Lost Melody (31 page)

After lunch, Hank led the way to the
family room. Guy settled into the overstuffed sofa. “Why did you
leave? Chad called me. They’re worried about you.”

Hank shifted to sit on the edge of his
chair, hands clasped, elbows propped on his knees. “I was finished.
I’d done my part. They can wrap it up without me.”

“You’re missing the point, Hank. Chad
told me they were going to finish without you, but you walked out
on a recording session and you didn’t tell anyone where you were
going. It isn’t like you. They were concerned. Hell, after Chad’s
phone call I was ready to put out an APB on you myself.”

Hank slumped back into his chair. “I’m
sorry. I’ll call and let them know I’m okay. I just had to get away
for a while.”

Guy nodded. “Did you know Melody was
in New York?”

“No. I knew she was going to Boston,
but it never occurred to me she would be here, much less in our
building.”

“I think I’ll take her to dinner
tonight to make up for ditching the lunch interview. Why don’t you
join us?”

Hank crossed the room to the bank of
floor to ceiling windows. Waves of heat made Central Park into a
living impressionist painting. “Thanks, but no. I told her she
could have as much time as she needs. If I show up tonight she
would think I was pushing her.”

He thought about the track he’d just
recorded. Yeah, he’d be pushing her soon enough as it was.
“Hopefully, she’ll be in a better frame of mind in January. If not,
I’ll probably lose her forever.”

“What do you mean by that? What’s
happening in January?”

“I want you to promote the
hell out of ‘Melody.’ The release date is January fifteenth, and
it’s not negotiable. I want it on every radio station, in every
market across the country.” He paced the room, thinking out loud.
“I mean
every
market, Guy. Big and small. How are the plans coming for the
tour?”

After talking business for nearly an
hour, Hank walked Guy to the elevator. “Keep an eye on her for me,
will you? She says she needs to be alone, but I want to know she
has someone to turn to if she needs it.”

“I can do that. Wouldn’t she call on
Sir Jonathan, though?”

“Probably. But just in case, make sure
she knows she can trust you, too.”

* * *

Mel’s phone rang, startling her.
Seeing Guy Nichols on the caller ID, she breathed a sigh of
relief.

“Did you find him?”

“Yes, I did,” he said. “I’ll tell you
what I know over dinner tonight. How’s that sound?”

As soon as he arrived to pick her up
for dinner, she peppered him with questions.

“Where is he?” she asked. “Did he say
why he left the farm?”

“He didn’t say, just said he was fine
and wanted a few days off. I guess the house full of people finally
got to him. He sounded all right. I wouldn’t worry about
him.”

Thank God.

“I’m glad he checked in with you,” she
said as they walked to the elevator.

“Me, too.” He pushed the elevator call
button. “Ms. Ravenswood, I owe you an apology for leaving you in a
lurch this afternoon. I should have known he would call me, but I
overreacted. I upset you, and I’m truly sorry. Can you forgive
me?”

She stepped into the elevator.
“There’s nothing to forgive, Mr. Nichols. You were worried about
someone you love, and I understand that. Hank is lucky to have an
agent who cares as much as you do.”

“Thank you. Please call me Guy. Mr.
Nichols sounds so old.”

As the elevator bounced to a stop at
the lobby level, she decided she liked Guy Nichols. “And you can
call me Melody. I think we’re going to get along just fine,
Guy.”

She stepped into the lobby. “Where are
we going for dinner?”

His private car dropped them at a posh
restaurant in the Meat Packing District. The Maitre d’ escorted
them to a quiet table on the Mezzanine, where Melody could conduct
her interview with a degree of privacy. Over a beautiful meal of
Lobster Salad and Duck, she asked her questions. An hour later, the
waiter removed her empty plate.

“Thank you for the wonderful meal,”
she said, and sipped the hot chocolate she’d ordered for dessert.
“You must come here often to receive such excellent
service.”

Guy sipped his coffee. “I come here
fairly often. Thanks to BlackWing, I enjoy a standard of living I
never thought to aspire to. It was a lucky day when I ran across
them. Don’t get me wrong. From a financial standpoint, I’ve been
more than lucky, but from a personal standpoint, I’ve been blessed.
I love those guys as if they’re my own boys. I’ve just got the one
daughter, and they’re like sons to me, every last one of
them.”

“Can I quote you on that?” she
teased.

He sat up and, placing his forearms on
the table, he leaned toward her. His face was solemn. “Yes, you
can. And I’ll do anything to see my boys are happy. Anything. I
think you can make Hank happy. If there is anything at all I can do
to help you, you just let me know. Anytime, day or night. I’m here
for you.”

“Thanks, Guy. I want Hank to be happy,
too. For the record, I love him. If you talk to him again, you can
tell him I haven’t forgotten what we talked about and assure him
I’m working on it. He’ll understand.”

He sat back, relaxed once again. “I’m
glad to hear that. He’s waited a long time to find the right woman.
Whatever it is you’re working on if I can help in any way, don’t
hesitate to call.”

Chapter
Twenty-nine

Mel arrived in San Diego on a
beautiful, early fall day with no marine layer in sight. Her hired
limo drove north along the sparkling coastline to the house she had
rented on the La Jolla cliffs. After the crowded of streets of New
York, she looked forward to the quiet of the coast for a few
months. Most of the tourists had gone, the gold-flecked beaches
would be empty except for the diehard locals and
surfers.

The house turned out to be everything
the realtor had promised over the phone. The Spanish-style
architecture gave a lazy, laid-back feel to the property. Terra
cotta roof tiles and beige stucco walls complemented the rugged
coastal landscape. Lovely, well-tended gardens surrounded the house
on all sides. They filled the yard with vibrant color and soft,
sweet floral scents. The vanishing-edge swimming pool appeared to
drop off the cliff into the ocean. Steep wooden steps descended the
cliff face to the beach below if she wanted a more challenging swim
in the cold waters of the Pacific.

She spent her first afternoon
unpacking and getting to know the house she planned to call home
for the next few months. She ate her dinner on the patio where she
could enjoy the sound of the surf and the mild ocean breeze. After
the summer of controlled chaos in the recording studio and a few
hectic weeks in New York, the solitude was relaxing. She lazed in
the garden and watched the seagulls soar against the backdrop of
sparkling ocean and the setting sun.

Her mother lived just up the coast in
Encinitas in the same house Melody had grown up in. She called her
mom to let her know she was fine and she would drive up to see her
on the weekend. She wanted a few days to adapt to West Coast time
and to establish her new work schedule.

Her time was hers to do with as she
pleased. She swam in the pool in the morning, wrote for several
hours. After lunch, she walked on the beach before returning to her
computer for a few more hours of writing, stopping as the sun began
to set on the western horizon. She loved the quiet backyard where
she would sit and watch the sunset. After dinner, she returned to
work, or if her creativity was low, she simply sat outside and
listened to the surf crash against the shore.

The first week passed quickly, and to
her surprise, she made remarkable headway with the book. Her only
regret was Hank wasn’t there to share it with her. She thought of
him constantly. Beneath her contentment swirled the ever-present
loneliness and heartache of missing him.

As the weekend approached, she dreaded
the visit with her mother. She’d always been close to her, growing
up in what was for all intents a single-parent home. However,
underneath the close bond lurked a festering undercurrent of
distrust she needed to come to terms with. Her mother never wanted
to discuss her father and never mentioned his death if she could
avoid it.

Melody wanted to build a life with
Hank. His parents’ marriage was by all accounts a model for the
perfect life. Hers was anything but. In order to live with Hank in
his bi-polar world of rock stardom and small town farmer, she
needed to understand the forces driving her fears and lay those
fears to rest.

She rented a car and made the short
drive up the coast.

Nothing has
changed.

The modest family neighborhood existed
in its own bubble of reality, where children still played on front
lawns and drove Barbie cars along the sidewalks. It was a
neighborhood filled with PTA moms, scout leaders, and Sunday school
teachers. The residents mowed their own lawns and tended their own
flowerbeds. Everyone knew everyone else, and holidays were
celebrated with bike parades and potluck dinners in the park around
the corner.

Her mother knelt on a foam cushion,
spade in hand, weeding the front flowerbed. She dropped the tool
and her gloves, rushing to grab Melody in a huge hug. She returned
the affection, genuinely happy to see her mother despite the
serious reason for her visit.

They eased apart, and her mother took
her by the arm, pulling her along behind. “Let’s go in and have
some tea. I want to hear all about this Hank Travis who wants to
marry you. I can't believe you'd get involved with a musician after
everything I've been through.”

She stiffened at the mention of Hank’s
proposal. She never should have told her mother about it in the
first place. Her mother’s reference to her own suffering, with no
mention of her daughter’s, hadn’t gone unnoticed either.

She forced herself to relax and
allowed her mother to drag her through the house to the kitchen.
She sat at the work island while her mother fixed a pot of tea.
Melody hadn’t ever thought much of it before, but she realized
brewing tea was a skill her mother probably picked up from her
father. It was as good a place to start as any, and it might keep
her mother away from the subject of Hank.

“Where did you learn to brew tea so
well?”

Her mother, Diane Harper Ravenswood,
finished pouring the hot water into the teapot before turning to
her daughter. Her lips were thin, but she managed a slight smile.
“You came here to ask me about your father, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I need to know, Mom. Don’t you
think I’m old enough to hear the truth?”

Her mother sighed and placed the
teapot, cups, and saucers onto a tray. She added a plate of
homemade cookies and a crock of honey. “Let’s take our tea out on
the patio. We’ll be more comfortable there.”

She held the door for her mother and
followed her out. A trellis covered with wine-colored bougainvillea
in full bloom shaded the area. Her mom poured the tea as neatly as
any lady of the manor.

“Cookie?”

To be polite, she selected
a cookie and set it on her plate.
How many
tea parties did Mom put on for my friends and me? Hundreds, at
least.
The memory brought a genuine smile
to her lips.

“You’re remembering the tea parties,
aren’t you? I used to love seeing you with your friends, all
dressed up in your frilly dresses, playing at being grown up.
Thanks to your summers spent at Ravenswood, you could put on a
passable British accent your friends were always trying to mimic. I
was sorry when you no longer wanted to have tea
parties.”

Melody remembered bitterly why she’d
quit having the parties. The one on her tenth birthday had been the
last. “They were fun for a while.”

“Yes they were.” She sipped her tea
and set the fragile cup back on the saucer. “What do you want to
know, Mel?”

“For one, why don’t you ever call me
Melody?”

“Your father named you. I wanted to
name you something normal, but he insisted. When you started
school, I knew if you went by your real name, it wouldn’t take long
for someone to figure out who you were. Once that happened, you’d
never have a moment’s peace, so I registered you in school as Mel
Harper. Of course, the school principal knew who you were from your
birth certificate. She didn’t want the notoriety for her school, so
she agreed to keep it quiet.”

She sensed her mother was still
holding back. At least she was willing to talk about a few
subjects, but clearly, she wasn’t going to get much further
today.

She rose to leave.

“Wait. I’ve got something for you.”
Her mother left, returning a short time later with a stack of
scrapbooks. “It’s time to pass these on to you. I started keeping
clippings about Milton long before I met him. You can learn a lot
about him and the kind of life he led by reading these. Don’t make
the same mistake I did, Mel…Melody.”