Bringing Home a Bachelor

“That gives me an idea,” she said. “I’m going to make pies that look like sand dollars … and cookies that look like starfish. Maybe cakes shaped like fish, too. It’s a perfect theme for Miami.”

“How about suns and boats?” Pete suggested.

“Great idea.” Mel upended the champagne bottle again, drinking deeply. “I’m going to make it, Pete, no matter what anyone says.”

He drew his eyebrows together. “Of course you are. Why would anyone doubt that you’re going to be a success?”

Pete noted with alarm that a good three-quarters of the bottle was gone.

“You wouldn’t believe,” she said, after finally taking a breath, “how many demeaning comments I got while I was enrolled at the Culinary Institute.”

“What do you mean?”

“Pastry chef?” Mel mock-scoffed. “Oh-what-cute-cupcakes-you’ll-make-for-your-kids-one-day.” Up went the bottle again. Glug, glug.

Pete’s radar detected deep wounds hidden under Mel’s words and consumption of champagne. “Who said that to you?”

The wind had blown a stray lock of hair free and into her face. Mel attempted to blow it back into place, but failed. “My brother Mark, for one. And my dad asked me if I could really support myself by baking cakes and pies.”

Pete had been ready with a rejoinder about what a jerk the comment-maker was, but he shut his mouth. “I’m sure they don’t mean to be unsupportive.”

“Right,” she said. Glug.

“So what about your mom?”

“My mom doesn’t take it seriously either, but she does order lots of cakes for her friends’ birthdays and other occasions.”

Melinda was perilously close to finishing off the bottle of champagne. Her speech wasn’t slurred, but Pete noted that every time the tide came in, she leaned backward a little. And every time the water rushed away again, she leaned forward, unconsciously echoing its rhythms. Her face had begun to flush, too, because of the alcohol.

Pete deduced that she’d drunk the champagne very quickly, and that more of its effects were going to creep up and clobber her any moment now. Time for a little friendly interference. “Hey, Bug-Eyes,” he teased. “Give me some of that.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, but handed over the bottle. “I could have lived without being called that ever again, you know.”

Pete winked and gave her a friendly shrug. He took two large gulps and k.o.’d the champagne. Then he set the bottle in the sand and manfully restrained a belch.

“Do you know what a complex you and Mark gave me? I went crying to my parents and begged them to take me to the eye doctor so he could fix the problem! I had nightmares about becoming a fly—and no, I never saw the movie because I was afraid to.”

Pete struggled mightily to look sympathetic and suitably remorseful, but he burst out laughing instead. “I’m sorry,” he gasped.

To his relief, Mel began to laugh, too. “It’s not funny,” she exclaimed.

“Yes it is,” he said, backing away with his palms in the air in case she tried to smack him.

“Well, it wasn’t funny at the time!”

He got control over himself and tried to imagine how scary it would be to a six-year-old to wake up in the middle of the night, in the dark, terrified that she’d sprout several hairy insect legs and a pair of wings to go with her existing “bug eyes.”

Regret washed over him. “Mel, I’m truly sorry if we said anything to traumatize you back then. We were just a couple of dumb kids.”

“It was years ago,” she said dismissively. “Forget it.”

“Okay.”

She picked up the empty bottle and peered into it. “Hey! You drank all the champagne.”

Pete decided not to correct her, though he’d had approximately one-eighth of the bottle and she’d had the rest.

“That’s not very nice.”

“What can I say? I’m not a nice guy.” He grinned at her.

She frowned back. “Yes, you are. You weren’t always nice as a kid, but now you’re so nice that your picture’s next to the word in the dictionary.”

He found that he was mildly offended. “Not true.”

“It is, too. You took off your shoes and came all the way out here to talk to me.”

“I came to talk to you because I like you, not because I’m nice.”

“You said you wanted to dance with me.”

“Yeah …?”

“Well, that proves that you’re nice.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Pete said.

“Does too.”

“Does not.”

This was ridiculous—they were behaving like little kids.

“I wanted to dance with you because you’re a beautiful, sexy woman,” Pete told her.

Mel snorted and turned away. “Riiiight.”

He put a hand on her arm and tugged her back around to face him. “You are. What’s with the horse noise?”

Mel’s face, already flushed with alcohol, deepened a couple of shades. “Pete, I’m not one of Playa Bella’s high-roller clients. You don’t have to suck up to me.”

Stung, he opened his mouth to make an uncharacteristic retort. Then he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes and stopped himself.

“I want some more champagne,” she said.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

“Not nearly.”

He shrugged. “Okay. I’ll get us some more in a minute. What’s got you so upset, Mel?”

“Nothing.”

“What’s Nothing’s last name? I’ll go beat him up for you,” he said teasingly.

“You’re going to coldcock my mother?”

Pete winced. “Okay, maybe not. So what did she do, honey?”

Mel expelled a long, quivering breath.

He waited for her to take another and blow that one out, too, staying quiet, not pressuring her to share. Pete knew how to listen. He was a pro. He listened to litanies of complaints from picky customers all day long. He then listened to staff complain about the complaints, as a matter of fact. So whatever Melinda had to say wasn’t going to faze him.

“My mother.” Mel laughed softly. “My stick-thin mother and her backhanded compliments …”

Uh-oh.

“She told me how lovely the cake looked—the wedding cake I did for Mark and Kendra. And in the same breath she said my life would be so different if I did something outside the ‘realm of temptation,’ the ‘calorie-rich’ environment of my bakery.”

Pete hissed in a breath. Ouch.

“Yeah, nice, huh?”

“It probably just came out wrong,” he said, trying to make her feel better.

She rounded on him. “Oh, so there’s a right way to say that?”

“Noooo, maybe not.”

“I’m really good at what I do! I’m proud of it!” Two angry tears overflowed Melinda’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

“Of course you are.” Pete wrapped his arms around her and tucked her head under his chin. He rubbed her back and tried very hard not to notice how good her hair smelled—like camellias—or how her breasts mounded solidly against his chest, or how his body reacted to her dangerous curves.

“Then why doesn’t my own family take me seriously?” She sniffled against his tuxedo jacket. “My dad still asks me if I need money. My mom treats me like a wayward teenager, and she recently subscribed me to Weight Watcher’s online without permission. And Mark only let me do his wedding cake because it was free.”

“That cake is stunning,” Pete said with honesty, but also because he needed to distract himself. Part of him was hardening, and unfortunately it wasn’t his heart.

He prayed that Melinda wouldn’t notice. They’d been kids together. She was Mark’s baby sister. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, pop a woody. Not here, not now.

He cleared his throat as she lifted her face from his tuxedo jacket. “Thanks, Pete. You’re such a good guy.” She hugged him wholeheartedly. “Just for that, you get a free birthday cake.”

How about a free birthday suit? Yours?

His body loved that idea.

Oh, hell. Pete closed his eyes.

Houston, we have a problem: the missile has launched.

Melinda stiffened, staring fixedly at the third button on his starched shirt for a beat too long.

She’d noticed. Of course she had.

As if to make sure she’d actually felt his wayward cock pressing into her abdomen, she shifted against him again.

Heat climbed Pete’s neck and burst into his cheeks. He took a deep breath. His instinct was to shove her away from him, but it might hurt her already wounded feelings … not to mention that it would leave him exposed, with a telltale tent at his crotch.

So Pete babbled instead. “Absolutely gorgeous, that cake. You made it yourself? How do you get the icing so smooth? How do you make those perfect roses?”

He knew he was asking too many questions, and asking them too fast.

Mel raised her eyes from the oh-so-fascinating button and met his gaze. Then she moved a hand down his side, trailing it downwards to his upper thigh.

Pete swallowed hard.

No way. Mel had been brought up in a conservative household, and she wouldn’t … unfortunately … act on this. It wasn’t going to happen, no matter how eager his trouser snake was. She’d had a lot of champagne, true, but—

Nah. Forget it. Not gonna happen.

Then Melinda stepped back two inches and wrapped her fingers around his colossal erection, squeezing it lightly through his trousers.

His mouth fell open.

“Do you really want to hear about how I make roses out of icing, Pete? Or would you like me to help you with this, instead?”

3

SOMETHING DEEP INSIDE Mel exulted, as she stood there on the beach with the wind making a mess of her hair. The tight fit of her satin bridesmaid dress felt sexy now, instead of confining, uncomfortable and embarrassing. She felt … voluptuous.

Pete wanted her. His body had betrayed him. He didn’t think of her as a stupid kid anymore, as Bug-Eyes, Mark’s little brat of a baby sister. He didn’t think of her as fat.

After the week she’d had, after her experience with Franco Gutierrez and a revisit of all her teenage emotional scars, Mel viewed this as a gift.

Curiously enough, she didn’t ask herself if she wanted him. She just exulted in the power of him wanting her.

She had a red-blooded man in a tuxedo with a raging erection—and they had a beach all to themselves … except it wasn’t so private, what with the hundred-odd windows looking down at them from the vast, modern hotel.

And then there was the question of the two pairs of Spanx she’d donned under the turquoise dress: an instant mood killer.

Mel brushed those concerns aside for the moment—she’d just have to get him to his hotel room. For now, she had her hand on the prize. She squeezed gently and Pete groaned.

“Mel,” he said hoarsely, “you really shouldn’t be doing that.”

She peered up at him from under her lashes. “Why not?”

“Because you’re playing with fire, little girl.”

An old-fashioned line, but she liked it. Nobody had called her a little girl for a long time. She considered the width of Pete’s shoulders and the breadth of his chest. He was only about five-eleven to her five-five, but he was built like the linebacker he’d been in high school. They’d called him Fozzie, since even back then he’d been a big teddy bear of a guy.

Mel used her other hand to ease down his zipper. “Show me what you’ve got.” She pushed aside the fabric of his boxers and cupped him, running her fingers up and down the satiny skin of his cock.

Pete made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. “Melinda, you’re killing me!”

She smiled. “I know. But you’ll die happy.”

He gritted his teeth and looked down at her, shaking his head. “Last chance to run, honey. Last chance to rethink this, before—”

She rubbed the underside of him with her thumb. “Before what?”

“Before you get a whole lot of Pete.”

“I think I’d like that.”

“Then get your hand out of my pants and take my room key.” He dug into his pocket and produced it, sliding it into her palm. “Meet me upstairs. I’m going to use my jacket as a shield, if you know what I mean, and I’ll stop to get us another bottle of champagne. Okay?”

She nodded.

He stuffed himself back into his pants and zipped up, carefully.

“If you change your mind, Mel, it’s okay.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him full on the mouth, drinking in the outdoorsy scent of his aftershave, sliding her hand along the slight bristle of his cheek. “I won’t change my mind,” she said.

“I sure as hell hope not.” Pete eyed her as if she were a cupcake and he a starving diabetic.

She started to turn, but he caught her arm.

“Do me a favor and stand there for a second.” He shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and folded it strategically over his arm. “I don’t want to run into any other guests with this battering ram extended out in front of me …”

Melinda laughed at the image. “Does that mean you really want to get inside my castle?”

“Honey, you have no idea,” he muttered. “Now go, before I throw you down right here in the sand and have my way with you.” Pete winked at her.

Mel picked up the shoes she’d dropped and made a bee-line for the hotel, picking her way over the beach barefoot. She was conscious of the fact that Pete was staring after her with lust in his eyes, and a strange, unaccustomed joy bubbled up within her.

Pete thought that she, Melinda, was hot.

Smiling from ear to ear, she put an extra wiggle in her step, just to torture him a little.

She reached the glass French doors of the hotel, pulled one open and ran smack into her mother.

“Melinda! Where have you been?” Jocelyn Edgeworth, elegant and pristine in a powder-blue suit and taupe heels, swept her gaze over Mel, stopping first on her tousled hair, then at the drops of perspiration that dotted her neck and cleavage and finally at her sand-encrusted bare feet. True to form, she flattened her lips and said nothing critical aloud. She let her steel-blue eyes do the talking for her.

Because she didn’t voice her opinion, Melinda couldn’t possibly make a rude retort. “Walking on the beach,” she said.

Jocelyn sighed. “Your brother and Kendra haven’t even cut the cake yet!”

“I needed some air. And I’ve seen the cake. Up close. For hours. I don’t need to see it again.”

“Wouldn’t you like to mingle with the guests? Great-uncle Ernie was just asking about you.”

“Great-uncle Ernie is a sweetie, but he’s getting senile. I spent half an hour talking with him at the rehearsal dinner last night.”

“Well, don’t you want some food? There are several low-calorie options …”

“Mom, I’m actually not feeling so well,” she lied. “My stomach is upset. I’m going to go up and lie down for a little while.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Jocelyn reached for her hand, but since it was clutching Pete’s room key, Melinda tucked it into her skirts and gave her mother a peck on the cheek instead.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll take a couple of antacid pills and come down to the reception again soon, okay?”

“Well, all right.” The steel-blue eyes held motherly concern, but also a bit of irritation. In Jocelyn’s book, a little tummy-upset was something to be swallowed and tolerated with a social smile, not indulged or complained about.

If her ancestors hadn’t come over on the Mayflower, then they’d arrived shortly afterward, probably swimming in relays behind it. They were all angular, lean, fast-muscle-twitch sorts of people; tennis-players, skiers, marathon runners.

Melinda took after her father’s side of the family. “I’ll see you in a little while,” she said, her brief euphoria and champagne buzz fading fast. She made for the elevator. A glance backward found Jocelyn staring with disapproval at the sand trail made by her bare feet.

As the doors closed and the car carried her upward toward room 817, Melinda no longer felt sexy. She felt like a human sausage squeezed into the two pairs of Spanx. She felt windblown and sticky and hopeless. How could a brief encounter with her mother and her prominent, Anglo-Saxon hip bones do this to her?

The elevator reached the eighth floor with a ding and Mel had to decide whether or not to get out. Whether or not to go to Pete’s room. Whether or not to wriggle out of the horrible Spanx and expose herself to his gaze.

Just as she hit the button for her own floor, five, the doors opened to reveal a bellhop with a large cart and three other waiting people. Clearly they all wanted to get into the elevator, and equally clearly, if they did there would be no room for her.

“Ma’am?” The bellhop smiled at her and held the door open. Reluctantly, Mel got out, and everyone else got in.

Slowly she made for room 817 and what was probably a huge mistake. Had she really reached out and put her hand on Pete Dale’s equipment?

She had.

And squeezed it?

She winced.

And unzipped his pants?

Oh, God. What had she been thinking?!

She stared at the innocuous wooden door as if it were the gates of hell, waiting to swallow her whole into fiery torment. She clutched the key card in her hand so tightly that it cut into her palm.

Melinda turned to run and then had the awful thought that she might hurt Pete’s feelings if she did that. He was such a nice guy; the only person who’d been truly wonderful to her lately. He’d have danced with her. He’d come looking for her.

He wanted her. And Melinda wanted so badly to be wanted.

Oh, that’s pathetic.

Really? There’s a song about it. I want you to want me …

Forget it.

Mel turned around and marched three steps from the door. Then she heard the familiar ding of the elevator again, cheerful whistling, and Pete’s hearty laugh.

“None of your business,” he said to someone. “But yeah, you could say that. I’ve got a hot date waiting for me.”

Aaaaaack!

Pete was about to walk this way, and she still had the Spanx on. She’d die before she’d let him see those.

Melinda sprinted for his room, as he stood chatting a little longer, evidently with a coworker here at the hotel.

She jammed the key card into the slot, fell inside and banged closed the door. She dived into the bathroom, eyeing his toiletries as she rucked up the skirt of her dress and yanked down on the waistbands of both pairs of Spanx. After a mighty tussle, she managed to roll both of them down her thighs at once, into a sort of microfiber pretzel, and then panicked.

She had no idea what to do with them. She shoved them into the trash can and wadded up some toilet paper to throw on top of them.

By the time Pete came through the door, she’d launched herself out of the bathroom and onto his bed, hyperventilating.

“Hello, beautiful,” he said, grinning at her. He held a full bottle of champagne and two glasses.

“Hi,” she huffed, leaning back on her elbows in what she hoped was a nonchalant pose. A drop of perspiration dribbled from her hairline down to her ear.

She took brief stock of the room—like hers, it was decorated in standard luxury-hotel fashion, with formal drapes at the sliding door to the balcony, and sheers in the middle for privacy. The bedspread was done in a fabric that coordinated with the drapes.

“What’s got you so out of breath?” Pete set the champagne down on a small, faux-Chippendale desk in the room, placed the glasses next to it and then began to work on the cork.

She cast about for an acceptable answer. The truth was completely out of the question. But so was, “I’m so desperate for you that I ran up seven flights of stairs, panting for your touch.”

She swallowed. “Oh, you know … I was just warming myself up for you.”

Pete knocked over the bottle. He licked his lips as he righted it. “Is that so?”

“Uh-huh. I got a little too warmed up, as a matter of fact.”

The cork shot out of the champagne and hit the flat-screen television on the dresser. His hand shook as he poured the bubbly into one of the flutes, then the other. Then he walked over to the bed and stood over her, his eyes hooded, gazing down at her. Pete no longer looked like a teddy bear. He looked faintly predatory and all male.

“You’re a naughty girl, Mel.” He handed her one of the flutes.

She flushed and gulped some of the wine.

“In fact, you’re just full of surprises. I had no idea.”

He sat down on the bed next to her, depressing the mattress so that she rolled right into him. He leaned forward, his face close to hers, their lips almost touching. “You didn’t come without me, did you?” His voice had gone husky.

Heat streaked like lightning to the core of her. “No …”

“I’m glad to hear that. I’d just have to make you come all over again.” Pete touched his lips to hers and she felt another flash of electricity shoot through her, leaving traces along her erogenous zones.

He smelled spicy, enticing. The outdoorsy aftershave mingled with the scent of his freshly laundered shirt and a musky smell that was all Pete—which went to her head most of all.

He slipped his tongue into her mouth, touching hers, and deepened the kiss. He tasted of champagne and mint and … cocktail sauce? She wasn’t sure, but then he set down his glass and took hers away, too, and it didn’t matter.

He took her face between his big hands and kissed her with urgency. She couldn’t think—she was all sensation, all pleasure.

Pete’s fingers threaded through her hair and he pushed her back onto the mattress. He found the hidden side zipper of her dress and pulled it down, down, down. He eased the spaghetti straps off her arms and peeled back the bodice. She wore a lacy black bra, strapless.

Pete kissed her cleavage and then freed her from the lace, the tiny sand dollar from the beach rolling onto the bedspread. His face became a study in boyish awe. Speechless, he mounded her breasts in his hands and then whistled like a construction worker.

Mel laughed, glad not to have disappointed him.

“They’re incredible … stunning.” He simply stared at them as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“Yours to play with,” she said, trying to catch her breath—a lost cause. “For now.”

Pete fumbled with the buttons on his shirt and removed it, never tearing his eyes away from her body.

It was her turn to stare at his, to take in the solid mass of furred muscle that was his chest, the gym-hardened, cut arms, the tanned expanse of his skin. Her mouth went dry.

How could she ever have thought of him as a teddy bear? Simple: she hadn’t seen him shirtless in years.

And dear God, now he’d kicked off his shoes, peeled off his socks and dropped his pants. Pete had the tough, built legs of a soccer or rugby player. How could she have known? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him in shorts. And she’d never seen him in plain blue boxers, as he was now.

He moved towards her with an expression of ownership that she’d never seen, either, a possessive gaze that made something inside her go all girly.

He mounted the bed and straddled her, then bent his head and kissed her again, the hair on his chest brushing her breasts erotically. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, the act imitating what he wanted to do between her legs.

When she was breathless, he turned once again to her breasts. He squeezed them together and took the peaks into his mouth, like a kid trying to devour two ice-cream cones at once.

Pure, hot pleasure overwhelmed her and reminded her that he was no kid. It surged between her legs and dampened her inner thighs. It spiraled through her belly, tugging at her womb.

Pete sucked harder, abrading her nipples with his tongue. Her powerful response to him came from somewhere primal; somewhere no other man had accessed before. A low scream tore out of her throat, shocking her, and turned to a keening noise as he continued.

She briefly considered shame, and rejected it. She threaded her fingers through his dark curls and pulled on them, her legs moving restlessly.