“No, it’s fine,” I assure her, deliberately not pointing out the fact that I steered her down that lane on purpose. “I enjoy hearing about that part of your life. Veronica’s life. So much more interesting than my solid middle class upbringing in Boston.”
“Mine, too.” She reaches out, squeezes my arm. “Hey, do you maybe want to look through a couple photo albums of Veronica’s childhood? Maybe you can find a picture or two they’d like to run in the Vanity Fair article?”
“I never even thought of that—I bet the editors would love a few photos of her with her family. Especially with you, since you two look so much alike. I’m surprised they didn’t want you to be a part of the photo shoot they had here the other day.”
“I know. I suggested that Veronica bring it up, but she refused to.” She links our arms once again, uses the connection to steer me toward her own suite. “She’s so famous and yet she gets so embarrassed asking for anything. I tell her all the time that there’s no point being who she is if she doesn’t take advantage of the benefits every once in a while.”
I’ve only known Veronica four days and already I know that’s pretty much the worst thing you can say to her. It’s been said that if you want to know the measure of a person, just watch how they treat the people who can’t help them. She may go all aloof and untouchable sex goddess on me, but that has much more to do with the crazy chemistry between us than it does any ego on her part. With the people at the photo shoot or the waiter at the restaurant where we first met or even the catering staff at tonight’s party, she has always been incredibly gracious.
After observing her for the last few hours, I’m not sure the same can be said for Veronica’s mother. Then again, she’s being more helpful to me than her daughter ever has and that is not a gift horse I’m willing to look in the mouth.
It doesn’t take long before we’re settled on a couch in Melanie’s sitting room, poring over three photo albums filled with pictures of the Romero family in days past. Melanie is in most of the pictures, which is not exactly a surprise to me. Any more than her willingness to open up, to tell stories about the places they’ve been and the people they’ve known, is. It’s very obvious that she loved every part of her life as both Hollywood sex symbol and dedicated wife of genius director Salvatore Romero. These photo albums were supposed to give me insight into Veronica, and they are, just not in the way I had originally expected them to. I’ve wondered before what it must have been like for her growing up with the parents, the lifestyle, she had. Now I’m seeing it firsthand, listening to her mother talk about it, and I can’t help feeling for her.
Growing up with Jason as a brother was no picnic for me, but at least I always knew where I stood with him. Growing up Melanie’s daughter…I’m not sure the same thing can be said. It must have been a very unsteady, very capricious way of life. For the first time, her secret house away from all this makes perfect sense to me. If I was living her life, I’d need a bolt-hole, too.
We’re in the middle of the second photo album, admiring pictures of Melanie (and Veronica, of course) at Waimea Canyon in Hawaii when I get my first glimpse of him. William Vargas/Liam Brogan. He’s in the background of the picture, helping what looks to be a nine-or ten-year-old Veronica out of an SUV while Melanie blows kisses at the camera in the foreground.
One of his hands is holding Veronica’s while the other is on her lower back. There’s nothing glaringly inappropriate about the way he’s touching her, except for the way he’s angled into her. And the fact that her face is completely blank. The same kind of blank it was when I was showing her the door at my hotel this morning.
The thought infuriates me, destroys me—the idea that I put the same look on her face that that bastard did. Almost as much as the knowledge that he had unfettered access to her for what my research indicates is almost three years.
It’s been twenty years since this picture was taken and still I want to grab Melanie, want to shake her, want to demand to know what the fuck she’d been thinking. Vamping for the camera, blowing kisses at her besotted husband, hamming it up while her daughter was right behind her, in the hands of a madman?
Of course, hindsight is twenty-twenty and the fact that this picture is still in the album attests to the fact that Melanie hadn’t had a clue what was going on. Then again, how could she when she was so wrapped up in herself and her perfect, movie star life?