The Kitchen Witch by Annette Blair Page A

too far in trying to make her feel better when he called her brilliant, of course. She was never that, but she had conceived the idea for the show and everything that went with it.
    Perhaps she wasn't so much of a featherhead, after all. Maybe she did have a bit of a mind for business. Logan had implied as much when he defended her. Logan had defended her. She wondered if his knight-in-shining-armor act would turn into as heavy a burden for him as the false veneer of confidence he'd laid on her.
    Melody pulled a bag of chips from the cupboard and carried it into her room, eating as she went. Too bad she'd needed defending. She sighed and stepped out of her shoes. At her desk, she pulled out a drawer to look at her father's checks, but her mind couldn't wrap itself around the hurt and frustration they represented.
    Slamming the drawer gave her some satisfaction. But signing them over to The Keep Me Foundation tomorrow would give her a great deal more. Every kid should be wanted by at least one parent, she thought, popping another chip into her mouth. And what poetic justice that one of her parents should fund the cause.
    She would tell the development officer that her father might like to meet some of the babies, too. Melody chuckled as she sealed the potato chip bag, washed her hands, and began to undress.
    After she finished in the bathroom and turned off the lights, she settled into bed to ponder a certain blue-eyed producer and relive the way she'd felt in his arms, twice in the same day, once frantic and hot, once tender and sweet. "Long John Kilgarven ," she whispered into the darkness. She had raised the devil in him for sure, and now she didn't know what to do about it. She knew only that the attraction between them sizzled, a dangerous hiss and sputter that she should deny, or at the least, ignore. Except that she couldn't seem to do either. She wanted him to touch her again, to see how far he would go. She wanted… to quote one of her boarding school teachers… to play with fire.
    WHEN Logan returned to his apartment, he found his mother wearing her sweater and carrying her purse. "Where are you going?" he asked. "I thought you were staying over." He'd looked forward to the chance to talk to her about retiring.
    "I changed my mind," she said. "I want to talk to Chester, so he's taking me dancing."
    Dancing ?
    "Sure am," Melody's father said. "Let's go, Phyl ."
    Phyl ? Logan swallowed his annoyance and kissed his mother's cheek. "Maybe you can stay over next weekend."
    After everyone left, Shane postponed the inevitable by eating one spoonful of ice cream between each chunky doodle ice sculpture he created. Eventually the caramel and chocolate melded and turned the mixture a nutty dull gray, and when he tipped his bowl to drink the rest, ice-cream soup ran down his shirt, his chair, and puddled on the kitchen floor.
    "That's it. Bedtime, sport."
    "Ah, Dad."
    But tonight, Dad meant business. He read one story, ruffled his son's hair, kissed him twice, and tucked him in. He couldn't get his mind away from the fact that Melody's father seemed to drain the life out of her. He couldn't forget seeing his mother flirting for the first time in his life, either, or the fact that she was no more aware than Melody was of the effect she had on men when she flirted.
    Logan ran a hand through his hair. Melody. You had to respect a woman who threw her father's guilt money in his face by signing it over to charity—charities, plural—to which he would never contribute on his own.
    After Logan finished straightening up and doing the dishes, he got into bed, still thinking about Melody, the feel and scent of her, until he finally grabbed the remote and the TV listing to get her out of his head.
    When the phone rang, he saw that somehow the
eleven o'clock
news had come and gone. "Huh? Hello?"
    Jagger Harrison Gardner, as station manager, should have been the one to go into work when a burglar alarm went off in the middle of the