THREE
MELODY hadn’t seen a photograph of the hotel; with most of the ones she had tried being full for Christmas it had been a case of beggars couldn’t be choosers. Now, as Zeke pulled up in front of the somewhat shabby exterior of the building situated in a side street off the Bayswater Road, Melody took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said painfully, ‘I really am. But one day you’ll see this was for the best. Thank you for meeting me today but I think it’s better if we communicate only through our solicitors from now on.’
Zeke said nothing, exiting the car and walking round the bonnet to help her out, his dark face grim.
It was a less than elegant emergence onto the pavement due to her damaged legs and as unlike her normal natural poise as was possible to imagine. Knowing Zeke’s appreciation of grace and style, Melody cringed inside, before telling herself it was all to the good. This was reality, and if he was repulsed by her clumsiness it only underlined the sense of what she had been saying: that they had no possible future together.
She glanced at his face as he shut the passenger door, but the inscrutable features could have been set in stone and revealed nothing. When he extracted her case she reached out a hand for it but he ignored the action, taking her arm as he steered her towards the hotel’s glass doors.
Once inside the lobby—which wasn’t half as bad as she’d expected from the exterior of the building—she said firmly, ‘Thank you,’ as she extended a hand for the case once more. ‘I can take it from here.’
‘Sit down.’ He deposited her on one of the plump sofas the lobby held as he spoke. ‘I’ll check you in and get the case sent to your room and then we’re going to lunch. Is there anything in the case you need before it disappears?’
Melody shook her head. Her medication was in her handbag. ‘But I don’t think—’
‘Good. Don’t think,’ he said with grim sarcasm. ‘For once in your life just listen.’
She stared at his back as he walked over to the reception desk and muttered several words under her breath. Her head was spinning, her legs were hurting and her back was aching like mad. When she’d been cocooned in her little room at the hospital her proposed plans for this momentous day—her emergence into the big bad world once more—had seemed straightforward. The doctors had warned her it would be tiring after the weeks spent in bed or sitting in the chair in her room, and she had imagined taking a cab here and then retiring for most of the day and using Room Service if she wanted anything to eat. She hadn’t expected to feel quite so weak and wiped out, though, but perhaps that was due more to seeing Zeke than her physical condition.
He was back in a couple of minutes. ‘All taken care of,’ he said with annoying satisfaction, ‘and they’re serving lunch in the restaurant in an hour so I’ve asked the concierge to park the car. They have a few spaces reserved for staff but they were very helpful. Very helpful indeed.’
She didn’t doubt it. Money had a way of smoothing out such issues and Zeke was always generous.
‘I thought you’d prefer to eat here than elsewhere,’ he continued, sitting down beside her. ‘You look tired. And I’ve ordered coffee while we wait.’
Melody felt herself bristling. How dared he take over like this, and what did he mean by saying she looked tired? That she looked haggard and unattractive? Well, she didn’t need him to tell her that. Her mirror did a perfect job every morning. She hadn’t slept well since the accident and when she did nod off her dreams were mostly nightmares.
After glaring at him she turned to look out of the window next to the sofa. Big fat flakes of snow were settling on the ground and already rooftops were covered with a glistening mantle. It was going to be a white Christmas for sure. Last year they had spent the holiday skiing in Switzerland, returning to their wonderful little lodge each night and spending the evenings wrapped in each other’s arms in front of the blazing log fire drinking hot toddies. She had been due to be involved in a big production in the West End in the New Year, likely to run for a good while, and life had been sweet. They had talked about having a family one day, of course, but not for years. Most dancers had to finish their career in their mid-thirties and Zeke had been content to wait until she was ready.
As though he could read her mind, he said quietly, ‘Looks like we wouldn’t have to chase the snow this year like last. It’s come to us instead.’
‘Except there’s not much skiing down the Bayswater Road,’ she said as lightly as she could, knowing her days of such sports were over. ‘Not unless you want to be taken away by men in white coats.’
Zeke chuckled, and then almost immediately his smile died and he leant forward. ‘Talk to me, Dee,’ he urged, unconsciously using his own private nickname for her. ‘Tell me how you feel, what this is really about. I need to know—you can surely see that? This excuse about not feeling the same isn’t you.’
It was the truth and it wasn’t. And deep down she had known she would have to explain herself fully for Zeke to accept they were finished. She had hoped by shutting him out and refusing to let him visit her in hospital his resentment and manly pride would overshadow his feelings for her, but Zeke wasn’t so shallow as that. At the same time she knew how he felt about sickness. In the years with his mother, before she had left, he’d been brought up in the most squalid of surroundings, often rubbing shoulders with drug addicts and down-and-outs, meths drinkers and the like. It had left him with an almost pathological resolve to take care of his own body and he couldn’t understand people who were careless about their health. Her perfectly honed, supple dancer’s body and extreme physical fitness had formed a large part of her attraction for him; she knew that although he had never spelt it out in so many words. And now…
Choosing her words carefully, she looked him full in the face. ‘Zeke, will you listen to me? Really listen and not interrupt until I’ve finished? Will you do that?’
He nodded, his face tense. ‘If you tell me the truth.’
‘You asked me earlier if I still love you and the answer to that is of course I do.’ At his sudden movement she held up her hand, palm facing him. ‘You promised,’ she reminded him.
He settled back, his ebony eyes intent on hers. ‘Go on.’
‘But now, after the accident, my loving you or you loving me is not enough. From a little girl all I’ve ever wanted to do was dance. It was my life. I was totally dedicated to and disciplined by the demands of ballet up until I grew too tall, but as long as I could carry on dancing I didn’t mind too much. You know how fierce the competition is within the entertainment business, but it never caused me a moment’s doubt because I had to dance. It was as simple as that. And now that is over.’
The waiter arriving with coffee interrupted her, and Melody waited until he had bustled off before she went on. ‘I know I could have been killed that day, and I am grateful to be alive, but I can never go back to the way things were. I’m all at sea at the moment, I admit it, but one thing I do know is that if I don’t want to drown in a sludge of self-pity I have to make a new life for myself far away from the world I’ve embraced for the last decade. And Zeke…’ She paused, not knowing how to say it but then deciding there were no right words. ‘You’re the embodiment of that world. You love it; it’s food and drink to you; it’s your whole life.’
He again made a movement to speak and was stopped by her raised hand. ‘But that’s only part of why I have to leave. You’re surrounded by women who see you as the means of their getting on in the business. Beautiful women—talented, young, ambitious—and we’ve laughed in the past at what some of them will do to get your attention. I’ve been there when you’ve been blatantly propositioned. I know how far some of them will go. I didn’t like it then and I like it still less now.’
She was trembling and took a sip of her coffee, needing the caffeine. The next part was harder to say.
‘Then I could be everything you need. Now I can’t. We have to be honest here, to face facts. You have a crippled wife. You—the head of the entertainment business. When we would attend functions and dinners and walk the red carpet and so on I’d be hobbling along beside you. There might even come a day when you’d be pushing me in a wheelchair. Or I’d stay at home, watching from afar, wondering which starlet was trying her luck that night. I’d turn into someone I don’t want to be and in turn you’d change. I don’t want us to end like that. Far better a clean break now, while we still care about each other and have good memories to look back on.’
He was staring at her as though she were mad, and now nothing could have stopped his next words. ‘This is rubbish—absolute rubbish,’ he bit out with controlled fury. ‘This isn’t you and me you’re talking about here. What we have is stronger and better than the people you’ve painted. And these supposedly beautiful women you’ve gone on about—what are you if not beautiful? Inside and out?’
‘But I’m not, Zeke, not any more.’ She was as white as the snow outside the window but determined to make him see. ‘I have scars—angry, red, puckered things that are gouged into the skin you used to say was like honey-coloured silk—and they’ll always be there. Oh, they might fade some, but they’ll still be ugly until the day I die. This isn’t going to go away.’
‘I don’t care about your scars. Only inasmuch as they affect your perception of yourself,’ he added softly.
‘You haven’t seen them.’ She stared at him, dying inside.
‘And whose fault is that? When I asked to see them you went hysterical and I was thrown out of your room and warned not to mention it again. You’d show me when you were ready, they said. But the next thing I know I’m warned visiting you at all is doing you more harm than good and if I care about you I have to give you a breathing space. Well if the “breathing space” resulted in these damn fool ideas you’ve got I should have carried on visiting. I love you, dammit—every part of you, scars and all—and I resent being labelled as some pathetic bozo who will bed any women on offer. That’s not who I am and you know it.’
Two spots of colour burnt in her ashen face now as her own temper rose. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘That’s exactly what you said.’ He was breathing hard and still furiously angry. ‘Okay, let me ask you something. What if it had been me in that accident? What if I’d been the one having the operations and months in hospital? What if it was my legs? Would you be looking around for someone else?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t.’
‘Then why the hell do you think I would? And what makes your love so damn superior to mine? Because that’s what you’re insinuating, however you dress it up, and I resent that.’
‘You’re twisting my words,’ she said helplessly, on the verge of tears. ‘I never said my love is better than yours.’
Zeke looked at her trembling lips, at the bruised blue shadows under her eyes from where she hadn’t slept and her too-slim frame where the weight had dropped off her. Swearing softly, he pulled her into him, careless of where they were. ‘Don’t cry,’ he muttered thickly. ‘I don’t want to make you cry. I want to love you and care for you and make it all better, but you’re driving me mad, woman. Stark, staring mad. I’ve nearly gone insane the last few weeks. I even resorted to coming to the hospital at night and sitting outside in the car park just to be near you. Crazy, eh? But that’s how it’s been.’
Melody relaxed against him for a moment—but only a moment. Far from reassuring her, his words had hammered home the fact that Zeke wasn’t seeing things clearly. He couldn’t make it all better—no one could—and the words he’d spoken earlier, about being in it for the long haul, were at the forefront of her mind. He felt staying with her, supporting her, protecting her, was his duty. And duty wasn’t a bad thing, even if there were folk these days who regarded it as a four-letter word; she just didn’t want it to be the reason for their marriage to continue. She couldn’t live with pity. His pity.
Drawing away from him, she made herself finish her cup of coffee. After a moment or two he did the same, but the ebony eyes remained fixed on her delicate features as he drank. ‘This is partly to do with your grandmother,’ he said after a little while. ‘You know that, don’t you? A damn big part too.’
Caught unawares, she shot her gaze to meet his. ‘What on earth are you talking about? My grandmother has been dead for years.’
‘I know she brought you up and you loved her,’ he said tersely, ‘but she wasn’t exactly a fan of the male of the species, from what you’ve told me. She never let you forget that your father walked out on your mother, and your grandfather’s affairs were mentioned every day. Isn’t that right?’
‘Every day is an exaggeration.’
‘Not much of one. She drip-dripped the poison of her own bitterness for years. You know she did. She couldn’t get over the fact that he left her in the end, even though she’d put up with his roving eye most of their marriage.’
Melody lifted her soft chin and glared at him anew. ‘And why should she have forgiven him? He was a hateful man. I’d have taken him to the vets for a certain operation if he’d been my husband,’ she declared stoutly.
A flicker of a smile touched Zeke’s mouth. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said gravely. ‘But the truth is her jaundiced view did some damage and made you very insecure in certain areas. Admit it. It’s the truth, Dee, and you know it. Face it.’
‘I’ll do no such thing.’ How dared he criticise her grandmother like this? ‘And my father and grandfather’s actions have absolutely nothing to do with this situation.’
‘It isn’t a situation, Dee,’ Zeke said grimly. ‘It’s our marriage and, regardless of what you say, their unfaithfulness has a huge bearing on how you see it and me. Did you ever expect us to make old bones together? Did you? Deep, deep inside, in your subconscious? Because I don’t think you did. I never have. But that didn’t matter because I intended to prove you wrong and I wasn’t going anywhere. I’m still not.’
He was confusing her, muddling everything up, and it wasn’t fair. She had prepared herself for the inevitable over the past torturous weeks, steeling her heart against any hope, and she couldn’t go back to the terrible time just after the accident when she hadn’t known what to do. That had been worse than after she’d realised leaving Zeke was the only way she could retain her dignity and who she was in the future. She couldn’t watch him slowly fall out of love with her as their life together went wrong. Their work and colleagues, their friends—everything was tied up in a world in which she had no part now. The very thing that had joined them was now the gulf forcing them apart. The ultimate irony.
‘I just know I can’t do this any more, Zeke,’ she said wearily. ‘Us, our marriage. I can’t.’
The entrance doors to the hotel opened as she finished speaking and a young Japanese couple came in with two small and clearly very excited children, gabbling away in their own tongue. The little girls were so cute in their matching red coats and hats that in spite of how she was feeling Melody had to smile as she caught their mother’s eye.
‘It’s the snow,’ the young woman called across in perfect English. ‘They so wanted snow at Christmas, so Santa and the reindeers could land their sleigh here and feel at home.’
‘That’s very important,’ Melody agreed, glancing at the little tots as she added, ‘And don’t forget to leave some carrots for those reindeers, will you? They get very tired delivering so many presents in one night.’
The children giggled; whether they understood her or not Melody wasn’t sure, but as she turned back to Zeke he was watching her with unfathomable eyes.
‘And what about the family we said we’d have one day?’ he said quietly. ‘Where do children fit into this future of yours?’
She looked down at her hands, letting the heavy wings of soft strawberry-blond hair hide her face from him. ‘They—they don’t,’ she whispered, knowing if she didn’t have babies with Zeke she wouldn’t have them with anyone. Just the thought of another man touching her was unthinkable. She was Zeke’s and she’d always be his—body and soul—even though she couldn’t be with him.
‘I see.’ His voice was low and tight. ‘So you’ve made the decision on my behalf. How kind. And am I allowed to protest at losing the chance of fatherhood?’
‘You don’t have to lose it. You could have children with someone else.’ She still didn’t look at him.
‘If it wasn’t for the fact we’re in a public place I’d tell you exactly what I think of that little gem,’ he ground out with hot, fuming fury. ‘Do you seriously imagine anyone else could take your place? Do you? Hasn’t anything I’ve said in the past meant something? I fell in love with you. I don’t want anyone but you. Not ever. Listen to what I’m saying, damn it.’
She had never seen him so angry when she made the mistake of glancing up. His face was that of a stranger—a dangerous, outraged stranger—as black as thunder, and his words were underlined with the same furious energy.
Her heart threatened to give way but somehow she kept her voice steady when she said, ‘This is what I was trying to avoid by not seeing you. I don’t want to fight with you, Zeke, but I mean what I say and you won’t change my mind. If you want to forget about lunch and leave now that’s fine.’
She watched him slowly rein in his anger, his self-control formidable. She had seen it before, this ability to master his emotions, and it was almost scary. After a few moments he was able to smile slowly, and you would have to know him very well indeed to recognise it wasn’t a real smile. But she did know him well.
‘I’m here and I’m staying,’ he drawled lazily.
And Melody had the feeling he wasn’t only talking about lunch.