Everything I Need, page 18
“Mel…Mel…Melody!”
The paparazzi jostled closer, the shutters of their fancy cameras clicking furiously as they tightened the ring of bodies surrounding her and made it all but impossible for her to walk the twenty feet or so to the car. One of them was an older man with more salt than pepper in his hair; one had an arm sleeved with colorful tattoos; one smelled like her grandfather’s sporty aftershave from back in the day. There were no police nearby, which made her wonder what would happen if things really got out of control. It wasn’t hard to picture them knocking her down, possibly trampling her. Nor did it strain her imagination to envision one of them with a gun or other weapon if he wanted to hurt her.
Arctic water ran through her veins at that thought, turning her blood to ice.
The hand on her arm tightened. The security people elbowed their way through and deposited her in the back of the car, quickly slamming the door shut behind her. The paparazzi converged on the car, straining to aim their lenses at her through the window the way she’d done in the past when she tried to get good shots of the pandas at the National Zoo. The trunk slammed. Someone smacked the car twice, a signal.
And they zoomed off, quickly merging into traffic as the photographers disappeared behind them.
Melody slumped back against the cushions, shell-shocked and, she realized for the first time, trembling.
“You all right, ma’am?” The driver glanced at her over his shoulder, another jolt because he and the steering wheel were on the right side of the car. “That was a little hairy, wasn’t it?”
“You can say that again,” Melody said shakily. “Thanks for the rescue.”
“My pleasure. Get yourself settled. We’ll be there in no time. Water bottle?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“All right. Buckle up, then. I’ll just radio ahead. Let them know we’re on our way.”
“What’s your name?”
“Hank, ma’am.”
“Do me a favor, Hank. Call me Melody. You’re adding ten years to my age every time you call me ma’am.”
He chuckled. “I’ll try, ma—I mean Melody. No promises.”
“Thanks, Hank. For everything.”
He nodded, eyes twinkling at her for a second in the rearview mirror before he focused on driving.
She, meanwhile, buckled up and pulled out her phone, dread congealing in her belly and backing up all the way to her throat. There were two new messages from Anthony wanting to know whether she’d landed safely and if the escort had connected with her, but she couldn’t bring herself to answer him just yet.
She had some reading to do.
As best she could tell, the Daily Universe had broken the story of their romance. Honestly, the article was such a trope-filled caricature of the tabloid culture that she would have laughed if she hadn’t been so stunned. There were references to their romantic getaway, the way they’d gazed lovingly into each other’s eyes and seemed deeply in love as cited by sources close to the couple. There were actually several grainy photos of them laughing together in the receiving line, a couple of which were filled with so much veiled heat and longing on both their faces that she had to marvel that their story hadn’t broken until now.
And that was just the beginning of the fun, folks.
There were more articles. More tropes.
There was one about her status as a science-y smart girl that included the picture from her hospital bio, the one that had led Anthony to want to meet her in the first place.
And there was one of the ones she’d dreaded most, right on top:
The noble burn victim.
Because she’d overcome a tragic childhood accident that left her horribly disfigured despite her lovely eyes and hair and had bravely soldiered through years of horrific treatments and built a life to be proud of while she inspired others with her bravery and toughness and hoped for surgical advances that might make it easier for her to look in the mirror one day.
The only good thing? There were no accompanying close-up pictures of her scar, but it was early yet. With her luck? She’d just provided the paps the shot they needed for the next round of articles.
Melody fumed in silence for a moment, longing to roll her window down and hurl her phone to the pavement as the car sped along at sixty miles an hour. As if she’d had a choice to do anything other than keep her chin up and put one foot in front of the other after her accident! What were her other options? To curl up into the fetal position under her blankets and never come out? To kill herself?
The smug SOBs who made up this shit didn’t know anything about her. It was so galling to see her entire life, everything she’d ever done, been or experienced, reduced to a few hundred poorly written words by some “reporter” who’d never even met her.
What gave them the right to write and sell this garbage?
Angry tears burned the backs of her eyes. She swiped them away and kept reading.
A body language expert had been trotted out to opine that the color in Anthony’s cheeks and the tilt of her head indicated that they were both equally besotted with each other and therefore well matched.
Ah. And here was the other storyline she’d really been dreading.
An expert on the royals had weighed in with his dog whistle opinion that a woman like Melody with her unusual background would present a delicate challenge to the courtiers who had certain expectations and traditions in mind for Anthony. But, he decided on a determinedly upbeat note, A modern woman like Melody, who is capable of rising above her humble urban beginnings, may well be the breath of fresh air needed to bring the monarchy into the twenty-first century.
Translation? The royal white folks in the palace weren’t ready for a hood rat like Melody to invade their hallowed inner sanctum and get fried chicken grease and watermelon juice on their silk drapes.
Melody dropped the phone into her lap and made an involuntary and incoherent sound of rage.
“You okay, ma’am?” the driver asked, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
Melody reined herself in, manufactured a smile and picked up the phone again.
“I’m great. Thanks.”
“Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” she said again, scrolling through more articles.
You had to love the twenty-four-hour news cycle, boy.
You hopped a flight as a private citizen, went to sleep and woke up as a viral sensation.
There was an article about her clothes and hair, with photos culled from her social media and some fancy-schmancy stylist offering her two cents on how Melody could benefit from some smoothing serum to tame her unruly ringlets. That particular article also referenced the pants and shirt Melody had worn in Tanzania, as though she showed promise as a fashionista in the making.
Melody dropped her phone again in utter disbelief.
Those clothes were from TJ MAXX, people! She’d bought them on sale! They didn’t signify anything other than they seemed airy and cool and offered protection from being bitten by nasty African bugs!
She rubbed her forehead, took a couple of deep breaths, wishing she had a Guinness or three, and dove in again.
Let’s see…let’s see…
Well, this article was nice. Sort of. It mentioned her education and career, stating that she’d be the first royal wife with such a high-powered career although she would, sadly, have to curtail it in favor of charity work.
She snorted. As if anything could induce her to scale back her career now that she’d finally finished her training and was a full-fledged surgeon. Please. No one ever expected the men to make the grand sacrifice for their relationship, did they?
Nothing like hopping into a time machine and finding yourself back in 1953.
And there was… hang on, what was this headline?
The Earl’s Future Sister-in-Law?
The article included—oh, my God!—a mug shot of her sister Carmen, aka the Perfect Princess!
She quickly scanned for the details. Carmen had—oh, my God!!!—been arrested for a DUI this past Friday night. Well, that certainly explained why she’d been acting so weird during the video chat the two of them had with Samira at Java Nectar on Saturday, didn’t it? The charges were still pending…she’d spent the night in jail and pled no contest…her career as a top NYC dermatologist was in question…her boyfriend Leonard, the junior senatorial candidate, had issued a statement:
“Although Dr. Carmen Harrison and I have ended our relationship, I wish her nothing but the best in the future and hope that she gets the treatment she needs.”
Treatment? Carmen wasn’t an alcoholic! She rarely, if ever, had more than a second glass of wine at dinner! She didn’t need treatment! That lying rat bastard! Stringing Carmen along all this time, then dumping and disowning her when she got into trouble! Ditching her like a rat leaving a sinking ship, all to protect his own worthless hide from scandal as he ran for political office!
Melody pressed a hand to her heart, trying not to hyperventilate. Her life had exploded in the last hour or so, sure, but poor Carmen. She didn’t deserve this.
Melody dialed her number and held the phone up to her ear so the driver couldn’t hear, watching the London skyline go by but seeing nothing—
“Hello?”
“Hey,” Mel said quietly, noting the strain in her sister’s voice. “Can’t really talk right now, but I just wanted to check in. How’s it going?”
There was a long silence that quickly turned brittle.
“Well, I don’t know. Let me think….let me think…oh, there was that one thing.” Carmen snapped her fingers. “I’ve kinda had a tough week. I’ve been arrested, fired—”
“Fired? Oh, no, Carmen.”
“—and dumped. Oh, and I’ve also been outed in a huge way about all of that because it turns out my sister the saint is dating a freaking prince! And she never said anything about it to me.”
“‘The saint’?” Melody echoed, stung. “Where’d that come from?”
Disbelieving snort from Carmen.
“Nowhere. Listen, I gotta go. Between hiring a criminal lawyer, polishing my résumé and joining all the online dating sites so I can get married and have a couple of kids before my last remaining egg shrivels up like a prune, I really don’t have time for chatting on the phone.”
“Fine. I just wanted you to know that I had no idea things would unfold like this. I would have given you a heads-up. And I, ah…I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Leonard—”
“No, you’re not! Why are you such a freaking hypocrite? You never liked him. You never thought he was right for me. You never thought he would propose. And now you expect me to believe you’re sorry that it didn’t work out and he bailed on me at the first whiff of trouble? Is that what’s going on here?”
“Oh, my God.” Melody tried to keep the rising frustration out of her voice. Carmen was hurt and upset. She was lashing out. Melody knew that. It was, therefore, her job to be the bigger person and not rise to Carmen’s bait. No matter how impossible a task that turned out to be. “I wasn’t his biggest fan, no, but I’m sorry that you’re hurt. I want you to be happy. That’s all I meant to say.”
“Yeah? Well, I want you to be happy, too, so here’s what I mean to say: you’re not going to be happy packing up and moving to London and living in some gilded palace where you can’t say what you really think or come and go without the Queen’s permission and a bunch of security guys to escort you from point A to point B. You’re not going to be happy wearing, I don’t know, spectator hats and white gloves while you do charity work and go to Ascot and the opening of Parliament and shit instead of focusing on your career and trying to save little kids’ lives in the operating room. And if you think that falling in love with your Prince Charming is going to override all of that, then you are sadly mistaken. And you deserve what you get.”
There was a long and poisonous silence while Melody pressed her lips together to hold back what was either going to be a roar of rage or a sob of despair. She wondered why she’d bothered to call her sister in the first place.
Most of all, she wondered why sisters always insisted on telling the truth in all its brutality.
“Mel?” Carmen finally asked.
“Wow.” Melody took a deep breath and tried to even out her wobbly voice. “That’s quite a list. Anything else?”
“Look, Mel.” Carmen’s voice acquired a conciliatory tone that didn’t do much to soothe Melody’s scalded feelings. “I didn’t mean to—”
Melody’s other line beeped.
“I need to go,” Melody said, eagerly seizing the opportunity to exit this excruciating conversation and not bothering to check the display. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Come on, Mel—”
Melody hung up on her, savoring a moment of petty triumph before she clicked over to the incoming call.
“Yes, hello?”
“Miss Melody?” boomed a male with a Texas twang that probably carried a fat silver belt buckle, a pair of crocodile cowboy boots and a longhorn steer with it. “Tony Scott here. You’re having a hell of a day, aren’t you?”
Melody froze.
Anthony’s father!
She hadn’t spoken to him since her bout with the flu several months back, and now didn’t feel like the ideal time to start. But what could she do?
“Truer words were never spoken. How did you get my number?”
“Honey, I’ve got folks on my payroll who could build me a spaceship and fly me to the moon by supper if I asked them to. Getting your phone number ain’t exactly a superhuman challenge. Where are you?”
“On my way in from Heathrow.”
“Good. I’m already here, installed in my old digs at KP. So we’ll be neighbors for the next couple days, but there won’t be much downtime, will there? Glad I caught you on neutral turf where you can talk a minute. Before you walk through those golden gates and get swallowed up by the machine.”
Swallowed up by the machine.
Now there was a term guaranteed to make her run screaming from the room. Not that she planned to admit it.
She frowned. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t get your hackles up and act all bewildered. It’s just me and you having a quick chitchat. One outsider to another. You know damn good and well what I’m talking about.”
She supposed she did. She was about to step onto the grounds of Kensington Palace and into a world as foreign to her as Outer Mongolia. A place where issues surrounding the Queen’s authority, Anthony’s sense of duty, class, race, wealth and protocol were, quite possibly, about to chew her up and spit her out.
That being the case, a tiny part of her appreciated having an ally on Team Outsider.
Was she suspicious of Tony? Of course. She’d heard more than enough about him from Anthony to be wary of the older man’s motives.
Still. She wanted to hear what he had to say and prayed he might have some useful advice for her.
Something to take the edge off of Carmen’s dire pronouncement just now.
“What’s up, Tony?”
“Now, listen.” Tony’s voice dropped. Acquired a conspiratorial air. “The thing you don’t want to do right now is give up your judgment and let yourself be railroaded into something that’s not right for you. I don’t care who’s doing the railroading. If something makes your stomach hurt, don’t do it.”
Very sensible. Melody breathed a sigh of relief and felt some of the tension ease through her shoulders.
“Okay…?”
“I want you to benefit from my hard-earned experience. There are days when I think that, if I had it to do all over again, I’d go back to the beginning and pass on the whole adventure. Stay in my lane back in Houston and never meet Lou-Lou. Never get married. Never have Anthony. Save myself the worst heartache a man can have and still live.”
Melody put her elbow on the armrest, pressed her forehead to her hand and let her eyes roll closed. Which was a better option than, say, roaring with frustration and punching her fist through the window.
“How is that helpful?” she asked wearily.
“Patience, Miss Mel. But if I chose that option, then I’d have missed out on the greatest joys a man can have. Never have met the love of my life. Never have Anthony.” Harsh sigh. “And there’s never any percentage in taking the coward’s way out, is there? You’re never going to win big if you hide from life.”
Melody raised her head. Frowned thoughtfully.
“The thing I really regret—and here’s the part that’ll help you, if I haven’t put you to sleep with the rambling—is that I didn’t stand and fight. I let myself be run off. Let outside factors come between me and the woman I loved. Lost sight of the big picture. And here’s what I want you to know.”
Melody found herself sitting up straighter and listening harder.
“You’re at a fork in your road right now, aren’t you? You can take the easy way out and head on back to Journey’s End. Tell yourself that this life isn’t right for you. That’s what I did when I signed off on a divorce I didn’t want. You’ll be nice and safe that way, but you’ll have to live knowing that you had it all, or almost had it all, but threw it all away because you decided that fighting for it was too hard. And take it from me.” Tony cleared his throat. “That’s a mighty bitter pill to swallow.”
Melody hesitated, trying to digest all that, and looked out the window just in time to see another gaggle of paparazzi swarm the car and try to snap her picture as they made the final approach to palace grounds.
But she was already in the car this time and they were quickly relegated to the rear-view mirror.
And then there was the quiet tree-lined street full of stately homes that seemed to belong in some regency romance novel and were so different from the quaint and cozy Cape Cods and colonials that she was used to back home. The wrought iron gate, guard station and security presence at the end. The breathtaking grounds.
The unmistakable red brick facade of Kensington Palace, the place where Anthony had grown up.
Her heart didn’t know whether to explode with excitement or expire from terror.
