Emmett Read Free

at her.
    Melody smiled back. She liked the little girl very much. She was open and warm and loving, despite her mischievous nature.
    Emmett saw that smile and felt it all the way to his toes. He couldn’t have imagined even a minute before that a smile could change a plain face and make it radiate beauty.But he saw the reality of it in Melody’s soft features. Involuntarily his eyes fell to her body. She was what a kind man would call voluptuous, her form and shape perfectly proportioned but just a tad past slender. Adell had been bacon-thin. Melody was her exact opposite.
    It irritated him that he should notice Melody in that way. She was nothing to him except a turncoat. She and her brother had disrupted and destroyed his life. Not only his, but his children’s, as well. He could easily have hated her for that.
    â€œI said, let’s go,” he told the children.
    â€œOkay.” Polk sighed.
    â€œI’ll wait in the hall,” Guy murmured. He avoided even looking at Melody.
    â€œGuy hates you,” Amy told her with blunt honesty. “But I think you’re wonderful.”
    â€œI think you’re wonderful, too,” Melody replied.
    Amy grinned and walked up to her father. “We can go now, Emmett. Can I write to my friend Melody?”
    â€œWe’ll talk about it,” Emmett said noncommittally. “Thanks for watching them,” he said as an afterthought.
    â€œOh, it was my plea…sure!” She tripped over a tomahawk that someone had left lying on the floor and ended up on her back. Guy picked up the weapon, and the kids and Emmett made a circle around her prone body. She glared up at them, trying not to think how a sacrificial victim in an Indian encampment might have felt. In those Indian costumes, the kids looked eerie.
    â€œWhose tomahawk?” Emmett asked as he reached down and pulled Melody up with a minimum of strain. His hand made hers tingle. She wondered if he’d felt the excitement of the contact, too, because he certainly let go of her fast.
    â€œIt’s mine, Emmett,” Amy said, sighing. She looked up at him, pushing back her pigtails, and her green eyes were resigned. “Go ahead and hit me. I didn’t mean to make Melody hurt herself, though. I like her.”
    â€œI know you didn’t mean it,” Melody said, and smiled. “It’s okay, nothing dented.”
    â€œNext time, be more careful where you put that thing,” Emmett muttered.
    â€œThat’s right, Amy,” Melody said, nodding. “Between your father’s ears would be a good place.”
    He glared at her. “You didn’t hear that, Amy. Let’s go, kids.”
    He herded the children out the door and closed it. Melody sat by herself with no ringing phones, no blaring television, no laughing children. Her life and the office were suddenly empty.
    Â 
    She closed up precisely at 5:00 p.m. and went by the grocery store to get enough for the weekend, which was just beginning. Thanksgiving Day had been quiet and lonely. She’d had a turkey breast, but she and Alistair had finished it off for supper the night before. So she bought ground beef for hamburgers and a small beef roast and vegetables to make stew and, later, soup. She lived on a budget, which meant that she bypassed steak and frozen éclairs. She would have loved to indulge her taste for both. Maybe someday, she thought wistfully…
    She fed Alistair, her big marmalade tabby, and then made herself a light supper. She ate it with little enthusiasm. Then she curled up with Alistair on the sofa to watch a movie on television. During the last scene, a very interesting standoff between a murderer and the police, the telephone started ringing. She grimaced, hating the interruption. If she answered it, she’d surelymiss the end of the movie she’d been watching for two hours. She ignored it at first. The only people who ever telephoned her were people who were