her cat. Which was why she’d gotten another one a couple of years ago.

      Since this guy was destined to be delisted, anyway, given her way-too-unmanageable-and-dangerous response to him, she considered mentioning her two felines, Oscar and C.C. Instead, she answered his question with a pointed stare. “Rosemary is my best friend. She was my maid of honor.”

      “How long were you married?”

      “Almost six years. The divorce was final a few months ago.”

      “That’s tough. I went through it several years ago.”

      “Is that why Rosemary’s trying to set you up?”

      Nick—she was mentally calling him Nick now, instead of Detective Walker, which probably wasn’t too smart but she couldn’t help it—rolled his eyes. “No, she’s doing that because she’s a pain in the ass.”

      Sharing his rueful grin, because it was true and because his voice held a hint of amusement rather than dislike, she murmured, “She can be.”

      “And,” he continued, “I suspect she thinks if I get distracted by someone, I won’t have as much time to corrupt Dex.”

      “Dex?”

      “My partner.”

      Melody nearly fell out of her chair. In fact, it actually did wobble a bit because she instinctively reared straight up on the rickety old seat. It almost went over backward, and probably would have if not for the grace of God and the luck of fools.

      “Partner?” she whispered.

      He nodded. Confirming he had a partner. Holy shit on a shallot, this guy—her fantasy guy—was gay?

      Reality immediately set back in. Not gay, dummy. A cop…all cops had partners, right? He had to be talking about his partner on the police force. Had to be. Because a man as masculine, rugged and sexy as this one being gay would be a crime against humanity. Well, half of humanity. The half that didn’t pee standing up.

      It wasn’t just the idea of the man sitting across from her being gay that bothered her. It was the idea that the man she’d once had such long, torrid fantasies about—in the early days of her less-than-satisfactory marriage—could be.

      She’d allowed her Time magazine marine to slip out of her mind sometime over the past few years, when she’d been so focused on pain, failure and betrayal. So she’d forgotten the many long, sleepless nights she’d lain in her bed and wondered about the stranger, picturing his dark brown eyes and the grim, intense expression on his face. She remembered now, though. And she feared it wasn’t going to be so easy to forget him again.

      There was one way to make sure of his leanings. “Uh, I take it you mean your partner on the police force. Not your partner…in life?”

      Lowering his coffee cup, he stared at her. Hard. “Yeah. My partner on the police force. Were you thinking…”

      Her face grew hot. And probably twenty shades of red. But there was only one way out of this and that was to brazen through it. “Well, only for a second.”

      He chuckled. “That’s some friend you have there, if you think she’d set you up with somebody who didn’t even like women.”

      She wouldn’t put it past Rosemary, who probably wouldn’t see anything wrong in having a one-night stand with someone who was a little, um…open…in his preferences. Maybe that was because Rosemary hadn’t had a close brush with a venereal disease. Unlike Melody. Who’d learned from her enraged ex-husband that the reason he hadn’t had sex with her during their engagement was because he’d been afraid he’d give her an STD and she’d never marry him.

      Uh, yeah, that’d been a pretty good bet.

      Thank God the prick with the drill had been so scared of getting busted that he’d always used condoms—using the too-soon-for-kids excuse. Then, typical of men who collect things, he’d quickly tired of her and had moved on to other conquests. Mel had been tested a number of times and, like most of her money, a sexually transmitted disease was not among the things she’d taken with her when she’d left her marriage.

      “It was just a brief thought,” she said with a smile.

      “An incorrect one.”

      “Okay. I’m convinced.”

      “You sure you don’t need proof?”

      Heat

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