Bringing Home a Bachelor Read Free Page B

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