Waltz This Way (v1.1) (35 page)

Grim. Jesus Christ. He’d been a shit more often than not since they’d begun seriously dating. “There’s a lot at stake.”

Nate crossed his arms over his knees. “There’s a lot at stake just crossing the road. Look, Mel was rich before, and she still taught kids who were underprivileged. She might have had a nice house and a hot car to drive, but what was really important to her was how much she loves to dance and how much she wants to share that with everyone else. Have you ever really watched her teach a class?”

He had, and he understood now. Remembering her that night with Neil brought with it a certain peace. “She’s beautiful.”

“She isn’t just beautiful, she’s passionate about what she loves to do. Mom loved painting and alcohol more than us. But I think Mel has room for both. You just didn’t give her a shot at working things out. Instead of explaining your real fears, you hid—”

“They weren’t fears,” he bristled.

Nate’s eyes rolled upward in his head. “We can call them whatever you want. How’s ‘misgivings’?”

He nodded his consent. “A fine word.”

“Okay. You didn’t tell her about your misgivings. You created a fight about something that wasn’t the real issue at all. Unfair.”

Yep. It was official. He was a total ass. “You really like her, don’t you?”

Nate grinned in the darkness, his white teeth flashing. “Yeah, I do.”

“You’re really smart.”

“A genius, in fact.”

“I might have ruined things for good.”

“That would so suck. For both of us.”

Drew rose, his mind racing with ideas for Mel’s return. “So I think it’s time I show Ms. Cherkasov that even Neanderthals can be reformed. We have a week. You in, son?”

Nate stood, jamming his shoulder against Drew’s. “All the way.”

“I can’t believe you turned Celebrity Ballroom down,” Jackie said with a forlorn tone as they drank wine in her enormous kitchen with the gourmet stove and shiny refrigerator the size of a Sherman tank.

The girls surfed in and out on feet with wings, chatting and giggling while assorted animals looked for stray hands willing to stroke them with love and attention.

Jackie held up her glass of wine and pointed it at Mel. “If anyone was perfect for the job, it was you, my friend. You were gorgeous on camera. You had that shit in the bag. Now those poor spray-tan people are going to have to suffer the wrath of Lucy Vega, and I want you to know, they hold grudges.”

Mel’s smile was equally forlorn, but it wasn’t because she’d turned down the offer to be a judge. It was because she missed Drew, and Nate, and she hated that she missed him. She hated that she’d checked her cell phone two hundred times since she’d left Jersey only to find that the jackass hadn’t called.

“I guess I just discovered that I’m not cut out for this kind of life. I told you that before I left to come here.”

Jackie waved a hand at her. “I know, but I thought once you got into the studio, threw on a hot, slinky sequined dress, you’d change your mind. At least, that’s what I hoped you do.”

“That was what cinched the deal for me. Everyone poking and prodding at me made me want to scream.” She shook her head at the irony of it all. “I always thought I wanted to be a superstar. With Stan, that dream faded, but it didn’t fade as much because of Stan as it did me. If I’d wanted recognition that much, I could have gotten it via Stan. Now, I like just being Ms. Cherkasov who teaches kids, who hate the craft, BTW, to dance.”

“Speaking of Stan— did you talk to his attorneys?”

Mel was still in a state of shock over the letter she’d opened in the airport. “I did, and it’s true. I’m a multimillionaire. Don’t ask because I sure don’t get it.”

“I think the fuckerly fuck discovered himself in some monastery while surrounded by goats who told him he’s a huge shit via some goat mind-meld in a sweathouse, and he decided to relieve some of his guilt by paying you off. No one knows where the hell he is to ask him.”

It was true. Stan’s attorneys wouldn’t disclose his location, nor would they reveal Stan’s reasons for giving her such an enormous amount of money. “It makes no sense at all. Why, after all this time, would he order his attorneys to dole out such a huge chunk of change to me? Guilt?” She’d wanted no part of it at first. The thought of taking Stan’s money appalled her, but then an idea had formed, and she’d decided she needed at least some of it.

Jackie’s sleek shoulders lifted in indifference. “Maybe he had a near-death experience. I don’t care what it was. You deserve the money. If you even consider returning it, I’ll break all your limbs.”

She grinned. “So how are we going to spend it, darling? Wanna hit Louis Vuitton? I, for one, could use a new purse.”

If she was sure before money wasn’t the key to happiness, not wanting to buy a Louis V. cinched the deal. Her sigh was long. “No. I’m not going to spend it on things like purses. I’m going to go back to Jersey and teach the boys how to dance just like I was going to do before I came into all this guilt money. I’m also going to buy my dad a place we can share, and I don’t have to sleep on a bed fit only for Thumbelina.”

Jackie cackled, cupping Mel’s chin in her hand. “Did you call Dean Keller?”

Her nod was slow and filled with sadness. “I didn’t, but Stan’s attorneys did, and I made sure a check was made out to cover Nate’s tuition until he graduates Westmeyer.”

“Whaddya suppose your Drew will have to say about that?”

She toyed with her pasta vodka in an absent motion. “I think we can officially declare him no longer mine, and I can guarantee he’ll never suspect impoverished Mel was responsible. He’d be livid if he knew I’d gone from just barely making ends meet to rich girl by proxy. It would only enforce his conclusions about my evil intent to rule the world one cha-cha at a time.”

Jackie’s spiky hair gleamed under the soft fluorescent lighting of her kitchen. “And that’d be stupid. Which I don’t get. I really liked Drew, and I’m usually good at pegging a guy who’s decent. I just feel like there’s something else …”

Mel snorted, pressing her fingers to her temple. “Both you and my dad think that. Right now, he’s just going to be stupid.”

“Well, we can’t exactly accuse him of being too bright, seeing as he let a catch like you go, now can we?”

Mel’s sigh was a shaky shudder. Thinking about Drew hurt her from the inside out. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here crying over man number two in just under a year. Second time is a charm, huh?”

Jackie’s eyebrow cocked upward. “Ah, well, there’s a huge difference this time. This time you’re crying but you’re not unemployed, honey. Oh, and you’re richer than shit. Best of all, you took care of you and stood up for what you want in a relationship. I’m proud, and Drew’s a dick.”

A big one. Blue whale big.

“Jackieeee!” Frank howled.

Jackie’s head swiveled in the direction of Frank’s media room just off the kitchen where he sat amidst a multitude of exotic green banana plants and pictures of the stars who’d made him famous hung on the walls. “If he’s yelling because he wants a scotch, I’m going to kick his ass. I ain’t the maid.” She turned in the direction of the media room. “What, honey? Christ. Can’t you see I’m consoling my friend with expensive wine you’ll regret we wasted because you couldn’t wait two seconds?”

“Get in here now, and bring Mel with you!”

Mel and Jackie shared a hesitant glance before scurrying off their stools and heading toward the media room. “What the hell, Frank? Did Clooney jump off a bridge? Brangelina have a three-way with live streaming video?”

He held out his beefy hand to her from the leather sectional that sprawled across half of the room. “Sit. Mel, you, too. I think you’ll want to see this.” Frank, a large man with an even larger heart, patted the sofa. His wide face, typically never without a smile, held a frown that revealed the wrinkles on his broad forehead.

Frank clicked the remote and Stan appeared on the screen, handsome as ever, tall, and lithe when he took a chair and seated himself across from Nora Phillips, one of the most respected reporters of all time.

Mel’s breathing stopped, seeing him after so long. He looked pained, as though every movement he made was an effort. His hands shook a little, undetectable to most, Mel supposed, most everyone but her. She knew Stan. She knew when he was simply using his artistry as a guise and when he was in real pain.

Jackie groaned and flapped a hand. “This is what the big deal is? Why would Mel want to see this? He’s probably going to spill his bullshit about finding himself at some Palm Beach spa confessional style. His ratings have been down since he shit on Mel and hooked up with that gold digger Yelena. He needs public sympathy like a crack whore needs change.” She elbowed her husband. “I can’t believe you dragged us away from some girl talk for this.”

Frank clicked the pause button on the TIVO before putting his hand over Jackie’s mouth, which was probably the only way to shut her up. “Hush, my love slave. Shut your yap and listen.”

Mel watched as Nora Phillips thanked Stan for coming to “share” his very emotional journey. She listened with half an ear as Stan droned on about his life, his marriage to her, which she gave him kudos for mostly portraying with accuracy, and she listened with two ears while he told Nora with watery blue eyes why he’d chosen her to reveal his tortured secret to.

Nora could be trusted to ask the right questions. She could be trusted not to edit things with her own personal slant. She could be trusted not to leak his interview until he gave her the thumbs-up. She was an icon in the business.

Blah, blah, blah. Stan may have given Mel blood money, but it didn’t mean she liked him more because of it. He’d left her to fend for herself with packs of vicious reporters and had never looked back while she sat in the rubble of their marriage.

Mel was a second shy of getting up and leaving to find a bucket to vomit in until Frank clamped his hand over her thigh and made her stay.

So she could hear Stan, with his Russian accent noticeable only in times of great stress, tears streaming down his face, throat clogged with emotion, confess.

That he was gay.

Drew hung up the phone and shook his head. Dean Keller had personally called on a Sunday morning to tell him an anonymous donor had paid for Nate’s tuition for the remainder of his schooling at Westmeyer.

Who did he know that had that kind of money? Why would someone do something so generous? How could he ever thank this faceless person for lifting the weight of a huge burden from his shoulders?

Since Mel had gone to L. A., not only had he spent the better part of her absence kicking himself, he’d spent the other half wishing he hadn’t shunned the job offers he’d turned down to work for major cor-porations because he didn’t want to get caught up in the rat race again.

He’d wanted to teach Nate to put family above all else— that no job, no amount of money was worth sacrificing your family time. In the process of that lesson, he’d become a zealot in the way that he lived— in his judgment of everyone around him— even in something as simple as buying a couch.

Now he was going to try and make things right. He had a few calls in to some of the companies that had once expressed interest in him with the hope they’d pan out. Yet, now that Nate’s immediate future was secure, he could breathe a small sigh of relief.

Rubbing his hands over the scruff on his face, he sank down on the couch Mel had called lumpy and stared off into space, missing her, wishing he could take back the crappy shit he’d said so he wouldn’t have to hear it on repeat when he closed his eyes at night.

A warm mug pressed against his hand startled him. He looked up to find Nate, grinning down at him. “You need coffee.”

“Did you just hear what I heard, kid?”

Nate nodded, shoving his hands under his T-shirt. “Yep. Somebody likes me— a lot.”

“But who?”

“For all my genius, I have no answer for this one. But promise me something?”

“What’s that?”

“That your pride won’t keep you from letting me use the tuition.”

“You know me well, grasshopper. I’m not saying I didn’t think about saying no.” Because he had, almost immediately, until he caught himself and remembered he and Nate’s conversation.

“I bet you did. That you didn’t is like some huge revelation of self-discovery,” Nate said with a grin.

“Do you know what this means, son?”

“It means your salary is your salary and we can buy a new couch?”

Drew barked a laugh of pure relief. “Yeah. It might be time for a new couch.”

“And maybe a picture or something. Poor people have pictures, too.”

Drew smiled. Since their chat when his twelve-year-old son had set him straight about an adult matter he should have seen clearly all alone, they’d put their heads together with a mission to win Mel back.

They had a week until she returned from fall break, and he had a plan.

It was a pathetic work in progress, but Drew was determined to make it happen.

The phone rang again, shrill and irritating so early on a Sunday morning. Nate jumped up and grabbed it. “If it’s Grandma, tell her no time for chocolate chip pancakes today. I have work to do.”

The look on his son’s face might have had him worried until he saw him smile.

He handed the phone to Drew. “Today is a very strange day in the McPhee household.”

“Who is it?” Drew asked, setting his coffee on the end table.

Nate thrust the phone at Drew. “Just take the phone, Dad, and give that thing we talked about a shot. You know, trust?” His grin turned mischievous.

Drew gave his son a perplexed glance before taking the phone.

“Hello?”

“Is this Drew McPhee?”

He stared at the phone while Nate did a touchdown dance. “It is.”

“Wonderful!” the cheerful voice, loud and boisterous yelped into the phone. “I’m so glad I caught you, and forgive my calling you on a Sunday, but …”