by Christa Wick
The knock sounded again and he called her name, his voice soft and further muffled by the door. She rubbed angrily at her eyes, knuckles stabbing roughly against her nose as she tried to erase the tears that had started flowing as she looked at Willie's picture.
"Mel..."
She shook her head, her hair bouncing around her shoulders until she must have appeared as wild as the main picture Celebrity Zone had published of Skye.
Then she wondered if her own mother, dear distracted Nancy Winslow Ivory, was filled with the same doubts about Roger. Had the beautiful Skye been his one true love?
A harsh laugh clawed at her throat. CZ had happily crowed about his father's infidelity, how the scandalous Brit, already married, had knocked up the deranged American college student while she was spending a semester abroad studying English literature. Had Roger known Skye was unbalanced?
"Unlatch the door, Mel."
Declan's voice had turned forceful, the tone stern. Her head swiveled lazily in the door's direction. He hadn't tried to open it as far as she could remember. He'd only knocked. How did he even know it was locked?
She looked around the room. Everything had been brought in to create a workspace for her except for the tables, a chair, the dozen totes and a clock on the shelf. Standing up, she approached the clock, picked it up and looked for a camera.
"Mel."
His patience clearly at an end, Declan hit the door with his shoulder, breaking the lock and sending the panel flying inward half off its hinges. He stared at her, ignoring the upended bins and their contents.
"There's a camera in here," she stated, her expression flat. A part of her brain wondered if she was in shock, but that wasn't possible. She hadn't been injured -- at least not physically. Or did some people go into a shock-like state when they heard bad news?
Not like someone had died, she mused. At least not in the last ten years or so.
"There's a live feed for all the rooms."
Her head tilted slowly to the side, her gaze narrowing.
"Don't worry, Mel," he ground out. "It's a closed system and I haven't been recording us. I'm nothing like those vultures are claiming."
Even as he said the words, his gaze filled with self-doubt. The web sites and people commenting on them were saying terrible things, making wild assumptions based on Declan's tragic past that had been hidden from the public for so long. She half thought the world was angry at him in part because he hadn't milked those tragedies, hadn't played the victim.
"Where were you?" she asked after studying him for a few more seconds. "Another hidden room ... one with monitors?"
She didn't believe that he'd been watching her the whole time. But she wondered how long he had known she was pawing through his bins and why he had waited until she zeroed in on Willie's bin before he decided to find her.
"There's a safe room," he answered, shoulders sagging.
Her head tilted to the opposite side. He looked defeated, at least slightly so. She'd only seen that posture in him when he was playing a role. She liked the movie version of Declan better, Melanie decided. At least then she knew he was acting, his emotions fed to him by the writer or director.
Moving away from the clock, she approached him. His hands flexed, the fingers seeming to yearn in her direction before they snapped back to his sides, his spine straightening at the same time.
Fine, she didn't want him to touch her anyway.
"You didn't think I should know there was a safe room?"
"You haven't been in the house without me, Mel."
She shook her head, anger building inside her. He didn't love her. Wasn't free to love her. For almost a month she'd been paying the price for thinking he did or could.
Another shake of her head and then she jabbed a finger against his muscular chest.
"There are death threats all over the internet. From the very first day, people were saying I should hang myself -- if I could keep from eating the rope first. At the very least, knowing there was a safe room would have eased my anxiety."
His mouth flattened into a thin line. He drew a slow, deep breath before answering.
"You didn't seem anxious, Mel -- not that way, at least."
Melanie crossed her arms over her breasts, hands flexing with the desire to slam against his chest. Yeah, she'd been "anxious" to fuck him, had dripped with the need. How nice of him to point it out.
She snorted, one side of her mouth jerking up to smirk at him. "Why did you let me think Willie was a man?"
His head angled down, a slow breath leaving him as he closed his eyes. "That's what you're upset about?"
Yes, no, maybe -- she wasn't sure. She still hurt to think of baby Declan in a hospital crib, his mother unable to even hold him because she was too unstable. If Declan loved Melanie, she could help him heal. But he didn't love her, wasn't trying to heal. He was just playing it safe.
He sighed and his shoulders dropped a little lower, his eyes remaining shut. "You've read the script. She was a male. She dated girls."
"That doesn't mean you weren't in love with her," Melanie sniped.
Eyes flashing open, he shot a dark look at her. "It doesn't mean I was."
"Oh!" Her hands darted up, the palms exposed and the fingers splayed in mock surrender. "So you didn't love her."
"Not like that, Mel."
Declan's expression warped once more and she felt like she was back in the fifth grade with Mrs. Coe telling her she was a fat, stupid child whose own parents must be repulsed by her.
"You're being silly," he persisted when she didn't cave.
Silly or stupid, they were the same thing when Declan said it with that look on his face.
Shaking her head, she edged past him.
"Baby--"
Declan reached for her arm but she shook him off.
"I need to think," she said, her teeth grinding over each word. "I need to be alone."
He said something, his voice soft with a hint of begging to the tone, but she couldn't hear him with all the blood pounding inside her head and the roar of tensed muscles as her face screwed tight to keep from crying while she was with him.
Vision blurred, she made her way to the staircase and escaped up to the princess suite where, for the first time since she'd moved into Declan's house, she spent the night in its bed -- utterly alone.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Retreating to the princess suite, spending the night there -- Melanie wasn't sure how she expected or wanted Declan to react. He didn't knock on her door the next morning. When she finally ventured downstairs, starving at a little after noon, she didn't see him on her way to the kitchen.
The entire house, for all its beauty, suddenly had the air of a mausoleum. Melanie felt little more than a ghost, perhaps one that was recently dead and just then "waking up" to the fact.
She was midway through scrambling eggs when she felt his presence. Looking over her shoulder, she found him standing at the threshold of the kitchen, his shoulder pressed against one wall as he watched her.
Finding her gaze on him, Declan lowered his.
"Do you want me to make some for you?"
Her offer wasn't conciliatory, even though her tone was muted, maybe even penitent. She was merely offering some kind of quid pro quo. Declan had cooked most of the meals since Melanie had moved in, spoiling her with his culinary skills and broad repertoire.
"I ate already."
He sounded a million miles away -- or a decade or more in the past.
Returning her attention to the skillet, she shrugged and kept her gaze locked on the task of cooking until she felt him drift out of the room as silently as he had drifted in.
Sitting at the kitchen island with her eggs and a glass of juice, she picked her way through half of the serving. Maybe it was because Declan was such a good cook compared to her own limited skills, but the food seemed devoid of taste. Even if she couldn't see the specks of pepper and grains of sea salt, she remembered spicing the eggs. The j
uice was equally unappetizing, as bland as it was temperatureless.
Running the rest of the eggs through the garbage disposal, she snorted at herself. All those little heartbreaks in grade school and college hadn't killed her appetite -- that had only been accomplished by her father's death and knowing she was losing Declan after never really having him at all.
Returning to the princess suite, she powered her phone off then sent her mom an email, then a second email to Cammie. She heaped sentences into paragraphs into pages, but it all boiled down to two words.
It's over.
Turning off the computer, she rolled over and took a nap until midnight.
On her back, the room pitch black, she woke and stared up at a ceiling she couldn't see while the last month looped through her mind.
Declan had treated her like a queen when he wasn't treating her like a concubine. She had enjoyed both roles. Even when he was fucking her, he pampered her. He had been generous, passionate, sweet and cuddly. After she had given herself over to the idea that he was really interested in her and not playing some revenge game with his father, the only conflict had come from the outside world and it hadn't been able to drive them apart.
Except they'd never really been "together." She had been "stage managed," as the Hollywood agents liked to call it when they had problem clients.
He had spent his childhood and college years surrounded by drama. His mother had scribbled every day and night away, even writing on wallpaper based on some of the torn samples in the bins Melanie had opened. Willie had been equally troubled judging by the script and corroborated by the news reports.
Both women had also been out of reach, their beauty only allowed to be appreciated from a corner of the room they occupied or through a grimy window. Melanie, on the other hand? She had been open to his every wish, as docile as a lamb.
An object, really.
Grinding her fists against her cheeks and closed eyelids, Melanie laughed at herself even as she cried.
The whole world had known it wasn't right. First they had attacked her for it, now they were attacking Declan. She knew, in that hard spot that used to be her heart, that all the lies and backlash against him would stop once she left, as if desiring her was the ultimate manifestation of mental illness. Hollywood would then forgive Declan as soon as he started banging some "size appropriate" starlet. Melanie could fade to black, assisted by Roger's open offer to move to London.
Eventually she might even get a chance to work in the industry again.
Exhaling a long sigh good-bye, she drifted back to sleep until Declan knocked on her bedroom door the next morning at a little after eleven.
Melanie forced herself into a sitting position, two spots on opposite sides of her back feeling like long sewing needles had been jabbed into them. She would have thought she had cried too much the night before to need to pee, but her kidneys were causing the physical pain.
Biting at her lip to subdue the furious complaints of her body, she walked with tightly pressed thighs to the bedroom door. Opening it a few inches, her body hidden behind the heavy wood, she squinted at Declan and told him to wait.
"I have to pee."
She hobbled off toward the en suite bathroom, faintly aware that he had entered the bedroom instead of waiting in the hall. Locking herself in the bathroom, she swiftly pushed down the pants she'd fallen asleep in and released a stream of urine that continued on so long she blushed from how much she had to go.
Finished, she didn't get up right away. Resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on her cupped hands, she mentally inventoried her body. She felt like crap that had been crapped out by crap. Her kidneys no longer hurt, but she could feel every line from where her jeans had embedded in her skin. The cage of her bra with its heavy underwire felt like it had cut through her flesh and was sawing at actual rib bone.
The cherry on top was the pounding sinus headache from the ridiculous amount of sobbing she had put herself through.
Pushing up, she tottered over to the sink, washed her hands then scrubbed at her face. Cupping her hands, she filled them with water. The first handful she swished around, unsuccessfully trying to rinse away the fact that her toothbrush and other hygiene supplies were in the bathroom attached to the master suite. She'd gone forty-eight hours or more without brushing her teeth and only washing her face with water.
"You're a real prize," she whispered, staring at her reflection after drinking down a few more handfuls of water. Huffing at the mirror's lack of a reply, she grabbed the hand towel off the rack and rubbed her face dry before unlocking the door.
Declan had remained in the room. He sat on the edge of the bed, his feet firmly planted on the floor, the flat of his forearms braced against the length of his upper legs. She hadn't paid attention to his clothing when he answered the door, but he was a business jacket short of being dressed up.
Slowly, he lifted his gaze from where he had been staring at a spot of nothing on the ground.
"I need to go by the attorneys' office," he started, his fingers plucking at the thin line that had been pressed along the front of his pant legs. "It will take a couple of hours. I need to listen to some audio and do another affidavit and..."
One hand swirled a couple of fat loops in the air in place of further explanation.
Standing slightly off to his side, a few feet away while Declan refused to look directly at her, Melanie let her gaze linger over his profile. He was a beautiful man, his face strongly resembling Roger's but enhanced by the fine, haunting features that his mother had contributed to his genetic makeup.
Looking at pictures of him in the past or sneaking a glimpse of him on set, she'd always felt a small thrill of pleasure spread down her spine and along her chest. She wondered how long it would be before she could look at films or photos, even by accident, without feeling like she was looking at an image of a dead loved one.
Standing abruptly, Declan took a step toward her. "Melanie, I--"
"Thank you for the notice," she interrupted, taking two steps back to keep the same distance between them.
Stopping his advance, he stared at her, his gaze flashing between a hard stare and extreme pain. "I want you to come with me."
"Do I need to listen to anything? Sign anything?"
Her hand drifted up to her throat. The voice she spoke with didn't sound like hers. It was slow, monotonous, like a computer or a taped version she was hearing at a slower playback.
"No," he answered, his gaze leaving her to look around the room.
She tracked the spots he stopped at -- her laptop, her backpack, the closet door. Except for the empty luggage in the closet, everything else she owned was either in Declan's bedroom or at the new place he had rented for Cammie.
Was he worried she would pack up and leave?
"Am I going to be shuttled off to some room to wait like last time?"
The attorneys had been adamant about her not being in the meeting while Declan discussed the allegations because, if what Strake claimed was true, she could sue Declan and press charges. They didn't care how much she had professed her trust in Declan.
"Probably," he answered.
"I think I'll stay."
He shook his head, the motion slow and not rising to the level of negating Melanie's intent.
"They need to see me today, something about some motion," he persisted. "But you've got plenty of time to get showered and dressed."
He tried another attempt at drawing closer. Once again, Melanie maneuvered until she was out of arm's reach.
"I'll make you breakfast while you get ready," he offered.
It hurt too much to look at his face. She stared, instead, at his hands. They were down by his hips, the palms turned toward her. The pose made Melanie think of the time Cammie had successfully dragged her to church with all the martyrs and saints that populated the walls and stained glass captured in the same supplicating gesture.
"I think I'll stay," she repeated.
H
e took a step toward her. There was nowhere for her to retreat unless she stepped into the bathroom or the closet. Lifting her gaze, she stopped him with a look.
"Mel..." His hands did a little dance, his arms drifting forward before returning to his sides. "I love you, Melanie."
She studied his face. Pride and hurt battled for the right to dominate his expression as she remained silent.
Tears crawled down her cheeks. She couldn't repeat his declaration, didn't know how she could say "I love you" and then walk out of his life. He had to know she was leaving. His face admitted as much. But he wouldn't ask her intent or insist she go with him. Nor would he stay to make sure she didn't leave.
"The sooner you go, the sooner you'll be back," she said to stop the echo of his words inside her head.
Declan reached for her again but Melanie lifted her hand, the fingers splayed in a request for him to stop.
"It will only be a couple of hours. When I get back, we can talk."
She looked to her right where a door opened onto the bathroom.
"I need a shower," she stated dully.
If they talked once he returned to his home, she knew it would only be over the phone. She would be gone. Her phone would be powered off. Even if neither one of them stated it outright, this was good-bye.
"Melanie." With a little shake of his head, Declan closed his eyes while he spoke. His jaws bunched tightly together, his voice soft but strained when he continued. "It's just a couple of hours. You believe Strake lied about the recording and any plan between him and me, don't you?"
"I do," she answered. "That isn't who you are."
"So I can go?"
She nodded.
If only he had asked a different question or told her he wanted her to stay. But he didn't and that was its own revelation.
"Please, Mel," he started and closed the distance between them before she could raise her hand in protest. His fingers curled around her shoulders and held her in place.
"Can I just--"
He cut himself off, bent his neck and pressed his lips near her ear as she turned to avoid the kiss. His fingers dug a little deeper into her flesh, his lips pressing hard for an instant before he pulled away entirely.