Chapter 3
Chapter Three
She had a knife pressed over his heart. Fair enough. His heart belonged to her, so if she wanted to cut it out while it still freaking beat, that was her prerogative.
Melody is back. Melody is back. He couldn’t believe it. Was half convinced that she truly was a ghost. Or maybe he’d just lost the last bit of his sanity, and he was imagining her. He’d finally gone that far off the deep end.
But, no, he wasn’t lost to madness. She was real. He could feel her. He could also feel the edge of her blade as it cut through his shirt and pushed into his skin.
Melody is back.
She’d rang the doorbell at the mansion. Walked inside the den with snowflakes still visible in the darkness of her hair.
Her much shorter hair. Hair that used to tumble halfway down her back but now skimmed her jawline.
Her heart-shaped face was thinner, her cheekbones seeming sharper.
As crazy as it seemed, even higher. The shorter hair made her green eyes appear bigger.
Deeper. And there was just something…different. Off.
But his body didn’t care about something being off.
He responded to her. Melody. His Melody.
Back. A heavy, aching arousal flooded through him, and, who cared if she had a knife pressed to his chest?
He was going to kiss her. He was going to taste her.
He was going to have his Melody back in his arms again, and if this whole night turned out to be some twisted hallucination, then so be it.
So the fuck be it.
There I go again, cursing even in my fucking head.
His mouth took hers. Her lips were soft beneath his.
She gave a little gasp. Stiffened. His tongue swept inside her mouth, and, damn, but he’d missed her.
Missed her taste and the wildfire of desire they could always ignite when they kissed.
The way they’d go from zero to one hundred miles an hour, and she’d moan and arch into him and he’d have her naked and coming for him in about two minutes flat—
The knife pressed harder into his chest. A quick flash of pain.
In the next instant, Melody shoved him away. “What in the world are you doing?”
He looked down at his chest. There was a drop of red blood on his white shirt. The blade had broken his skin.
“Oh, no.” A frantic shake of her head as she, too, saw the blood. “I cut you. I’m sorry! I-I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t kiss me back.” His heart was leaden in his chest.
She still gripped the knife. “Why would you kiss me?”
“Why?” Victor ignored the blood.
“You hate me.” She looked around the room, seemingly confused. “You hate me. Everyone knows…and you come in here to kiss me?”
He’d come in there to fuck her. To reclaim his fiancée. Except Melody was staring at him like he was insane.
His spine snapped straight. His shoulders rolled back. “Strawberries.”
“Why do you keep saying that? There are no strawberries in here. If you want some, I’d suggest you check the kitchen.” Her nose scrunched. “I think you need to leave my room. Now.” Her voice cracked a bit around the edges of what should have been a hard order.
“Where were you for the last year?” His nostrils flared. Melody had always smelled like a blend of champagne and vanilla. With a hint of honeysuckle. Her signature fragrance. She’d had the special perfume imported from Paris.
She…didn’t smell like champagne and vanilla. No trace of honeysuckle. She smelled crisp. Clean. Maybe she carried the faintest scent of jasmine.
“Traveling.” A vague reply from her. “I was taking time for myself. Clearing my head.”
Utter bullshit. “You didn’t contact your family once. Your father has been sick.” Sebastian Mage’s condition was far worse than most people knew. Tonight had been one of his good nights. A very, very good night.
Most nights—and days—weren’t so good. Some of them were pure nightmares.
Melody flinched. “I…didn’t know that he was ill. It wasn’t in any news reports.”
He was sick before you left, Melody. It’s the whole reason I finally took over the company. How the fuck could you not know that about Sebastian? How the—
He stopped the thought. Studied her again. The shorter hair. The thinner body. The cheeks that were far hollower and more pronounced than he’d ever seen before. Melody, but…different. He just hadn’t quite realized how different.
Why would she need to check the news to learn about her father’s illness?
She’d gone with Sebastian to all of the original doctors’ visits.
She knew what was wrong with Sebastian. Another reason why her disappearance hadn’t made sense.
Despite her issues with her father—and there were certainly plenty of issues—Victor had never thought that Melody would leave Sebastian in his time of need.
Not willingly.
The rest of the world might have believed that Melody Mage was spoiled. Fickle. Narcissistic. But Victor had known the real woman.
No one’s heart had been as big as Melody’s.
On her own, with zero help from her family, she’d created two shelters for women and abused children.
She’d opened two food pantries. She’d stopped for every lost dog she’d seen in the road.
Been constantly fostering animals as she found them the perfect home.
It was only those who didn’t truly know her who believed Melody was cold and uncaring.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Her right hand gripped the knife.
Melody had hated knives. Mostly because, a few years ago, she’d been mugged. The bastard who’d slashed her bag right off her shoulder had cut her with his blade. She’d been bleeding in the street.
She’d called Victor to help her.
He’d gotten her stitched up. He’d made sure the mugger was handled. In other words, he’d beaten the hell out of the bastard. No one hurt Melody on his watch. Not ever.
“Do you mind taking off your sweater?” Victor asked, and he thought it was a very polite question. Especially since he was feeling far from polite. In fact, he was holding onto his control by a thread.
“Are you quite insane?” Melody returned as her eyes widened. “Yes, I one hundred percent mind. I’m not about to take off my top for you! Get out. I don’t know what you think is going to happen here, but you’re clearly confused.”
He nodded. Yes, he had been confused. I needed Melody back. “Just wanted to check. Make sure you still had the scar. About two inches long, faint, along your right shoulder, pointing toward your collarbone.”
She wet her lower lip. “I’m not taking off my sweater for you.”
Another nod. “Fair enough. I do apologize if I frightened you.” It would be simple enough for her to pull her top to the side and show him the scar. To prove such a simple thing existed on her body.
But she made no move to reveal the scar that she should possess. Instead, her chin notched up even more. “It’s normal to be frightened when a stranger breaks into your bedroom. Even if it is a guest bedroom.”
A stranger. Yes. That was what he appeared to be. Before he did something that he would regret, Victor needed to get out of that bedroom. “Be sure and lock up after me.”
“Don’t worry, I will. Though a lock hardly prevented your entrance the first time, now, did it?”
No, it had not. Victor turned on his heel. Marched for the connecting door.
“Why did you kiss me?”
The question cut right through him. But it shouldn’t have. The answer was really quite obvious. “Because I thought you were someone else.”
She gasped.
He opened the connecting door. Strode forward.
Shut the door behind him with a soft click.
He pulled in a deep breath. Then one more.
With determined steps, he crossed the guest room he’d taken for the night.
Screw the snowstorm. He would have driven right through it in order to get home, if she hadn’t been there.
But she had been. Melody Mage had walked out of the snowy night, and everything had changed.
He yanked off the cut shirt. A small cut from the tip of her knife.
There were drops of blood on the garment, so he threw it to the side and hauled a fresh, white, dress shirt from his bag.
A bag he always kept in his car, just in case.
Then Victor exited his room. Hurried for the staircase.
His feet thudded down the stairs. At the landing, with no hesitation, he turned and advanced for the den.
He threw open the door. The little group was still there. Waiting.
Dario, drinking and glaring near the fireplace.
Olivia, pacing near the Christmas tree.
Sebastian, still hunched in his chair.
Sebastian’s nurse, Tracy Ryder, had joined the group. She hovered near Sebastian, faint worry on her face.
Even Hatterson lurked nearby, twisting his hands in front of his big body.
All eyes locked on Victor.
“Well?” Dario bit out.
Victor’s fingers curled too tightly around the doorknob. “We need a DNA test. Immediately.”
Dario’s breath expelled in a rush. “I told you, I told you all! I don’t think that’s Melody. She looks different. She acts different.”
Yes, she did. She looked different. Small differences. She acted differently. Big differences. She’d called him her enemy. A stranger. She hadn’t kissed him. Had seemed shocked that he’d ever want to kiss her.
She’d refused to show him her scar.
“I know my daughter.” Sebastian was adamant. “That’s her.”
Victor wanted it to be. He did. But… “DNA test. There’s too much money on the line. You can’t just accept her into this house without proof.” But he didn’t really mean into this house. He meant…You can’t accept her into the family. We can’t bring her into our lives.
I can’t—
“She is Melody!” Veins bulged in Sebastian’s forehead.
Was she Melody? Or was she just a very carefully produced look-alike? “She wanted to know when you got sick,” he told Sebastian.
Sebastian’s lips parted. He didn’t speak.
“When I questioned her, she said she didn’t know about your illness. That it wasn’t in the news.”
“Well, of course, it’s not in the news,” Dario muttered.
He slammed down a shot glass. It clinked when it hit the mantel top.
No more wine for him. He’d advanced to the whiskey.
“We’re keeping it secret from the Press.
Had mergers to deal with. Millions of dollars were on the line.
Can’t let the info leak because then you’ll have panicked investors and—”
Victor just stared at him.
“Oh.” Dario nodded. Cleared his throat. “She should know. Right. Yes. Understood. Check.”
Considering that Melody was the one who’d first noticed the small signs that indicated Sebastian’s condition, yes, she should know.
But she didn’t.
Just as she didn’t seem to know that she and Victor had been lovers.
Just as she didn’t know the meaning of strawberries. That had been their codeword. If they’d been at a party or a company meeting and she’d wanted to leave, she’d brush by him and whisper, “Strawberries.”
Or, if others had been present and she’d been in the mood to torment him, she’d make up some vague statement and say it right in front of everyone.
Something like… “You know what would make this dessert extra decadent?” She’d stare at him with her incredible eyes.
“Strawberries.” And he’d known she wanted to get away with him.
That she wanted to be in private with him so they could close out the rest of the world.
So that they could fuck like animals and get lost to pleasure.
But the woman upstairs had seemed clueless when he uttered the one word that Melody had relished using so often with him. Their private codeword.
She hadn’t known what the word truly meant.
She hadn’t known her father was sick.
She hadn’t known that she and Victor were lovers.
Not Melody. Not Melody. Not Melody. The refrain blasted through his head. Made the hope he’d felt earlier taste bitter on his tongue. She is not my Melody.
And that posed another big question. If the woman currently in the guest room right above him wasn’t Melody Mage, then who the hell was she?