Eva Rutland - The Million-Dollar Marriage

She stared at him, her mind fumbling for an excuse.

Jake bent toward her. “And why do you think he took that little hatcheck gal with him?”

“He didn’t!”

“Oh, but he did.”

She didn’t want to believe that, either. But Jake had never lied to her. For that matter, neither had her father.

“Face it, Mel. Your dad did you a favor. You may as well swallow your stupid pride and come home.”

She had gone home. How could she hold on to something that wasn’t there!

“Forget him,” Jake had said. And she vowed that she would.

But she had lost more than Dirk.

She had lost trust. The wonderful, exhilarating, fulfilling love found on the snow-covered slopes was a lie. Sold for fifty thousand dollars. Buried forever in the drab kitchens and cheap motel rooms in Reno.

Tony Costello slammed the door of his battered pickup truck, and ran up the steps of the modest bungalow on Lotus Street. The door was opened by Jerry, his seven-year-old nephew.

“Tony!” The little boy looked up in gleeful anticipation. “You come to help me with that model?”

“Not tonight. Got a date,” Tony said, rumpling Jerry’s hair as he followed him into a steamy, noisy kitchen.

“Hi, Tony. You’re just in time. Sit over there by Patsy.” His sister-in-law pointed with the spoon she was using to ladle out heavy servings of savory spaghetti. She was pretty, but heavy in the last stages of pregnancy, and her face and hair were wet with perspiration.

Tony bent over her bulging belly to kiss her cheek. “Thanks, Rosalie, but not tonight. I have a date, and I want to—”

“No!” his brother bellowed, almost choking on a mouthful of food.

“Aw, come on, Pedro!”

“Is it Joan?” Rosalie, who had filled her own plate, took her place at the table and smiled at Tony. “I like her. She’s so—”

“Not Joan. Someone I just met. Well...” Almost met, he corrected to himself. He didn’t even know her name. “Can’t expect me to pick her up in my truck, can you?”

“Can if that’s all you’ve got,” Pedro said, moving just in time to prevent the kid in the high chair from dumping his dinner. “Watch it, buddy! It goes in your mouth, like this!”

“Aw, come on, Pedro,” Tony said again, glancing at his watch. Almost five. And he still had to shower and shave. “Tell you what. I’ll come over and break up the ground when you’re ready to put in your vegetables.” Pedro hated gardening more than he loved his ’67 Mustang. That should do it.

Pedro was not about to give in easily. “If you’d get yourself a decent job, instead of monkeying around with flowers, you could buy your own ride. What kind of a living do you expect to make out of posies, for Pete’s sake!”

“At least it’s my own business. Which, I again remind you, has great potential. I’ll be sitting back giving orders and collecting dividends, and you’ll still be holding on to a jackhammer for fifteen bucks an hour.”

“Twenty bucks. Which is why I’ve got a house and two cars, while you—”

“Did you bring me a present, Tony?” Patsy interrupted. She had heard this argument many times before.

“As a matter of fact, I did, honey.” Tony tossed a bag of chocolates on the table. “Be sure to share it with your brothers.”

“Not till after dinner,” Rosalie said, confiscating the candy. “Who is this girl, Tony? Where did you meet her?”

“Around,” was Tony’s vague answer. “Come on, Pedro. I don’t have time to argue. Where are the keys?”

Mel searched through her closet, trying to find something to wear. Armani suits and Calvin Klein dresses didn’t exactly go with a burger stop or a pizza parlor. Maybe a simple wool dress. No. Pants, to climb into that beat-up truck he’d been driving. She pulled out a pair of brown wool pants and a matching sweater.

She had told Cook she did not want dinner, and had been glad to see her retire to her room before five. She wouldn’t see her leave.

She was waiting in the kitchen when a vintage, shiny black Mustang motored down the drive. Not the truck she had expected.

It was him.

She slipped on her jacket and hurried out.

CHAPTER TWO

HE LOOKS different, too, she thought, as he got out and came around to open the door for her. Rather debonair, and more like a movie star than ever in tan slacks and a cardigan sweater.

“Hello again,” he said, his eyes lighting with appreciation.

“Hello,” was all the usually talkative Melody could muster. Why, she wondered, did she feel so giddy and light-headed?

“I thought we’d go to Beno’s,” he said as he shifted gears and started down the driveway. “It’s not too far. Do you like Italian food?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He smiled at her before turning into the street. “Now that that’s settled and we’ve howdied, how about introducing ourselves? I’m Tony Costello and you are...?”

“Melody Sands.” Darn! Now he would know who she was.

He didn’t seem to make the connection. “Melody. Like a beautiful tune, huh?”

“A dumb name.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Melody,” he mused. “I kinda like it.”

“I don’t. I prefer just plain Mel.”

“Okay. Mel. Have you always lived in Wilmington?”

“Mostly. At least, this is home.”

“And I’ve never seen you before.” He shook his head. “This must be my lucky day. How long have you been working for... Who lives there anyway?”

Was he putting her on? “Don’t you know? You were working there.”

“For Peter Dugan. He just asked me to do the rose beds at 18 Clayborn Drive.”

“Oh.” So he doesn’t know who I am, she thought, pleased. She was... well, unencumbered. An ordinary girl on an ordinary date with an ordinary guy.

“I ought to pay him,” he said.

“Who?”

“Pete.”

“Why?”

He had pulled to a stop at a light, and turned to her. “I met you, didn’t I?”

“Oh.” She was mesmerized by the look in his dark eyes. Not laughing, but serious. As if seeing her as someone special.

“Guess I owe the cook, too. Best coffee I’ve ever tasted.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe because you brought it. Do you know you have the brightest blue eyes and the most gorgeous mop of red hair I’ve ever seen? Tell me, is it for real?”

“You tell me,” she said, at last finding her voice. “Do you flirt so outrageously with all the women you meet?”

“Only the pretty ones.” There was that grin again.

“And then?”

“Then what?” he asked, as he merged onto the freeway.

“What do you do with the crowd? Do you select the most beautiful one or do you take turns?”

“Ah, come on. I was kidding. I’m not some fancy ladies’ man. Really.”

He looked so embarrassed she couldn’t help teasing him. “Then you’d better be careful, passing out all that baloney. We poor females are vulnerable creatures.”

“Bull. You’re about as vulnerable as a stone wall. And what I said wasn’t baloney. You know you’re a number ten.”

She gave him a smug smile. “So I’ve been told.”

“I bet. Anyway, it was more than that...being beautiful, I mean. You’re...different.” He gave her a puzzled glance. “I don’t understand it myself. I don’t usually go for this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“This. A date. I don’t have time. But this morning, when I saw you standing there...” He hesitated. “Well, it was like I didn’t want to let you get away. I wanted to know all about you. Who you are, what you do, what you like, what you don’t like.” Another quick glance. “So. What do you do all day up at that big house?”

“Oh, this and that,” she said quickly, her throat suddenly dry. This was dangerous ground. “You promised I would get to know you. So tell me. What do you do besides fix rose beds for Pete?”

“Everything. Or maybe I should say anything...from weeding to landscaping.”

“Oh?” She gave him a skeptical glance. Quite a gap between weeding and landscaping.

“Okay, here we are,” he said, as he pulled into a crowded parking lot.

She looked at the unpretentious one-story building that didn’t seem large enough to house all the occupants from the cars in the lot. It took him some time to find a parking slot. When at last he did, she reached for the door handle, but he was there before her.

“Hope we won’t have to wait,” he said as he opened the door and helped her out. Most polite man she had met in a long time. Even Adrian would have allowed her to hop out by herself. Maybe, she mused as he guided her toward the entrance, Adrian and his ilk were accustomed to a doorman helping her out when they drove up for valet parking.

Also, Adrian would have had a reservation, she thought when Tony apologized for the twenty-minute wait. “Hope you don’t mind. I asked for a booth. So we can talk.”

She didn’t mind. In fact it was quite interesting, standing in the crowded entryway—it could hardly be called a lobby—watching people come and go. Like the fat man whom she thought was alone with his three noisy children until the harassed woman joined him, waving a doggie bag and exclaiming that Jimmie hadn’t touched a thing on his plate, and she sure wasn’t going to leave all that food. There was the overpainted woman holding on to a boy with bulging muscles who looked young enough to be her son. Was he her son? Hardly, not the way she was cuddling up to him. And the teenage girl with the ponytail who—

“Costello!” the man at the cash register shouted.

“Okay!” Tony said, taking her arm. “Wasn’t too long, was it?”

Not long enough, she thought. She hadn’t yet discovered who the teenager was with. She hoped she was with her parents. But as she followed Tony through crowded tables to a booth, she decided she was more interested in finding out about him.

“Are you a landscape artist?” she asked after the waitress had taken their order.

“Not bloody likely.”

“But you said—”

“I lied.”

“Shame on you,” she said, laughing.

“To impress you.”

“You wanted to impress me?”

“Sure. Why do you think I borrowed the car?”

“The Mustang? It’s not yours?”

“Nope. Belongs to Pedro, my brother.”

“Nice car. I enjoyed the ride. Thank him for me.”

“Thank me. I’m doing the landscaping to pay for it.”

“Oh. Then you really do landscaping?”

He grinned. “If turning up the soil for a vegetable garden qualifies.”

“Oh, you!” The waitress brought their drinks, and Mel was silent for the moment, wondering why she wanted to know everything about this man. Obviously, he was a jack-of-all-trades, and she shouldn’t embarrass him by pressing. She couldn’t seem to help herself. “Will you stop trying to impress me and tell me what you really do?”

“Like I told you, everything. Okay, okay,” he said, holding up a hand as if to ward off her scowl. “I’m in business for myself. And I only stretched the truth a bit. I’ve got two more years at the State in Landscape Architecture.”

“Really? I am impressed.”

“You needn’t be. It’s a long way off. Evening school only, because I have to keep working, and then I have to do an apprenticeship before I can get a license.”

“But it sounds like a great career.” She paused as the waitress set a plate piled with mounds of spaghetti before her. How was she to manage all that? she wondered, as she watched him expertly wind the spaghetti around his fork and begin to eat with relish. “I never can eat it like you’re supposed to,” she announced as she took her knife and cut small pieces, and sampled a forkful. “Delicious!”