by Helen Brooks
Melody had steadfastly kept her eyes on the view outside the windows, where the snow continued to fall thickly from a heavy, laden sky, but she was vitally aware of Zeke’s black, brooding gaze fixed on her profile. In spite of his relaxed, nonchalant pose—one leg crossed over the other knee and his arms draped along the back of the sofa—she knew Zeke was as tense as a coiled spring.
The restaurant was pleasant enough, but nothing like the grand, expensive eating places Zeke had always taken her to. Nonetheless, the Christmas decorations were tasteful and brought a festive charm to the room, and their table for two was pretty, with a tiny beaded Christmas tree taking centre stage on a white linen tablecloth encrusted with sparkling silver stars.
After the waiter had placed two embossed menus in their hands and left them to decide on their meal, the wine waiter appeared. Zeke smiled at her. ‘As we’re celebrating, I think a bottle of your finest champagne,’ he said to the waiter, but with his eyes on Melody. The waiter beamed. This was obviously his type of customer. And at Christmastime too, when everyone tended to tip well.
Melody let the man bustle off before she said quietly, ‘Celebrating?’ keeping her voice expressionless.
‘Of course. You’re out of hospital and life can start again.’ His smile was challenging. ‘Isn’t that worthy of good champagne?’
She wasn’t going to rise to his bait, she told herself silently. Raising her small chin a notch, she shrugged. ‘I didn’t think you approved of drinking and driving.’
‘Quite right,’ he said with aggravating aplomb. ‘I don’t.’
Fighting the urge to ask what he was going to do about the Ferrari, because she knew he wanted her to do just that, Melody gritted her teeth and concentrated on the menu. No doubt he’d get one of his minions to pick up the car and he’d get a taxi home. He wouldn’t care about spoiling someone’s plans for Christmas Eve.
And then she immediately felt ashamed of herself. Whatever else Zeke was, he wasn’t high-handed with his staff. She was just being nasty, and it wasn’t like her. But then she’d come to realise over the past months since the accident that she didn’t know herself at all.
She had always thought she was quite a focused, well-balanced person on the whole—the type of woman who would take whatever life threw at her and get on with things. But the accident had knocked her for six—not just physically but mentally, and more importantly emotionally too. It had been one of those cataclysmic events—one of those disasters that she hadn’t imagined in her worst nightmares—and she hadn’t known how to handle the fall-out. She still didn’t. It had brought to the surface a whole host of emotional blocks which had begun to dissolve to reveal the insecurities and pain inside, starting from as way back as her father walking out on her and her mother. He obviously hadn’t wanted the responsibility, so had he abandoned her mother because of that? Had she been the cause of their break-up?
Melody suddenly became aware that the waiter was back and pouring sparkling champagne into two crystal flutes. Once he’d placed the bottle in an ice bucket he sailed off again, and Zeke raised his glass to her. ‘To you,’ he said very softly. ‘My beautiful, vulnerable, exasperating, sweet, incomparable wife. The centre of my universe.’
She had raised her own glass. Now she put it down without taking a sip. ‘Don’t, Zeke.’ Her voice was quiet and pained.
‘Don’t what? Say how much I adore you? But I do, Dee.’
‘You—you don’t have to say that.’ Her legs were hurting, reminding her of how she looked beneath her leggings.
‘Have to?’ His tone was quizzical rather than annoyed. He shook his dark head. ‘When have I ever done anything because I have to? Okay, that toast clearly isn’t to your liking. How about—’ he raised his glass again and paused until she did the same ‘—to us?’ he suggested mildly.
‘Zeke.’ She frowned at him but he merely smiled back.
‘The season then. A merry Christmas to one and all. Is that sufficiently impersonal? Surely you can drink to that?’
Melody tasted the champagne. It was delicious, Dom Pérignon at its best, smooth, seductive and sophisticated—very much like Zeke. She glanced at him. ‘Very nice,’ she said primly, trying not to notice how his mouth was curving.
‘Isn’t it?’ he agreed softly. ‘Are you hungry?’
Surprisingly, for the first time since the accident, she did have something of an appetite. She nodded. ‘A bit.’
‘Good. You need feeding up.’ Ignoring her grimace at the criticism of her thinness, he went on, ‘I’m going to pass on the Christmas fare and save the turkey dinner till tomorrow. How about you? The salmon en croûte looks good for a starter, and the lamb shanks with red-currant and rosemary to follow for me, I think. I’ll think about dessert later.’
Melody would have chosen the same, but felt the need to assert her independence. ‘I’ll have the wild mushroom pâté and then the beef in black bean sauce.’ She put the menu down and took another sip of champagne. The bubbles danced in her mouth as the wine fizzed and she reflected she would have to be careful. She hadn’t drunk any alcohol in the past months whilst in hospital, and this excellent vintage was as dangerous as it was delicious. With Zeke in the mood he was in she needed all her wits about her. She had never been able to resist him in the past, with or without alcohol.
The waiter glided to their table and as Zeke talked to him Melody was able to really study Zeke’s face for the first time that morning. He looked as attractive as ever, but tired, she thought, a little dart of concern piercing her heart. Had he been working too hard? Before their marriage she’d heard it wasn’t unknown for him to work round the clock when some drama or other necessitated it, and even after they’d wed there had been the odd occasion when she hadn’t seen him for twenty out of twenty-four hours. He found it impossible to delegate, that was the thing. Having carved out his small empire with blood, sweat and tears, he was fiercely proud and protective of it, and not always so sure of himself as he’d like people to believe. Particularly so with regard to her.
It had been that which had first captivated her when they had begun dating, she acknowledged. He’d been mad for her but touchingly unsure of how she felt about him, which had surprised her. He rarely talked about his early days, but when he did she’d come to realise he’d had massive issues about love and commitment in the past and trusting the female of the species.
The thought bothered her. She had been trying to push such truths to the back of her mind these past weeks. But Zeke would find someone else easily enough, she told herself in the next breath. Her grandmother had always said that love meant something entirely different to men and women, and that men’s love was altogether more earthy and transient. ‘Even the best of them will look for a younger, fitter model in time, Melody. Just you remember that and protect yourself against the day it happens.’
For a moment it was as though her grandmother was right there with her and Melody blinked, mentally shaking herself. Zeke had said her grandmother’s jaundiced view of life and love had affected her, and she hadn’t liked it at the time, but could there be some truth in it? Had it affected her adversely?
The idea felt like a betrayal of the woman who had raised her and sacrificed much to give her the dancing lessons she’d craved, and Melody immediately repudiated it. Men did obsess on a woman’s body and looks. The number of middle-aged women who were dumped during their husbands’ ‘mid-life crisis’ was proof of that. Men simply weren’t naturally monogamous.
She came out of her reverie to find she’d inadvertently finished her glass of champagne and that Zeke’s gaze was tight on her face. Silently he refilled her glass. ‘What were you thinking just now?’ he asked quietly. ‘It was about me, wasn’t it?’
There was no way she was going to tell him, but she had to say something to satisfy that razor-sharp mind. She made herself glance across the restaurant, which was gradually filling up, her stance studiously offhand, before she said, ‘Just that today hasn’
t gone the way I’d planned, I suppose.’
‘Did you really think after three months or so of being incarcerated I’d let you do this on your own?’
‘I am more than capable of taking care of myself,’ she said tersely. ‘I’m not a child.’
His voice carried more than a touch of self-deprecation when he drawled, ‘Believe me, Dee, I’ve never seen you as a child. Exasperating, unfathomable on occasion, but never a child.’
She flushed at the sensual desire in the ebony eyes. She’d walked right into that one. Flustered, she sipped at her champagne, before realising what she was doing and putting the glass down so abruptly it almost toppled over.
‘Relax.’ He took her hand, as if he had the perfect right to touch her whenever he wanted to and her talk of separation and divorce had never happened. ‘You’re like a cat on a hot tin roof. This is me, remember? Your husband.’
He slid his thumb into her curved palm, softly stroking her silky skin before turning her hand over and raising it to his lips. A bolt of electricity shot up her arm and she gasped before she could stifle her reaction to his mouth on her sensitive flesh. Jerking her hand away, she glared at him. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said, a mite too fiercely.
‘Another don’t.’ His mouth curved wryly. ‘But you like me touching you. Don’t deny it. And I like touching you, Dee. Remember how it used to be?’ His gaze drifted to her lips and she felt them tingle, the tips of her breasts hardening as a flood of sexual need raced through her. ‘We’d make love anywhere, any time, remember? And that’s what we did, Dee. We made love. We didn’t just have sex, great though that was.’
She wanted to say Don’t again, and stopped herself just in time, but his voice was evoking memories she could have done without—memories that persisted in surfacing in dreams at night that rent her in two when she awoke and he wasn’t there.
‘Like that time in Madeira when you were cooking us pancakes for breakfast and we found another use for the maple syrup,’ he murmured throatily. ‘I swear I’ve never tasted anything so good. We never did have the pancakes, did we…?’
They had ravished each other right there on the sun-warmed wood of the kitchen floor, and later, when they’d showered away the stickiness of the syrup together, washing each other with silky-soft suds, they had made love again, slowly and languorously, making it last. Heady days. Magical days.
Aware that she was in a public place, and couldn’t give way to the anguish the terrible enchantment of his words had induced, Melody grappled for self-control. It didn’t matter how good they had been together. That was then and this was now. The girl who had revelled in winding her smooth, honey-coloured limbs round his, who had delighted in the pleasure he got from her perfect body, was no more. Never again would she feel so uninhibited, so full of joy, so his. She didn’t expect him to understand—she barely understood herself—but self-survival dictated she had to leave him before she withered and died trying to be the person he’d fallen in love with. She couldn’t face the prospect of kindness and pity replacing the desire and passion he’d had for her.
‘You want me, Dee. Every bit as much as I want you.’ He refused to accept her transparent self-denial. ‘You need to feel me inside you as much as I need to be there. I want to make love to you for hours again. Nothing hasty or rushed, because we have all the time in the world now you’re with me once more. Every doubt you have, every concern, I can make it better. I can sweep them all away and make you believe we’re okay.’
‘No, you can’t, and I’m not with you again—not in the way you mean,’ Melody said feverishly, trying to fight the ache of sexual need his words had called forth.
‘You’re mine, you’ll always be mine, and you know it.’ He leant closer, not touching her yet enveloping her with his body warmth. ‘Our home is waiting for you and it’s killing me to live there alone. I can’t be there without imagining you in my arms, making love in every room like we did the first week we moved in.’ His ebony gaze watched the way the memories he’d called up were sinking in, and his voice was husky as he continued softly, ‘This is the first day of the rest of our lives together—’
‘Stop it.’ Her tone was sharp enough to check anything further he might have said. ‘Stop it or I’m leaving right now.’
He stared into her eyes, large and tragic against her pale features, and then swore under his breath. Leaning back in his seat, he drained his glass of champagne.
The waiter brought their first course to the table in the next few moments, and it was another minute or two, after they had begun to eat, that he said, his voice conversational, ‘I don’t know whether I want to kiss you or strangle you right now.’ His voice was low, but she knew he meant every word.
‘You don’t need to worry about it because I wouldn’t let you do either.’ She deliberately kept her voice light and her face expressionless. ‘This is wonderful pâté, by the way.’
Zeke’s eyes were hard black stones as he tried to assimilate the change in her. She could see she had thrown him, and because he was always perfectly in control he wouldn’t like that. She didn’t think a woman had ever said no to him before either; until he had met her he had always been the one to end his relationships, and they had invariably been conducted exactly the way he decreed. Having said that, most of his exes seemed to have a soft spot for him still.
‘So you are determined to continue with this ridiculous farce?’ he said mildly, after he had finished his salmon.
Melody looked at him squarely, blessing the strength that had come from somewhere and was keeping her trembling inside under wraps. ‘You mean the separation? Of course.’
‘Of course?’ he drawled lazily, his mood having taken a lightning change of direction. ‘I wouldn’t have said there was any “of course” about it. But what am I? A mere man.’
Melody eyed him warily. No one could accuse Zeke James of being a mere anything.
He stared back at her, his uneven mouth lifted in the appealing curve she knew so well. Why did he have to be so—so everything? she asked herself with silent despair. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with a nice Mr Average—someone she found attractive but who didn’t have the rest of the female race champing at the bit? Someone she could have felt was truly hers?
But she hadn’t. Bottom line. And maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference to how she was feeling if she had. Maybe she would still feel she had to go it alone even if her man had been a nondescript nine-to-fiver with as much sex appeal as the average gnat. But she didn’t think so.
Zeke refilled their glasses as the waiter whisked their empty plates away. Christmas carols were playing softly in the background, and outside the restaurant windows the small courtyard the room overlooked had been transformed into a winter wonderland, the one tree it contained proudly displaying its new clothing of glittering white. The flakes of snow, as thick and luscious as in a child’s painting, were still falling fast, and already an inch or so carpeted the ground.
Without really thinking about what she was saying, she turned to Zeke. ‘The snow’s settling fast. As soon as you’ve eaten you ought to think about leaving.’
The hour’s drive to their big sprawling manor house on the outskirts of Reading would take double the time in this weather, and the Ferrari—beautiful though it undoubtedly was—wasn’t ideal for Arctic conditions. He could easily get stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Zeke’s smile was little more than a quizzical ruffle. ‘Can’t wait to get rid of me?’ he murmured.
He was at his most sexy in this mocking mood, but Melody refused to be charmed. ‘That and the fact you could well find yourself stuck in the middle of a snow-drift somewhere. The wind’s getting up—or hadn’t you noticed?’
‘I’d noticed.’
Melody shrugged. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘Considering you’ve done nothing but warn me about things since first thing this morning, I wouldn’t dream of it.’
He was still
smiling, but she hadn’t imagined the edge to his voice and it did nothing to reassure her he had decided to accept defeat. She felt a wave of intense weariness sweep over her for a moment. She didn’t want to have to fight him. She felt so emotionally bruised and battered she just craved peace of mind, and she wouldn’t achieve that until she was far, far away from Zeke. Once she had got herself together and organised a few essentials she intended to disappear for a few months. She wouldn’t take a penny of his fortune to support herself—she had worked for her living in bars and restaurants before, and she could do it again, and she’d already thought about setting herself up as a dance teacher in the future.
The waiter appeared again with their main course, but suddenly her appetite was gone and she had to force herself to eat. It didn’t help that Zeke was watching her like a hawk with its prey, his eyes boring into her as though he was trying to dissect her brain. Which he probably was, she reflected darkly. He would be looking for a chink in her armour—it was the nature of the beast.
‘You’re struggling.’ As Melody glanced at him, Zeke motioned with his fork at her own plate. ‘Tired?’
She nodded. The effort of leaving the hospital and not least this confrontation with Zeke, which she had been hoping to avoid until she was stronger, had taken more out of her than she would have thought possible. The doctors had predicted that she would experience bouts of extreme exhaustion in the early days of her release, but she hadn’t expected to feel so completely wiped out. All she wanted to do was to crawl into bed.
‘Want to skip dessert for now?’ he asked softly.
She didn’t know quite what he meant by ‘for now’, but was too weary to take him up on it. She had eaten more at one sitting than at any time over the past weeks, and the champagne had done its bit to drug her too. Dessert was beyond her. She nodded again. She could lay her head down and sleep right now.