The Touch of Love

by Unknown

  He pulled off the road, still shaking from the close call. He could have killed the innocent driver of that car! He had to get control of himself, stop painting pictures of Melody on the telephone with a man named Jeff. Smiling and laughing. Excited.

  Melody, her head thrown back, her mouth open on a gasp as Scott touched her throat with his lips. Melody, soft and wild under him, her skin glowing with firelight as he possessed her. His name, whispered on the night air. Melody's whisper.

  Chapter Six

  Melody wanted to go to Hawaii to meet Robin, but she hesitated to take the baby with her. Scott had had trouble with Robbie on the ferry. If the baby got seasick, he might well get airsick, too.

  Scott. When would his name on her mind turn to something ordinary, instead of leaving her with this trembling emptiness?

  Melody wanted to meet Robin in Hawaii, but could not accept the idea of leaving Robbie behind with Mrs. Winston. The housekeeper had not been very much of a mother substitute for Melody and Robin. Maybe Robbie was too small to notice, but he had already lost his mother. He needed stability.

  But to tell Robin about Donna's death on the telephone-

  The baby started screaming just before noon the day after Scott left. Melody realized that her concept of time was changing, that life was organized into before Scott came, when Scott was here, and after Scott left. He was the lover in her dreams, in her songs.

  Jeff turned up just as Robbie started screaming.

  You drive, she said as he walked through the door. To the hospital.

  He looked startled, but recovered quickly. Yes, ma'am, he said and he got her there quickly.

  A night in the hospital and she had Robbie back, but with the caution, He's got a hernia in his groin. It's slipped back into place now, but watch him. It may have to be operated on, but we'd like to wait until he's at least a month older.

  Robin called the next night, the telephone ringing in the middle of the night. Melody stumbled downstairs to grab it before it woke the baby. Jeff, in the room that had been Scott's, slept through the noise.

  Her twin's voice was vibrant over the miles. What is it? Don't tell me they've messed up on the dates for the recording studio.

  You're in Hawaii? Why had she not practiced the words, ways to tell him? Do you know what time it is here? When did you get in? Donna's dead. The woman you loved is gone.

  > Just now. He was laughing at her confusion, not repentant for interrupting her sleep. Just cleared customs now and got my cruising permit. What's up, Melody?

  In the end she said it bluntly, because she knew no soft way. She blurted, Donna Alexander's dead.

  Nothing. He did not say a word. She gripped the receiver, wished she could touch him, see him. How could she have broken the news to him so brutally.

  Oh, God, he whispered. No. Please, no.

  Robin, there's a baby. Your baby.

  He did not hear. He whispered, Donna-

  She remembered when they had been twelve years old and he had tried to keep a trapped squirrel in captivity. It had died. She remembered Robin's face, his eyes just before he stormed out of the house. He had been gone six days. Everyone had searched. Mrs. Winston. The police. Even Amanda and Charlie, called home from a night club engagement in France.

  She gripped the receiver tighter. Robin? I-look, what city are you in? Where in Hawaii? What marina? I'll come there. I-

  No! He sounded angry, but she knew it was not anger.

  Robin! Listen to me! Don't go off and-the baby-this baby needs you. Your baby. Donna's-

  She heard a choked sound, then nothing but the hollow sound of her own telephone. She hung up quickly, hoping he would call back, knowing he would not. He needed time. Why was it that they could never share their worst hurts with each other?

  Don't worry, she told the baby softly as she fed him. He'll come. And ... even if he doesn't, I'll look after you.

  Jeff knew nothing about babies and had no intention of learning, despite Melody's threat that she would tell his next girlfriend what a rotten baby-sitter he was. So Melody got Mrs. Winston to baby-sit while she was away at the radio station. Monday she went through Island Time in a fog, but on Tuesday she got hold of herself, and by Thursday she managed most of her time on the air without thinking about Scott.

  Jeff made up for his inadequacy as a baby-sitter by overhauling her synthesizer while she was at the station, getting rid of an annoying buzz that occurred whenever she tried to lay a percussion track over bass guitar. He was the soundman in Robin's band, and what he didn't know about synthesizers hadn't been discovered yet.

  He was exactly the kind of guest she had always liked. If he was hungry, he fed himself or went out to a restaurant. When he wasn't playing with her equipment, he was reading, technical magazines and horror novels alternately. When she was restless and unable to work, he talked her into getting Mrs. Winston in for the evening and going out dancing at the hotel.

  But Scott was haunting her daydreams, giving her nightmares. She was fighting a losing battle trying to talk herself out of the infatuation. It had been too long since she had taken a romantic interest in a man. She had been too long in an emotional vacuum, with only the fantasies in her music room. It hadn't been Scott, but her own needs exploding. It could have been any attractive man.

  She did not believe her own arguments. There were attractive men all around her. Jeff was attractive, although she had never felt anything but comradeship with Jeff. There was a man in the advertising department at the radio station, too, tall and handsome and single, yet he left her cold.

  She was in limbo, unable to work or think straight. She told herself it was Robin she was waiting for. He would call, or he would come, and until then she could not make any plans for her future. She wasn't sure why she needed to plan, but she felt a desperate hunger for something to hang onto.

  She stumbled through the days. Reality was the hours in the sound room, letting her feelings loose on the music. Reality was holding Robbie in her arms. Everything else was a haze, but she had control. At the radio station, she made her voice light and warm and friendly. At home, she tended to Robbie's needs, fed him and changed him and sang to him. She listened to Jeff talking, nodded and murmured to keep his words flowing.

  Would Robin never call, never come? Two weeks, now three? Three weeks, Scott had said. That was the day he brought Robbie to her. Three weeks and he had to be on board his ship. The days had passed and she had counted. Scott would be there now, on his ship, and she had only a hazy picture of a formless ship in the midst of the ice, Scott at the bridge.

  She wished Jeff would go so she could stop pretending to be cheerful. Then, suddenly, he did leave, and it was worse, because she had no one now to distract her from her thoughts.

  Before Jeff left, he caught her chin with his long fingers and tipped her face up, examining it carefully. Want to talk about it? he asked.

  She shook her head. She should have known Jeff would see that she was disturbed, but talking about it would only make it seem more real. Infatuation, not love. It would go away if she tried hard enough, waited long enough.

  He said simply, If you do need to talk, you know where to find me.

  I know. Thanks, she whispered.

  He kissed her cheek and was gone, leaving her alone with Robbie and her worries about Robin, her memories of Scott.

  Mrs. Winston left for a holiday in Vancouver with her husband, so Melody took the baby with her, playpen and all, to the radio station. Scott would not like that. She shrugged that thought away angrily, but the next day she got Bev to look after Robbie. Robin Scott. Donna had named her baby after the two most important men in her life, her lover and her brother. For Melody, it meant that every time she said the baby's name, she would be haunted.

  ***

  She waited by the telephone the next Wednesday. He had not said he would call, but he had said phone calls once a week, and it was a Wednesday when he called before. She spent the whole week telling hersel
f she didn't care if he called, and then Robin came home and she really did manage to forget about Scott for a while.

  At first, Melody thought Robin was reaching for his baby only because it was the child of the woman he had loved. If so, the infant soon wound its own spell over the man.

  I'm going to find a house, he told Melody, young Robbie held against his shoulder for a burp. Come on, Robbie. One big burp for your dad. Not an elaborate house, though. Something that feels like home. Like this.

  There's this house, offered Melody. She watched father and son, seeing Robin's dark eyes echoed in his child, his slight, fine-boned figure. She could share the work of bringing the baby up. This house is as much yours as mine, and there's surely room. Flying from here to LA is easy, you can make connection in Vancouver. You could-

  He shook his head, not smiling now. No, my dear twin. This is your haven, not mine. I like these islands, but I probably wouldn't come back at all if it weren't that you were here, making this place feel like home. If I lived here with Robbie, you know how it would be. He frowned at his son and said somberly, She wouldn't marry me, you see, because she was certain that a performer couldn't make a home. That I'd be off and away all the time, always leaving her, and she'd be more lonely with me than without. I told her-I promised her I wouldn't let it be like that, that we could make a home, a real home, even though I had to travel to perform. But she needed a home, you see. She'd lost her parents before she could remember, been a foster child, had a foster father who was always away at sea.

  Melody did not know what to say. She thought she understood how poor Donna must have felt. Robin was so passionate, so effervescent, and so impulsive. A woman might worry that he would chain her, and then disappear.

  Scott would have shared Donna's childhood. If it had made Donna insecure, it seemed to have made Scott strong. Had it also made him wary of loving and families?

  Robin said, I promised her that. She didn't believe me, that it could work, but-Our child will have the home I would have given Donna if she'd lived. He blinked, hard, and his jaw went rigid. Melody knew he did not want her sympathy to erode his self-control.

  He said, Somewhere near Los Angeles, I think. Or at least somewhere close to a major airport where I can get to LA in a couple of hours. I'll find a housekeeper. Someone who's good with kids. A wife was what he needed, she thought, but with the shadow of Donna in his eyes, she could not say so.

  He said, I'll be there every night I can. He caught her eyes and held them. Melody, I can't keep Robbie here. I'd take advantage of you, and you'd tie up the rest of your life with my child. It's time you reached out for your own life. I'm not going to give you excuses to hide away.

  What would he think if she told him that her life was growing its own complexities? People talked about twins lives running in parallel, but this was ridiculous! Robin, with a child he had unknowingly fathered. And Melody-

  I've got two weeks, he said, moving away with Robbie. I'm going to put Robbie to bed and-

  For two weeks? She had missed something here.

  He smiled. No, you idiot, for a nap. Then I'll get on the phone and organize things, get real estate agents looking, get something fixed up temporarily. I'll take Robbie to LA with me, to my apartment. Someone to look after him while I'm working.

  She said, The studio's booked a week from now.

  Practice sessions. Robbie can come to them. He grinned and she laughed, thinking it a good thing that she had been taking the baby into her music room, getting him used to the sounds. He added, Not to the recording sessions.

  The twins stared at each other silently across the room. He had always been so much a part of her life, but as adults they had both stood alone, going their separate ways, Robin into the heart of the music scene, and Melody staying on the fringes, needing quiet and order.

  Finally she nodded. She was going to miss Robbie, but she could not cling to him now that Robin was back. Two weeks, she echoed. I'll have the songs ready for you next week in LA.

  You'd better. Are they good?

  Wait and see. They both knew she would not share them until the work was finished, even though there was little to do now but the final polishing. See you in LA in two weeks, she whispered, and although he did not leave for two more days, that was their real farewell.

  She should have been in the music room that evening, but the soundproofing would block out the telephone if it rang. Wednesday night. Scott. She was right beside the telephone when it rang, sitting in one of Charlie's big chairs in the living room.

  How's Robbie? he asked.

  Fine. She settled into the deep chair, her legs curled up. Robin's putting him to bed right now. The doctor says the hernia looks like it won't need surgery.

  And Robin? Your brother? He sounded as if he were close, perhaps only a block away.

  Good. He's sad about Donna. And he wants to meet you, to ask about Donna. He and Robbie are going to LA in a couple of days. She was going to miss them terribly. She would be following soon, but she knew she would not feel this sense of family in the madhouse of the practice sessions for Robin's new album.

  I'll be back on the tenth of June, said Scott. For two weeks. We'll get together then.

  We? Did he mean to come to her, or just to see Robin and the baby? She stared at the library of music on the far wall and told herself that this was her life. Stable, her hideaway on the islands. She had no room for what happened to her with Scott. Hadn't she come here to find herself, to concentrate on writing songs?

  And the music? he asked, as if he sensed the motion of her thoughts.

  Almost done. Next Wednesday she would be in Los Angeles with the tapes. She almost said it, told him what hotel so he could call there. Then she stopped herself, afraid she would be taking too much for granted, assuming he wanted to know her movements. In the end she changed her words to, What's up in the Arctic?

  Ice. His voice was wry. Lots of ice. We've spent the whole week fighting it.

  How do you break ice? Do you just ram into it?

  He explained how the ship rode up onto the ice until the ice knife under the water broke through. Sometimes the knife under the bow wasn't enough. Yesterday Jonathan Cartier had jammed in the ice. Scott described how he had got clear by rocking the ship, pumping water from port to starboard tanks inside the ship.

  Actually, he said, I pushed buttons and talked a lot. The engineers did the work. Lots of noise, he added with a laugh. I slammed the throttles from full ahead to full astern so many times, the chief engineer was ready to come up on the bridge and have my head.

  Five minutes. It was over so soon. Then she was alone with her thoughts and a clear image of Scott sitting across from her, as if they had talked for hours.

  Why did he call? Once he had called someone named Caroline from her house. Did he call her now, from the frozen north? Melody hugged herself, wishing she knew where this was going. It was one thing to write wild, emotional songs, but she liked to know where her life was headed. Maybe it was all the years of their childhood, of rambling from backstage room to backstage room, but when Charlie and Amanda parked the twins in Queen Charlotte, Melody had vowed she was going to keep control of her own life after that. She'd slipped, getting caught up in the music scene when her own songs started to sell, trying to keep up with the madhouse of the recording industry, of Peter with his demands that she fit the image of a popular song writer and the fiancée of an upwardly-mobile talent agent.

  Upwardly mobile! God, she hated that phrase. It summarized all of her agonies in Los Angeles. No matter how hard she had tried, it had never quite worked. Thank God for Jeff, who had shown her what she was doing with a few critical words.

  She shivered, wishing Scott were there to light the fire for her. She was scared. Things were happening. She was losing control, and she knew that she could not hide from the changes. She was not sure what she wanted, but knew that when Scott Alexander had walked into her home with a baby in his arms, her life had changed. It
was never going to be the same again.

  Chapter Seven

  Melody stayed to watch the recording sessions. Robin was surprised, but did not ask her why. Peter was less restrained.

  As your agent, I'm glad to see you're coming to your senses, he told her as they stood together in the back of the control room. She was wearing jeans and a bulky sweater, and he had already told her that she should dress up more, you never knew when you might run into a newsman. Now he said, You should be here until the recording's done. Friday I'm booking the Chapels for a party. You'll-

  No. She looked at him, tall and thin and nervy, his blonde hair carefully waved across his forehead, his eyes watchful. No, Peter. I'm not doing any publicity stuff. Robin's the performer, not me.

  He was gearing up to argue. He was a good agent, and she knew she would be crazy to leave his agency, but he was not going to dominate her life. She cut off his words quickly. Peter, I'll do interviews, even a talk show while I'm here if you really think it's important, but I'm not going on display with rounds of parties and angling for gossip columns. She shook off his frown and said firmly. I hate cocktail parties and I loathe publicity dinners and I won't do it.

  He opened his mouth to protest and she snapped, Accept it, Peter. It was an old argument with them by now, but one she was determined never to lose again. Now stop talking and let me hear what's happening with this song.

  She turned away and forgot Peter as she watched Robin and his band turning her poetry into what had to be a hit song when it was released. Even the cynical soundman had a moody look in his eyes as he twirled the dials in the control room. As she listened, she could almost pretend that this was everything, that she would walk from here back to her island retreat and into her music room where the world could not invade.

  She left in the third week of recording, taking a jet from Los Angeles to Vancouver where she retrieved her van from the parking lot. It was time for her to deal with what was happening to her.