tongue. When she did, he wanted to be ready. And that meant keeping his messy stew of emotions under wraps. Melanie needed to see him as calm. Collected. Worthwhile.
Muttering a curse, Jace downed another gulp of his too-weak brew. For sure Melanie was going to be steamed. Not the best way to begin any collaboration, especially one which he hoped to turn into a relationship.
Whoa, he warned himself. Don’t get carried away. He wasn’t prepared to commit himself to the idea of a bonafide relationship with a woman who barely gave him the time of day.
But he wanted the shot. Wanted to see if what he thought was possible actually was. No other woman had ever affected him the way Melanie did. After countless hours of consideration and many sleepless nights, the reason remained a mystery.
Jace, like many men, had a type of woman he normally went for. Melanie wasn’t only different from those women, she was a complete aberration. Stubborn instead of easygoing. Prickly and sarcastic instead of sweet and charming. And, more often than not, an utter mess instead of perfectly put-together. From shirts buttoned wrong to mismatched socks to tripping over air, the woman was a walking disaster.
Traits that shouldn’t, under any circumstance, have proved appealing. But God help him, he found every one of them endearing. Cute. At times, downright sexy.
Today was an ideal example. Singed hair—he had to wonder how she’d managed that—coffee-stained pants and, he’d noticed with some humor, one eye artfully shaded with cosmetics and the other eye bare. It took all of his willpower to keep from pulling her to him for a kiss.
He fantasized about her, for crying out loud. Which would be okay if all of his fantasies surrounded getting her into bed. He was a man, she was a woman. Those types of fantasies made sense, could be expected, even. But mixed in with those delicious imaginings were the mundane. Washing dishes with her, watching TV curled up on the couch together, and the most recent—going to the damn grocery store with her.
And that was only the beginning of the strange, wacko world he’d lived in since first laying eyes on Melanie Prentiss. She drove him crazy. He drove himself crazy thinking about her. And he didn’t have a damn clue what to do about it.
Jace went for another swig of coffee, only to find the mug empty. His eyes landed on the door, which he’d purposely left open, and then at his watch. It had easily been twenty minutes…so, where the hell was she?
A cramp hit his calves. He attempted to stretch his legs while retaining his laid-back, not-a-care-in-the-world pose and managed to shove his chair backward. His ass slid forward as if he’d slicked his jeans with butter, and before he could react, his body—and the mug—hit the floor with a combination crash-bang-thud.
He winced, more in embarrassment than in pain, and pulled himself up. Fast. And looked toward the door, half expecting to see that Melanie had shown up in the nick of time to witness his tumble. She wasn’t there. Partly a relief, partly a worry.
Jace picked up his mug, brushed off his bruised rear, ignored his bruised pride and retook his seat. This time, though, he stretched his legs under the desk. Safer that way.
Aggravated, Jace turned to his laptop and tried to focus on editing his latest article. He had plenty to do until Melanie arrived. Plenty to keep his mind occupied. He read the opening sentence and then glanced at the door. No Mel. He re-read the sentence and continued on to the second before his eyes slid from his monitor, only to see the doorway still vacant.
“Idiot,” he muttered.
He rubbed his hands over his face and returned his attention to doing his damn job. His role at the paper was rather varied. Sure, he was given assignments like any other Gazette employee, but Jace’s main gig was “Bachelor on the Loose,” a biweekly column on dating delivered from a single man’s point of view. In addition, he did a monthly write-up, “Man About Town,” that included Portland and the surrounding area’s hotspots, current events and anything else that caught his fancy.
This particular article wasn’t any of the former. It wasn’t a lighthearted piece. It wasn’t an interview with a local politician or a breakdown of the city’s economy.
No, the focus of this article was personal. The subject being his nephew, Cody, who’d died in a car accident a little over three years ago. Jace’s older brother, Grady—Cody’s father—had taken Cody to see Santa a few days before Christmas. On their way home, they were struck by a drunk driver. Cody had been five.
That first year, the loss had made it impossible to even consider writing about the accident, about Cody. Since then, though, the idea had swirled around in Jace’s brain until he had no choice but to act. Anger didn’t begin to describe how he felt that his sweet, loving, funny nephew had lost his life because someone hadn’t thought.
He wanted people to think. He wanted to do what he could to make people think.
In his efforts to tackle the project, he spoke with various organizations and compiled a boatload of statistics. He didn’t mention Cody at all in the first or second drafts, concentrating instead on laying out the facts in a clear and concise manner. Neither draft made the cut, as they were dry, lackluster and held less emotion than gravel.
He’d set the piece aside for months while his brain and his heart battled it out. Finally, he gave in to his heart and wrote about Cody. That was when the article came alive. So he interviewed other people who’d lost someone they loved because someone else had gotten behind the wheel when they shouldn’t have. And that was when Jace came to grips with what the article was really about.
The piece was truly about Cody. It was about the little girl who was the sole survivor when an intoxicated driver going the wrong way on the highway crashed into the minivan carrying her family. It was about the airline pilot who, upon driving home late one night from the airport, died instantaneously when a car filled with college-age partiers hit his vehicle head-on. It was also about the pilot’s widow, a woman who had proudly shared memories of her husband when Jace had met with her.
It was about them: the people lost and the people left behind. And damn, he wanted to do it justice. Needed to.
But he couldn’t concentrate, so he shut off the laptop. Another day, when his mind was clearer and his heart wasn’t smacking against his breastbone like an overactive puppy. When his ability to create wasn’t hampered by a woman he couldn’t make sense of.
Jace glanced at his watch again and groaned. Where was Melanie? No way should it have taken this long for Kurt to give her the specifics. Panic struck, tightened Jace’s chest and closed his throat. Maybe she’d refused the deal. Maybe she was packing up her belongings now and heading out. No. That was ludicrous. Partnering with him had to be preferable to unemployment.
He pushed his chair away from his desk, ready to stalk out of his office to find out, when she stalked in. Relief punched him solidly in the gut, because, yep—she had flames and smoke. Which meant she’d accepted the deal and he had the time he needed to figure things out.
She’d fixed her makeup and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. The building had workout facilities in the lower level, so he assumed that was why she had an extra set of clothes on hand. But he found it interesting that she’d decided to change before coming to see him.
Kicking his legs up on the desk, he winked. “There you are, darlin’. I was wondering what was taking you so long.”
“Planning your demise,” she said with a flip of her shoulder-length, caramel-colored
