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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. Yo
u—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.’
