Here With Me by Beverly Long Page A

up.”
    Pearl hadn’t told Tilly, her daughter, yet
she’d told her hired help. Very interesting.
    “Maybe the thought of having a
great-grandchild will give her something to live for,” Gino said.
“Sort of romantic how the two of you got together again after
having been apart for a couple years.”
    George stood close enough to Melody to sense
her body stiffening. A couple years. Try a hundred and
eighteen.
    But it was the story she’d told. Given that,
he’d have thought she might be a little more adept at keeping false
about it. She wasn’t too skilled at this kind of thing.
    Like a calf facing a branding iron, she
looked like she might bolt if given the chance. He put an arm
around her shoulder. “I’m grateful she waited for me,” he said,
smiling at her.
    Melody’s upper lip twitched nervously in
response.
    “Maybe we should check on your grandmother,”
he suggested.
    She gave him a grateful nod. “I’ll see you
later,” she said to Gino and Bernard. “You’ll both be at dinner,
right?”
    “Wouldn’t miss your first dinner home, Sweet
Pea,” Gino said. “I imagine Bessie’s going all out, probably fixing
every one of your favorites.”
    Melody’s eyes filled with tears again and
George tightened his grip. “Come on,” he urged. With his arm still
around her, he turned her body toward the door. Sensing that she
might want a minute to compose herself, George kept the pace
slow.
    They were close to the door when Bernard
called after them. “Hey Melody, when can I show you the data entry
that needs to be done?”
    They both turned. Bernard stood in the same
spot where he’d been. There was no sign of Gino.
    “I can come tomorrow,” Melody said. “How
about at—”
    Bernard held a hand up to his ear, telling
her that he couldn’t hear. Melody slipped away from George and took
several steps back toward her old friend.
    And what happened next, happened so fast,
that George didn’t have time to think, barely had time to react. He
heard the sharp whoosh of air moving and looked up to see a
heavy barrel rolling from the top of the stack. It was gathering
speed, headed straight for Melody.
    George sprang forward, wrapped his arms
around Melody, and hauled her back. He hit his shoulder on the oak
barrels directly to his left and the pain shot down his arm. He saw
the now-airborne barrel fly across the center aisle.
    It hit less than a foot in front of them.
There was a sharp crack of oak against oak, then a dull thud as it
dropped to the cement floor. George stared at it and knew that if
it had hit Melody, it would have killed her.
    If he’d have been a fraction of a second
slower, he would have been too late. The realization made him
swallow hard, twice.
    Then, the realization that she had her back
to his front and he had one arm wrapped just under her breasts and
one around her middle, made him afraid to breathe. It was wrong to
hold her so, to be so forward. To hold her in the way that a man
holds a woman when that woman is his. To hold her in such a way
that all he had to do was arch his hips and he’d be pressed in
behind her, her curves suddenly a part of him. To hold her in the
way a man holds a woman when he wakes up in the middle of the night
and his need is great and her body is warm and welcoming.
    “George,” she said, her voice a mere
whisper.
    He kept his hips right where they were
supposed to be. “Yes,” he said. He was afraid to breathe, afraid to
jar their careful balance.
    He could hear her take a deep breath and he
felt her chest expand. She turned her head, and her lips were just
inches away from his. And for the briefest moment he thought that
she was going to kiss him, like he had kissed her before lunch, and
his whole body started to shake.
    He let his hands drop back to his own sides.
What the hell was he thinking? He took a step back, giving them
both space.
    She smiled at him. “It seems a bit
inadequate, but thank you.”
    He wanted to come up with something