Shane's eyes
widened,
and he stepped into his father's ready embrace.
Melody bit her lip and swallowed, focusing on the drowsy kitten in her lap, aware that something significant had just passed between father and son, something she did not understand, a soul-deep kind of connection that she yearned to experience, though it frightened her to the pit of her belly.
"When I'm sixteen," Shane said, as he pulled from the embrace, "then can I?
If another baby animal without a mother needs help."
Melody placed the half bottle of formula on the end table. "Don't ever do what I did today, sweetheart. Please."
"Maybe when he's thirty," Logan said, petting the kitten in her lap with his index finger. "Thirty is old enough."
"Right," Mel said, amazed at how tiny the kitten appeared in proportion to Logan's large, well-shaped hand, glad Logan no longer seemed angry with her.
"But what if I see a baby animal in the road before I'm thirty?"
"I'll rescue it for you," Logan said.
"Or Mel can. You and Mel can do it 'til I'm old enough, right?"
Logan and Melody regarded each other, the knowledge that their paths would diverge years before, heavy and unspoken between them. They nodded tentatively, both to appease a wide-eyed boy who had a great capacity for love and to keep him out of danger.
DRESS-REHEARSAL day arrived at four in the morning for Melody. She'd told Logan she was so nervous, she wanted to go to work a couple of hours early, to make sure everything was all set, which was true… as far as it went, but she had essential errands to run on her way, so she fired up her vintage VW.
For the first show, Gardner had decided she would cook an Early New England-style dinner, which worked for her, but whatever she cooked, she knew she
would need
help to pull off a rehearsal.
Before Jessie and Logan's mother could leave for work that morning, she needed to pick up the Boston baked beans and brown bread from Jessie, and the cider baked ham from Phyllis. Melody's friend Vickie had agreed to prepare her grandmother's famous hashed squash, an Old New England favorite, and
Kira
had donated a steamed cranberry pudding to the cause.
All of Melody's friends had come through for her, for which she would remain supremely grateful, though each of them, in their own ways, had hinted that they would not "bail her out," to quote Vickie, "a second time." Melody knew they were right. She did need to learn how to cook for herself. She had even suggested to Jessie and Phyllis
Kilgarven
that she would like to have cooking lessons. But Jessie said her
Boneyard
tours were picking up, and Phyllis mentioned dating Melody's father rather steadily—which news Melody would not be the one to impart to a certain male
Kilgarven
, of the long, tall variety.
"I will learn to cook," Melody repeated to herself as she carried a huge glass casserole dish bearing a crusty, cider baked ham onto the set at six that morning. And she would, though not before her first show, unfortunately.
All she needed to do was get through dress rehearsal, and she would be halfway to making it through her first show. How hard could it be to sprinkle herbs on a ham, stab it with cloves and throw the meat into an oven? She didn't actually need to cider-marinate the ham she was pretending to prepare. Who would know?
After her fake preparation, she would simply take Phyllis
Kilgarven's
finished ham from the oven. Voila!
The live show would be a different matter, of course, but she would deal with that in due course, like the day after tomorrow.
PIECE of cake, Melody thought the following night. Her rehearsal had gone great. Perfect. The crew had applauded. Tiffany Peabody—who seemed to dislike Melody, as much as she liked Logan—had scowled, which pretty much proved it was good. Gardner had beamed, and Logan had groaned in ecstasy when he tasted the ham. "Almost as good as my mother's," he'd said, and Melody forced herself to turn away, so she didn't smack the half-wit and tell him the ham
was
his mother's.
In less than forty-eight hours, she would be shooting the first
Kitchen Witch
show live, she thought, as she practiced making the ham in her own kitchen, while praying that her first would not be her last.
For the tenth time, she smoothed Logan's mother's ratty old recipe, so she could read it better.
Phyl
couldn't have been kidding when she said she knew the recipe by heart. Who could follow this old thing, with half the instructions bonded by edible glue? Every time Melody tried cooking it, something different went wrong. Tonight it was the glaze, as in: She could stand a spoon erect in it.
Tomorrow, she would have to cook the meal successfully, throughout the course of the show, in order to teach her audience, in live segments, how to do it themselves. Oh God. What would she do if the meal she prepared on live television ended up resembling the dinner she and Shane had murdered the first time she took care of him?
She could still picture herself that night dancing around the kitchen yelling "Yikes," with Shane trying not to giggle. She remembered his gentle, "Yuck," and, "Oh no."
Too bad she couldn't bring him on the show with her, she thought, in case it happened again. Not that she expected to have a problem, but…
Melody went upstairs and knocked on Logan's door. She heard a giggling, "Dad," or two from Shane before Logan answered with a crease in one red cheek, his eyes barely focused, wearing floppy socks, faded sweats with peek-a-boo knees, and trying to smooth an endearing case of bed-head.
Stuffed suit, humanized. Have mercy.
Good thing Shane came up behind old
Dad,
or Melody might foolishly have touched the dimple in that unshaven chin. She fisted her hands and gave Shane her full attention.
"Hi, Mel.
Ink and Spot have a new bed—come and see."
"I will, later. I came to ask if I could borrow you for a while."
Shane's eyes lit up. "Can I, Dad?"
Logan seemed too fuzzy to assimilate their words.
Melody hid her grin. "I'm nervous about tomorrow," she said. "I thought Shane could distract me."
Logan nodded.
"Uh, sure."
He checked his watch and regarded his son in that speaking way only a father could. "Bedtime in one hour," he said. "
One
hour."
"Hooray!" Shane shot down the stairs, nearly knocking them over.
Melody grinned. "I don't think he wants to."
She got out the construction paper,
PopsicJe
sticks, glue, markers, and crayons she kept on hand for when he stayed over, and put him to work. "Hey Buddy, remember that dinner we made the first night you came over, and everything went wrong?"
ON the day of the first
Kitchen Witch
show, the whole of New England was under a hurricane weather watch, which made getting to the station early a bit of a challenge. Nevertheless, Melody drove her beetle convertible and ignored the wind whistling through its tattered top.
Not only were the seas along the eastern seaboard threatening to spill over, Wardrobe had done something horrible while cleaning Melody's favorite forties shirtwaist, and a spillover of another sort threatened. Gardener and Logan came into her dressing room as Melody tried valiantly to tuck her breasts back into her bodice.
"Leave it, Mel." Logan gave her a wink. "I like the way it fits."
"You would." Melody blew the hair from her brow.
Gardner laughed and handed her a black witch hat with red polka dots to match her dress. "I had one made for each of your outfits for the next six weeks."
"I'm touched," Melody said. "Shocked, but touched."
"Witch hats instead of chef's hats. I'm brilliant," Gardner announced, since no one else bothered. "I mean, if we're going for a wild and sexy cooking witch here, we may as well go all the way."
"Right."
Melody only hoped the show didn't get anywhere near as wild as she feared it could.
Her frizzing hair had seemed to triple in volume, and the perspiration on her face reflected the light, like a mirror aimed at the sun, but hairdressing and makeup fixed both—mostly. Her dress stuck to her, despite the air-conditioning—in ninety-nine percent humidity, nobody stayed dry—and the preheating ovens did nothing to help her cause.
Before she knew it, Melody stood offstage, trembling, while Woody raised his hand and gave her the signal as he mouthed the countdown. "Three, two, one…"
Lights, camera, action
.
Melody thought.
Nerves, butterflies, nausea.
"I think I'm gonna throw up."
Logan chuckled from behind her and squeezed both shoulders. "Knock '
em
dead, gorgeous."
Until he spoke, Melody hadn't a clue he was there, but his presence, more than his compliment, calmed her in a way she'd thought impossible.
She flattened her hand against her quivering midriff, as the announcer began. "Welcome ladies and gentlemen. Let's give a huge round of applause to Salem's own 'Saucy' Kitchen Witch,
Mizzz
Melody
Seabright
!"
Melody's heart leaped as she took the stage, the applause track drowning the lukewarm reception from her sparse studio audience.
LOGAN watched, dazzled all over again, as Melody beamed, found her mark, stage left, and flicked her wand toward the orchestra, stage right. On cue, they struck up a jubilant rendition of "Do You Believe in Magic?"
In her black and red polka dot dress and hat, with red spikes, and her amazing hair cascading to her waist, Melody made her hip-swaying way across the front of the stage to approach her set from the opposite direction. "Swing it and show it off," Gardner had instructed her, and so she did. Man oh man, could that woman swing it.
Once Melody stepped up to the island counter where she would do her preparations facing her audience, she gave the orchestra another magic flick of her wand, and they stopped mid-beat… like magic.
The audience ate it up.
Behind Mel, as if suspended in midair, white cupboards hung on a night-blue sky—actually a high-tech video wall—splashed with a tasteful sprinkle of gold stars—techno magic at its finest. Two high-definition plasma screens stood off to each side for live close-up shots of food preparation.
In a move that surprised Logan, Melody reached beneath the island for a sign. Attached to a Popsicle stick stuck in a wooden spool, and printed in colorfully bold block crayon letters, the sign read, "Caution!
Ditzy witch at work."
The letter
z
had been printed backward, and the slant to the left-handed letters looked amazingly familiar.
As Melody chatted, smiled, and generally dazzled her viewers, Logan's respect for her grew. She moved like a dancer in and around the props and ingredients she had begun to sort. Damned if she didn't seem as if she knew exactly what she was doing, thank God. He'd been more than a little worried.
After she placed everything in a certain order, she sashayed around toward the front of the island, raised her shoulder, tilted her head, and bent her knee in a way that showcased her dress's sexy center slit as well as a fine pair of legs.
Raising her wand, Melody drew three flaring swirls above her ingredients and chanted as she circled back to where she began.
"Sugar and apples to sweeten it twice Salt sprinkled gently to tease and entice Cloves and mustard to spice the meat. Give us the skill to cook the treat… And friends and family to share and eat!"
This time, in-house applause drowned the applause track.
Melody began to prepare her cider-baked ham with no less flair than she put into the spell itself. She covered it with a mixture of brown sugar, bread crumbs, and a little dried mustard. "Did you know that mustard seeds are believed to carry the magical properties for courage and faith?" she asked.
Logan hadn't expected her to improvise on her dress rehearsal, nor had he expected her to bring real magic into the show, though Gardner did say she needed to "play" every angle.
"Cloves," she said, a minute later, as she began to stab whole cloves into the ham, "are used to stop gossip, protect children, and foster kinship."
Okaaay
… it's okay
, Logan thought when he saw that a couple of people in the audience seemed to be taking down her every word. Melody was simply delivering the kind of magic they were looking for.
Everyone, including the crew, seemed to be… in love, bottom-
Uning
Melody's appeal in two simple words. Melody
Seabright
"made love" to the cameras, and, oh God, Logan thought he might be falling as hard as the rest of them. Yes, her show had the makings to be a winner, but with all her talk of herbs and magic, he might be in more trouble than he originally suspected.
After she put the ham in one of the ovens, she took out the ingredients for the hashed squash, set a cast-iron skillet on the stove, placed a slab of bacon inside, and turned on the heat.
Everything was going so well, Logan thought a few minutes later, he wondered why he'd been nervous. Mel was ac-
ing
the show. She'd been baking the ham, peeling the squash, and wrapping her audience around a small manicured finger, all at one time. He couldn't believe it.
As if her every move had been choreographed, she buttered the mold, so her brown bread wouldn't stick, poured in just enough batter, placed the cover on the mold, and put it in a kettle on the stove's back burner to steam.
When the timer that played the intro to "Do You Believe in Magic?" went off, her smile surely won a host of new viewers. "Time to remove the ham from the oven," she said, using her own unique brand of sex appeal to do something as simple as open an oven.
Logan caught her expression at the precise moment her veneer of self-confidence cracked. It happened when flames leaped from the skillet on the stove, set off smoke alarms, and set Melody herself on what might very well be a quick downward spiral.