Wreck the Halls

Beat’s mouth arranged itself in a lopsided smile.

After a long stretch of silence, Danielle leaned forward. “Like I said, we have to act while they’re hot. We could wait until next year when they don’t have a viral hit and public fascination has waned.” Now she zeroed in on Beat—and he got the sudden sense that Danielle had buried the lede. “Or we can pull the trigger on a new form of entertainment I’ve been dying to play with. A reality show in real time. Unedited, unfiltered. Streaming live from the network’s social media accounts, twelve to fifteen hours a day. We would also dedicate several hour-long slots throughout our conventional television programming to The Parents’ Trap. That’s what I’m tentatively calling it.” She paused to smile. “My goal would be to broadcast this journey into every household worldwide. Live.”

Beat’s stomach was in the vicinity of his loafers. He should have known better. How many times had he agreed to participate in some behind-the-music special about his mother only to have the producers dive straight into his off-limits topics, like his parents’ marriage or details about the 1993 Concert Incident? The goal would always be entertainment value, no matter the cost. Did he really think this was going to be easy? And now he’d brought Melody into it, too? “This is the first time you’ve mentioned the show being a live stream,” Beat said, keeping his voice even. “I assumed any footage would be in editing for months afterward, the final product to be approved by approximately sixteen lawyers.”

Danielle didn’t bat an eyelash. “I wanted to wait until you were in my office to give you the full scope of the project.”

“Why?” Beat stood without waiting for an answer, hastily buttoning his suit jacket. “I’m sorry about this, Mel. Let’s go. I wouldn’t put you through something like this.”

“I know,” Mel said automatically, before shaking herself. “I mean . . . it’s a lot to take in.”

“Too much,” Beat agreed.

Danielle remained serene. “If I could just—”

“Beat,” Melody said, standing, looking at him as if through fresh eyes. “Could we speak somewhere privately?”

Being alone with you isn’t a good idea. Why was that his first thought?

Something about this woman magnetized and fascinated him, but surely he could refrain from asking her out long enough to have one conversation. “Yes. Of course.”

“There is a cafeteria on the fourth floor. They have coffee. I’ll have my assistant prepare the table.” Danielle smiled. “I’ll wait here until you’re ready to talk again.”

Beat gestured for Melody to precede him. “If we decide to talk again.”

The cheerful-looking receptionist chose that moment to enter the office with a tray of beignets, which Melody intercepted before the girl could set it down on the desk. She held it out to a bemused Danielle so the producer could snag a few, then carried the rest of the baked goods out of the office while Beat followed in her wake. And it didn’t make any sense, but as they rode downward in the elevator chewing on beignets and staring at each other, he wondered if he’d been missing Melody his entire life.





Chapter Four




Melody sat down across from Beat at a small, square table that was positioned up against a window overlooking Tenth Avenue. When they arrived at the employees-only lounge, an assistant had been waiting to hand Beat two paper cups of coffee and guide them to their seats. Beat placed Melody’s drink in front of her, turning the cup until the little drinking spout on the plastic lid was closest to her. It was an unconscious move that made Melody’s pulse sprint like a child chasing down an ice cream truck.

Asking Beat to speak privately had taken all her courage.

The meeting had been ending. The premise of The Parents’ Trap was preposterous. Invasive. Ridiculous. Obviously Beat had been caught off guard by the nitty-gritty details and had no intention of entertaining the idea any further.

Curiosity continued to weigh heavily in her gut, though. And Melody found she couldn’t get back on the train to Brooklyn without satisfying it.

Needing a moment to gather up another supply of courage, Melody sipped her coffee, watching Beat watch her. A gust of wind blew through her stomach and disorganized everything at the way he regarded her mouth closely, sitting very still while she brought the cup to her lips, as if he wanted to make sure he’d positioned the cup perfectly to meet them. When it did, because of course he’d judged it correctly, a muscle slid high in his throat and never seemed to come down.

He could still make a person feel like they were the only one in the room. It was his superpower, wasn’t it? It drew people to him. It wouldn’t hurt to remember that.

It also wouldn’t hurt to ignore the way his sculpted lips suctioned the spout of his coffee cup lid. Or the sheen of moisture he licked away when he set the drink back down. But it took her a moment to find her voice because it was lost somewhere among the pandemonium of her hormones, which hadn’t been this noisy since the last time they’d been together. That wasn’t to say Melody hadn’t been with men sexually. She’d experienced pleasure with men. But the bond, the trust she needed to feel truly fulfilled, it never materialized. She was only ever one solitary figure copulating with another solitary figure. There was never a sense of partnership or belonging. What would touching Beat be like? Being touched by him?

You’re never going to find out.

He almost definitely had a girlfriend. She was shocked he didn’t have a gold band on his finger, this wildly handsome, successful thirty-year-old who happened to be kind. Kind! Who was kind anymore? Such an outdated and underrated quality—and Beat Dawkins had it.

“Mel,” he said now, shrugging off his jacket and twisting to hang it on the back of his chair, a tidy region of obliques shifting beneath his white dress shirt. “I’m so embarrassed that I brought you all the way out here for nothing.” Nothing? She would have driven to the opposite coast just for the coffee date. “Please believe me, I wasn’t aware of the twist.”

“No, of course you weren’t.”

Her confidence relaxed his shoulders, but the strain around his eyes, the tension she’d noticed immediately upon walking into the meeting, remained. He wasn’t a carefree sixteen-year-old anymore.

“I hope you didn’t have to take a day off work . . . ?” Beat prompted.

“No. I have a project at home that I’m working on, but I’ll make up for lost time tonight.”