Everything I Need, page 8
“Well, I bloody well won’t be under your thumb, either, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve told you I’m not an oilman. I’m not moving to Houston.”
“You don’t have to move to Houston,” the old man said easily. “Don’t get me wrong. I wish you would, but all I want is for you to get yourself sorted out. Find your own path.”
“And what path is this, pray tell?” Anthony demanded.
“No idea. You’ll figure it out.”
“And under your grand scenario, when will you release my money?”
“Not real sure,” Tony said slowly. “I was thinking we could revisit the issue when you turn forty.”
Anthony stiffened, his fingers reflexively tightening on the phone until it was a wonder he didn’t crack the case in two.
He thought about his decades-long plan to come into his money next year, come out from other the yoke of his father’s tyranny and come into his own. He’d never been sure what coming into his own would look like, but he’d known that next year was the year when he’d get it all sorted out. And it (whatever it turned out to be) would, of course, be separate and apart from anything his father did or anything his grandmother did. It would magically catapult him to a place where he was something other than Anthony Scott, future Earl of Stockbridge, whose importance was tied to the royal blood dripping through his veins via an accident of birth, or Anthony Scott Jr., son of an oil tycoon.
He could, for once in his life, just be Anthony, a bloke like any of the others he’d served alongside while overseas. Free from the galling knowledge that his grandmother and the taxpayers paid his bills on the one hand and his narcissistic and overbearing excuse for a father held the purse strings to his future on the other.
Most of all, and this had weighed especially heavy in his thinking in the last couple of days, he could be the rough equivalent (not as good, clearly, but less not good enough) to a self-made woman like Melody, who had a brilliant career in front of her.
And now this.
Five more years of being beholden to others and knowing that his future, whatever it might turn out to be, was not yet his own.
His dreams smashed to rubble beneath his unsuspecting feet.
“You can’t do this!” he yelled on an overwhelming surge of frustration. “It’s my money! My mother left it to me!”
“Calm down, son,” the old man said soothingly. “This’ll do you some good. You’ll see.”
“Don’t you patronize me,” Anthony snarled. It dawned on him that he no longer heard the water from the shower, so he reined it all in and tried to get a grip on his temper. The last thing he needed was for Melody to walk in on him throwing his mobile through her sliding glass doors. “You don’t get to hold on to my purse strings and justify it by telling yourself you’re being a good father. You don’t have my best interests at heart. You never have. You’re just angry that my mother got half your fortune in the divorce and then passed it along to me when she died. You can’t stand the fact that she might have got one over on you or that I might not need to dance to your puppet strings any longer.”
Tony laughed bitterly.
“You’ve never danced to my puppet strings a day in your life, boy. If you had, you’d be here in Houston, working hard to learn the business so I can focus on my golf game and take a spa day every week. And if you were so interested in not being a puppet, you might want to think about cutting the strings your grandmother’s got running through your arms and legs.”
That flared Anthony up again.
“Don’t you bring her into it! You can’t stand the fact that she and I are close and I want to do my best for her, can you? You never could.”
There was a deathly silence.
It went on for so long that it gave Anthony the chance to take several deep breaths, stop fuming and decide that he might have gone too far this time.
“Be mad all you want, AJ,” Tony finally said. Anthony could practically hear his shrug. “Don’t make me no never mind. As long as you recognize that half of your anger is for your own damn self. Because you’re a grown man who doesn’t have a thing of his own. Not one thing that wasn’t handed to you from someone else. Not one thing earned through your own hard work. Not an apartment, let alone a house. Not a car or a career. Probably not even the drawers covering your ass right now.”
Outrage washed over Anthony again, but the bitter sting of truth was far worse.
“Don’t you dare—”
“But cheer up. These extra five years will help you get it all figured out. I hope you make some progress real soon. You wouldn’t want me to decide you need additional motivation and cut back on your interest checks, would you?”
“Are you threatening—”
“Bye, son,” Tony said cheerily. “Talk soon.”
And he hung up first, denying Anthony of even that satisfaction.
Anthony cursed. Hurled his phone against the sofa cushions.
“What’d I miss?” came Melody’s hoarse voice behind him.
7
Shit.
Anthony wheeled around to discover Melody standing there wearing a wry expression and a fresh pair of flannel pajamas in a red and green plaid. She probably wore them for the Christmas season, but he had to fight back the hysterical urge to tell her that the pattern was called Royal Fraser and was, in fact, his grandmother’s official plaid.
She’d smoothed her wet hair back into a ponytail and looked refreshed and rosy, although her high color was probably still due to the fever, and she brought a fragrant cloud of fresh-scented lotion with her.
At the sight of her, a large portion of his anger receded.
“Nothing, darling. Feel better after your shower? You didn’t pass out and drown yourself, I see.”
“That was a loud nothing,” she noted darkly.
He grunted something noncommittal.
She rolled her eyes and reached out a hand. “Come on. You can tell me in bed. I’m barely alive here. I don’t have the energy to drag it out of you while standing up. Grab your whisky. You look like you need it.”
“Best offer I’ve had all day,” he murmured.
He followed orders, took her hand and followed her to her room, where the nightstand lamp infused everything with a cozy glow. He watched while she sank into her side of the queen-sized bed and burrowed under her delightfully luxurious white sheets, then quickly divested himself of his clothing and dove in after her.
By then, she was drowsy and pliant, her supple body generating enough heat to put the old radiators at one of his grandmother’s castles to shame. He eagerly spooned her up from behind, tightening his arms around her while she settled her luscious arse against his crotch.
His crotch noticed. Beastly thing didn’t care that she was an invalid.
She noticed the noticing.
“I hate to waste an erection,” she said, wriggling against him in a particularly unhelpful manner.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he said brightly. He nuzzled her neck, wallowing in the delicious scent of her since that was all the wallowing he’d allow himself this trip. “There’s plenty more where this came from. You seem to produce an endless supply.”
He kissed her cheek, delighted with the way it plumped with her smile. Then a thought hit him.
“Hang on. Don’t go to sleep just yet. I’d meant to make you a hot toddy.”
“Hmm. First of all, hot toddies are disgusting. Second, there’s no empirical evidence that they do anything to help with the flu.”
“’Course they do. They make you so drunk and sweaty that you no longer care that you have the flu. That’s worth something.”
“True,” she said, laughing.
His mother snuck into his brain. He typically posted sentries at the borders of his thoughts and counted on them to keep her from getting too close. That way lay madness. But sometimes, especially when he was tired or upset, his mother tiptoed right up to the other side of the gate and insisted that he acknowledge her.
“My mother made a wildly effective hot toddy,” he said. “I’ve never been able to recreate it.”
There was a pause.
“Is she the reason you know how to take such good care of me?” Melody asked quietly.
“I suppose she is.”
“Tell me about her.”
Anthony’s heart swelled.
“She was a wonderful nurse. Right there with the popsicles and the hot broth. And she’d let me climb into her giant bed, which had a whole mountain of pillows. And of course there was a telly to watch. I never had one in my own room. I remember this one time when I had a nasty stomach thing. She stayed with me all day. Made a fort with the linens. But then Granny had a state dinner that night, so my mother had to get ready. The maids came in to do her up. When it was all said and done, Mum wore this amazing white dress, all glittery, with one of Granny’s borrowed tiaras.” He paused, the memory getting to him. “She looked like an angel.”
The growing tightness in his throat and ache in his chest forced him to slow down. Take a breath.
“She sounds like a wonderful mother.”
“She was the best mother. She kept my cousins running around, making sure I wasn’t lonely as the only child, but I always had the feeling that it was the two of us against the world. We would sneak out on adventures to Harrod’s or to the zoo. The park. A movie. We had the best Christmases. Hot chocolate with peppermint sticks in them. Gingerbread men. Figgy cakes. We’d make gifts for my cousins when I was little—she was very crafty and creative—and then she took me out to buy them things with my allowance when I got older. Our last Christmas together, she taught me to wrap the presents. You should see the way I do them up with fancy paper and satin ribbons. They’re like works of art.”
“Sounds amazing.”
He felt the smile slide off his face as his story came to an end.
The end of his old life.
The end of his childhood and those days of absolute happiness.
That was the problem about opening the door to his mother’s memory. He always slammed headfirst into the end the way she’d skied headfirst into the tree that wound up killing her.
“Three months later, she was dead,” he said bitterly.
“I’m sorry.” Melody reached back over her shoulder to cup his face. “I’m so sorry. I know you miss her.”
“Yes.” He cleared his gruff throat. “At the holidays, especially.”
She nodded.
They didn’t say anything for a while. He lay there, trapped in his moody memories.
“What happened with your father tonight?” she asked sleepily, now rubbing his forearm where it lay across her waist.
He cleared his throat, all the anger surging back to him.
“Mum left me everything in trust with my father as trustee. I’d thought it would all come to me on my thirty-fifth birthday next year, but he’s decided to wait until I’m forty because he thinks the delay will be good for me.”
He couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of those last three words.
“Oh, no,” Melody said, her voice infused with just the right amount of horror on Anthony’s behalf. Her empathy instantly made him feel better. “What’s he trying to accomplish?”
“Not sure. He was yammering on about me doing things on my own. Becoming my own man. Whatever that means.”
“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully.
“What?”
She opened her mouth. Hesitated.
“I’d like to remind you that I’m at death’s door. So don’t bite my head off.”
“What?” he asked warily, a nasty feeling of dread tiptoeing up his spine.
“Why are you really so mad at your father?”
“Isn’t that enough?” he cried. “That’s he’s trying to extend his financial reign of terror over my life?”
“It’s enough, but I don’t think it’s all.”
Christ.
That arrow zoomed through the air and hit him in the dead center of his chest.
And with zero warning or anesthetic.
“There you go with the ruddy crystal ball again.” Sudden agitation forced him to let her go and sit up against the pillows, flapping the linens over his lap. “It’s a terrible habit. Why don’t you leave me a private thought or two?”
She turned over to face him, her eyes heavy-lidded but surprisingly understanding.
“That’s not how I roll. You should know that by now.”
“Have you tried to roll another way?”
“Anthony.”
The quiet reproach was the worst possible punishment, much like his grandmother’s raised brow. It made him batshit crazy. He could deal with a lot of things, but knowing that either of those women might think one iota less of him was not one of them.
He flapped the linens again. Smashed the pillow behind his head into a more comfortable position.
Melody waited patiently. He half hoped she’d fallen asleep, but a quick glance down at her revealed only her steady brown gaze.
“He cheated on Mum. Repeatedly. No one was off limits. The nannies. Her friends. His friends’ wives. He wasn’t discreet. He didn’t think to save her feelings, much less the tabloid embarrassment.” He crossed his arms. Noticed that his left foot was jiggling under the covers and forced it to stop. “A preadolescent boy already spends a good chunk of his time wishing his father was out of the picture so he can have his mother to himself, doesn’t he? And when you add in the fact that the father has made the mother sob herself to sleep on more than one unforgettable occasion?” Anthony tensed with renewed fury. “There’s no more vindictive or unforgiving force on earth than a young boy.”
Melody shrugged. “Maybe. But you’re a man now. And you’re smart enough to know there’s more to it than you probably ever saw. Your mother wasn’t an angel and I’m betting your father isn’t a demon, either.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he snapped, catching himself gritting his teeth in back. “And what would you know about it, anyway, having only met him for thirty seconds when he was at his charming best?”
“I know I don’t like the look on your face when you talk about him,” she said implacably. “Seems like it hurts you more than it hurts him. But, hey. What do I know? I’m probably delirious with fever.”
“Does the fever also make you meddlesome?”
“Meddlesome. Now there’s a word we don’t hear much on this side of the pond.”
He snorted.
“If being meddlesome means I want the very best for you, then yes. I’m meddlesome.” There was a weighty pause. “Maybe your father is also meddlesome.”
“My father doesn’t know me well enough to know what’s best for me,” Anthony muttered. “He wouldn’t know what was best for me if it marched up and bit him in the arse.”
“If you say so,” she said sleepily.
She closed her eyes, leaving him to marinate in his dark thoughts for a moment or two. Her beautiful face slackened into peaceful relaxation as her breathing evened out.
He frowned down at her, then felt some of his storm clouds begin to drift away.
Just looking at her made him feel better. It was as though she wanted to model serenity for him so he could calm down a bit. He reached out to smooth some of those spiral curls away from her temple, categorically unable to keep his hands to himself when she occupied the same room.
What was best for him.
What did that even mean? He’d come home from overseas alive and with all of his limbs. Wasn’t that best? He belonged to a family that had the honor of serving the people of Britain and the privilege of living in the stateliest homes in the land—for free. Wasn’t that best? Who the hell wanted to hear a prince whine about having to give boring speeches or the fact that his free bachelor pad on the grounds of Kensington Palace wasn’t quite to his tastes?
So he had to wait a few more years to come into the fortune his mother had left him. Big deal. He’d put his head down and continue to do his duty by his family and his country the way he’d always done. The way his grandmother had done every day of her life since she ascended the throne all those decades ago.
What was best for him.
Please.
Did anyone anywhere on the planet even know what that—
“Did you think about my question?” Melody asked quietly, her eyes still closed.
He stiffened and played dumb, which seemed like the best idea at the moment.
“What question?”
Her lids flickered open and she nailed him with those all-seeing brown eyes.
Reproach…reproach…reproach.
Until he couldn’t stand it any longer and fidgeted uncomfortably.
“Yes, well, I don’t see the point. At all.” He cleared his throat. Adjusted the pillow. Surprising how difficult it was to crack open the door to his back-burnered dreams and let a little sun shine through. “But as you’re insisting on this pointless discussion…I’d wanted to be a human rights lawyer. That was my plan going into law school.”
“A human rights lawyer?”
“Yes. I actually clerked in the legal department at the UN. And then at a firm in New York that specializes in human rights. Nelson Mandela said, ‘To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.’” He laughed ruefully. “Maybe it’s corny, but that meant something to me.”
Melody’s jaw dropped.
“I suppose I’d been exposed to these issues early on. Mum was always quite concerned with the rights of refugees around the world. Women’s rights to education and reproductive rights. That sort of thing. After she died, I thought that I might, ah, sort of continue in her footsteps.”
He found himself holding his breath, waiting for Melody’s reaction.
She beamed up at him with the sort of delight he’d expect from women worldwide if he announced he’d discovered a failsafe and inexpensive cure for male premature ejaculation.
“A human rights lawyer? Oh, my God. You’d be wonderful at that, wouldn’t you?
He blinked, a bit startled that she didn’t laugh him out of the room.
“I would?”
