She strode up then halted abruptly, her knees a breath away from his. Her feet spread to either side of his own, fists once again on hips, hair swung aside with a sharp toss of her head, revealing bare shoulder, neck, face, and intense blue eyes. This wasn’t the lioness, female or not, this was the lion—the greatest hunter of them all. The grandest alpha of the whole pack, no matter her gender.
“Holy wow, Melanie! Who was that?”
“This,” she brushed a hand down her length from neck to groin, “is the woman about to drag you back to her bed.”
Josh staggered willingly to his feet to be led to his doom.
Melanie woke abruptly in the dark. Alone. She knew it without having to roll over and look. An empty bed felt different. A shiver rolled up her spine; some dream, barely forgotten, but one that had racked up her heart rate and breathing.
An odd noise came from the living room. A soft sound she couldn’t identify.
She donned a t-shirt and sweatpants and crept to the door. A single light lit the kitchen table.
Joshua. The dream retreated a little further.
He sat with an untouched glass of milk rested beside the small laptop. His bare back so beautiful in the softness of the indirect light. Once again he wore jeans that rode low enough to show he wore nothing else. His focus was absolute.
Melanie watched him type for a long time. He’d pause, stare off into the darkness, seeing something, searching in the shadows. Then he’d put his head back down, his fingers flashing across the keys once more before he even had time to look down at the screen.
She was in such trouble with this man. They had been here together days, merely days, yet it felt as normal as if it had been forever. At some point, she’d get a call and she’d be gone. New York, Paris, Milan, Tokyo. The only reason she wasn’t gone already, other than the stupid swimsuit issue, was that she hadn’t updated her website to show herself as available for bookings.
It wasn’t rebound. Yes, Carlo had left her, but over the years she’d been single as much as she’d been with anyone, more. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was Joshua Harper.
It was his doing that pieces of her shield lay unrecoverably shattered on the condo’s floor. The protection she’d always kept so close about her heart didn’t keep out Joshua. And the rest of The Fabulous Five. What did they now see and know that she’d never shown to anyone in her life?
Her anchors were gone.
Perhaps he was right. He wasn’t good for her. Not safe. She shouldn’t have pushed. After five years of marriage it was too soon for him. He’d latched onto her like a breath of fresh air, but that was all. And she’d latched onto him as a fantasy of… She couldn’t quite make up an excuse for herself, but it was there. Wasn’t it? Domesticity? Of belonging, if only for a moment of time?
Joshua would get lost in some novel, or settle somewhere, put down roots, and never want to leave. He struck her as a complete homebody.
Then she’d be totally trapped.
What if she could adapt? Settle in…Seattle? The runways were New York, Milan, Paris. The photo shoots were mostly New York. Seattle connected to nothing in her life.
Better to just end it, be done with it, and run back to New York where no one knew her. Declare it as one night of marvelous distraction and cash it in while she was still ahead before—
“Hey, you. Didn’t see you there. I tried not to wake you.”
Joshua stood a single step in front of her. His chest all shadows; safe to hide in. But Melanie had never liked hiding from her problems. She’d done it—when the dark clouds of pending depression had threatened to stomp her flat—she’d done it. But she didn’t want to hide from this problem.
“Melanie?”
Or did she? “Sorry to interrupt your writing. I’ll just go back to bed.”
“No, wait. I’m done anyway. I just had to get something down. You inspire me, pretty one.”
“Pretty one? Pretty one! Is that what I am?” Please, no! That’s what her mother always called her right before she struck. When Melanie was a powerless little girl. Well she wasn’t powerless any—
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Josh held up both hands.
If he’d stepped forward, she might have struck out at him. Pay back all that pain, all that fear that—
“Melanie.”
“What!”
“Take a breath.”
“What?”
“Take a deep breath.”
“Look, I’m breathing just fine.” She waved to her chest. That’s all men saw of her anyway.
“You’re on the verge of hyperventilating.”
“If I do, it’s my problem!” Then she heard her own voice; heard the shrillness that sounded so like her mother’s. How had it spun in on her? And tonight of all nights? She and Joshua made such love and here she was… She could feel her cheeks flash hot as she bolted for the bedroom.
She didn’t make it. Josh stopped her easily; his casual, unthinking strength a comfort rather than a cause of fear. He led her away from the safety of the bedroom, from the safety of the bathroom where she could lock the door, the shower where she could weep and no one would hear. He guided her to the couch. Sat her down. Wrapped a throw around her shoulders. Then he fetched his untouched milk.
“Sip this. Slowly.”
When she didn’t unclench her fists from inside the blanket where they were bunched close below her neck, he held the glass to her lips. She was forced to take a swallow or have it dribbling down her chin.
It was warm, soothing.
She could feel it moving down, into her belly. Her breathing slowed, curse him. And her heart rate along with it.
Finally, she simply leaned her head into the middle of his chest. He set down the glass of milk and wrapped his arms around her blanketed shoulders. She was unable to speak past her own embarrassment. Now was when he left her. Now was when he decided she wasn’t worth the trouble. In the past… Actually, no one had been allowed to see this in the past. No one had ever seen The Melanie at her most fallible.
“Well…”
Here it came.
“You did mention being less than perfect, didn’t you?” His voice was light, amused.
She had.
“I’m still not seeing it.”
Melanie jerked upright to protest. But in the motion, she clipped his chin with the back of her head.
Hard!
His curses and intermittent, “Ow! Ow! Ow! My tong-ga!” would have been funny. Was funny. Really, she was such a mess that she started to laugh. Beyond funny, it was ridiculous.
The laugh swept her. They were two such ludicrous people.
She wiped at her eyes to see Joshua’s expression shift slowly from pain to amusement to laughing himself.
“Ow! Ow! Don’ make me laugh! Hurth!”
That tipped her right off the deep end. She collapsed into his lap, right onto… Well, wasn’t that interesting. No questioning her effect on Joshua’s body, not even when he was in pain.
His bare belly was right there. She put her lips against it and blew a loud raspberry.
His laugh turned into a high and silly giggle, intermixed with “Ow! Ow! Ow!” He was so cute.
She blew another raspberry against his ticklish spot.
He twitched. Pushed at her.
She managed one more before he leveraged her away.
The next moment his mouth was on hers and if his tongue was still hurting, he showed no signs of it.
He swept her up in his arms, blanket and all, and carried her back to bed without once breaking the kiss.
Chapter 11
“Where does it come from, Melanie?”
They’d woken together, sometime well into the morning. Rather than simply expecting a wake-up round of snuggling, Joshua merely held her. Again, they had slept wrapped around each other.
She discovered that she was past keeping secrets from Joshua. Past being coy, or pretending to be. When had that happened?
“Wh
at are your parents like?” she had to know his frame of reference.
“They’re all right. Retired a couple years ago to Florida. How stereotypical New York can you get? I try to see them a few times a year, whenever I’m, I was, in the area to review a restaurant. We’re good. Not close, but good. Why?”
She held onto him hard, hoping against hope that he’d still be there when she was done telling him about hers. No one on the planet other than Perrin knew anything at all about her parents, and even she didn’t know the details. Melanie would bet that was one story that hadn’t traveled to Jo and Cassidy. There were some things they wouldn’t understand. Of the three of them, only Perrin had also known fear.
“I don’t know how to tell this,” she rolled her face into his chest looking for strength and, oddly, found it.
“Just say it. I’ll still be here when you’re done.”
Some little girl part of her wanted him to promise. Maybe he already had. In Joshua’s arms was the safest place she’d ever been. Just do it, Melanie. She took a deep breath and began.
“When I was eleven, I woke up to hear a terrible fight going on outside my bedroom. Apparently my father had decided I was pretty enough for him to spend some time with.”
Joshua’s body went rigid. His voice, at least an octave lower, ground out, “Did he touch you?” It was the first time she’d ever heard anger in his voice and it would have been terrifying if it was aimed at her. He’d shifted in a heartbeat from thoughtful lover to powerful bull-male. The kind you didn’t want to upset.
“He never had the chance. Mom caught him halfway through my bedroom door on his first foray. In minutes, we were in the car and gone. I had clothes and school books, not much else. We never went back.”
“Three cheers for her.”
“No,” she tried to sit up to judge his face, but he was holding her so tightly she couldn’t move even that much. “You don’t understand. She was yelling at him about the risk of damaging me. My first big photo shoot was scheduled for the next morning.”
“At eleven?”
“I started out as a hand model,” she held up one before her eyes as if she could see what was so special about them, but had never spotted it. “In the first years I made over thirty percent of my income from my hands. I still accept a dozen or so hand shoots a year. Sometimes for the oddest thing. Jewelry sure, but also holding a Coke can, a fine ink pen… No soap commercials. Risk of rash.”
“How did the shoot go?”
“The photographer’s cat scratched me and they had to get another model. My mother slapped me so hard we had to cancel two face shoots as well because my face was swollen. I missed a week of school because you could still see the palm print on my cheek. Those first months living in the car together were hard.”
“You—” His voice choked off. His anger beyond speech.
“Mom ran my career with an iron fist for seven years, though she never struck me again anywhere that would show. By the time I was eighteen, I was a lot smarter. She’d been waiting for that moment, had been focusing all her efforts toward the big payouts. She had Playboy, Hustler, and a couple of porn movie companies all lined up for the day I became legal.”
Joshua merely ground his teeth.
Usually when she’d thought of those years she felt ill, misused, and so very alone. But now she simply felt disconnected. She could have been reading a school report aloud for all she felt. Again, the safety of Joshua’s arms.
“Did you—” There was no doubt as to his feeling on this. He wasn’t some man asking if there were salacious photos he had missed somewhere. This was a man angry almost past tolerance.
“No. Never. If you see a naked photo of me, it’s a fake. Not even a peep shot from the changing areas backstage at a runway. I gained a rather fierce reputation by smashing high-end camera equipment pretty early on.”
“Well done!”
“I did a family divorce, got custody of myself, so to speak. Put out a restraining order against my mother. Shed myself of her name, that is why I use no last name. I let her keep the money she’d embezzled as my manager.”
“You let her keep—”
“I didn’t want it. Not after her slimy hands had been all over it. Actually, every account I was a signatory on, I signed over to charity. I’m sure she had accounts I didn’t know about, but I bet I got most of it. The day I turned eighteen I was broke, but I was my own woman. And I was in demand. I’d studied business, hard, and have been my own manager since that day. I own a small studio apartment free and clear in a secure building in Manhattan. Everything else—everything, went into savings.” She smiled and kissed Joshua’s chest. He still hadn’t let her up and it felt wonderful. “I’m very well off.”
“Whoa!”
“What?”
“I was wrong before.” She tried to read his voice, but she couldn’t. The anger was gone but she couldn’t tell what had replaced it.
“Wrong about what?”
“About the whole perfect thing.”
“Blew my cover, did I?” She tried to smile as she said it. She really hoped this wasn’t where he pushed her away. And she should never have mentioned all the money. Bad slip.
He finally released her. Rolled slightly until they lay face to face, just inches apart. His dark eyes were intent, warm, welcoming. No signs of disgust or avarice. Every time she second-guessed his motivations, she’d been wrong.
“Totally blew your cover,” Joshua acknowledged with a brush of knuckles along her cheek. “What’s the word for someone who’s better than perfect?”
She shoved against his shoulder which barely moved him. He was far stronger than he looked.
He leaned in and kissed her.
She let herself melt into the kiss.
“Wait,” he murmured against her lips. “What’s better than that?”
Then he showed her just what he really thought of her.
Chapter 12
For a whole week Melanie let herself play house. During the days she worked with Perrin on her business plan and consulted with Tamara after school on her new line.
In the evenings she and Joshua began exploring the local restaurants from the old tradition of The Merchant Café to the little Pho noodle shop on the corner. At night she had the best lover imaginable.
And they never shut up around each other. Joshua’s characters were starting to take shape. He was cast-building and between them they worked out how his characters walked and talked, their backgrounds and how they reacted to different stresses. Teaching Joshua how to do the walks enough to feel them with his body had left them both in tears with laughter.
Joshua held Melanie’s hand when they took long strolls along the Seattle waterfront. They would walk an hour or more because they were so enjoying the discussions.
Shelley was now one of his main characters.
“She walks just like you did that night,” Joshua’s eyes went dreamy at the memory.
She had more where that came from.
“Though I gave her thick dark hair. She’s a military trainer.”
“Who lives where?”
“How should I know? In a renovated missile silo?” he’d tossed it out flippantly.
Melanie’s spontaneous laugh had apparently settled that idea for Joshua. So, they’d gone about the task of designing the levels of her missile silos. Two silos: one to live in, one to run training sessions in. It was all a great game.
During the day while she was at Perrin’s, he’d be at Angelo’s or the Pioneer Square condo pounding out words. In the evening she’d read through them, marking the bits she liked and the bits she didn’t. He had a turn of phrase that made her smile when she least expected it.
One afternoon she’d received a text to meet him at the urban park on the high side of Second and Madison. She found him sitting on a bench in the bricked yard, shaded by leafed-out maple trees. Melanie could easily spend the day just watching him work.
But the sixth sense Joshua h
ad developed about her presence had him turning within moments though she’d come up behind him. The afternoon traffic was loud, the metro buses shuffling and roaring.
“How?”
“Me and Superman.”
A quick scan and she spotted the tall coffee shop window in which they were both clearly reflected. “No, Joshua. Just you. Superman didn’t have eyes in the back of his head.”
Josh loved that Melanie had both spotted his cheat and let him have the win anyway. He kept his kiss brief because they were in a public place and he didn’t want some random scandal photographer to get a photo and make her life miserable.
“C’mon. I just discovered this place that I’ve got to show you.” He offered his arm.
She slipped in her hand and he led her two blocks up the hill and toward a building that filled an entire city block, six or seven stories of diamond-shaped glass. He waited until she spotted the sign.
“The Public Library.” He could hear the blasé tone. Nothing was as good as NYPL; the New York Public Library was one of the best libraries on the planet after all.
“Trust me,” Joshua was grinning as he led her inside.
“Stacks. So what’s the big deal?” The place was bustling, but it was just stacks on the first floor.
Without a word, he led her up the escalator. And the world opened above them. Computers and comfortable meeting rooms ranged far and wide across the floor. Light poured in from above. The modern version of the NYPL’s Rose Main Reading Room, with lines of reading desks and fifty-foot ceiling muraled like the sky.
“It’s pretty.”
Rather than speaking, he led her to an elevator and took them to the top floor. The view from the top was nice, but nothing spectacular. Without comment he led her down the ramp that circled downward. Level bookshelves ranged off to either side, but the aisle descended in a spiral row by row.
They were in the 100s before she noticed the numbers painted on the floors, the walls, the bookcases. By the 200s she was looking a little dazzled as they completed the first lap of their descent.
The Complete Where Dreams Page 98
