Red Velvet Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page A

idling V8 engine getting ready for a drag race, increased as Mel stood and put the milk away in the fridge and the saucer was officially his.
    “I don’t know,” Mel said. “I called Slim Hazard to tell— What?”
    “Nothing,” Joe said with a grin. “I just really like his name.”
    Mel smiled. Joe was sitting at the counter, watching her. He was in casual attire for a change, a fitted T-shirt and shorts. Being an assistant district attorney, he rocked the suit thing pretty much 24-7, and Mel always felt like she got the “real Joe” when he had the time to dress down and just be with her.
    Given that it was still brutally hot outside, they were bunkered in her apartment, which was a snug eight hundred square feet, so it cooled easily.
    She glanced out the window, noting that the sun hadn’t set yet and it was undoubtedly still turkey-roasting hot. Once the sun set, things would cool down—not much, but enough to make the idea of venturing outside seem less like being caught in an inferno’s back draft.
    “I wish you could have seen Marty with him,” Mel said. “I haven’t seen a case of hero worship like that since my nephews saw the man in the giant rat suit walking around the Chuck E. Cheese.”
    “I think Chuck E. is a mouse.”
    “Either way,” she said. “I think Captain Jack could take him.”
    They both looked down at the feline, whose purrs had turned into noisy slurps of joy.
    “No question,” Joe agreed.
    Mel circled the counter and sat down at the breakfast bar beside Joe. She reached for her glass of ice water and took a long sip, aware that Joe was watching her.
    “Anyway, I told Slim we had to get the van fixed up, and he said not to worry and that they would make room for us no matter what. I noticed when we gave him a six-pack as a thank-you for giving us a lift that he has a sweet tooth and a weakness for my Death by Chocolates,” Mel said.
    “I like him already,” Joe said.
    He reached over and laced his fingers with hers. Despite the coolness of the apartment, it was still July in Arizona, and hugging was kept to a minimum.
    “Angie has been badgering Sal about the van, while Oz has been spending his days at the dealership helping out,” Mel said.
    “I didn’t know Oz knew anything about cars,” he said.
    “He doesn’t,” she said. “I think he’s just watching over his baby chick.”
    “Oz as mama hen. I like that.” Joe gave her his patent-worthy amused grin.
    He absently ran his thumb over the inside of her wrist, and Mel felt her pulse kick up a notch. Honestly, all the man had to do was walk into a room and smile at her and she was as useless as a puddle on the floor. It had been like that since the first time she’d been flattened by his grin when she was in middle school and he was in high school.
    Joe was the middle of Angie’s seven older brothers and had spent his life as the peacemaker of the rambunctious DeLaura clan. Mel had worshipped him from afar, never thinking he would see her as anything but his little sister’s pesky best friend.
    But one day, he’d come to the bakery, upon Angie’s request, to offer Mel some legal advice, and just like that thegrin that had always made her knees turn to jelly had come to belong just to her.
    For Mel, he had become her compass point. Whenever the self-doubt of adolescence snuck up behind her and her former chubby self tried to kick her in the pants and shatter her confidence, all she had to do was have Joe gaze at her through his lashes and give her his slow grin, that special look that she knew belonged just to her, and all of her insecurities melted like butter in the sun.
    “I’m a little worried about how it’s going to shake out,” she confessed. “I mean, the van looked deader than dead when we left it.”
    “Sal knows his cars,” Joe said. “If he thinks he can fix it, he probably can.”
    “Yeah, but it had faded ice cream stickers on it and it reeked of sour milk,” Mel said. “When I asked