Read Online In a Heartbeat by Elizabeth Adler - Free Book Online Page B

checking her out, taking her in from the tip of her untidy blonde head to the toes of her black suede ankle boots. She could see he didn’t believe her.
    “It’s
true,
” she persisted. “I was in your beach house in South Carolina.
I met the killer.
I heard him talking about you. He was going to kill me, too. . . .”
    Ed Vincent held out his hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Miss . . . ?”
    “Merrydew. And I promise I’m not crazy. I really saw him, I saw the body in your library. . . .”
    “Okay, okay,” he nodded. “Well, since you came all the way from LA to tell me that, the least I can do is take you to lunch. We can discuss it there.”
    She couldn’t believe it, the idiot was coming on to her, asking her to lunch. . . .
“Didn’t you
hear what I said?”
She banged a fist on his desk for emphasis. “
I
was there.
In that
Psycho palace
you call a beach house. . . .”
    Ed grinned at her description. “Okay. So I believe you were there.”
    “Well, thank God for that.” Mel flopped into the big green leather chair behind his steel desk, long, bare, suntanned legs sticking out in front of her. “Honey,” she said, relieved, “I thought I’d never get through to you.” She caught his amazed look and added quickly, “Don’t take any mind of me calling you honey. Southerners call everybody honey. It’s just the way we are.”
    Her stomach rumbled loudly. She hadn’t eaten since the plane last night. “Come to think of it, I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning. . . .”
    Ed held out his hand and pulled her gently to her feet. She was as tall as he, and for a second they looked into each other’s eyes.
    Mel took a deep breath. Whoa, she warned herself, this guy is really something. Better watch your step, honey. . . .
    The assistants and the secretaries were lined up outside the door but she didn’t give them a second glance. “ ’Bye, hon,” she called airily to the glossy receptionist as she sailed out on Ed Vincent’s arm. Sometimes even petty revenge was sweet.
    “Do you mind if we walk to the restaurant? It’s such a nice day.” Ed took her arm, guiding her through the throng of pedestrians as they walked south on Madison.
    Thank God he hadn’t suggested a limo, she thought. That would really have put her off the big shot. It
was
a nice day, though, bright and sunny and crisp.
    “You’re seeing New York at its best,” Ed Vincent said, thinking, amused, that she looked like a lofty Valkyrie loose on Madison Avenue, with its elegant women dressed for fall in coats and scarves. She strode along, a golden California alien, bare-legged, head up, oblivious of how she looked. She was certainly different, and that’s why he was intrigued, even if she was zany. Besides, she had certainly been to the beach house—only a woman would have described it that way,
“the Psycho palace. . . .”
He grinned again, thinking about it.
    Her battered black leather jacket and bare legs got her a few sideways looks at the Four Seasons, though. She glanced uncomfortably at the Bill Blass–suited women who were lunching there. “I feel out of place here.”
    “You needn’t,” he said easily. “Besides, you’re probably half their age.”
    “I wish,” she said with a perky grin. “You are looking at a thirty-two-year-old woman, the single mother of a seven-year-old daughter, who is the love of my life.”
    “That’s an admirable thing to be. I remember being the light of my own mother’s life, and how good it felt.”
    “Is your mother still with us?”
    He smiled at the euphemistic way she phrased it; it was so very LA. “Sadly, honey, she is not.”
    “I’m sorry.” She lowered her eyes, twisting a piece of bread in her fingers. “And I’m sorry I asked that. I didn’t mean to pry.” Then she grinned at him. “That ‘honey’ thing is catching, isn’t it?”
    Ed Vincent was different from what she had expected. There was something in the eyes, a wariness, a memory of