His Melody (5 page)

“Happy I could help,” he said.

She smiled and released his arm. He struggled against the feeling of disappointment he felt and walked down the hall to his room.

Chapter Five

Melody heard a knock at the door as she headed for the door on her way downstairs for dinner. She opened it and had to hold onto it to keep from stumbling backward. There was no doubt in her mind as to why he’d gotten discovered as a model. He filled out a simple T-shirt and jeans better than she’d imagined anyone could. He’d bulked up some since his modeling days. He was huge, and it was all muscle.

He passed a hand over his buzzed blond hair and settled blazing green eyes on her face after making his own appraisal. It’d been quick and subtler than the one he’d made earlier that day, yet she caught it. She tried to tell herself she hadn’t chosen to wear her low-cut yellow sundress to dinner because of him. The one she’d bought specifically because the top was cut just low enough to make her breasts look phenomenal.

“You ready for dinner?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. He offered his elbow. Laughing, she linked her arm with his. “I can pretend I’m on the red carpet, huh?” A thrill of warmth flooded her when their skin touched. She found it difficult not to tremble.

#

“Sure,” he said. “How was your shower?” The last thing he wanted to talk about was red carpets.

“Perfect. Just what I needed,” she said. She frowned at a loud crack of thunder. Rain pounded the roof. In the large, cavernous house, the sound was like that of the world crashing down on top of them. “That storm’s getting really bad, huh?” she asked as if she were trying to fill the silence. She turned to him, her heart-shaped face framed by her short black hair.

“I guess.” He studied the slight pout on her full lips. The soft fabric of her dress felt like silk where it touched his arm. That thin bit of fabric was the only thing between him and her smooth, warm body. A body that was soft in all the right places, and firm in all the right ones, too.
At least from what he could tell so far.
Investigating any further into the matter would likely earn him a slap to the face.

“I bet your mom’s as bad about electrical devices during storms as she is about showers,” Melody said, bringing him out of his thoughts.

“Worse,” he said. At that moment, as if on cue, the lights went out.

“Great,” she muttered. “That definitely means no internet. Or charging my phone.”

“You’re right about that, but on the bright side, our first dinner together will be by candlelight,” he said. He wasn’t sure what’d made him say it, but he was relieved when he heard her laughter.

“I can’t see a thing,” she said.

“I got ya. I know every inch of this house even with my eyes closed.”

“A useful skill to have right now,” she said.

“I guess it is.” He slipped an arm around her. Gripping her waist firmly, he guided her the rest of the way down the stairs. He knew he was holding closer than was necessary, but he couldn’t stop himself. He felt the heat of her skin through the flimsy material of her dress. She smelled like vanilla. He let his hand slip down to the top of her hip as they headed for the dining room. Either she didn’t notice, or she didn’t mind.

They did indeed have dinner by candlelight. He and Vernon set out the candles, and the others, Melody included, brought in the dishes and the water and sweet tea pitchers. Then they all sat down to a feast. Every meal his mom cooked was a feast, no matter how many or few people would be sitting down to eat it.

He hadn’t thought it possible, but Melody was even more radiant by candlelight. He wanted to brush her soft, black hair away from her the sides of her face and tease her skin with his tongue so badly that he could barely focus on the dinner table conversation.

“I hope Regan’s all right out there in all this,” Mom said. “I worry about her when it storms or anything, but she insists on living all alone out at that big farm,” she continued while fussing with a casserole dish.

“She’s fine, Mom. You know she is,” Austin said. Regan was one of the toughest and most self-reliant people he knew.
Funniest and smartest, too.
He’d always admired that woman.

Once they started eating, the conversation turned to Melody. He found out she was an A&R exec back in Atlanta where she was from and that she’d been on a business trip to Miami. A&R, huh? Life must have thought it was funny, always cracking little jokes at his expense.

“A&R. That must be so glamorous,” Avery said. “You probably meet so many stars. Do you know
?...
” and she rattled off the names of several musical acts. His sister had always been smitten with celebrities. She still was after all that’d happened. She was always picking up some gossip rag at Zip’s, the local grocery store. He couldn’t stand those tabloids. They ruined lives. They’d definitely helped ruin his.

After Melody got done answering Avery’s stream of questions, Melody said, “But you all have your very own star right here. Grayson Meadows.”

Everybody got real quiet. The only sounds were the scrape of fork against plate, the background patter of rain, and occasional booms of thunder that were starting to fade farther away. There was no way for her to know what a sore subject it was for his family, but he was still angry with her for bringing it up. He knew his anger was irrational, but if there was such thing as a family wound, Grayson Meadows was it for the Holts.

“Well,” his mom said, forcing a smile. “We are right proud of Austin.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her plate. “Melody, tell us more about Atlanta. Life there must never be dull.” That was his mom all right. Always putting out fires. Hiding
her own
pain. Protecting him. He felt especially guilty about that last part.

Donnie snorted in his direction before sending him a look. Austin couldn’t see him well in the dim, flickering candlelight, but he knew the look Donnie was shooting him had to be an ugly one.

Melody must have sensed the awkwardness she caused because she stumbled over her words when she first started telling Mom about life in Atlanta as requested.

Thankfully, the rest of dinner conversation centered
around
Melody, her job, and Atlanta. That didn’t stop Donnie from jumping in with his little snide remarks about Grayson Meadows. Donnie never had known when to shut his mouth up. That was probably why he had been busted in it so many times. Not by Austin—well most of the times Donnie had been busted in the mouth, Austin hadn’t been the culprit.

#

That night, after Melody changed into the sweatpants cut off at the knees and dark blue tank top that were her favorite sleeping apparel, she climbed into bed and quickly realized it was going to be impossible to fall asleep. It was too hot for sleep.
The electricity, and so the air conditioning, was still out.
Georgia in the summer was not a place anyone wanted to be without air conditioning. Even at night. Rather than cooling things off, the storm was making the air even muggier. Fans and cracked windows didn’t stand much of a chance against the humidity and the day’s heat that was still trapped in the house. This was especially true in a house the size of Bellevue. The rooms were huge and thus hard to cool. Especially the rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows that soaked up plenty of sun during the day—like the bedroom Melody
was
staying in.

After tossing and turning for a while, she pushed her sticky sheets aside and got out of bed. She decided to wander around for a bit, check out the rest of the house. If the house had been around since before the Civil War, maybe there was a ghost or something lurking around. And maybe she watched too much T.V.

Glancing down the hall, she saw light coming from under one of the doors. It was the one she’d seen Austin enter earlier that night after they’d finished with dinner and washed dishes the best they could
considering
the power was still out. Good. Maybe they could keep each other company since neither one could sleep. Plus, looking at him would be more fun and probably a better idea than wandering around in the dark in a place she hadn’t been invited to explore on her own. Besides, there was always the possibility that the ghost theory could pan out, and she was certainly no ghost hunter and had no desire to become one.

She padded down the hall and knocked lightly on the door, hoping he hadn’t simply fallen asleep with the light on.

“Come in,” came a muffled voice from the other side of the door.

She walked in and her breath caught in her throat. A candle burned on his desk, and he sat in the chair in front of it. He leaned back in the chair as she entered the room. He was shirtless. Shadow and light played over the well-defined muscles of his biceps, pecks, and abs. She swallowed hard and pressed her sweaty palms to the sides of her cut-off sweatpants without really thinking about it.

“See something that interests you?” he asked. She heard the amusement in his voice, and it brought her back to reality. She remembered how irritating she’d found him earlier that day. That cocky guy was surfacing again.
Not that she hadn’t encouraged him to come out of there.

She ignored the connotation behind his words and thought up an excuse to cover her real thoughts. “I was just looking at your tattoo.” Luckily, he had one.
A tribal band around his left bicep.

He looked down at it as if to confirm it was still there and then looked back at her. “Yeah, my agent thought it’d give me an edge or something.” The way he said “agent” sounded even
more bitter
than the rest of the words he’d just spoken. But he grinned when he said, “My image consultant hated it.” He gestured toward his bed. “Have a seat.”

She walked over and sank down onto the soft bed.
A feather top mattress.
It was the kind of bed that made you want to melt into it and fall asleep as soon as you hit it. The king-sized bed was in one corner of the sparsely furnished room, near a window. The lack of furniture made the already large room seem even bigger. His bedroom was almost the same size as her two-bedroom apartment.

“I’m sorry if I made things strange earlier,” she said. “At dinner. I didn’t know your modeling career was such a touchy subject for your family.” She settled back on the bed.

“There wasn’t any way for you to.” His expression didn’t seem to change, but it was hard to tell in the semi-dark.

“You wanna talk about it?”

He hesitated for a moment, but he eventually shook his head. “Nothing to talk about. I was a model. Now I’m running the family business.”

“Funny how things work out, huh?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Not so funny. I grew up with cars. Should’ve known I’d never escape ‘em. You can run, but you can’t hide.” His laugh was forced. He hunched his shoulders a bit and stared at a point to the left of her head.

“I guess I was thinking of me more than you when I said that,” she said, partly to make their conversation less awkward by taking the pressure off him and partly because it was true.

“Oh?”

She nodded. Her mother had always drilled being practical into Melody. Mom was terrified of Melody turning out like her dad—a washed up, deteriorating, starving artist. Melody had idolized her dad. When he died, she’d been so devastated that she cut music out of her life altogether for a couple years. Her mom encouraged it. Music was the center of her world, though.

When she realized what a dark place her world was without it, she’d enrolled in some music theory classes at her college. Later, she decided to minor in musicology. That was how she’d met the fool she married who tried to kill her love of music again.

“Yeah. I love music, but A&R exec was never my first choice for a career,” she said. “I love my job, but I used to want to be a songwriter. I knew singing wasn’t for me, but there was a time when I would’ve given anything to hear people who had real talent belt out my songs.” She chuckled. “I used to dream about writing a song for Jill Scott.” She shook her head. “Crazy, right?”

“What’s crazy about that?”

She shrugged. Her practical mom could’ve given him a laundry list of answers to that question if she were in the room.

“You still write? The songs, I mean?” He sounded interested in what she’d said. Excited by it even.

She shook her head. “I realized it wasn’t gonna happen, and I gave up on the whole thing.”

“Shame.”

She snorted. “How do you know? You’ve never even heard one of my songs. Could be for the best for everybody.”

“Sing me one.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not? You got any of ‘em with you? Or memorized?”

“Maybe.” She had lots of them memorized. She wanted to sing, but she was afraid. She’d never sung solo in front of another person before. When she and Jen did karaoke songs together, she sang so low people could barely hear her. Karaoke nights and shower tunes made up the full extent of her singing resume. She was happy with that. Her dad had been the performer in the family.

“Sing to me.” He said the words in a low soft voice that made her stomach muscles quiver. He came over and sat next to her on the bed. The world seemed to tilt a little as the bed sagged under his weight. His scent—spice and soap—washed over her.