by Dani Collins
He quickly turned away from those painful memories, frustrated that he couldn’t seem to keep his mind plugged into work. It had always been his escape from brooding and he needed it more than ever.
Yet he found himself rising and stepping away from his desk to look over his view of Central Park. At least his eviction plans hadn’t actually put the ashes in danger. As Melodie had pointed out, there were laws. His ability to have her things removed required thirty days’ notice. She’d arrived home and cleared out within days, according to the building manager. Her mother’s ashes had been safe the entire time, and Melodie had taken them with her when she’d left.
Twelve years ago, he had been thrown out of his home overnight, losing everything. The locks had been changed while he had hitchhiked from Virginia to New York, still nursing broken ribs and two black eyes after confronting Anton at his father’s campaign office. His meager possessions had been gone when the super had let him into his apartment, not that he’d cared about anything except his custom-built computer. Taking that had been pure malice. They’d already had the files. They’d wanted to set him back, quite literally disarm him, and it had worked.
Roman hadn’t dared go to the police. Not after Garner’s threats of charging him with hacking. Roman had that prior conviction and no money to hire a lawyer. No time to wait for the wheels of justice to turn. Survival had been his goal.
Living on the streets, really understanding what his mother had been up against, he’d not only come to understand and forgive her, but he’d even considered a form of prostitution himself. The temptation had been high to sell his skills to the highest bidder and embrace a life of crime. Honest work hadn’t been paying off.
Somehow, though, he’d found himself outside Charles’s house—the security specialist who had helped him all those years ago. He’d walked as though he was being pulled toward a beacon, arriving without understanding why or how his feet had carried him that direction. Charles hadn’t been there. He’d been in a home, suffering dementia. But his wife, Brenda, had let him in.
Until then, as a product of the foster system, Roman hadn’t really believed things such as friendship and kindness and loyalty were real. He’d seen Charles’s singling him out as a mercenary move, a specialist developing a skilled apprentice for his own benefit. Anton had befriended him to exploit him, as well. That was how it was done, Roman had thought. Nothing personal. People used people. That was how life worked.
But as Charles’s wife had taken him in for no other reason than because Charles had always spoken fondly of him, Roman had begun to comprehend what one person could mean to another. Not that he took advantage of her. No, he had carried his weight, taking out the garbage and giving her what he could for groceries and rent every week.
She hadn’t needed his money, though. She wasn’t rich, but she was comfortable. She had grown children she saw often, so she wasn’t lonely. The house had been well alarmed in a good neighborhood. She hadn’t needed his protection. She’d had no legal obligation to help him.
She’d done it because she had a generous heart.
It had baffled him.
He still wondered what he might have resorted to if she hadn’t taken him in for bacon and eggs. Told him to shower and provided him with clean clothes. If she hadn’t listened to his story and believed him.
He’d been wary, not allowing her to be as motherly as she had wanted to be. Almost his entire life to that point had been a reliance on strangers. He hadn’t wanted to go back to that kind of setup, but her unconditional caring had been a glimpse of what he had missed in losing his own mom. Parents, good ones, were a precious commodity.
So the thought of Melodie’s mother’s ashes being mistreated still bothered him, even though nothing terrible had come to pass. It had been more than the basic indecency of such a thing. He simply wasn’t that cruel.
Meanwhile, the claim Melodie had made about how she’d come to have those ashes had shaken his assumptions about her and her family. He had needed to know more, to understand if what she had claimed about her estrangement from her father could be true. He’d made a number of calls over the ensuing days, first talking to her building manager at length.
Melodie, it seemed, was a perfect tenant who paid on time, lived quietly and took care of minor repairs herself. In fact, until the recent passing of her mother, she’d spent most of her days out of her apartment, working or visiting her mother at the clinic.
When Roman had looked more closely at her finances, he’d learned that she’d been living simply for years. Her income was low, especially for the daughter of a senator who received dividends from a global software company. For six years she had worked in a variety of part-time and minimum-wage jobs, only taking on debt to improve her mother’s care and then to start her wedding planning business.
He’d spoken to Ingrid’s mother, too, learning more about Melodie’s mother than Melodie herself, but even that had been an eye-opener. Patience Parnell had been a fragile sort at college. She’d been given to tears and depression over the tiniest slight. She’d quit school when a modeling agency had scouted her, but after the initial boost to her self-esteem, that sort of work had ground her down. She’d left that career to marry a rich widower, expecting to be a homemaker and help him raise his son. Instead, she’d been his trophy wife, constantly on display as he set his aspirations on Washington. The demands of networking, campaigning and entertaining had grown too much for her. She never really recovered from postpartum depression after having Melodie. She’d checked into a sanitarium six years ago and, it was whispered, had checked out under her own terms.
When she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, she had refused treatment, letting it take her life in a type of natural suicide.
Every time he thought about it, he saw Melodie before him in that ridiculous outfit. Her anguish had been so real as she’d said, I’ll keep her safe. I’m the only one who ever has.
That crack in her control was the thing that niggled most. She had been such a coolheaded fighter up to that point. He’d seen it in the way she’d doggedly tried to argue with him. At any other time he would have admired such a quick, clear ability to reason her way out of conflict. Hell, he probably would have tried to hire her. People who could step past emotion to straighten out a tense situation were gold.
All he’d seen at the time, however, was an attack. A cold-blooded one. His mind had been so skewed by his experience with her father and brother he’d stayed on the offensive, refusing to hear her, especially because she’d been so levelheaded in her defense. He’d read her wrong because, until those last moments, she hadn’t flinched or broken down.
That strength in her had thrown him, making him see her as an adversary. Now all he could think about was how it would feel to put all one’s energy into fighting for someone, for your mother, and lose her to a lack of will to live.
He swallowed, pushing stiff fists into his pockets, knuckles coming up against the string of pearls he should have returned to Melodie by now. He kept thinking she might contact him, but, in her shoes, would he want to talk to him?
If there was a good enough reason, he thought she would.
The beads rubbed mercilessly against his knuckles, the way a certain question kept rolling around in his mind, rubbing and aggravating.
Did no condom mean no birth control?
A lead blanket descended on him each time he recalled his fleeting moment of sobriety, as he had recognized the mistake he was about to make.
He was a man of logic. He didn’t believe in giving in to feelings. He still couldn’t understand how he had, especially with his view of Melodie as dark as it had been. He’d been appalled in those first seconds afterward for so much as touching her.
Yet it had been the most profound sexual experience of his life.
Had it been the same for her? Had their physi
cal attraction been real? Please, Roman, please. His entire body clenched with tension and his breath drew in and held, savoring the memory of skin and musky scents and hot, wet welcome pouring over him like a bath. Behind his closed eyes, another question, the most burning question, glowed brightly.
Was she pregnant?
* * *
Beggars can’t be choosers. It was a truth Melodie had learned to live with the day she’d come home six years ago to discover her father had badgered her mother into a hospital she couldn’t leave.
She’s an embarrassment, he’d said.
He was the embarrassment, Melodie had informed him. Terrible words had followed, ending with her nursing a bruised cheek, a sore scalp and a wrenched shoulder while she’d begged through choked-back tears for permission to see her mother. He’d forced her to stay silent on his abusive behavior if she wanted so much as a phone call.
After striking that deal, Melodie had walked out, going to a friend’s house and never returning. Her privileged life had ended. She’d learned the hard way how to make ends meet, taking whatever job she could find to survive.
Of course, there was one job she had refused to stoop to, but today might be the day she completely swallowed her pride. They’d noticed at her temp office job that she had a flare for organization. They wanted to offer her a permanent position with a politician’s campaign team. Become a handler. A political gofer. Barf.
But the money was significantly better than entry-level clerk wages.
And her mother’s wish to have her ashes sprinkled in the Seine was weighing on her.
So Melodie begrudgingly put on a proper tweed skirt and jacket over a black turtleneck, put her hair in a French roll and closed the door on her new apartment far earlier than necessary so even if she missed her first bus, she wouldn’t be late for her interview.
This was an old building, bordering on disrepair, and it smelled musty, but the price was right and all the locks worked.
As she walked down the stairs, she told herself to be thankful she had anything at all. After a lifetime of watching her mother struggle against negative thoughts and spirals of depression, Melodie had learned not to dwell on regrets or could-have-beens. She accepted her less-than-ideal circumstances philosophically and set goals for a better situation, confident she would get to where she wanted to be eventually. This apartment and taking a job she didn’t want was merely a step in the process.
This was also the last time she started from scratch, she assured herself, grateful her mother hadn’t lived to see her fall on her face this way.
Mom. Pearls. France.
Her hand went to her collar, didn’t find the necklace, and her heart sank into the pit of her stomach.
She tried not to think of France, but Roman crept into her thoughts day and night, taunting her with how horribly she’d misjudged him.
She blamed her sunny ideals. All her life she had wanted to believe deep emotional connections were possible, even though her mother’s yearning for a better love from her father had been futile. And even though, among the loose friendships Melodie had made over the years, she’d seen more heartbreaks than success stories.
Ingrid and Huxley had fed her vision, though. Every once in a while, she came across a couple she wished she could emulate: the people who communicated with a glance and did sweet things for each other, just because.
The only way she’d coped with her barren early years had been by promising herself that real, true love would come to her eventually.
She’d mistaken a sexual reaction for a signal of mental and emotional compatibility where Roman was concerned. Maybe she wasn’t as delicate as her mother had always been, but grief had been taking its toll. A month past her out-of-character encounter with Roman and she could see how susceptible she’d been that day. Ingrid’s joy in her coming nuptials had created impatience for a life partner in Melodie. She’d seen the possibility of a future in a kiss from a superficially attractive man.
Relationships, she decided, could wait until both her finances and her heart were back on their feet. The thought allowed her to feel resilient as she reached the ground floor. She was capable of meeting challenges head-on with equanimity. She would take this job and rebuild her life.
After striding across the lobby, she pushed open the glass door onto the street.
The bluster of a nor’easter yanked it out of her hands.
Actually, it was a man. He filled the space, blocked her exit. He wore a suit and an overcoat. His dark hair glistened with rain. He was clean shaven and green eyed like a dragon. Heart-stoppingly gorgeous.
Roman Killian.
* * *
Melodie was still in Virginia, but had moved to Richmond.
The moment that detail had been reported to Roman, he’d booked a flight. The dry, musty interior of her apartment building, with its ugly red-and-silver wallpaper, closed around him as he stepped into the foyer, forcing her back several steps into the wall of mailboxes. He barely took in his surroundings. He was too busy studying her.
She looked...thin. A stab of worry hit him as he considered what that could mean for an unborn baby. Her face was wan, too, beneath her makeup. She wore a smart suit beneath an open coat, but her eyes swallowed her face. Her pale lips parted with shock. Whatever she held dropped from her grip with a muffled thump.
It was just her purse, but he shot forward in instinctive chivalry.
She snatched it before he could, jerking upright to stare down on him.
It was the oddest moment of juxtaposition. She was the one living in a low-end ZIP code in a modest suburb of the city. He appeared on list of Fortune 500 CEOs as one of the richest men in the world. His suit was tailored, his handkerchief silk.
Yet Melodie stood above him like a well-born lady. Which she was.
He knelt like a peasant. A scab on the complexion of society.
Which he was.
He held her gaze as he rose, shedding any traces of inferiority. Refusing to wear such a label. Not anymore. The struggle to get here had been too long and too hard.
Her eyes grew more blue and deep and shadowed as he straightened to his full height. He found himself resisting the urge to smile as they stood face-to-face. He’d forgotten she was so tall. She met his eyes with only the barest lift of her chin. And she impacted upon him with nothing more than turmoil and silence.
The same fascination accosted him that he’d suffered in France. He was instantly ensnared. If anything, her pull was stronger. Now he knew what it felt like to kiss her and touch her, to possess her and release all of himself into her. The power she had over him was deeply unsettling. Through air coated in layers of old carpet and must, his nostrils sought and found the hint of roses and oranges.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
That sweetly ambling voice of hers made him want to sit back and relax. “We need to talk.”
“I’m busy,” she said flatly, thumbing the face of her phone to check the time. “I have an interview.” She started to move around him, but he held out his hand.
It was enough to stop her. She very pointedly held herself back from accidentally brushing his arm.
Her aversion stung.
“I have to catch a bus,” she said stiffly.
Seeing her in this low-end building, using public transport, gave his conscience another yank. He had another reason for being here besides the possibility of pregnancy. He needed to know for sure. Was she really estranged from her father? Had he really crushed an innocent beneath his heel that day?
“I have your things in my car,” he said, “I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.”
“Mom’s pearls?” Her averted gaze flew to his, round and anxious. “Why didn’t you bring them in?”
“I saw you through the window as I was get
ting out. I thought—” That she might somehow escape him if he didn’t act fast to catch her here in the foyer. His actions had been pure reflex.
She figured out what he’d almost revealed. “We have nothing to say to each other, Roman,” she said tonelessly. “Just go out and get them. I’d like them back.”
“We do have to talk,” he asserted firmly, watching her for signs of evasion. When she only gave a firm shake of her head, refusing to look at him, he reminded her, “I didn’t use anything that day.”
Her expression blanked before comprehension dawned in a dark flood of color. Her jaw fell open, appalled. “I’m not pregnant!” she cried.
Someone down the hall opened a door and peeked out.
Melodie was scarlet with embarrassed anger. Her dismayed blue eyes glared into his as she folded her arms defensively, mouth pouted in humiliation. “I’m not.”
“Are you sure?” he challenged.
“Of course I am. But I’m stunned that you’ve tracked me down to ask. I assumed you’d been careless on purpose. When it comes to ruining a woman’s life, leaving her with an unplanned pregnancy is about as effective as it gets.”
That bludgeoned hard enough to knock him back a step.
“I wouldn’t do that.” He was deeply offended she would think him capable of such a coldhearted form of revenge. When she only lifted disinterested brows, he insisted, “I wouldn’t. I know too well what it’s like to be an unplanned baby. I’m here to take care of my child if I have one. Do I?”
* * *
“No,” Melodie insisted, forcing herself to meet his gaze even though it was very hard. She was telling the truth, but she didn’t want to see his sincerity or have empathy and understand him. She only wanted to put him and her grave error behind her.