Married by Accident Read online

“Maybe I have. And I’m not coming back. I’m making a new life and that’s all there is to it.”

  “But what possible satisfaction can you find, all the way out there on the West Coast, selling lingerie to movie people, for heaven’s sake?”

  Melinda considered and rejected the idea of telling her mother that she’d left Forever Eve. Such news would only add fuel to Elaine Bravo’s fire. “I’m doing quite well, Mother. And I have no plans to return to New York.”

  “We think you’re foolish.”

  “Oh. Well, I get that. Loud and clear.”

  “Sarcasm, Melinda, is the refuge of a defensive heart—and the tool of a small mind.” And I’ve always

  “I do feel defensive about this, Mother. And I’ve always known you never considered me particularly bright.”

  “I know you’re bright. What has always bothered me is your unwillingness to put your intelligence to good use.”

  “I’m almost thirty. I think it’s time I got to decide for myself how I want to use my own mind.”

  “Oh, lately, it seems I just cannot get through to you.”

  “That makes us about even then, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Why this hostility? Did I ask for this?”

  “Mother, I am not moving back to New York. And I’m certainly not ever getting near Christopher Blayne again. As soon as you and Father accept that, you will find that my hostility will greatly diminish. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Poignantly so.”

  “Then could we please talk about something else?”

  After that, the tone of the conversation improved somewhat, but Melinda still hung up feeling lower than before—and thinking about Annie. Hoping she’d given in to Cole’s demands and agreed to go home. And perhaps understanding a little better Annie’s final plea that Melinda come with her, to stand by her, if things got too tough with her father.

  After dealing with her mother, Melinda wouldn’t have minded a little support from Annie about now.

  She actually smiled, thinking of the things Annie might say, if Melinda described the conversation with Elaine. Things like, “It’s your life and you gotta live it yourself,” and “That man dedicated some poems to you? What is the matter with him? He turns his back on his baby, and then he goes out and writes some poems and thinks that’s gonna make up for what he went and did?”

  Oh, yes, a little support from Annie would have been lovely right then.

  But she couldn’t talk to Annie—and she had accepted that.

  Melinda got out the Sunday Times, turned to the Employment section, and went to work with her red felt pen.

  Then later, since the heat wave had broken and it was a bright and balmy eighty degrees out, she packed up a picnic lunch and drove to Griffith Park, where she walked the nature trails and spread a blanket on the grass beneath an oak tree to enjoy her lunch. It really was a pleasant, if somewhat lonely, afternoon.

  She returned to her house about four.

  And Cole’s pickup was waiting at the curb.

  She could see him, sitting there on the step.

  She parked in the driveway and got out. Ignoring the leap of her pulse and the witless feeling of lightness the sight of him inspired in her, she marched up the walk to see what was wrong now.

  He got up as she came toward him and took off his hat. “I’ve gotta talk to you.”

  She led him inside. He tossed his hat on a chair, but seemed too full of impatient energy to have a seat himself.

  “I’ve been yellin’ at my sister for two days straight,” he said. “And she’s been yellin’ right back at me. The baby’s been screaming.”

  “She still won’t go with you?”

  “No. Not unless you come along.” He looked down at his boots, and then back up at her. The mute appeal in his eyes struck her like a physical blow.

  She backed up a step. “No. Wait a minute. You were the one who wanted me out of her life. You were the one who said—”

  “Listen. I know what I said.” He looked infinitely weary. “But I’ve argued with her until we’re both sick at heart. And she won’t budge. She’ll only go home if you go with her. So I am to the point that could be called desperate now. And I am willin’ to do anything—anything—to get us back where we belong. If there is crow to eat, I’ll chew it raw. Just help me out here, Melinda. Help me to get my baby sister back home.”

  Melinda called her mother that night to explain that she’d made some new friends and was going to Texas to visit them for a week or two.

  “Texas? Melinda. I don’t understand. What about that job of yours?”

  “I... Actually, I quit my job.”

  “Oh, Melinda.”

  “Mother. Don’t worry.”

  “How can I help it? If you would only—”

  “Mother, please. I’m going to Texas and I’ll be back in two weeks at the most.”

  “But why? And who are these new friends of yours?”

  “It’s hard to explain. But they are very nice people. I... ran into them by accident and... Oh, I really don’t want to go into it now.”

  “But—”

  “I promise, there is nothing for you to be concerned about. I just wanted you to know where I was. I’m taking a little vacation, that’s all. To see the Texas Hill Country. It’s supposed to be quite beautiful there.”

  “Nothing to be concerned about? How can you say that?”

  There was more in that vein. Melinda bore it as long as she could. Then she gave her mother the address and phone number Cole had provided for the house in Bluebonnet. She asked Elaine to call only in case of emergency and promised to get in touch again as soon as she returned to L.A.

  They left for Bluebonnet on Tuesday. Cole drove his pickup, of course. And Melinda drove her BMW.

  At first, Melinda had tried to suggest that she might fly—and that Annie and the baby could fly with her. But Annie said she was nervous about taking Brady on a plane.

  “He’s not even two weeks old,” she said. “When he gets up that high, his ears just might explode from the pressure—or something.”

  “Annie, the cabin of a jet is pressurized. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Then how come all those baby books recommend that I wait till he’s older?”

  “Annie, I know what you’re up to. It’s just another stall tactic, to put off dealing with your father for a few days.”

  Annie’s face flushed a charming pink. “You’re right. I admit it. I am a stone coward, and I hate to face my fate. But Brady and me, we’re takin’ the highway, like Cole. And it would just mean so much to me if you would ride along, too. Besides, you’ll be glad when you get there, to have your car.”

  “I could rent one.”

  “You’re not listenin’. We are going to have fun. Brady and me will switch off, you know? Ride with Cole sometimes, and then other times with you. And maybe, for a little of the trip, I could drive that cute red car of yours and you could keep me company, and tend to the baby when he fusses.”

  “Sounds just lovely.”

  “Oh come on. Don’t go actin’ like some big-city snob. We’ll get to stay at the Holiday Inns and swim in their pools. You know you’re gonna have a ball.”

  “I cannot wait.”

  “That means yes, doesn’t it? You’ll take your car.”

  “Did I ever have a choice?”

  “Nope. You never did.”

  Annie didn’t have that much to pack. Cole rented a two-wheeled U-Haul to pull behind his truck. Between the trailer and the bed of the pickup, there was plenty of room for everything.

  On Tuesday morning before they left, Annie carried a letter down to Mrs. Lucas, the apartment manager, who lived in back. The letter was for Jimmy.

  “This way,” Annie explained with a tear in her eye, “when he comes back, he’ll know where he has to go next. I truly do hate to make it harder on him. He did swear he’d never go back home. But some things, well, they just can’t be helped.”
r />   Melinda doubted that Annie’s runaway husband would even return to L.A.—and she saw no possibility at all that he’d show up in the small town he despised. But she didn’t tell Annie that. Annie had a right to her dreams.

  They left at a little before nine in the morning, Melinda in the lead, Annie and the baby riding with her. Cole followed them, ready to pull off the highway behind them whenever the baby made it necessary to stop.

  They made surprisingly good time, considering Brady demanded feeding and changing just about every two hours. At seven that night, in Flagstaff, they found a big motor hotel called the Vacation Inn. It had a huge pool. Annie was thrilled. Melinda watched the baby in Annie’s room while Annie went for a swim.

  She returned a half an hour later and insisted that Melinda enjoy a dip herself. “Oh, Melinda. You’re gonna love it. They’ve even got a waterslide.”

  Actually a swim did sound like a great idea. Melinda put on a suit and threw a beach wrap over it. Then she grabbed a towel and took the elevator to the first floor.

  The pool area was enclosed, with a Plexiglas dome roof. Above the dome, cotton-white clouds drifted across a slowly darkening sky. The smell of chlorine thickened the air and children shouted and laughed as they splashed in the water and rocketed down the high, twisting blue slide.

  Cole was there. Melinda spotted him right away, sitting several yards from poolside in a patio chair, next to a round glass-topped table. He saw her, too. And he smiled.

  Melinda smiled back, warmth spreading through her, thinking how nice he’d been since she’d agreed to help him get Annie to Bluebonnet. Yes, that unnerving physical attraction remained, keeping her just a tiny bit off balance whenever he was near. But he spoke to her gently now. He let his natural kindness show. She even dared to hope that in his gratitude for her aid with Annie, he’d forgiven her for a kiss full of promises that never should have happened—and the unequivocal rejection that had followed right after.

  In the shallow end of the pool, not far from where Melinda stood, a group of kids were playing keep-away with a beach ball. Water splashed high. Melinda laughed and jumped back as the cool drops hit her.

  From his patio chair, Cole laughed, too. Then he waved her over.

  A sudden ridiculous shyness claimed her. Why, she might have been thirteen again, in the throes of her first mad crush on a certain literary novelist her parents had admired and sponsored. The novelist was a painfully thin fellow, a young genius of twenty-two, with haunted eyes and jaundiced skin. Every time Melinda saw him, she would be stricken with such a torrent of overwhelming unfulfilled longing, that she just couldn’t bear it. She would turn and flee. She’d hidden from her own adolescent yearning in coat closets and in bathrooms, under stairwells and in empty lecture rooms. As far as she knew, the young genius had never even realized the desperate passion he’d inspired.

  Adolescent. Yes. That was exactly what she felt like around Cole Yuma too much of the time. Full of hungers and longings she could neither understand, nor trust herself to control. Just like the confused and lovesick teenager she’d once been, she only wanted to turn and run.

  But adulthood brought with it certain responsibilities. An adult didn’t hide in a coat closet to get away from feelings she feared she couldn’t handle. An adult pulled her shoulders back and tipped her chin at a confident angle and marched right over to the object of her persistent and thoroughly exasperating infatuation.

  An adult said things like, “Annie insisted that I come for a swim.”

  And got answers like, “Well, the water’s great.”

  An adult tried not to stare at a man’s tanned and muscular shoulders, not to allow herself to become fascinated by a pair of strong legs and well-formed masculine feet An adult set her towel down on the pebbled glass of the patio table and said, “I guess I’d better try it, then.”

  Of course, right then, an adult realized that in order to swim, she would have to remove her beach wrap, thus revealing her black lace maillot. Which, other than the high French cut at the thigh, was actually quite modest, since it was fully lined.

  An adult untied the knot of her sash and felt the beach wrap fall open. An adult coolly dropped the sash on top of her folded towel and let the light fabric slide from her shoulders. She took a minute to turn, and drape the wrap over the back of her chair, to step out of her sandals and set them neatly by the table.

  And when an adult glanced up and caught the quick flare of heat in a certain man’s eyes, she knew how to pretend she hadn’t seen that flare at all.

  “Coming in?”

  Cole grinned. “You gonna try the slide?”

  Melinda shrugged. “Annie told me I’d better.”

  “She’s a tyrant, that sister of mine.”

  “But a sweet one.”

  He grunted. “Most of the time.” The hard muscles in the thighs she wasn’t looking at flexed as he stood. “Come on. Let’s hit that slide.”

  They rode down three times, waiting on line first, slicking the water off their hair and trying not to look too long into each other’s eyes.

  All three times, Melinda rode down first and Cole followed right after. It really was fun. The slide had four whirling turns and then a long run at the finish, so riders shot like rockets across the water before landing with a huge, loud splash several yards out.

  Each time, Melinda would wait after her own ride, safely to the side but still in the water, to watch Cole go twisting down, bathed in swirling water, and come flying off the end. Then they’d climb from the pool together and line up again.

  After the third ride, the line had become quite long.

  Cole lifted a wet eyebrow at her. “Had enough?”

  “I think that will do it.”

  He went back to the patio table. Melinda swam a few laps in the area beyond the slide, where she wouldn’t be hit by anyone shooting off the end. Then she climbed out and joined him.

  “It’s past eight,” he said as she dried off and they both pretended he wasn’t watching her do it. “We’d better start thinking about getting something to eat and hitting the sack. Tomorrow, I’d like to get going good and early.”

  “Fine with me.” She tossed the towel on the table and bent to the side to gently wring the water from the ends of her hair.

  His gaze lingered, warm and lazy, on her hands, her wet hair, her face, her shoulders. Then he seemed to catch himself. He glanced away, toward the pool. “I saw a pizza place while we were coming in.” He looked back at her again, with guarded eyes and a carefully friendly smile. “You like pizza all right? Maybe with sausage and pepperoni?”

  “How about a special? Have them throw everything on it?”

  “Sure. A special. Why not? But I’m warnin’ you. We’ll have to watch Annie pick off the green peppers.”

  “Oh, well if Annie doesn’t like a special—”

  “Hey. I love my sister, but she can’t always have everything just the way she likes it.”

  Melinda thought of Jimmy Logan. “Come on. Not everything goes Annie’s way.”

  “That’s true. She only has absolute power over you and me—and my dad, sad to say. He can’t refuse her anything. But in this case, she’s gonna have to pick the peppers off. Because I like a special, too.” He pushed himself from the chair. “I’ll go get dressed, give the pizza place a call and head over there to pick it up. I’d say...forty-five minutes? In Annie’s room?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Oh, yuck,” Annie groaned. “You went and got us a special.”

  Cole laughed. “Melinda begged me.”

  “I most certainly did not beg,” Melinda announced with great dignity. “I...requested one with everything on it.”

  “And naturally Cole just jumped at the chance.”

  The three of them sat on the bed around the open pizza box while Brady lay in the soft-sided portable playpen Melinda had bought him the day before.

  Annie began working over a couple of the slices, taking off pepp
ers—and mushrooms and onions, too. She stacked the vegetables neatly in the corner of the pizza box.

  Cole slanted Melinda a grim look. “Don’t watch her. It will only make you want to lecture her about her manners. And if you do, she’ll ignore you. And that’ll bug you no end.”

  Annie wiped her fingers on a napkin, then slapped her brother lightly on the arm. “Oh, you just stop.”

  Melinda pulled a big slice free, slid a napkin beneath it, took a bite, chewed and swallowed. “Mmm. Wonderful. The peppers are particularly good, don’t you think, Cole?”

  “Yeah, and the onions...the best.”

  “Not to mention the mushrooms.”

  Annie ignored them. She continued carefully picking off the offending ingredients until nothing but sauce, cheese and meat remained.

  Once they’d polished off the pizza, they just sat around for a while, finishing the tall iced soft drinks Cole had brought them to go with the meal. Annie had taken a handful of star mints from the big bowl at the hotel’s front desk. She offered to share and they each took a few.

  “You two better have a mint,” Annie taunted. “After all those yucky onions you ate.”

  “Mmm,” Melinda teased back. “Onions. Green peppers. Don’t get me started.”

  So Annie swatted her arm and ordered, “You just stop.”

  Then Cole said, “We’re gonna make it to Amarillo tomorrow. That’s over six hundred miles. With the way you women have to stop every ten minutes—”

  “Cole,” Annie chided. “We do not stop that often—but we do have a baby to worry about.”

  “Exactly. So we’d better leave by six a.m. We’ll be lucky to get to Amarillo by six at night—and give ourselves a little wind-down time. Then, on Thursday, we can probably make it home by late afternoon.”

  “Home,” Annie said softly.

  “That’s right.” Cole reached out and ruffled Annie’s hair. “Home.”

  Watching them, Melinda thought of her own big brother, Zach. Over the years, she’d lost touch with him. They still shared phone calls at holidays and such. But those were always brief, rather awkward conversations. She would ask, “How have you been?” And he would answer, “Well, I’m just fine...”