He shifted so that his face was turned directly into Melanie’s shoulder. It felt as if he could hide there. Her well-defined collarbone lined up with the bridge of his nose. His nose snuggled into the softness of the muscle just below, his lips on the first suggestion of the rise of her breast. She still rested her cheek atop his head and he could feel her hair sliding over his arms and bare back like a cloak of safety.
“I’ve had this idea since forever. A foodie mystery. Hercule Poirot meets, I don’t know, Julia Child. But every time I try writing, it just sounds contrived or pompous. I write, wrote for a living. And now I’m wondering if I should get my old job back.” Had Shirene already contacted Elric? Yes, he’d left New York and quit the magazine almost two weeks ago and she had a magazine to run. She’d probably hung up the phone with him and speed dialed Elric. No call back for other suggestions probably meant he’d leapt at the opportunity as predicted.
Melanie didn’t say anything. He’d seen her in the bookstore at Bainbridge. He knew she was an avid reader. Maybe she was thinking what an idiot he was to imagine he could jump from journalism to novel-length fiction.
“I tried opening with a punch like you suggested, but since I don’t know what I’m punching, it just comes out lame. Angelo and Russell cooked up this deal where I’m writing him a set of marketing press releases and website copy for the restaurant. A phased campaign. He’s thinking about a third restaurant but wants to build up some attention beforehand.”
“It is sidetracking you from your novel?”
Melanie smelled so spectacular. He ran one hand up her back beneath the t-shirt, again appreciating her deceptive strength. His other arm remained cinched about her waist to anchor her securely in his lap.
“I see. I am the one sidetracking your attention.”
“Perhaps tonight a little more than usual,” he admitted. His hands, his senses, his brain was reeling from the floodgates this woman had opened inside him. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“Nor I,” and she made a motion with her hips that took his breath away. Then she shifted out of his arms until she was once again sitting across from him. She stretched out her forever-long legs, the tail of her t-shirt hiding almost none of their glorious length—or much of anything else—and rested them on his knee.
He began massaging her feet.
“But that is not answering my question again, monsieur. And that will never do. Tell me of your story.”
Again the image of the lioness struck him. The deadly, powerful, beautiful queen of the savannah, with the power to transform herself into passionate lover, or abandon herself to the moment.
“That’s the problem. I don’t have one.”
“Okay, tell me of your characters.”
“They’re all bland, or flat, or… Hell, I don’t know!”
Melanie closed her eyes as he found a knot down in the arch of her foot. Her breathing picked up pace a bit, her breasts lifting enticingly against the loose, worn-thin Michael Kors t-shirt.
“Oh,” she breathed when the muscle had loosened up and he’d eased off. “If you ever want anything from me. Sex, personal shopping, someone to order takeout, just do that again.”
He’d have to remember that. He didn’t think it would be hard to recall. He was well into the other foot by the time she spoke again.
“Maybe your problem is like a runway show.”
He couldn’t imagine how, but was glad to listen. She could read the Wall Street Journal, all of it, and he’d be glad to listen to her voice. Especially if she was wearing nothing but that thin t-shirt.
“You are starting with the finished show.”
“Huh? What? No I’m not. I’ve got nothing finished. I haven’t written a single paragraph worth saving.” He forced his gaze up from her amazing breasts to her amused eyes.
“You are starting with the show. A designer never begins with a show. They start with a piece: a jacket, a dress, or…” she wiggled a toe against his ribs which tickled, “…or an emotion. Then another. It is only then that they can build an entire outfit, when they have found the unique qualities of all of those pieces.”
“Then you have a show.”
“Silly man,” she rubbed a foot along his leg, impossibly eliciting a response from his body that he’d have bet was long past recovery. “Then you have one outfit. A twelve-outfit show can easily take twenty or thirty outfits to discover, for some designers it can take hundreds to put together a twenty-piece fall line. Then, it must all be in the right order. Do you write reviews?”
“Sure.”
“Non! You write about a restaurant, you set it in a city, perhaps a neighborhood. Then you tell the story of its ambience. You might give a hint of a dish as a tease, but you do not describe the whole dish at once. That is for later, to be discovered by the reader as they wind through your review. That is why I like your reviews so much.”
Josh had to fight down the distinct urge to preen a bit at the compliment. However he could see what she was after and it made sense. He went to speak, but Melanie was on a roll, sitting up, leaning forward, her feet now on the floor.
“You think I just walk. Any girl can just walk. It is all most girls do is walk. Look, I show you.”
Oddly, with this different kind of impatience she didn’t slip back into New Jersey, but actually back into her model-world French. No, it wasn’t impatience or anger. That’s why. It was excitement.
She jumped to her feet. “This walk. The Grand Pas, ‘Big Stride.’ This one. Watch the walk, not me.” She set off across the living room with a hard punch that made the t-shirt flounce and bounce in an interesting way, but did look a bit ridiculous.
“Or this one!” Her abrupt tone forced his attention wholly onto the walk. A purposeful stride, more appropriate to a power suit at a Fortune 100 meeting than a t-shirt in a condo.
She continued back and forth, showing him a dozen walks or more, each so unique he could still identify them, even if he didn’t know how she did it. Each as unique as a character. She started giving them names. Veronica was practically a streetwalker. Jessie clearly wore a tennis skirt. Razz would be in leather and chains and was so smokin’ hot that he wouldn’t mind running into her a time or two.
“This one. Her name is Shelley. A new fashion editor I have only met a few times. She is a powerful woman, if a little unsure of herself. She shows that to no one. But there is a tiny slice of it that only the right man can see, that least bit of vulnerability.” And she walked away from him with a near perfect, almost military confidence. Three steps from the front door, she half turned to look back over her shoulder, but didn’t quite finish the turn. Just that flash of uncertainty totally changing the character. An eyeblink and he would have missed it. If she hadn’t told him, he’d certainly have caught the feeling though not why he felt it.
Melanie stood at the far side of the room, her fists on her hips. “Oui?”
“Oui,” she was absolutely right. He was trying to write a novel. He needed to write a character first, after that maybe a scene.
Then Melanie came walking straight toward him rather than up and down the length of the room. She walked with a perfect awareness of how the t-shirt skimmed the top of her thighs, shrugged the t-shirt off one shoulder at just the right moment to jack his libido through the roof. Head down. Just enough tilt for her face and chest to be wholly hidden by her swinging hair, forcing all attention to her legs and hips. She let each leg carry her weight in turn and her hips completely relax. It caused them to sway in a way that was making him sweat.
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 crap, Melanie! Who the hell 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 screwed.
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 get the hell back to New York where no one knew her. Declare it as one night of marvelous sex 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 ass—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?” Fuck! 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 own damn 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, damn 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. God 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!” Gods 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 sex first thing, 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?
“What 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.”
Where Dreams Are Written Page 14
