“Tea. Actually, alcohol. Definitely alcohol.”
Beat tipped his chin at the hallway leading to side-by-side bedrooms. She toed off her high heels and followed him, their footfalls soft on the living room carpet. Without turning, he could sense her looking around at his furniture, his artwork, the view of the East River. Was his place what she’d expected? Better? Worse? He’d had a lot of friends here over the years, but never a lone woman. Something about Melody being the first felt alarmingly right.
He reached the guest bedroom and flipped on the light, smoothing down the dimmer to lessen the brightness, and set her bag just inside the door. The skin of his left shoulder prickled when she stepped up beside him, his obliques contracting. “It’s perfect,” she said, sliding past him, obviously being careful not to let them touch. “Thank you.”
A hum was all he could manage until his muscles loosened. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen for that drink.”
“Okay.”
He closed the door behind him, staring at it for a moment. The sound of her dress zipper coming down was like a stroke of fingertips across his lap. His mounting attraction to Melody had already been difficult to manage, but now that the camera was gone, there was a sense of freedom he hadn’t been expecting.
Ignore it.
Jesus, he had to ignore it.
They had a long way to go before Christmas Eve and he was already stumbling.
With an irritated headshake, Beat strode to the kitchen while removing his bow tie and tuxedo jacket. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his dress shirt and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, pulling down two glasses from the cupboard and setting a bottle of triple malt scotch beside them. He’d just about gotten his shit together when Melody walked out of her bedroom in a long, oversized T-shirt that really, truly shouldn’t have been so fucking sexy. But when she stopped in front of his floor-to-ceiling window, her silhouette against the glowing city lights made one thing painfully obvious.
She’d taken off her bra.
Beat poured himself a double.
“Is this how your parents decorated the apartment, or did you change it?”
“I changed it,” he said into his glass, before taking a long sip. “My mother’s style is . . .”
“Palace chic? Lots of whites and creams and golds? Swan-headed fixtures.”
The scotch burned his throat when he laughed. “You nailed it.”
Melody stooped forward slightly to peruse a collection of framed photographs on a table in the living room, causing the rear hem of the T-shirt to ride up, exposing her to midthigh. Beat swallowed thickly, begging the scotch to kick in and numb his reaction to her. Unfortunately, the sting of the alcohol only seemed to make it sharper.
“You know, I didn’t expect to be starstruck by Octavia tonight, but I was. She really lived up to her legend status. Stars are two-dimensional beings and some of them, in my experience, remain that way when you meet them in real life. But not your mother; she was brighter and more captivating than I expected. I can only say that about two other celebrities.”
Beat’s drink paused on its way to his mouth. “Who?”
She gave him a twinkling smile over her shoulder. “Springsteen and Tina Turner.”
“Wow. Good ones. Mine is McCartney.”
“You just had to one-up me with a Beatle.” She shook her head at him playfully while tapping one of the picture frames. “Who are the kids in this picture?”
The scotch took a wrong turn and settled uncomfortably in his stomach. “That was taken at summer camp. Those are my cabinmates.”
She straightened on a gasp and padded barefoot to the kitchen, mouthing a thank you when he nudged her glass of scotch in front of her. “You went to summer camp?”
He nodded once. “When I was thirteen, my father thought it would be good for me to get out of LA. Get some dirt under my fingernails and eat terrible food for a month.”
Melody sipped her drink experimentally. “Was it?”
When the prompt went right over his head, Beat realized how hard he was staring at the sheen of alcohol on her mouth. “Was what?”
“Were bad food and dirty fingernails good for you?”
“Sure were.” He forced a broad grin. The one he used with his friends. Everyone, really. “If I’m ever stranded in the woods, I’ll have a fire blazing within minutes. Two hours, tops.”
Why was she looking at him funny? Did she . . . actually see through his phony front?
“Was it really a good experience, Beat?” she asked, quieter this time.
“At first, it was, yeah.” God, his voice sounded hollow now. Unfamiliar. “Then the other guys slowly realized who I was. I think maybe they overheard some of the counselors talking. And then . . .” He tried to laugh, but it emerged flat. “Well, then . . .”
Melody’s hand fell away from her glass. “Oh, Beat,” she whispered. “They hated you.”
There was no comparison for the rush of gratitude he felt in that moment. He’d never experienced anything quite like it in his life. Not since the first time they met, at least. This woman sitting on the other side of his breakfast bar was the only person he knew who understood the weird shame that came along with being the offspring of a world-famous icon. It took every drop of his willpower not to reach across the marble countertop and drag her over the damn thing into his arms. “Yeah,” he said. “The first week was fine. Great, actually. Until my mother sent a care package containing smoked oysters, an engraved pepper mill, and Pellegrino. She meant well. She really did. But after the counselors revealed who the package was from, the cat was out of the bag. They started asking me questions about my life in LA and I had no choice but to be honest. At first, they seemed interested. They wanted every detail. But those details only served to make them resent me. There were still three weeks to go and . . .” He shrugged. “I went back every summer until I was sixteen, hoping it would be different. But it was the same every time. Let’s just say I slept out in the cold a lot.”
“What did they do? Lock you out?”
Locked him out. Sabotaged his campsite. Put dirt in his food. Every time, he sucked it up, too embarrassed to explain the situation to his parents. “Mel, it was good for me.”
Her nose wrinkled. “It . . . what?”
“Yeah.” He drained his scotch. “Everything came too easy. I didn’t even have to ask for new clothes or shoes or my own boat, Mel—they just appeared. Vacations, friends, even the press was so easy on me, compared to you. God, I hated that.” He closed his eyes briefly, until the memories of some of the meaner headlines faded again. “When I returned from camp, after weeks of having my food stolen and my survival skills ridiculed—and rightly so, I couldn’t light a fire for shit—everything went back to normal, but I . . . couldn’t stand the excessive comfort anymore. I just couldn’t stomach it.”
Melody watched him, not moving. “And now?”
“I still can’t.” Don’t say the rest. He needed to keep his mouth shut, but stemming the flow of his words was next to impossible when the one person who’d lived through a parallel existence was sitting right across from him, looking into his eyes like she could see clear through them into his thoughts. “But I have a way to manage it,” he said, voice like gravel.