No one, not even René, had a key anymore.
Her cell phone sat in her bag by the door, her Beretta in the kitchen spoon drawer. Had the shooter followed her back from the hospital? Lock-picked his way in to finish the job?
Taking no chances, she grabbed her heated hair-straightening wand and manicure scissors and stepped behind the red-lacquered Chinoiserie dressing screen.
She took slow breaths.
Raised her arm.
The footsteps paused in the hall. The tall bathroom door creaked open. Her heart beat so hard she thought it would jump out of her chest.
She gauged the distance. Waited until he got within range. Swung.
A cry. The smell of searing flesh. She kicked the Chinoisierie screen over. She just had to make it through the hallway and reach her gun in the kitchen. Using the screen as a shield, she almost made it to the door, where she slipped. The intruder wrestled her to the ground. Her ankles were caught, and she jabbed out with the pointed manicure scissors.
But her wrists were caught in a steel grip. She was pulled down, hot breath on her neck. Melac’s perspiring face grimaced in pain.
“Still like to be on top, don’t you?” Melac sucked in his breath.
“Next time remind me you still have the key.” Her body went limp. “Morbier sent you, didn’t he?” His familiar citrus scent made her heart clench.
“You okay, Aimée?”
“Almost wrestled you down, didn’t I?” No point in telling him her shoulder stung like hell. “Don’t tell me you’re my police protection?”
“You’re carrying my child,” he said. “Or did that slip your mind as you were kicking high-heel ass and getting shot?”
“So it’s my fault I got gunned down in the street?”
He waved his hand in dismissal. “Why does someone else have to tell me about our baby?”
As if she hadn’t wanted to tell him? Sort of.
“I called,” said Melac. “Left you messages. Ecoute, Sandrine suffered a setback. Intensive care. I got caught up. But what’s the problem?” Surprise filled his face. “We planned all this, talked about fixing up my father’s farm, raising children together in Brittany.”
Once, one midnight, after too much champagne. “That was months ago. And you just assumed …”
“But you agreed, remember?”
Had she?
“Every morning I work with my old friend Paul—he’s buying a bigger fishing boat. The farm’s almost finished. There’s a perfect room for your office, but now it will be the baby’s room.”
There he was, tanned, muscular and so vulnerable on her bathroom floor. And brimming with crazy ideas. “My life’s there now,” he said. “Yours, too, and the baby’s. You won’t be alone raising a child.”
They hadn’t spoken for months, and he expected her to move to Brittany?
“Do you know how lucky you got last night?” His grey-blue eyes narrowed in concern. “You can’t just think of yourself now. There’s a new life growing inside you.”
This again? “You call a bullet lucky?”
He kissed her shoulder. “I’m worried. Think of the baby, Aimée. The farm overlooks the sea, the air’s clean and the only crime is poaching in the forest. You can learn to cook.”
Cook? Another reason they didn’t get along. It would always be this way with him.
He sighed, maybe realizing she wasn’t going to just say yes to him. “Zazie’s been sighted,” he said then. “Two units have staked out a warehouse. All under control.”
Her heart leapt. “How can they be sure? What if it’s just a ploy?”
“According to my friends on the force, no one appreciates your interference,” said Melac. “The chief of the Brigade des Mineurs is handling this case personally. Let them do their job.”
Interference? Would they even be looking for Zazie at all if she hadn’t gone to the lengths she had? “And you’re the messenger to warn me off?”
Melac pulled her towel off. “Beautiful.” He ran his hands over her stomach. “Son or daughter?”
“It’s a surprise.” She glared at him. But he’d pulled her close, his body heat enveloping her, his lips on her neck … his tongue licking her ear.
He smelled the same, that same citrus scent.
“I’ve missed you, how I’ve missed you.”
She couldn’t pull away. Then she didn’t want to.
“How long has it been?” said Melac.
“Four months and fourteen days, but who’s counting?” Immediately she wanted to take those words back.
Melac grinned. “So we’ve got a lot to make up for.”
Why did she want him to keep stroking her stomach? To keep feeling his hot breath in her ear? Why couldn’t she ignore that shiver she’d missed so much?
SHE WOKE UP on top of the duvet, Melac’s tanned leg over hers. Delicious. A breeze rippled the gauze curtain, carrying in the scent of the lime trees below.
“Can’t beat making up like this,” he whispered and nuzzled her neck. She realized he was cradling his cell phone to his other ear even as he was nuzzling her. “Listen, the care nurse comes recommended. Trust her, Nathalie.”
Aimée sat up. Talking to Nathalie, his ex-wife. And she realized it would always be like this with him—his life dominated by his suicidal ex, who never stopped calling. A man stretched in all directions.
Right then she knew she wasn’t ready for a new role: moving to Brittany, working long-distance and figuring her baby’s life around Melac’s fragmented idea of a relationship. Always preoccupied and at the beck and call of his daughter and her health; his fragile, unbalanced ex who required so much maintenance.
She watched those blue-grey eyes, felt his warm hand on her thigh, but …