Heaven on Earth

Chapter One The doughnuts she'd bought the night before were stale, the coffee in the thermos was lukewarm and bitter, and every bone in Melina Dimitris's body ached from spending ten hours in the cramped seat of an eighties vintage Mustang. She was definitely too old for these all-nighters, she thought as she rubbed her gritty eyes. She wasn't a two-bit P.I. trying to make ends meet. She owned the biggest and best investigations firm in all of Buffalo, so what was she doing hunkered down outside a sleazy motel watching the room where her client's sleazy husband was holed up with his girlfriend of the week? Why wasn't one of her employees doing this while she spent a lovely, comfortable night in her lovely, comfortable condo? One of her employees had been doing it, honesty forced her to acknowledge, until she'd shown up in the wee hours of morning, unable to sleep and in need of a distraction, and had sent him home. She couldn't keep doing it, though. She wasn't as young as she used to be, and her body didn't bounce back the way it used to. Just because Sebastian Knight had broken her heart, the rat bastard, didn't mean she had to let him break her body and spirit. Instead of moping around like some lovesick schoolgirl, she would deal with him properly, starting today. She would finish up here, shower, then go to her folks' house for the weekly Dimitris family get-together, and there she was going to ask her brother Nikos to set her up with one of his friends. Greek, Italian, or hell, maybe even plain old white-bread American--she didn't care, as long as he wasn't six feet five, incredibly broad-shouldered, ruggedly handsome, and didn't have intense hazel eyes and amazingly strong, gentle hands. As long as he wasn't someone she could fall for. That falling was tough business, especially when you landed. She'd done it twice now, and she wasn't inclined at the moment to do it ever again. If she wanted that kind of pain, she could just shoot herself and recover a whole lot faster. Movement at the motel drew her attention across the street. The door to Room 16 opened, and the sleaze stepped out. She raised the camera with its telephoto lens and snapped off several pictures as Miss June appeared in the doorway, showing an incredible amount of tanned skin, and examined the rat's tonsils with her tongue. Now all Melina had to do was follow him home, where he would tell his wife all about his weekend business trip to Chicago--the difficult client and the lousy hotel that left him badly in need of an afternoon's sleep. Then she would be free to tend to her own business. Meeting family obligations. Finding a new guy. Getting Sebastian the pig out of her system. The sleaze pulled onto the street, and after a moment, she followed. She was thinking about her client, who'd trusted this man enough to make him the father of her children, and about what an amazing risk love and marriage were for any woman, when too late she realized she'd been spotted. Instead of trying to lose her, though, the bastard slammed to a stop, his car angled across the quiet residential street, and he jumped out, grabbed a baseball bat from the backseat, and ran toward her. "What the hell are you doing following me?" he shouted, his face mottled. "Did my wife hire you? Do you really think I'm stupid enough to let you give her evidence against me so that bitch can divorce me and take everything I have?" He smashed the bat against the Mustang's driver's door, rocking the entire car, then leaned in the open window, forcing her back in the seat and making a grab for the camera. His fingers were knotted around the camera strap when Melina brought her weapon up and pressed the barrel against his temple. The Sig Sauer was warm and hard, and it made his eyes practically pop out of their sockets. "Go ahead," she said softly. "Give me a reason. Threaten me with a bat. Steal my cPappano, Marilyn is the author of 'Heaven on Earth' with ISBN 9780440237143 and ISBN 0440237149.