Bringing Home a Bachelor. Karen Kendall

walked a couple of paces ahead of him, then bent down to pick up a small sand dollar. The fabric of her dress molded, once again, to that curvy backside of hers, and if she wasn’t wearing a thong, then his name was Abraham Lincoln and not Peter S. Dale.

      Pete barely restrained a groan.

      Mel stood up with her prize and smiled. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? So amazing that nature can create something so perfect.”

      He nodded and held out the champagne bottle, but almost dropped it when Melinda slipped the sand dollar into her cleavage. She took the bottle without noticing that he’d practically started drooling.

      “That gives me an idea,” she said. “I’m going to make pies that look like sand dollars … and cookies that look like starfish. Maybe cakes shaped like fish, too. It’s a perfect theme for Miami.”

      “How about suns and boats?” Pete suggested.

      “Great idea.” Mel upended the champagne bottle again, drinking deeply. “I’m going to make it, Pete, no matter what anyone says.”

      He drew his eyebrows together. “Of course you are. Why would anyone doubt that you’re going to be a success?”

      Pete noted with alarm that a good three-quarters of the bottle was gone.

      “You wouldn’t believe,” she said, after finally taking a breath, “how many demeaning comments I got while I was enrolled at the Culinary Institute.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Pastry chef?” Mel mock-scoffed. “Oh-what-cute-cupcakes-you’ll-make-for-your-kids-one-day.” Up went the bottle again. Glug, glug.

      Pete’s radar detected deep wounds hidden under Mel’s words and consumption of champagne. “Who said that to you?”

      The wind had blown a stray lock of hair free and into her face. Mel attempted to blow it back into place, but failed. “My brother Mark, for one. And my dad asked me if I could really support myself by baking cakes and pies.”

      Pete had been ready with a rejoinder about what a jerk the comment-maker was, but he shut his mouth. “I’m sure they don’t mean to be unsupportive.”

      “Right,” she said. Glug.

      “So what about your mom?”

      “My mom doesn’t take it seriously either, but she does order lots of cakes for her friends’ birthdays and other occasions.”

      Melinda was perilously close to finishing off the bottle of champagne. Her speech wasn’t slurred, but Pete noted that every time the tide came in, she leaned backward a little. And every time the water rushed away again, she leaned forward, unconsciously echoing its rhythms. Her face had begun to flush, too, because of the alcohol.

      Pete deduced that she’d drunk the champagne very quickly, and that more of its effects were going to creep up and clobber her any moment now. Time for a little friendly interference. “Hey, Bug-Eyes,” he teased. “Give me some of that.”

      She narrowed her eyes at him, but handed over the bottle. “I could have lived without being called that ever again, you know.”

      Pete winked and gave her a friendly shrug. He took two large gulps and k.o.’d the champagne. Then he set the bottle in the sand and manfully restrained a belch.

      “Do you know what a complex you and Mark gave me? I went crying to my parents and begged them to take me to the eye doctor so he could fix the problem! I had nightmares about becoming a fly—and no, I never saw the movie because I was afraid to.”

      Pete struggled mightily to look sympathetic and suitably remorseful, but he burst out laughing instead. “I’m sorry,” he gasped.

      To his relief, Mel began to laugh, too. “It’s not funny,” she exclaimed.

      “Yes it is,” he said, backing away with his palms in the air in case she tried to smack him.

      “Well, it wasn’t funny at the time!”

      He got control over himself and tried to imagine how scary it would be to a six-year-old to wake up in the middle of the night, in the dark, terrified that she’d sprout several hairy insect legs and a pair of wings to go with her existing “bug eyes.”

      Regret washed over him. “Mel, I’m truly sorry if we said anything to traumatize you back then. We were just a couple of dumb kids.”

      “It was years ago,” she said dismissively. “Forget it.”

      “Okay.”

      She picked up the empty bottle and peered into it. “Hey! You drank all the champagne.”

      Pete decided not to correct her, though he’d had approximately one-eighth of the bottle and she’d had the rest.

      “That’s not very nice.”

      “What can I say? I’m not a nice guy.” He grinned at her.

      She frowned back. “Yes, you are. You weren’t always nice as a kid, but now you’re so nice that your picture’s next to the word in the dictionary.”

      He found that he was mildly offended. “Not true.”

      “It is, too. You took off your shoes and came all the way out here to talk to me.”

      “I came to talk to you because I like you, not because I’m nice.”

      “You said you wanted to dance with me.”

      “Yeah …?”

      “Well, that proves that you’re nice.”

      “No, it doesn’t,” Pete said.

      “Does too.”

      “Does not.”

      This was ridiculous—they were behaving like little kids.

      “I wanted to dance with you because you’re a beautiful, sexy woman,” Pete told her.

      Mel snorted and turned away. “Riiiight.”

      He put a hand on her arm and tugged her back around to face him. “You are. What’s with the horse noise?”

      Mel’s face, already flushed with alcohol, deepened a couple of shades. “Pete, I’m not one of Playa Bella’s high-roller clients. You don’t have to suck up to me.”

      Stung, he opened his mouth to make an uncharacteristic retort. Then he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes and stopped himself.

      “I want some more champagne,” she said.

      “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

      “Not nearly.”

      He shrugged. “Okay. I’ll get us some more in a minute. What’s got you so upset, Mel?”

      “Nothing.”

      “What’s Nothing’s last name? I’ll go beat him up for you,” he said teasingly.

      “You’re going to coldcock my mother?”

      Pete winced. “Okay, maybe not. So what did she do, honey?”

      Mel expelled a long, quivering breath.

      He waited for her to take another and blow that one out, too, staying quiet, not pressuring her to share. Pete knew how to listen. He was a pro. He listened to litanies of complaints from picky customers all day long. He then listened to staff complain about the complaints, as a matter of fact. So whatever Melinda had to say wasn’t going to faze him.

      “My mother.” Mel laughed softly. “My stick-thin mother and her backhanded compliments …”

      Uh-oh.

      “She told me how lovely the cake looked—the wedding cake I did for Mark and Kendra. And in the same breath she said my