Chapter 22 #2
Mateo’s voice jerked her out of her reverie, and she quickly touched up her makeup before swiping some gold-tinted gloss over her lips.
She slid her feet into the low-heeled sandals Mateo had chosen to go with the dress, then picked up her denim jacket.
It was still warm enough that she didn’t need it yet, but if Mateo had laid it out, he would expect her to have it.
As an afterthought, she went to her dresser to reapply the perfume oil she’d dabbed on her neck and wrists this morning.
Frowning, she pushed aside the other bottles and vials, looking for her favorite. It was missing.
“Time’s up, baby girl. Let’s—”
Mateo came up short in the doorway, almost tripping over his own feet at the sight of her.
Melody stood tall and endured his perusal, holding her breath.
His eyes slid over her from head to toe with excruciating focus, as if he saw nothing in this room but her and didn’t want to miss a single detail.
She swallowed past a lump of anxiety and waited for him to give voice to his thoughts, praying they would be favorable.
“Jesus, baby girl,” he whispered, coming slowly into the room as if swept up in her gravitational pull. “You are beautiful.”
Melody released the breath she held with a huff, then her lips parted on a shaky smile. Tears stung her eyes. “Thank you.”
“Come here,” he said, offering her a hand.
She crossed the room and took it, then allowed him to bring her close. He rested a finger under her chin and tipped it up before placing a short, soft, bone-melting kiss on her lips.
“I am going to enjoy showing you off tonight,” he murmured into her mouth, giving her another kiss and a quick feel of his tongue. “Make every man jealous. They can look, but they can’t touch, because you’re mine. These lips. This body. Your name. Your truth. Mine.”
Melody’s vision swam with only Mateo’s face in sharp focus. Her legs were made of water and her spine was jelly. He was holding her up with only his finger on her chin, firm but gentle.
“Where are we going again?” she managed around a thick tongue.
He took her hand and pulled her along, thrusting the paper bag from Willie’s into her hands before picking up a purple leather tote bag.
“Lake Charles.”
Melody stumbled along behind him and through the door. “Lake Charles? Is that my overnight bag?”
Now she knew where her perfume had gone.
Mateo didn’t respond until he had her in the car. He opened the passenger door and motioned for her to get in, then slung her bag onto the backseat. While he got in on the other side, she glanced back and noticed that his own bag sat beside hers.
“We’re going to Lake Charles because it’s not safe for us to be seen in public here, and I’m tired of sneaking around and hiding. I want to take you somewhere, buy you drinks, dance with you, and maybe try to get under that pretty little dress later. No pressure.”
She put on her seatbelt as he backed out of the parking lot, pressing a button on the console to open the sunroof. The sun had set a while ago, and the night was clear, allowing her a view of a blanket of stars as she tipped her head back.
“Korenic has associates everywhere along the southeast coast,” she said. “There are eyes everywhere.”
“Not where I’m taking you,” he said. “Not Korenic’s scene.”
Melody wrinkled her nose. “Lake Charles is three hours away.”
“Thus the overnight bags.”
“I have work tomorrow!”
Mateo stopped at a red light and looked at her. “I’ll have you back in plenty of time. We won’t even be gone twelve whole hours. Relax, baby girl. I wanted to take you out, and I don’t want to have to worry about who’s watching.”
Melody relaxed against the seat, realizing that her anxiety abated the further they drew away from the French Quarter. She didn’t know what he had planned, but realized it couldn’t be anything that would take him away from his case for too long.
“Okay,” she said. “That sounds like fun.”
“Good. Eat.”
Remembering the paper bag in her lap, Melody tore it open, her stomach twisting and rumbling at the smell inside. She took the time to spread two layers of napkins over her lap to keep her dress clean before digging in.
“You been to Lake Charles before?” she asked between bites.
“A few times back in my army days. There’s a base there—Fort Polk. I did some training and stayed on base for a few months at a time. Never made it to New Orleans, but we hung out in Lake Charles a lot. I remember enjoying it. You ever been?”
“No, I came straight to NOLA when I left Texas.”
The chicken tasted like sludge on her tongue and her stomach lurched.
She had just opened the door for him to ask her what had brought her here.
If he asked, she would have no choice but to explain, because he had already proven that lying to him only prolonged the torment.
He would have the truth one way or another.
Instead of stepping through that open door, Mateo glossed over her slip-up with another question.
“How’ve you been? Sorry, I haven’t been able to come see you the past few days. Lots going on at the field office.”
Melody found a renewed interest in her chicken now that Mateo had changed the subject. She chewed and swallowed before answering.
“Busy. The club manager has his panties in a twist over Glow Night. No one wants to risk pissing off Roman.”
He scoffed. “Is it that serious?”
“It absolutely is. He won’t have a good time if even the slightest detail isn’t handled to his exact specifications. And if Roman isn’t having a good time …”
“Then everyone else is having a bad time.”
“Yep.”
“I don’t like it,” Mateo\ grumbled, fiddling with the dial controlling the radio. “You seem stressed. You’re not eating.”
Melody didn’t remark on that, pretending to be too engrossed in her food to talk.
He seemed content with that, finding an R&B station and cranking it up while she ate.
Once Melody was finished, she shoved all the trash down into the bag and shoved it into the backseat.
Then, she settled against the back of the seat and stretched with a yawn.
The long day combined with a full belly to make her eyelids heavy.
The rocking motion of the car now that they were on the highway lulled her toward sleep.
She fought it, wanting to talk to Mateo and pepper him with questions.
She was so curious about him, his life, his thoughts and feelings.
She was starving for every morsel he would give her, no matter how small.
Melody had never known what it was like to own little pieces of someone—their secrets and their desires, their pain.
Mateo made her crave those little slivers, and she longed to collect them all until his heart was in the palm of her hand.
She turned her head to stare out the window, incredibly saddened by the knowledge of how impossible that was.
His hand fell on her thigh and he squeezed. “Go to sleep. We got three hours and I need you perky for our date.”
He followed that with a soft chuckle, as if he found her cute as she adjusted to make herself more comfortable. With the rhythmic bass of the music and the weight of Mateo’s hand on her thigh, Melody quickly drifted off to sleep.
Mateo glanced at Melody from the corner of his eye as she stirred awake.
Her timing was perfect, as they were about ten minutes from their first destination.
He kept his focus on the road, but reached out, his knuckles finding her shoulder before tracing a path up to her cheek.
The decision to take her out of town for the night had been an impulsive one.
Once the idea had taken hold of him, he hadn’t been able to let it go.
At first, the typical logic of his mind argued against it.
With the case, there were so many spinning plates to balance, so many details to oversee.
There was also Donovan’s warning, and the potential for Carlisle’s interference.
It didn’t take long for his heart to take over the thinking, overwhelming the voice of reason in his head.
No further moves could be made until they heard something useful over the Solstice wiretap, and Caleb Morgan was brought in for questioning.
There was nothing to be done that couldn’t wait a day or two, leaving Mateo free to execute his plan.
He’d acted on his impulses with relish, climbing the fire escape of Melody’s apartment and breaking in.
He’d spent an hour preparing for her to arrive home from work, selecting the things she’d need in her overnight bag and rifling through her closet before finding the dress she now wore.
He’d left long enough to pick up dinner from what he now knew was one of her favorite restaurants, and returned, sitting on pins and needles while waiting for her to come home and discover him.
Now that he’d gotten her away from New Orleans, his excitement had reached its height.
He couldn’t wait to show her what he had in store.
He almost—almost—hated to wake her. She’d slept like the dead through the entire drive, her fatigue clear.
She’d been under a lot of strain lately, and he wouldn’t ignore his own part in that.
She deserved this night, and he would make it good for her.
Hopefully, her little nap would be enough to keep her on her feet for the next few hours.
“Hey,” she murmured, nuzzling her cheek against his hand. “How long was I out?”
“We’re a few minutes away. We even made a stop about an hour ago, but you slept through that too.”
“Sorry, I’m such a shitty road trip partner. I’ll do better on the way back.”
“You’ll do whatever you want on the way back and I’ll be fine with it. You needed the rest.”
A soft smile curved her mouth. “And what about you? Are you sleeping well?”
As it always did in her presence, his mouth ran away with him before he could think over his response. “Not half as good as when I had you in my bed.”
He glanced over to find her clenching her hands together in her lap, head lowered.
She always withdrew when he spoke with such bald honesty.
He could imagine such candor was difficult for someone like her to handle.
Survival had required her to close herself off, to present a false face to the world.
He couldn’t expect her to lower that mask completely just because he’d made love to her and called her beautiful.
It would take far more than that for him to earn what she withheld.
“Are you always so blunt?” she asked.
“Yes, because I learned the hard way how short life is and how little time we have to express what we feel to the people we care about. I lost my chance to say so many things to the people I’ve lost, so I make it a point to tell people what I want them to know, because I never know when my last words to them will be the last.”
Once he fell silent, he realized how morbid his words sounded. They were the fatalistic thoughts of a man who could die any day. The awareness of his mortality had been driven home the day of Mari’s death—the day the UNSUB ripped him open and filled his lungs with blood.
And then, for reasons he couldn’t understand—maybe due to some deep need to have her understand him—he added, “The night I met Mari, I walked right up to her and told her she was the future Mrs. Garcia. She laughed in my face. We got married six months later.”
He saw the flash of Melody’s smile in his peripheral vision.
“That’s beautiful,” she declared.
“We’re here,” he said, turning into the parking lot of The Copper Rose.
Melody pressed close to the window to read the marquis and inspect the building.
The weathered wooden facade gleamed under the warm glow of string lights.
The sprawling exterior didn’t look like much, its rough cedar siding faded to soft gray with hints of coppery orange where the sun had roasted it over the years.
A wide, wraparound porch framed the front entrance, and shadowed bodies milled about, cigarette smoke wafting under the awning into the night air.
As he shut off the engine and killed the radio, the twang of country music penetrated the open sunroof.
“I should have known you were a Texas girl before I even read your file,” he said at the shocked but delighted look on her face. “You say ‘y’all’ when you’re addressing multiple people, and then there were the records in your apartment—”
Mateo’s words choked off on a grunt as she threw herself over the center console, practically sprawled in his lap, and threw her arms around his neck. A half dozen kisses fell against his cheek and jaw, and Mateo’s chest swelled with pride. His baby girl was pleased.
“You brought me to a country club?”
He kissed her back and grinned. “I did. See, I told you. Not Korenic’s scene.”
“Not even a little bit,” she agreed, smiling.
Mateo pushed his door open and rounded the car to let her out.
He helped her into her denim jacket now that the night had cooled significantly.
Threading his fingers through hers, he tugged her along toward The Copper Rose.
He’d visited the spot with his old battle brothers back in the day, and had been pleasantly surprised to search it up online and discover it was still thriving.
Anticipation lightened his steps as they approached the club.
“Come on, baby girl. I’m going to dance you dizzy.”