She's Got the Look by Leslie Kelly

did. “You need to strike while the iron is hot.”
    Nick caught the kid’s resigned look and winked. “Oh?”
    â€œShe’s all flustered now. Once she gets home and thinks about it, she’s going to forget how charming you were and only remember how you yanked her chain about that list of hers.”
    Nick winced. The woman had heard every word they’d said.
    â€œListen, when you have babies you develop ears like a hawk. And your conversation was a mite bit more interesting than ours.”
    He laughed, dropping his hand to the pre-schooler’s head to rustle his soft hair. “You got a smart mama, you know that?”
    The little boy nodded. Then, lifting his hand, he said, “What does this mean?”
    Nick knew the middle finger was gonna pop up about two seconds before it actually did. “Yikes, sorry,” he muttered.
    The mother sighed heavily and waved a hand, shooing him off while she dealt with the child.
    Nick didn’t plan to act on the young woman’s advice. He had a feeling Melody wouldn’t take kindly to being followed down the streets of Savannah. Besides, he didn’t need to follow her. He knew where she lived.
    Glancing at the table they’d shared, he spied Mel’s half-empty cup. It was smeared with a bit of her lipstick, the rosy color shining brightly against the white mug. Strange, he could still almost see her slim hand curled around it and the way her lips pursed as she blew on it to take off some of the steam.
    Crazy. He’d never been so focused, so aware of a woman before. Of her every movement, the way she lifted her hand to brush back an errant strand of hair. The hitchy little sound she made in the back of her throat when she was upset. That brilliant, full-lipped smile.
    Still looking at the mug, he started to chuckle as he realized something. Even though she’d blown him off with a resounding silent hand gesture, he’d obviously gotten under her skin. Melody had been so flustered she’d forgotten to even pay for her coffee, leaving him stuck with the bill. His and hers.
    He didn’t mind, he’d have wanted to pay anyway. But he’d bet anything she wouldn’t have wanted him to.
    When he actually looked at the check, his chuckle turned into a full laugh. Because Melody hadn’t only walked out without paying for a cup of coffee. “Biscuits and gravy,” he read aloud.
    Mel had left him with the bill for her breakfast, and she’d had his favorite. Somehow that made him like her even more.
    And reaffirmed just how much he couldn’t wait to see her again.
    Â 
    A FTER HER SILENT parting shot, Melody hadn’t been able to get out of the restaurant fast enough. She’d almost tripped over a couple of people as she’d made her escape, but she didn’t think she’d have been able to stop if someone who’d eaten one too many cholesterol-laden scrambled eggs keeled over of a heart attack right in front of her.
    â€œToo much,” she muttered as she stood outside in the hot Savannah morning a few moments later. She’d had to pause to make her heart stop pounding and to regain her calm.
    Nick Walker was too much. She just couldn’t take him today. Or tomorrow. Or next year. Maybe when she was fifty she could handle a man like Nick, but until then, uh-uh.
    Why, oh why had Rosemary done this to her? Setting her up, telling him about that stupid list? She’d thrown Melody to the wolves…at least one Big Bad Wolf…when Rosemary, better than anyone, knew how deeply Bill’s betrayals had hurt her.
    A product of a home broken by infidelity herself when she was very young, Rosemary had been the one Mel had confided in during the last miserable months of her marriage. Before she’d gone to the billboard, before she’d made a laughingstock of herself, Melody had poured her heart out to Rosemary.
    And this was how her friend had repaid