by Lexy Timms
“You’re not marrying her!”
“I’m not completely sure. It suddenly feels like I think I am!” Mel threw up her hands, shoving past him to grab a robe from the closet. His robe, because she didn’t even have one of her own, like she hadn’t had a dress, or shoes, or anything else for living this crazy fairytale life. She wrapped herself up, knotting the belt tight, armoring herself. “It’s not like you were even here. You ran away. Tonight, at dinner, she’s talking wedding plans and moving the date up to October. Are you aware how close that is? She was sitting there, shuffling it so such and such and so and so and who’s who can be in attendance!” She spoke the last few words in a passable imitation of Linda.
Brant’s mouth thinned to a hard line. “I didn’t exactly hear you objecting,” he pointed out, arms crossing, one hand still holding the suit jacket he’d just removed.
“You just sat there and nodded, agreeing with everything! What was I supposed to do? This be our wedding! Don’t you have the slightest interest in your own wedding?”
“Of course, I do!”
“Then say something! Be there tomorrow!”
“I can’t be there tomorrow!” Brant shot back. “I have plans, I have appointments.”
“Where? You’ve hated business, that’s what you told me. You said that was why you wouldn’t open your own office. You didn’t like the finances of it all. Now you’re what, some great stock market investor?”
“I have a responsibility to this family. When my father died, his property was left to me! Do you understand that? TO ME. Not to her!” He threw the suit coat at a chair and missed. “It was a fight. A fight he took with him to the grave, and once again I was the one used as a bargaining chip! She’s got her money, she made a fortune off her movies, but the bulk was his and now it’s mine. And I cannot and will not just piss it all away, especially when I no longer have the office!”
“You’re a surgeon, the best cosmetic reconstructive surgeon in a city known for it! You make a fortune every time someone grows an extra chin. How much do you need?”
Brant stopped. “What are you saying?” He was suddenly calm. A part of Mel’s mind tried to shut her up, to warn her not to push, but she couldn’t stop.
“That maybe it would be nice if you were part of this relationship? If you put as much effort into us as you do into whatever the hell you’re doing all day long.” She slumped into a chair. “Argh!! What do I know? Maybe I’m the one who’s all wrong here. Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t belong here at all.” She looked around the room, seeing the monstrous bed, with sheets that probably cost more than her clinic’s entire budget for one month. At carpet that required a groundskeeper to tend. At furniture that had names of designers attached. “I don’t belong here, Brant,” she whispered. “This…” she gestured to the room. “This isn’t me. I’m not here. I don’t belong here.”
She looked up at him then, only then. Saw the hardness in his face, the stiff way he held himself. If she reached out she could touch him, and yet he was a million miles away.
Say something.
Tell me I’m wrong.
But his silence spoke volumes.
Mel got up and walked from the room, padding through the house until she found the guest room where Maria had stayed.
She locked the door behind her, but it didn’t matter.
Brant didn’t follow.
Chapter 4
Mel heard a door close somewhere nearby. It was a big house, a huge mansion with a dozen bedrooms and as many bathrooms, but it seemed that the two rooms in the corner, the ones she and Maria used when they first arrived, were the only usable guest rooms in the place. Her explorations into the other rooms found several completely vacant, and a handful with sheets draped over the furniture, keeping things neat, she supposed, until the inevitable house party would call them into service.
Now knowing Linda, Mel figured a house party was inevitable. It would happen whether she liked it or not. She stared at her reflection in a mirror hanging in the room. She looked as miserable as she felt. She knew she was being slightly unreasonable but, somehow, she’d managed to lose her job, hurt Maria and then fix that hurt, lose her home in the jungle, embarrass herself, and then get engaged to man with a mother more famous than half the presidents—all this since a stranger showed up drunk on an airplane. And now she was living in a house that was probably bigger than her clinic in Belize! A house that supposedly belong to her future husband, even though his mother seemed to take more ownership of it.
Linda.
A mother-in-law who terrified her.
Linda had taken possession of the other guest room, the sunny yellow one that Mel had stayed in while Maria had lived there.
Which, of course, put her soon-to-be-mother-in-law uncomfortably close to her.
Mel lay there in the darkness, very much awake and wishing she’d taken her chances in one of the rooms with the dust sheets. With a sigh, she pulled at the pillowcase, finally flipping it over to find the cool side, and tried to train her medical brain on herself. Which honestly wasn’t all that hard to do.
What the hell had she been thinking?
She’d torn into Brant, walked out before he could say anything.
It wasn’t like her.
Her eyes fell on the chair by the window. It seemed strange, seeing it in the semi-darkness without Maria’s teddy bear. The girl was nearly thirteen now. Her birthday would be in a couple of weeks. She’d been so embarrassed when Mel had spotted the stuffed toy, but there was no way she could have left it in Belize. The unfortunate thing had been worn and ragged with years of hard loving, and was even singed a little on one ear, a victim of the fire, permanently scarred like its owner, though Maria was recovering now, and those scars Brant couldn’t erase would eventually fade. That bear had brought much comfort on the girl’s first trip to America, and had gone to the hospital with her, and then back home again, clasped tight in the girl’s arms.
I could use something to hold right now….
The problem was, she’d had something to hold. She’d yelled at him and then stomped out of the room.
Mel flopped over on her back and stared at the ceiling.
Why does everything have to change?
This room, for example. There was nothing here left to show that Maria had ever been part of this family. Absolutely nothing of her remained in this house. All her clothing, her toys, toiletries, all gone. Though it had taken two suitcases to send her home, double what she’d brought. But there had been many gifts lavished on the girl during her stay in L.A. There had been a strange up-side to the fame of a certain viral video, and that bear hadn’t been the only one Maria had carried home, though she’d donated most of the toys to the hospital before she’d returned to Belize.
And her room had been cleaned and made ready for the next charity case.
You know that’s not fair.
Of course she knew better, and chided herself for thinking such dark thoughts, but such things came back easily in the night. She shifted, trying to find a comfortable spot, wishing she hadn’t eaten such a rich dessert at dinner. Tension made it sit uneasily in her stomach now, and she curled on her side, holding a pillow for comfort, though her imagination couldn’t change it into Brant no matter how hard she tried.
She lay there, listening to a clock tick somewhere in the room, watching the darkness of the room, and counting off the minutes, each one an eternity.
It’s too quiet.
It was the sound, rather the lack of sound, that had made it impossible to sleep that first week. No animals prowled in the distance, mosquitos didn’t ram themselves against netting over her head, insects didn’t scream for mates throughout the night. Oddly, there’d been a time when those noises had kept her up at night, back when she’d first arrived in the jungle. Somewhere they’d become what home sounded like. And this was… L.A. Or a rather elite version of it.
She sat up and thought about walking through the mansion. There had
to be a dozen rooms, some of which she wasn’t even sure she’d seen. In her mind’s eye she walked through each, inspecting, analyzing.
She couldn’t bring to memory a single item of hers in any of them. She’d bought a few things since she’d gotten here: a robe she thought she’d never actually need, toiletries, a plant because she needed to see something green that wasn’t wallpaper.
Things that meant anything to her, though? There was nothing. No pictures, no mementos, no identity. She was in his house… no wait, her house. The home of Linda Phelps. Mel was a guest that refused to leave, the poor waif who’d been adopted, like Annie.
All that education and all those years of hard work and she’d come to this.
Well, it isn’t like you have nothing…
There were the boxes Doctors International had shipped from the clinic before she brought the entire organization to its knees. She’d stacked them in one of the guest rooms that didn’t see much use. She’d dismissed them as part of her old life.
Intent on finding something that was hers, Mel rose and realized she’d stormed off nearly naked and had nothing but her underwear. She’d thrown his robe somewhere, not wanting to have anything of his touching her skin. Good thing Linda wasn’t home at the time. Imagine being caught streaking…
Mel shuddered and pulled the blanket off the bed, wrapped it around herself and stole quietly through the sleeping house to the wrong room. And then another.
She stumbled upon her things almost by accident, assuming it was the wrong door after so many false starts, but checking each just in case. They were there. Three legal-sized boxes stacked neatly just inside the door. It wasn’t much for a lifetime of collection.
She popped the lid off the first one and found some of her clothing that she hadn’t taken on the plane with her. Gratefully, she slipped into a t-shirt and shorts. There were sandals in the bottom, but she left them there. A quick inventory showed that the box was all clothing.
The next box stopped her heart. On the top was a picture. Carmen smiled at her. SMILED! She didn’t even know Carmen could smile! Next to her was Joseph and his big toothy grin. Tina and Angelica were hamming it up in the front. Joseph was holding up a cardboard sign with brightly colored letters, awkward and handmade, reading, “WE MISS YOU DR. BELL!”
Mel stared at the picture for a long time. Tears flowed like warm rain, tears she couldn’t stop, not that she wanted to. To do so would be to lessen the gift, to refuse the impact of their love. So, she let the tears flow, and traced the faces of the people she knew.
She traced the faces of the only family she’d had for many years.
She didn’t hear the door open, didn’t hear Brant’s bare feet whisper across the carpet. Didn’t know he was there until he touched her. The hand on her shoulder felt so natural, so right, that it only belatedly occurred to her that he must have been looking for her. With a soft cry she turned, his arms curling around her. She clung to him and wept.
He held her for a long time, stroking her hair and whispering the sort of soothing sounds you would to a child frightened on a stormy night. Meaningless sounds that conveyed more than actual words; that, coupled with the soft touches on her hair, let her know she was safe. She was loved.
“I don’t understand anything anymore, Brant,” she whispered into his bare chest.
“What’s to understand?” he asked, holding her tighter. “I love you, you love me, we marry, live forever happy as two bonded clams.”
She laughed, though it sounded more like a desperate hiccup. “Brant.” She looked up at him. “Do you remember when you came to Belize? That first day?”
“I’m not likely to ever forget it.” He smiled and set her back away from him, just far enough to be able to look into her eyes, but still within the circle of his arms. “I still have nightmares about snakes in the bathroom.”
“Do you remember me that first day? What did you think of me?”
He scratched his head with exaggerated confusion, teasing. Being Brant. “Well, I was sleeping off a hang-over…”
“Brant, please. Be honest.”
Brant looked down at her for a moment. “I thought you were a stone-cold bitch,” he admitted.
Mel laughed. “At least you’re honest.” She bit her lip. “And I was a stone-cold bitch.”
“But you’re my stone-cold bitch.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
She laughed through the tears. “But now look at me,” she said and wiped at her eyes. “Look at me. I don’t recognize this person. I… I’m all… I can’t… Brant, trying to fit in here is tearing me apart. What do I do?”
He kissed her gently. “You go home,” he said simply.
Panic raced through her. “You want me to leave?”
He shook his head and then shrugged. “You go back to the jungle and I go with you. It’s simple.”
“Not that simple. More like incredibly complicated. I doubt Doctors International will take me—or you—now. I did kind of destroyed them.”
He caressed her cheek. “They’d be fools not to. Listen, if that’s where you’re happy, then that’s where we’ll go, you and me.”
“You and I,” she corrected him weakly, and with a small smile as hope melted into her heart. “You’re an educated man, you need to sound smart.”
“I do? In the jungle? Really?” With that he pounced on her, sending her tumbling into the box of clothing as she tried to evade him, screaming with laughter when he caught her foot and tickled it mercilessly.
And just like that the tears were gone.
As she scrambled away, all the while flinging bras and socks at him in a wild defense against further tickling, she noticed that he was actually wearing pajama pants. Apparently wandering naked in front of his mother was a one-time statement.
Maybe he was intimidated by the great Linda Phelps as much as she was.
It was an oddly comforting thought.
* * *
Mel glanced down and saw the picture at her feet, the one that had started the tears. Carmen smiling. This time she smiled, too, as she carefully laid the picture back on top of the other things in the box. There would be other days to deal with that.
Right now, she had more pressing matters.
Brant sat on the floor beside her and watched as she wiped at tears that had come from laughter. There was a bra dangling from his shoulder and he was sitting in a sea of panties. He looked… silly…and open. Like he was carefully paying attention. He was sitting there, ready to listen to her every word. Letting her decide what happened next.
She reached out to touch his cheek to make sure he was real. He kissed her palm, lips feathering across the skin in a way that sent knots into her stomach.
Damn, she loved him. Desperately.
Then she attacked.
Knocking him to the floor among the scattered clothing, she pounced on him, mouth taking his, her hand running along his bare chest. He felt good, real, solid. She smelled him, took him into her mouth, her nose her touch, filling her senses with him as deep as she could get.
She straddled him, tearing at the pajamas, ripping them along the seams. In her haste to get to him, she shredded the fabric. Her own clothing had no easier treatment. She tore the shirt over her head and flung it across the room. She wiggled down his body, giggling at the way his hardness rose when she did, and pulled off her shorts.
He lay before her, arms reaching for her breasts, stiff and waiting. She lowered herself onto him, impaling herself, and began to ride him hard and fast.
It wasn’t just lust or physical need. Though his body was beautiful, she needed him in her like never before. She had to take him, possess him, be possessed by him. She needed to become a part of him and he a part of her.
She rose above him, her hands clawing at his shoulders, his hands grabbing her breasts, the whole one, and the one with the scar tissue equally. She cried out more than once, not in orgasm, though that came and came again. She cried out in pain and release and joy.
She cried out for the man who loved her, who offered to give up… everything and accept her nothing in return, just to be with her. How did she get so lucky? What had she done to deserve him?
She arched and he moaned, and they froze, a glorious moment in shared ecstasy, and she saw him, his face contorted in agonizing bliss, and she felt a swelling in her heart, a rising passion turned to lust to love to inseparable oneness.
This would be the man with whom she would spend the rest of her life. This was the man she would give her life for. And in that moment, she vowed exactly that.
When she collapsed on him, breathing hard, sweaty and shaking, she felt something between a laugh and a sob burst from her, and for the third time that night she cried; this time, though, because it was all so beautiful.
“I think…” she gasped, “I think that maybe I could get used to this. And…” she hesitated a second, shy and knowing just how utterly stupid it sounded, “if I need to, I mean, I could probably get used to being wealthy. If I have to…”
Yet despite her self-deprecating laughter that came with such an outlandish statement, he took her seriously, recognizing that, yes, this was hard for her, in ways she’d never begun to imagine. So, when he answered, his words caused her heart to soar all over again. “Mel, I want you to be happy. If that’s a jungle hut, I’m okay with that. I would be willing to be a ‘real’ doctor again.”
Damn, I love him. How could I not love this man?
She placed a finger over his lips. “For right now, let’s just get through the wedding. No…” She looked up, glancing around the guestroom, seeing it really for the first time. “No, let’s do something even more immediate than that.” She sat up and swept her arm out, indicating the room. “I don’t see anything in here that makes me think of you.”
Truth be told, there was very little in the room that felt like anyone. The floors were a dark hardwood. The walls a creamy white, with a pretty little fireplace tucked in the corner. They lay on an exquisite white rug; impractical, but lush. Besides the boxes, there was barely anything in the room at all, save a deep armchair by one of the two tall windows, with a small table and lamp next to it. And the bed, of course; a rather ordinary thing with a plain headboard and a white coverlet over a queen-sized mattress.
