Snow Angel (32 page)

At the same moment, they moved forward, moved into each other, wrapped their arms around each other, and clung.

Melinda tilted her head back, raising on tiptoe to meet his seeking mouth. She thrust her fingers into the hair at his nape, and he wrapped the length of hers in his fist and held on, pressing his hands into the small of her back.

They sank into the kiss with mutual groans, rubbing their bodies against each other in mutual frustration.

Knowing they had only moments, they poured everything they could into the kiss, and when they broke apart, they were both breathing heavily.

Melinda’s lips stung, full and puffy from his mouth, her skin lightly abraded by his unshaven cheeks, but no one would notice it under the bruises.

They stared at each other for one long, weighted heartbeat, then reluctantly exited the bathroom and went to help prepare for the party.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“There’s our champ,” Danny said when he walked in the door of the condo, making a beeline for Melinda. He pulled her straight off her feet and kissed her lightly on each cheek before setting her down again. “How ya’ feeling, Rocky?”

“Better,” she said, giving his arm a squeeze. “Thanks.”

“You’re not on any meds or anything, are you?” he asked.

“No,” Melinda answered with a frown. “Why?”

She did have a pile of pills in her suitcase, thanks to the totally unnecessary prescriptions the doctor had given her last night, which her mom had filled while they were out during the day. Just in case, she’d said.

Melinda had the impression the doctor had freaked out that Dane’s attack on her had happened at the resort and wanted to make absolutely sure she was well-medicated, as if that would make up for it.

Whatever the reason, she hadn’t taken anything.

“Good,” Gabe answered instead, coming in behind Danny. He snagged one of her favorite fruity wine-coolers from the ice bucket on the kitchen counter, shook it up, and twisted off the top before handing the bottle to her and gently ruffling her hair. “Drink up. It’s New Year’s, after all.”

“Thanks,” she said, clinking bottles with the beer Gabe held in his other hand.

He winked at her, his deep green eyes gleaming. “I live to serve.”

Melinda snorted, but smiled back. Danny and Gabe toasted her with their bottles, then moved on into the family room, joining Wendell, Christian, and Bill to watch the game. Her dad stood at her mother’s elbow, sneaking food every chance he got, getting his hand smacked repeatedly for his trouble.

Jacob and his mother had gone next door to help haul trays and drinks for Nancy. Since Melinda had already finished the chores her mom had given her, she’d taken a few free minutes to change out of her pajamas and freshen up. Now she sat at the kitchen table, one bare foot braced on a second chair, painting her toenails a bright, sunset pink, and watching the antics of her family and friends.

No amount of makeup would completely cover the bruising or the scrapes on her face, which looked much worse than it actually was, thanks to her Irish heritage and pale skin. And her jeans and dark-purple sweater were a far cry from the red dress she’d worn the night before. But she felt better, and more festive, for having made the effort.

“Hey, it’s the Terminator,” Rick said, sliding into the chair opposite and scrutinizing her face.

“Movie one or two?” she wanted to know.

“Neither,” Eddie disagreed, taking the seat next to her cousin. “Rambo. You’ve definitely got the Rambo vibe going on.”

“All right, boys,” Lois said, walking through the condo’s open door with Jacob on her heels, both laden with trays. “Leave the girl alone and come help me with these.”

Rick and Eddie jumped up to take the food from Lois’s hands, leaving Jacob to balance his overfull trays on his own, while Melinda frowned thoughtfully after them, trying to decide which movie tough guy she’d rather be known as. None of them seemed quite right.

“What about Dirty Harry?” she asked the room at large, to a chorus of loud nos.

“Why not?” she asked, offended.

“You don’t have the
cojones
for Harry, sweet pea,” Gabe said from the couch, then shoved a handful of corn chips in his mouth.

“But the Terminator, Rocky, Rambo…” She trailed off meaningfully.

Gabe shrugged. “Not Harry.”

“Not Terminator,” Eddie repeated his earlier opinion. “It’s the same thing. Him and Harry are calm, cool, deliberate. Rocky and Rambo—they’re temper and flash, emotion. Unpredictable. Like a woman, only badass.”

“Hey!” all the women in the condo chorused, Aunt Pat loudest of all.

“Dude, did you just call Rambo a
woman
?” Danny asked, astounded.

“Son, did you just call a woman not badass?” Aunt Pat asked Danny, who wisely clamped his mouth shut.

“I think Eddie’s got it right,” Jacob put in, with a grin full of secrets only for Melinda. “Hot-blooded badasses are the ticket, more like you.”

“Hmm,” she said, slightly mollified, though she’d been pretty damn proud of her calm, cool, and deliberate action in kneeing Dane in
his
tiny little
cojones
.

“Rick,” Karen said in a scolding tone of voice as she came back into the kitchen, “save some of those for Stan.”

Standing at the kitchen counter with his mouth full of cheese squares, Rick leaned out of reach of her mother’s swatting hands and tapped the side of his nose, tilting his head as he studied Melinda thoughtfully.

“I dunno, Mel,” he said. “We already established you’re a little crazy, so I’m thinking more Martin Riggs.”

Melinda narrowed her eyes at her cousin, but after thinking it over, nodded decisively.

“I’ll let the crazy part pass,” she said magnanimously, “but I can live with that one. Riggs it is.”

The
Lethal Weapon
movies made up one of her favorite series, and Mel Gibson’s character in them was a quadruple threat—tough, tender, funny, and sexy—even if nowadays he was way old. If she couldn’t pull off Dirty Harry, she’d settle happily for a female version of Martin Riggs.

Eddie’s dad and Uncle Allan squeezed through the door next, another cooler grasped between them, which they trucked down the short hallway to the storage area.

“What’s in the cooler, Dad?” Eddie asked. “We already brought over all the drinks.”

“Never you mind, son,” Peter said, coming back into the kitchen and clasping his son on the shoulder. “It’s for later.”

Swinging behind her chair on his way back to the other condo for more trays, Jacob leaned close to Melinda’s ear and whispered, “If you’re Riggs, does that make me the blond he gets together with in the second movie, or the brunette he gets in the third?”

Melinda snorted out a laugh, but he was gone before she could come up with an answer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The party went on until the wee hours of the next morning.

Zach called in the early evening, a welcome surprise since they’d just talked with him at Christmas. They shifted to FaceTime so everyone could get in on the call.

Predictably, her mom teared up a bit, and Melinda did, too.

She missed her big brother.

It was so great to see him, and he looked relaxed and happy, though he’d had seven fits when he first caught sight of her face and heard the story of New Year’s Eve. She was glad when they got past that point, though she noted Zach kept glancing at her in concern whenever she was on screen.

After a dinner made up mostly of finger foods—in astounding quantities, though the guys pillaged the trays like a plague of locusts descending—the surprise in the extra cooler turned out to be a chocolate ice cream cake, Melinda’s favorite. Nancy and Peter had driven all the way to the town at the bottom of the mountain to make the purchase earlier that day.

The cake, like everything else, disappeared in record time.

They watched the evening football games, played a few games themselves, listened to music. Conversations sprang up everywhere. Laughter rang. Groups shifted, blended, broke apart, reformed in new combinations.

Melinda scanned the condo, contentment settling in her heart. She’d enjoyed the big New Year’s Eve party the night before. Well, at least until the end. She loved large gatherings, big, dressy events, lots of noise and people. But this—her family and friends all in one place, comfy and casual, sharing the night together, just them—this was her favorite sort of party.

After the final bowl game, they put the first
Lethal Weapon
movie on, in honor of Melinda. She bowed for their applause, and the last shred of Dane’s specter vanished from her mind. Yes, he’d knocked her around, but that was as far as it had gone, and the lingering fear over what might have happened disappeared as well.

Later, Rick badgered his brothers into presenting a short one-act play like the ones they used to do when they were kids, although this one was a lot more risqué.

Melinda held her belly in giggle-pain, howling with laughter when Danny threw down a dance-off challenge in the middle of it and came out the clear winner over Gabe, Eddie, and Wendell.

During a brief lull in the evening, Rick grabbed Melinda by the hand and dragged her off to the hall bathroom, closing the door behind them and pulling her to sit on the side of the tub.

“So, Riggs,” he said, and made her laugh. “How’re you feeling?”

Because his eyes went serious when he asked, she answered him the same way. “I’m good. Really.”

“Good,” he said, then wrapped her up in a hug.

His blond curls tickled her nose, but her eyes went a little teary. For all his wild antics, Rick could be every bit as sweet as Christian, as older-brother-ish and protective as Danny. The three of them, along with Jacob and her brother, were her champions.

She was surrounded by them, really, including Eddie, Gabe, and Wendell in their number, and her Honeywell cousins, too. Each one of them was so different, but at their cores, they were all genuinely good people.

Her heroes.

She was a lucky girl.

Momentarily overcome, Melinda sniffled, and Rick cleared his throat and patted her back.

“Scared me,” he said, squeezing her a little tighter. “All of us.”

“Me, too,” she whispered.

Rick held onto her another minute, then gave her a heartier pat and sat back to scan her face again, suddenly brisk.

“But you’re good, so we’re good, right?”

“Right,” she said, pulling her composure back together.

“Great. Then can I ask you a favor?” His blue eyes twinkled merrily, which should have given her warning.

“Of course.”

“Can I borrow your makeup and try to copy some of this?” he asked, waving at the
this
that was her bruised face.

The belly laugh took her by surprise every bit as much as his request.

“Sure,” she said, rolling her eyes but still laughing, standing to grab her makeup bag.

“Thanks,” Rick said, moving beside her and pawing through her eyeliners and shadows. “Hey, this purple’s perfect.”

He turned to the mirror and brushed a healthy swipe of the powder across his right cheek, studying the effect.

“I’ve got a post-fight scene in a thing I’m doing next month,” he explained, “and pulling off this look would be awesome. The girl who’s doing the makeup’s not so good with the blood-and-guts stuff.”

“Have at it,” Melinda said, waving her hand.

“Here,” he said, grabbing her around the waist and hoisting her onto the counter. “Tilt your head to the left so I can get a good look—no, not that far, just, yeah right there. Now don’t move.”

Well used to Rick’s fascination with her makeup, Melinda tilted and turned at his direction while he played. He had to crouch down to see himself clearly in the mirror due to his height, which only made it funnier. There was something about watching her tall, muscular, ultra-handsome, very masculine cousin fool around with her products like any one of her girlfriends that always put her in a good mood.

“So,” he said a while later, as he fluffed blusher on his temple over several layers of her favorite eye-shadow to deepen the bruising effect, “what’s going on with you and Jake?”

Melinda startled, her eyes flying wide as they met her cousin’s in the mirror.

Oh, that was sneaky.

He’d lulled her into relaxation with the small talk and makeup-artist routine, then pounced when she’d least expected it, and it was too late to cover her obvious reaction.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t give it a try.

Settling an innocent expression on her face, she said, “What do you mean?”

Rick snorted with disgust. “Melinda, whatever you do, don’t try for a career on the stage.”

She folded her arms over her chest and glared, affronted, her nose in the air. She was so not discussing this with him, or anyone, until she and Jacob worked out what was what. Rick went back to fluffing her blush brush over his face, studying her mulish expression and clamped lips in the mirror.

“The silent treatment, huh?” Blush, brush, fluff. “Okay, then, let me tell you what I know.”

Snapping the blush compact shut, he tossed it back in her bag and turned to face her directly, leaning his hip against the counter.

“I know Jake hasn’t been able to keep his eyes off you for months,” he said, then paused when her eyes went round. “What, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

“Months?” she mouthed, almost silently.

She’d thought this whole thing was a recent development on his end. Months? How could she have missed it?

Her mind supplied the answer.

Mitch.

She’d been wrapped up in Mitch and hardly noticed anything outside their own little circle.

If she had seen, if she had known… Would it have changed anything? Impossible to know, though it gave her a funny thrumming under her heart.

Why had Jacob never said anything?

“Yes, months,” Rick said, talking over her thought process. “I know
you
haven’t been able to keep your eyes off
him
your whole life, and—”

“What?” Melinda interrupted, unwilling to expose her feelings in front of Rick before hashing them out with Jacob. “Don’t be stupid, I never thought about him that way. We’re friends.”

The memory of every secret-marriage fantasy she’d ever had about Jacob danced through her head, one frame after another speeding by and putting the lie to her words, but they’d been just that—short, sweet, innocent little crushes, quickly buried under the weight of their friendship and the sure knowledge that their futures would never mesh.

And okay, she’d never said anything to Jacob, either, but that was because she’d known those fantasies had no hope of becoming real. Their friendship had always been the most important thing in her life.

It still was, if it came right down to it.

Wishing for anything more was just…

Was just…

Well, it was exactly what they were doing right now, wasn’t it? Hoping. Wanting. He’d declared his love to her, and despite how things had gone earlier, she loved him desperately, so it was different now. Real. Or it could be.

If she was brave.

Oh, God.

“Don’t
you
be stupid,” Rick said. Unaware of her inner turmoil, he took a washcloth and scrubbed off all the layers of makeup. “You forget how well I know you. Of course you thought about him that way. You guys have danced around it for years.”

Years, Melinda thought, suddenly very glad she was already sitting down.

“When you brought Mitch home,” Rick continued, “we all thought that was the end of it, so thank God that’s over.”

Surprised yet again, Melinda gaped at him. “You guys liked Mitch.”

“Eh,” he said with a shrug. “We liked him for your sake. I always thought he was sort of a slimy git, but that’s not the way to start things off with someone you might end up related to eventually.”

“But…”

“I never took you and Jake seriously until I got hit in the face with it—which is sort of how you look right now, by the way—but now it clicks.”

Melinda sat staring at her hands, clasped loosely in her lap, wondering if someone had spiked the single wine cooler she’d had earlier. She felt half-drunk, as though the counter and floor kept shifting beneath her, and her head swam dizzily, but it was information and emotion overload causing it, not the alcohol.

“Hey, kid,” Rick said, placing a hand on her shoulder and waiting until she met his gaze. His expression now was repentant. “Have you two not talked about this yet?”

Melinda could only shake her head. Then nod. Then shake. They had. Sort of. Okay, yes, but… Not really. Not fully.

Oh, God
.

Why did hearing about it from Rick make is somehow more real, more scary?

“Ah,” he said, and pressed his forehead to hers. “Sorry. I just wanted to tease you, I didn’t realize… Christian said—”

Melinda’s head popped up, eyes narrowed. “Christian? What does Christian have to do with this?”

“He said—that is, he talked, uh…” Straightening, Rick cleared his throat. His blue eyes went shifty. “Maybe I should just…”

Watching her warily, he stretched a hand behind him for the doorknob, obviously hoping to escape the conversation. She wasn’t letting him off that easily.

“Richard Dean Carlisle,” she said, jumping down and pointing to her vacated spot on the counter. “Sit.”

Ducking his head, Rick did as bade, hopping up on the tiled surface and swinging his feet like a naughty four-year-old. “You sound like my mother.”

“Now,” Melinda said, disregarding that comment and leaning into his space, “what did Christian say?”

Rick ran a finger under his collar. “Only that he talked to Jacob and we were right and—”

“Who’s ‘we’ and right about what?”

“Danny, and, um—”

“Danny, too?” Melinda rubbed a hand across her forehead and the sudden ache blooming smack in the middle of her eyes. “You guys are worse than a bunch of gossiping girls, you know that?”

It took some more grilling, but finally it all became clear. She wanted to smack them upside their handsome blond heads for interfering, though she supposed her cousins had their hearts in the right place. And if they were right, Jacob had had feelings for her for a lot longer than she’d suspected. Maybe he hadn’t planned to marry her when they were four, the way she had, but still…

“I cannot believe you guys talked to Jacob about all this and not me,” she said.

Rick shrugged, unconcerned. “Guy code.”

“
Guy
code? How about family code, dork?”

“Girls are heartbreakers, Mel,” he said, pointing a finger and scratching the tip of her nose. She batted his hand away, though guilt stabbed through her mind. She didn’t want to break Jacob’s heart. “Men have got to stick together. Besides, Jake’s practically family, too.”

“Huh,” she said, “I’ll remember that the next time any of you are dating someone.”

“Now, Mel—”

“And by the way,” she added, firing up again, “if no one liked Mitch, a little heads-up would have been nice!”

Now he had the grace to look abashed.

Hunching his shoulders, he said, “We thought you were going to marry the guy. Would you have listened if we’d said anything?”

Considering him, Melinda searched herself for truth. And sighed, relenting.

“No, probably not. I thought… Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

Seeming to believe he was safe now, Rick slid off the counter and hugged her.

“Mitch didn’t deserve you, sweetie,” he said. “Jake does. No one belongs together more than you two. Even if the whole thing is weird beyond words and cracks me up.”