Page 23 of Stay Away from Him

“They’re not,” Melissa protested, though now that he mentioned it, she noticed several of the men looking their way as well. They weren’t looking ather, though—they, too, were looking at Thomas. Jealous that their prospects, the women they came here to meet, all seemed to be attracted to someone else. It was hard to compare to Thomas, with his beautiful eyes and smile, his perfectly fitting shirt falling straight over his stomach but pulling tight at the shoulders, chest, and arms, hinting at a lean, muscled body beneath. Melissa couldn’t help but feel sympathy for all of them, the men and women both, the vulnerable hope embodied in the careful way they’d done up their hair, their makeup, the outfits they’d chosen—nice but not too nice, trying but not too hard. It was hard and scary and embarrassing, looking for love.

“Shall we make it interesting?” Thomas offered. “How much you want to bet that if I left the table and went to the bathroom right now, by the time I came back there’d be at least two men at the table, trying to get your number.”

He shifted his weight on his chair and put a foot on the groundlike he was about to get up, and Melissa reached forward to seize his hand on the table.

“Don’t,” she said. “Stay.”

The other women in the room might have been staring at Thomas, but he was only looking at Melissa, gazing intently across the table with an expression so warm it might as well have been the sun. Thomas turned his hand over and grabbed at hers, preventing her from pulling it back—but she didn’t want to anyway. She let her hand lie there in his, glanced down at it as he ran his thumb lightly up and down her forefinger, her skin tingling at his touch.

“So,” Thomas said. “Melissa Burke.”

“That’s me.”

“I finally got you to come out with me.”

“Finally?” Melissa asked. “We met each other, what? Barely twenty-four hours ago?”

“An eternity,” Thomas said. “That’s what it’s felt like. Would you believe me if I told you I’ve basically spent every waking hour since then thinking about you?”

She shrugged. “Why don’t you give it a try?”

“I’ve spent every waking hour since we met thinking about you.”

Melissa flashed him a sly grin. “I don’t believe you.”

Thomas laughed, a surprised and delighted bark. “Well, it’s true.”

She lifted her hand out of Thomas’s but didn’t withdraw to her side of the table. Instead, she curled her fingers around Thomas’s wrist and ran her hand up to his forearm, tracing the lines of his veins, his bones, the tendons and sinews of muscle.

“I bet you say that to all the women,” she said, resting her chin against her other palm and looking him in the eye.

And she couldn’t be sure—but there might have been a hitch inhis breath, a reaction to the touch of her fingers on his skin, inching under the fabric of the sleeve rolled almost to his elbow.

“What women?” he said softly. “There’s been nobody, Melissa. Not since Rose.”

Rose.The name of his first wife, hisdeadwife, fell out of his lips and dropped on the table like a stone. Melissa had almost forgotten about her—almost—in the brief awkwardness of walking in on the wine bar’s singles night, and the light banter that ensued. Biff and Xena, arguing about which of them was drawing stares. But the mention of his wife was a reminder of the specter hovering over the table, the unspoken thing shading every touch, every look, every word. Melissa took her hand away and set it in her lap, sat back in her chair.

“Did I ruin something just now?” Thomas asked. “I shouldn’t have mentioned her.”

Melissa shook her head. “You didn’t ruin anything. And you shouldn’t avoid mentioning her name. She’s part of you.”

“And how she died? What about that?”

“That’s part of you too. And we can’t avoid talking about it forever. We shouldn’t.”

“Oh, why not?” Thomas sighed. He poked at the table, scratched the nail of his forefinger against a knot of the varnished wood surface, then folded his arms and propped them on the surface. “All right, look. I’ve been trying to figure out what to say about this since we met yesterday. I figured someone would tell you about—well, about everything that happened. And that you’d have questions. But to be honest, I still haven’t figured out what to say. The only thing I can really say is what I’vebeensaying all this time. I didn’t kill my wife.”

Melissa breathed out, a tension she didn’t realize she’d been carrying releasing from her body.

It wasn’t much. A simple denial. He’d say it even if he was guilty.

“It was so unfair, everything that happened,” he said. He was no longer meeting Melissa’s eyes, looking instead at the table. “Soterrible. First, Rose disappears without a trace. That was bad enough. I was sick with worry, actually physically sick. Frenzied with it. But I had to be strong, for Rhiannon and Kendall. They were scared, and so was I—but I had to put on a brave face, tell them everything was going to be all right.”

Thomas’s fingers fidgeted nervously on the table, and Melissa reached forward to place her hand on his. His eyes cut up toward her with some mixture of surprise and relief.

“That must have been hard,” Melissa said.

“It was. I was barely keeping it together.”

---