License to Thrill

There weren’t very many things Marc McCoy, Secret Service Agent, third of five proudly macho male siblings, was afraid of. But he was man enough to admit that Wilhemenia Weber was one of them. And when she followed Mel out of the shop, she threw a wrench the size of a semi truck into his plans.

“Damn.”

Marc fought the urge to sink down in his seat. Not only to keep Mel from spotting him, but to prevent her mother from focusing her fault-finding gaze on him. Oh, yeah, he’d met her once. And that one time was enough to know the woman would never like him. He grimaced, finding it difficult to believe it was just over three months ago, before that stupid discussion about love and before Mel’s injury, that she’d talked him into going home for Sunday dinner.

Mrs. Weber’s disapproving stare had started when he sat on the couch, causing the thick plastic furniture cover to crackle in a way that had made him flinch even as Mel laughed. The Stare had followed him throughout dinner, where Wilhemenia had jerked his soup bowl out from under his nose—apparently because he wasn’t convincing enough while trying to choke back the thick, cold green stuff—and ending when she’d practically slammed the door on him when he’d only been halfway out.

The only saving grace was that Mel had taken a perverse sort of pleasure in the whole ordeal. But he absolutely drew the line at returning to that woman’s home. Unless she took that stupid plastic off her furniture and ordered in for pizza and beer.

He sobered, realizing that would never happen. Not until Mel invited him back into her life.

His gaze followed mother and daughter down the sidewalk of the quaint little town of Bedford. What was more than a little unsettling was that he still wished Mrs. Weber had liked him…at least a little.

The risk of being spotted gone, Marc scanned the street before he slowly switched his attention to Mel. And found it suddenly difficult to breathe.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but she looked different somehow. Her blond hair was slightly longer, brushing the top of her shoulders in a curly way that caught the rays of the early evening sun. But that wasn’t it. Then it dawned on him. It was the dress. Well, not the dress, exactly, but the fact that she was wearing it. In muted pink with shiny flowery things stamped on the fabric, it was exactly the type of thing Mel wouldn’t have been caught dead in before. He appreciated the sway of her bottom, thinking he’d have been okay with her wearing feminine attire if she’d asked him. But she hadn’t. In fact, aside from the brief meeting when they’d first been assigned to work together, he’d never seen her in a dress. And then she’d been wearing a knee-length black skirt. This thing…this thing barely brushed the middle of her thighs.

Then there were those heels.

Growing more than a little hot and bothered, Marc tugged at the neck of his T-shirt. The shoes added a good three inches to her five feet seven inches. That would bring the top of her head to his nose rather than his chin when they came face-to-face.

Mrs. Weber turned her head in his direction. Marc slumped in his seat, jamming his knees against the dashboard in the process. He cursed. But the words barely exited his mouth when Mel nearly toppled right off those high, sexy heels. He grinned, forgetting the pain shooting up his knees for a second. Now that was more like the Mel he knew and—

He bit back the word, an audible gulp filling the interior of the Jeep. What did he know about love? Hadn’t Mel told him during their first and only argument that he didn’t know diddly about love?

No, he didn’t, couldn’t love her. He just liked Mel’s sexy backside enough to think it worth protecting from the guy who’d already shot her once.

“Oh, yeah? Then tell me something, McCoy. Why is that damn engagement ring you’ve been carrying around for three months burning a hole in your pocket?”

ADVENTURE, FREEDOM and hot sex are overrated. Melanie squeezed her eyes shut and repeated the sentence slowly.

“Melanie, dear, there are guests present.”

She cracked her eyelids open to take in a generous view of Wilhemenia, who sat across from her in the dining area of the Bedford Inn. She wasn’t sure why, but lately everything her mother said, no matter how innocuous, got under her skin. She offered a patient smile. “Of course there are guests present. It’s my rehearsal dinner. I invited them, remember?”

She took in the gilded antique chairs, the crisp white damask tablecloths and the pretty flowered wallpaper, wondering exactly why the traditional event was called a rehearsal. It wasn’t as though she or Craig needed pointers on how to walk down the aisle. That was a no-brainer. She smiled at Craig’s father, who sat adjacent to her, and suppressed the urge to fidget, sure the unladylike move would elicit another public reprimand from her mother. Then realization settled in. The rehearsal part of it didn’t have so much to do with her and Craig. Rather it was a preview of what holidays would look like from here on out.

The tickle of panic that had been with her all day grew to a pang.

Melanie tried to shake the images that crowded her mind. But like an unwelcome visit from the ghost of Christmas future, she envisioned her mother perched on the edge of a couch making comments that always somehow seemed like criticisms about the Christmas tree and covertly trying to get at the nonexistent dust bunnies under the coffee table with her ever-present embroidered handkerchief.

And Craig’s parents? Melanie watched them as she chewed a bite of cold roast beef. Okay, so his father was a bit…overbearing. Suspicious almost. Which was only fair given the suddenness of the upcoming nuptials. Melanie’s cheeks heated. Craig’s mother, on the other hand, was almost effusively nice. Likely a result of spending the past forty years trying to compensate for her husband’s bad manners. And her desire for grandchildren from her only child. The roast beef stuck in Melanie’s throat. Doris was going to get one of those sooner than she expected.

Guilt ballooned to challenge the panic.

Craig’s mother smiled at her brightly. Melanie smiled back, the tongs of her fork screeching against china.

She purposely avoided looking at Wilhemenia.

“Scary, isn’t it?”

“Hmm?” She glanced at Craig, who sat next to her.

He leaned a little closer and lowered his voice so only she could hear. “The thought of these guys being in the same room for more than five minutes at a stretch.” He cleared his throat. “Just getting my own parents to spend that much time together is asking for trouble.”

His familiar grin eased her discomfort as he unwittingly fit his own welcome image in with the others stamped in her mind. It didn’t surprise her that he’d been thinking the same thing she had. Throughout their nearly lifelong friendship, Craig and she had always understood each other.

She watched as the grin vanished from his face. He tugged at his tie. She thought he must be feeling as awkward as she was. He leaned in her direction again. “When this infernal thing is over, we need to talk.”

“Sure, we can do that.” Melanie was almost relieved to focus on someone else. She had been so wrapped up in her own thoughts, she hadn’t considered that Craig might be as nervous about all this as she was. But the fact that his request was so very serious scared her. Was he having second thoughts?

She glanced up to find the table had gone suspiciously silent. “How about this heat wave?” she said, not comfortable with the way her mother was watching her.

Doris made some comparison between the heat and a tin roof that Melanie missed, but Craig’s burst of laughter made her sigh.

Why can’t you be more like Marc?

She jerked involuntarily at the unwelcome thought, sending her fork sailing through the air. She watched in horror as it spiraled above the table, prongs over stem, prongs over stem…. Finally it landed neatly in the middle of her mother’s plate, spearing her roasted potatoes.

“Melanie!”

Her cheeks felt on fire. Of all the places for the sucker to land. She tightly clasped her hands in her lap where they were unlikely to do more damage.

“Pardon me.”

“Are you all right?” Craig asked.

Melanie made a show of watching her mother pluck the foreign piece of silver from her food.

Look at him, she ordered herself. She did.

It wasn’t that Craig Gaffney wasn’t attractive. He was appealing in an all-American way that included surfer good looks, wide grin and a sharp mind for drugs. Pharmaceuticals, she amended. She thanked the waiter when he brought her another set of linen-wrapped silverware. Her mother cleared her throat. Melanie carefully freed the silver from the white linen and picked up the clean fork, though she didn’t think she could swallow another bite of food.

Craig had a great sense of humor. Did it really matter that he sometimes didn’t grasp a punch line? Or that his capacity for humor had somewhat dwindled since they announced their engagement?

She picked up her wineglass and took a hefty sip only to realize she shouldn’t be drinking. She forced herself to swallow, then coughed. Craig’s father narrowed his eyes, watching her far too closely.

“Wrong pipe,” she said quietly.

Her fiancé was also very comfortable to be around, she continued, reviewing her Pro-Marriage to Craig column. A quality that had instantly cemented their friendship nearly twenty-five years ago when they were in kindergarten. He didn’t judge her the way most people did then…and now. She glanced in her mother’s direction. Wilhemenia was frowning…again. No, Craig had always accepted her for who she was. Which made accepting his proposal all too easy when she’d spilled her troubles to him.

Craig leaned toward her, giving her a hefty whiff of his cologne. I can change that. He lowered his voice. “You don’t feel like you, well, you know, have to—”

“Throw up?” she said a little too loudly.

He didn’t laugh. Instantly, she realized why. No one else at the table knew she was pregnant.

She searched for a way to cover her mistake. “I think I’m suffering from a case of pre-wedding nerves. Otherwise, I’m fine. Really.” Which was true enough. She hadn’t suffered through a moment of morning sickness, and she was two weeks into her second trimester.