Mel didn’t want to be waited for. That much was apparent from the dreamy look she gave Neil when their dance ended. “As long as you’re okay, Aunt Myriam, I’m out.” He turned to make his way to the door while fighting his ridiculous resentment for Neil Jensen.
“Chicken,” Myriam taunted after him.
He was no chicken. He’d asked her out and she’d turned him down. Mel’s Bell’s apparently wasn’t interested in a man who wasn’t schooled in the arts and didn’t have more money than brain cells.
He could take rejection.
Even if he had to spend every day of the school year with Ms. Rejection.
Shit.
* * * *
Mel sat across from Neil at the Greek Meets Eat Diner while she picked at a Caesar salad, and he consumed a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. “Don’t they feed you in Hollywood?” she commented with a grin.
“I’m catching up on my carbs,” he joked, shooting her one of his dashing smiles. “I can’t eat like this during the show because it weighs me down, so every once in a while I indulge. Nothing beats Jersey diners. So, when in Rome.” He slipped another mouthful of pasta between his lips and wiggled his eyebrows.
“I lingered a little too long in Rome.” Mel grimaced when she pinched a small roll of fat lying directly under her ribs.
Neil gave her a thoughtful glance. “What happened, Mel? Why the hell didn’t you call me? You know I would have come and gotten you and Weez. You could have stayed with me.”
“And done what when I got to your place, Neil? I had no money…no…”
He held up a hand and made a face of disgust. “Oh, I heard. I heard it all—through the tabloids. Which really pisses me off. I should have heard it from you, Mel. I felt like total shit when I found out. And I could have gotten you something on Celebrity Ballroom.”
Mel’s face flushed with shame. “I was so humiliated I didn’t know which way was up, and I get the feeling no one who watches Celebrity Ballroom wants to see rolls of flesh seeping out from beneath my feathers and rhinestones. Besides, all that spray tanning has to be a lot to keep up with.”
Neil laughed, a laugh she’d missed. They’d only seen each other occasionally over the years, and it was almost always when Stan wasn’t around. Mel had never understood the tension between the two men, but it was palpable and uncomfortable and had kept Neil away often over the years.
Yet, when she and Neil were together, it was always like old times—like they were still meeting at Miss Gina’s five days a week to practice.
“It’s a damn good paycheck and a consistent one to boot, especially at my age. I’m grateful to have work. Work I love, and you’re not fat, Mel. I didn’t have any trouble lifting you tonight. Just like the old days.”
When she was ninety pounds soaking wet? Right. “The hell you didn’t. I heard you grunt. Thank God for deaf seniors and loud music.”
“Okay, so you put on a couple of pounds, but it looks good on you. All you need is a little toning up. I still think you’re more beautiful than ever.”
Mel put her fork down and toyed with the edge of her napkin. She and Neil, once they’d hit their hormonal fluxes at thirteen or so, had always known they’d never be anything but friends. His compliment, while a stab at comforting her bad body image, was ludicrous.
She flicked a finger under his nose. “I don’t need you to whitewash what I look like. I see it in the mirror every day.”
Neil shook his shaggy blond head, his mouth a thin line of anger.
“No, you don’t. You see what Stan told you to see. I’ve shut my mouth for a long time out of respect for you about that asshole, but not anymore. Stan’s a jackass for doing what he’s done. Did he really take the studio and not leave you a penny?”
Terror gripped Mel’s stomach for a moment then eased when she remembered she had a job and a pending paycheck.
So, fine. A big thumbs-up to Maxine for being right about at least the relief that security brought. “He did, and I haven’t spoken to him since just after he left for auditions for the show. Everything after the press informed me he was doing Yelena was done through his lawyers. I didn’t have one because I couldn’t afford one, and I wouldn’t let my father pay for one. So I signed papers because despite the fact that I did love Stan once—or thought I loved him—I don’t want a cheat and a liar. There was nothing else to say because of the prenup, so that was that.”
Neil’s fist clenched, the veins in his hand pulsing. “Jesus Christ, Mel. That’s brutal.”
“What I don’t get is why he was so cruel about it in the process. Stan wasn’t a horrible person, despite your deep dislike for him. Yes, he was self-absorbed and impatient, but he was once very good to me. If he’d come to me and asked me for a divorce because he’d fallen in love with someone else, yeah, that would have hurt, but to turn it into a tabloid fiasco by letting me find out from a reporter and then enforce that stupid prenup I signed, like I would have taken all his money from him and left him bankrupt, leaves me baffled. And hurt. So hurt I almost couldn’t breathe from it for a while.”
Yet, as she spoke the words, she realized Stan’s betrayal didn’t hurt as much as it had for the first couple of months. It still hadn’t stopped her from wanting to know why he’d let the press have at her in such a vicious fashion and afterward would only speak to her through his lawyers.
Someday, if she ever had the courage, and she could get past his brood of angry security guards and locked gates, she’d like an answer.
For now, it was okay to avoid any sort of drama. She was up to her eyeballs with drama.
“So it’s true? The reports on Hollywood Scoop and in the papers? The prenup’s really ironclad?”
“Locked up tight like a virgin in a nunnery.”
“The son-of-a-bitch.” He threw his napkin on the table and sat back in the booth.
“That seems to be the sentiment.”
“The least the asshole could have done was leave you something. You know, because he’s filthy rich? Christ, it isn’t like you didn’t devote your entire life to him. If nothing else, he should have given you something out of decency. What a selfish, egotistical prick,” Neil sneered.
“I didn’t want his money, but the dance studio…that definitely hurt.” God, it had hurt as surely as if he’d stabbed her over and over.
Neil reached across the table and rubbed her knuckles. “Did you still love him when this went down? Or more appropriately, do you still love him now?”
Mel’s grainy eyes ached. “I loved who he was as an artist, but I’m beginning to wonder what I’d find if you took away all the wide-eyed surprise because someone as famous as Stan fell in love with me. If what I felt for Stan was anything more than a crush on my childhood idol that I, in all my youth, mistook for real love, keeps me up at night lately. I’m not sure I understand the concept of love—or even what it means to find the ‘one’ everyone talks about. I thought I had, but Stan and I grew apart probably as early as five years into our marriage. I began to want to settle down, and Stan loved roaming the world. I kept hoping it would change, and it never did. So I settled because I took vows—and I took them seriously. The glue that held us together was our love of the craft. We just loved it differently.”
Neil’s eyes were distant. “You were definitely starstruck. Don’t think I don’t remember all those gushing phone calls after that first audition in New York for his Off-Broadway play.”
She remembered. Or more aptly, she remembered the gushing phone calls filled with screams of excitement when Stan began to woo her. The deep emotions she’d thought she’d experienced, clearly clouded by admiration for Stan, weren’t as easily summoned today.
“I just couldn’t believe someone like Stan could fall in love with someone as unlikely as me.”
Neil squinted in her direction. “Well, the rest of us could. You’re a beautiful woman. I hate to tell you this, but back in the day, not many rivaled your ass. It was mesmerizing, and Stan wasn’
t getting any younger.”
“Unlike in the here and now where it’s just lumpy.”
Neil’s anger, though she appreciated a good BFF high five for Stan’s ass-o-holic behavior, was a vibe she literally felt roll off him when he spat, “Lay off the self-flagellation with me, okay? This is me. Neil. It’s bullshit, and I’m not going anywhere until you see it’s bullshit. I’ve rented a furnished efficiency here in town, and I’ve got three months of nothing but time on my hands, with the occasional charity appearance back in L. A., till the show starts again after the New Year. So guess what we’re going to do?”
Her lips lifted in a smile. Neil was here. Finally, somebody had decided she needed a break. “I hope it involves canned frosting. Chocolate’s my favorite, but I’d settle for vanilla.”
Neil frowned at her. “Nope. It involves you getting your ass out of bed every day at five and running with me before you go to work. It also involves lots of vegetables and yogurt and the occasional trail mix. I need a workout partner to keep me on track while the show’s on hiatus.”
“So you’re telling me you couldn’t possibly maintain that rock-hard physique without my love and affection in the mix?”
“And your jiggly thighs.”
She sputtered on her water with lemon. “How can you afford to leave your life to save mine?”
“Because you’re my oldest friend, and I wasn’t doing anything important anyway.”
Neil’s aversion to long-term relationships had always baffled her.
He had so much to offer, and he understood a woman like no man she’d ever known. Yet he fell into one affair after the other like he was just biding his time instead of investing in a future that meant he wouldn’t be alone someday.
“Don’t you have a girlfriend, Romeo? Someone who’s going to be royally tweaked that you’re spending all this time with your ex-, now-fat, dance partner? I don’t need some angry, totally in shape and capable of kicking my ass twenty-three-year-old hunting me down because I stole her man. You do remember Mary Swarofsky, right? It was a good thing my knees were so strong or she’d have taken me out in the parking lot at school. I don’t have that in me these days. I just can’t duck as quickly.”
Neil laughed when he nodded. “I remember, and nope, no crazy bitches hell-bent on revenge. I’m free as a felon whose charges were dismissed.”
“How do you manage to keep all those hot L. A. women at bay? I don’t get it. You’re a good-looking guy. No, you’re a great-looking guy who’s on a hit TV show with every variety of woman imaginable drooling over you. But here you are, forty and single.”
Neil’s expression darkened for a brief second, leading Mel to believe maybe somewhere along the way, there had been someone and it had left him with a lingering ache, but then he shrugged casually. “Chalk it up to every cliché you can think of. I’m a ramblin’ man. I get bored easily, and let’s not forget, I’m probably as self-absorbed as Stan was. I’m just not as much of an asshole. I’d have left you a couple of bucks for all those years of devotion.”
Something didn’t ring true in his words. She didn’t doubt Neil was and always would be one of her best friends. But to up and leave L. A. when he could be taking on other choreographing jobs in his downtime from the show? That wasn’t like the Neil she knew.
“Okay, so now tell me the real reason you’re here. Why are you doing this?”
“Because I owe you, Mel.”
There was that fierce tone in his voice again. One she didn’t grasp the origins of. “Owe me?”
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve regretted not trying to keep you from marrying Stan since this all went down. Can’t sleep for the shit he’s put you through. Hell, I danced at your wedding and drank that Dom like I didn’t have objections. I did. Major ones.”
Mel ran her finger around the rim of the glass as she called up the memory. “I remember. You made a little bit of a scene at my shower, as I recall. But you were drunk—so I forgave you.”
Neil nodded, his face lined in misery. “I was drunk, but I wasn’t wrong. I knew it then, and I regret the hell out of it now. I should have made you listen to me.”
“No one could have stopped me, Neil. Not even my parents’ objections stopped me. I was an adult—even if I was only a newer one. I made my bed. Now I’m lying in it.”
“Well, you’re not going to lie in it while you consume kettle chips and cake batter.”
“Frosting.”
“Whatever. I’m here, and you have to go home and go to bed because five’s gonna come early, dancer,” he taunted, throwing some money on the table and lifting his perfect body out of the booth.
A rush of gratitude overwhelmed her and more tears stung her eyes. “I love you.”
“You love me right now, but tomorrow at five in the morning? Probably not so much. Move it, pretty lady.” He swatted her ass on their way out the diner’s door.
Mel giggled, feeling lighter than she had in months.
Well, her spirit felt lighter.
Her thighs still had a big question mark hovering over them.
But for the first time in months, she wanted to get out of bed in the morning. Maybe not at five, but she wanted.
Wanting anything other than the cover of her shame and pain was a start. That thing Maxine kept saying would happen just might have begun.
With his hand at her waist, Neil gave her a light pinch. “Hey, isn’t that your friend from the Village giving us the evil eye,” he asked as they made their way to Neil’s Corvette.
Mel glanced in the direction of Neil’s gaze and nodded up at him, shooting a twiddle of her fingers in Drew’s direction when they passed in the parking lot and avoiding the curious butterfly that had taken flight in her stomach at the sight of him.
But Drew only glowered at her. Someone was still holding a grudge about being turned down, reinforcing her first thought that no one turned down Mr. McPhee.
Neil opened the passenger door and poked his head in with a question on his face. “You like?”
Yeeeessss.
“No. No, I do not like. And he doesn’t like me either. He’s of the ridiculous mind-set that teaching boys to dance is a waste of time. He was really pissed when he found out I was his son’s ballroom instructor at the school. Too bad you couldn’t show him all the money in your bank account you earned, wasting your time, huh?” She pinched Neil’s lean cheek with affection.
He pursed his lips. “Yeah, too bad.”
Chapter 6
Dear Divorce Journal,
In light of sucking it up: five in the morning should be outlawed. In fact, there should be no numbers on a clock before, say, nine a. m.
The other day I hated everything. Now all of my hate’s directed at Neil. I’d forgotten what a Jane Fonda—ish exercise dick he is. And I don’t care if my caboose will eventually look like I bought the Booty Pop when I finally can fit into some skinny jeans. I. Hate. Neil. I also hate crunches and third position in ballet.
I’d also forgotten how much third position strains a girl’s flabby thighs. Oh, and there’s one more thing I hate. Drew McPhee.
Okay, maybe not him per se, but all of his luscious fantasticalness. Yes. That I hate. I mean, Jesus Christ and a tango—a girl says no to a date with a guy and then not only is he suddenly everywhere, but to make matters worse, he’s all she can think of? What kind of special hell is that?
Neil watched his best friend in the world—the only friend he’d ever almost completely trusted—wander off into the lit interior of Westmeyer a week after he’d arrived in Jersey, and gritted his teeth.
He loved Mel as much as he loved any family member. Maybe even more.
And he’d done something so unforgivable, she was now broken, penniless, and so sad, it hurt him to look at her for very long without wanting to find Stanislov Cherkasov and beat the Russian out of him for mutilating Mel’s life this way.
To see her with so little interest in a passion they’d shared and worked s
o many years to find fruition in, almost broke him.
But Stan would pay.
It would hurt.
That made Neil smile as he left Mel to make some phone calls.
* * * *
Mel limped toward her first class, attempting to hide the agony she was in, but her thighs just wouldn’t go down without a screaming match. Oh, God. How was she going to teach a class when she couldn’t move without squealing like a pig?
Damn the Neil-a-nator and his endless taunting about hip-hugging bikinis and muffin tops. The relentless bastard; she’d never said word one about her desire to be a cougar. She’d grown crazy-fond of her soft, doughy middle.
Clinging to her classroom door, she dug her fingers into the doorframe and groaned at the thought of warming the boys up with stretches.
“Did someone show off just a little too much doing the waltz last week?”
Mel’s head popped up.
Drew smiled down at her—smug and arrogant, a tool belt around his lean waist.
If her arm could move more than two inches above her hips without protest, she’d yank that hammer out of it and club him to death—spiky end up.
“You remembered the name of the dance. I’m impressed. Bet you can’t spell it.”
She’d managed to avoid him for a week now, but for the occasional passing in the hallways. Him with a sour expression of distaste on his gorgeous face when he walked past her classroom, and her counting the planks of wood on the dance floor to avoid his cranky.
Just because she’d said no to coffee didn’t mean they had to have a metaphoric dual at dawn each time they were in the general vicinity of one another.
And that was another problem altogether.
As vehemently as she’d denied the wish to date was as often as Drew’s handsome face and sinful grin popped up in her mind’s eye.
From almost the moment she’d said no, she’d done nothing but think about him.
He’d put some sort of voodoo curse on her—maybe made a Barbie Mel doll he stuck pins in every night to make her painfully aware she’d said no to him. He was sticking them in her unmentionables, too. Two nights ago, she’d awoken with some very impure thoughts about Drew McPhee and red-hot cheeks.
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