A Profiler's Case for Seduction(85)

Melinda and Ben were in jail awaiting their trials for multiple crimes including the murder of the three men. Life in Vengeance had returned to normal, with students scurrying from class to class, and most days nobody even mentioned the horror of the homecoming bonfire. Melinda would hate that with each day that passed people were forgetting all about her.

The knock on the door sent Dora’s heart racing with happiness. She opened the door and Grace marched in first, her cheeks pink and her smile bright. She held a bright red-wrapped package in her arms and paused to give Dora a kiss before she ran over and placed it beneath the tree.

“Do you like pretty pink scarves?” Grace asked as her father entered through the front door.

As always, Dora’s heart leaped at the sight of him. “I love scarves,” Dora said with a laugh to Grace. She smiled at Mark, who kissed her on the cheek. “And do you like gingerbread cookies? Because I just made some especially for you,” she said to Grace.

Grace threw her arms around Dora’s legs and smiled up at her. “I love gingerbread cookies!” she exclaimed.

“Then shall we go have some cookies and milk before we open presents?” Dora suggested.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Mark replied as he grabbed Grace and tossed her up on his back piggy fashion to head to the kitchen.

As they ate the still-warm cookies, Grace told Dora everything that Santa had brought her that morning and Mark alternated adoring looks from his child to Dora.

Dora wanted to capture this moment of father and daughter and Christmas cookies and milk mustaches and burn it into her heart forever.

Once they were finished with their treat, they moved back into the living room for the exchange of gifts. “Daddy bought you a ring,” Grace said as she settled into a sitting position at the foot of the tree.

“Grace!” Mark gave his daughter a mock stern look. “That was supposed to be our secret.”

“I wanted to share our secret with Dora because I love her,” Grace replied.

Dora’s heart pumped wildly. A ring? She looked at Mark. Mark smiled, the slow, sexy grin that had been Dora’s undoing since the moment she’d met him.

“I love her, too, Grace.” He never took his eyes off Dora as he pulled a velvet ring box from his pocket.

“I get to be the flower girl,” Grace said.

“The flower girl?” Dora continued to look at Mark as he opened the jewelry box to display a princess-cut diamond engagement ring.

“Will you marry me, Dora?” Mark asked.

“Will you marry us,” Grace corrected her daddy.

“After you graduate in May. That will give us five months to plan the kind of wedding you want and to find a place for us all to live in Dallas. Marry me, Dora, and make me the happiest man on earth.”

“Yes, oh, yes,” she said, and held her breath as Mark removed the ring from the case and slid it on her finger. The gold was warm and welcoming, as was Mark’s smile as he leaned in to kiss her gently.

“Okay,” Grace said impatiently. “It’s time to open the presents.”

Dora laughed as Mark stepped away from her and they all settled on the floor in front of the sparkling tree. She’d already received her present. The day Mark had entered her life he’d been the gift she’d dreamed about, the wonderful present she hadn’t thought possible.

Her future with him was as bright as the lights on the tree, as sweet as the scent of gingerbread that hung in the air and as exciting as Grace’s laughter when Dora handed her a present to open.

It had all come together for the little girl from Horn’s Gulf. She’d found a man who didn’t care where she’d come from, a man who only cared that at the end of the days, at the end of their lives, she was with him.

That was more than enough.

* * *

“Samuel.” Melinda spoke into the phone.

“Ah, Melinda, I was wondering if I’d ever hear from you again.” Samuel’s smooth voice slid over the phone line. “Sounds like you got yourself in a little trouble in Vengeance.”

“I beat you at your game, Samuel. You created a cult, but what I managed to accomplish will go down in the true-crime record books as something amazing.”

Samuel laughed. “And yet there you sit in a jail cell awaiting trial. I’d say you didn’t do anything so amazing.”

Melinda tamped down the irritation to reach through the phone and stab Samuel’s eyes out. How dare he diminish what she’d pulled off. “Maybe I’m not finished yet,” she said in a voice low enough that the guard on the other side of the room couldn’t hear her.