Riding in Cisco’s car was even more intimidating than riding in his truck had been. Or maybe it was the situation. Who knew? Melody couldn’t even be sure her entire range of crazy emotions wasn’t caused by the weird visit she’d had from Cisco’s “girlfriend.” Surely anyone would have the right to be totally weirded out by a woman coming into their place of business with the sole purpose of ordering them away from a friend—uh huh, yeah, friend.

Maybe that was the other reason that riding in Cisco’s car was such a big deal. It certainly wasn’t anything negative about him. The man was a freaking saint! He had helped her drag her idiotic friend back into Allie’s apartment. Then Cisco had very nicely reminded her—without being a know-it-all—that Melody being an enabler wasn’t going to help Allie’s situation at all. Now Cisco was parking in front of a little corner deli a few blocks away from her apartment building.

“I’ve actually eaten here a time or two when I was visiting an old college friend who worked at a pro bono legal aid office around the corner while we were still in grad school.” Cisco smiled as he turned off the car and prepared to get out.

Melody didn’t know what to say. It was hard to imagine him in anything but the fanciest of circumstances. But maybe that was just how she saw him. “So, this is slumming for you, huh?”

“Slumming? That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?” Cisco made a face as he exited the vehicle. “This is Denver, not Philadelphia or Boston.”

“I suppose.” Melody got out of the car and tried to close the door without slamming it. She didn’t want to hurt his car. “I’ve never been to any other cities. In fact, the farthest I’ve ever been from Denver is Colorado Springs.”

“School trip?” He raised an eyebrow.

“How did you know that?” She allowed him to hold the front door open for her.

He smiled as she walked past and winked at her. The silly little action sent a riot of chills down her spine. He affected her so much! It was insane.

“It was a guess. I think everyone went down to the Springs to see Garden of the Gods and the very old part of town while we were learning about state history.” He laughed. “I seem to remember that trip being very boring.”

“I didn’t think it was boring,” she protested. “It was way better than never seeing anywhere else at all!”

They chose a corner table and sat down. A waitress bustled up. She was an older woman wearing the standard uniform and hideously serviceable shoes. She smiled at them as she took their orders, but Melody could see the exhaustion behind her pale blue eyes. That was one of Melody’s worst fears. That she would somehow turn into this woman the older she got. The woman wasn’t wearing a wedding band. She didn’t look as though she had anything very positive in her life, and sometimes Melody feared that she would end up just like this.

“What are you thinking?” Cisco murmured after the waitress had bustled off to the kitchen.

“That I don’t want to be that woman when I grow up.”

The words slipped out before Melody could think about how they might sound to someone like Cisco. He frowned. “That’s why I want to talk to you about your land.”

“About that,” Melody said thickly. She swallowed back the lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat. “You really shouldn’t be doing this for free. You know? And I can’t pay you. And there’s no guarantee that anything will come of it anyway. Paul Weatherby might have enough pull to force me to sell it to him just because I can’t pay the taxes.”

Cisco was now staring at her with a very flat expression on his face. It felt as though he just looked at her forever. She could not stay still. She squirmed. She fidgeted with her napkin. She moved her silverware around on the formica tabletop. It was all she could do to keep from changing the subject and just pretending that nothing was happening and nobody had threatened her.

“What happened today?” Cisco’s voice was not demanding. It was the opposite. It was coaxing. It encouraged a confidence. And dammit all, she really wanted to give into the urge to confide in him. He was a smart man. He would be able to help her.

“It was just a bad day.” Well, that was true enough. “My boss decided to blame me for Allie’s bender and the fact that she didn’t come to work or call.” Okay. Melody hadn’t had any intention of sharing even that much, but the story was just tumbling out without any sign of slowing. “So, my boss decided to cut my hours and hire someone else just in case this should happen again. She’s trying to claim that we’re all required to stay at work until the next shift comes in, even if that means we work straight through because someone else doesn’t show up.”

“That’s usually the manager’s responsibility,” he commented. “Sounds like your boss is trying to pass the buck. That’s wrong, Melody. I’m sorry.”

“Now my hours are cut. I’m not going to make enough money to pay the repair guy to fix my car for another five months at this rate. Allie got fired, which probably means she’s going to ask me for money to help her out.” Melody swallowed. She needed to stop. That was it. There was nothing else to say. “And then the woman in the blue dress who was your date the other night came in and told me to stay away from you. She insisted you aren’t going to be handling any legal issues for me and that I’m ruining your career.”

“What?” His voice was sharp. “She said what to you?”

Melody repeated what she could remember. “She told me that if you continued to work on my case, it would ruin your career and that I needed to look elsewhere because you were out of my league. There was some other stuff about my bad hair and bad clothes, but that’s pretty much the gist of it.”

“Bad hair and bad clothes?” He sounded as though he could not even process what she was telling him. “She said that to you?”

“Yes. She accused me of drooling all over you the other night. She was very upset about this.” Melody started laughing suddenly. She pressed her fist to her mouth to stifle the sound, but she was still cackling like a crazy person when the waitress brought their drinks and food back to the table.

“You okay, ma’am?” The waitress actually looked concerned, bless her.

Melody wheezed a bit to find enough breath to speak. “Yes. I’m fine. Just one of those days, you know?”

The waitress patted Melody on the shoulder. “Oh, honey, you go ahead and lose it. Girl, we all know what those days are like!”

There was something oddly encouraging about the idea that she was not alone in trying to stumble through life feeling as though she had only been given less than half of the start that other people had. It was a bit like trying to play a board game with the pieces missing.

Cisco waited for the waitress to leave before saying anything else. “I’m so sorry, Melody. Vittoria had no right to talk to you like that.”

“But is she right?” That was the niggling doubt that bothered Melody so very much. “Was she right when she said that your helping me is going to ruin your career?”

“No.” He shook his head and poured a generous amount of ketchup onto his plate. “You’re not doing anything to harm my career. If I want to handle this for you, I will. In fact, I already have. For the most part, I’ve filed several complaints against Watson, which had a very interesting affect. Then I established with the courts that you are claiming misrepresentation. I want to pressure Watson into showing us proof that he either could not or did not get a lease on that property that would pay the bills. There’s no way that this is true. And even if it is, there are no entries on that balance sheet that show any kind of influx of money. We need to find the bills from your grandparents’ stay at the nursing home. That will tell us a little more. If all of the profits were being paid out for long-term care, then that’s one thing. But I don’t think that’s true.”

“My grandparents had long-term care insurance,” Melody said suddenly. She closed her eyes briefly and tried to remember one of the early conversation she’d had with her grandfather where he had been trying to tell her things about the future and she had been far too uncomfortable with the idea of inheriting the property of these strangers after their death to pay enough attention. “I remember him talking about it. The premiums had been horrendous, but he said that after their daughter’s illness nearly bankrupted the ranch, they realized that they had to take care of their own bills so that I wouldn’t be left in the same boat.”

Cisco’s expression was very serious. He was obviously taking this all in. He ate a few of his fries and took a big bite of his burger. Of course, this reminded Melody that she had a plate full of food in front of her. She stuffed a handful of fries into her mouth and savored the flavor of them on her tongue. They were warm and mealy and good. She could not imagine that after two meals she was starting to get used to regular food once again, and yet she had been full from the Irish stew and all of the bread for what felt like forever.

“I’m going to have someone I know dig into Watson’s finances a little bit. Then I’m going to have him look into your grandparents’ and even Paul Weatherby’s.”

“Is that a good idea?” Melody asked dubiously. “Won’t that just make Weatherby angry? He’s already angry.”

“Has he continued to call you?”

“No. The calls have stopped.” In fact, Melody realized that she hadn’t had a single call from Weatherby’s agent since that incident had started. “You know they weren’t actually from him. They were from a real estate agent who claimed to be representing him. What if that agent has information and doesn’t realize it because she doesn’t know that there was an illegal transaction taking place?”

“It’s certainly a possibility.”

For some reason, Melody was getting excited about the possibility of getting at least some information about this crazy situation. “Let’s call her and see if we can set up a meeting!”

“Now?” He drew back, looking confused. “Isn’t it sort of late for that kind of thing?”

“She’s a real estate agent, right? They’re supposed to be perpetually on call if she wants to make a sale. And we don’t want her contacting Paul and either asking if it’s okay to talk to us or asking him what he wants her to say.” Melody’s mind was spinning around this problem and developing an elaborate idea of how to make it work. “So, what if we trick her? We’ll just pose as someone who wants to look at a piece of property she has listed. Then when she comes to show it to us, we’ll spring a bunch of questions on her.”

“That sounds pretty darn creative,” Cisco laughed. His blue eyes were sparkling with humor, and he was shaking his head as though she had just proposed a crazy scheme that he was willing to go along with anyway.

“So, let’s do it.” Melody held out her hand. “Can I borrow your phone? I need to use the data search. Sorry. I hope you don’t mind. I don’t actually have data on mine.”

“It’s fine, sweetie,” he murmured as he handed his phone over the tabletop.

Melody tried not to overthink the word sweetie. He’d used it more than once. She was sure of it. The idea that he could possibly consider her his sweetheart, or that he was experiencing that kind of sentiment toward her, was both shocking and very exciting. He was still so far out of her league that the idea of it was laughable.

Idea of what?

Her brain kept getting stuck on that notion. It wasn’t like he had tried anything. There was only that very sweet kiss to give her any ideas that Cisco might be interested in her as anything more than a charity case that needed his help. But as a charity case, she had to be doubly aware that there was really no hope and no future for the two of them. Not together. So, perhaps she should just focus on trying to find a piece of property listed by this agent so that they could go look at it and try to get some answers into the bargain.