A Christmas Night to Remember(18)
She swayed a little, so tired she could barely remain upright, and then made her way into the bedroom where her case had been left earlier. Shrugging off the robe, she climbed into bed, wanting to think about her and Zeke, to reaffirm to herself the rationale that vindicated her decision, but so exhausted her brain simply wouldn’t compute. She couldn’t think. Not now.
The swirling snow outside the bedroom window had bathed the room in soft evening shadow, despite it being only a little past one o’clock, and the bed was supremely comfortable after the hard institutional one she had endured for the past three months. Within seconds her breathing was even and deep and she slept a dreamless sleep.
She was completely unaware of the big broad figure that entered the room a few minutes later, standing just inside the doorway until he had satisfied himself her sleep was genuine, at which point he walked softly over to the bed. Zeke stared down at his sleeping wife for several long minutes, his gaze caressing the fragility of her fine features as she slept, and the breakable quality of the shape under the coverlet.
When he noiselessly closed the drapes against the worsening storm outside the cosy cocoon of the hotel his cheeks were damp.
Melody wasn’t sure exactly what had dragged her out of the depths of a slumber so heavy her limbs were weighed down with it. She lay in a deep, warm vacuum, a charcoal twilight bathing the room in indistinct shapes as she forced her eyes open. She felt blissfully, wonderfully relaxed.
For a moment she had no idea where she was, and then the past few hours came rushing back at the same time as voices somewhere beyond the bedroom registered. Male voices.
She couldn’t remember closing the curtains. She stared towards the window, her brain still fuzzy, but then as familiar deep tones registered she sat up in bed, shaking her hair out of her eyes. That was Zeke’s voice. She glanced at her wristwatch but it was too dark to make out the time.
Her heart thudding fit to burst, she threw back the coverlet and reached for her robe on the chair at the side of the bed, pulling it on with feverish haste. After switching on the bedside lamp she again checked her watch. Four o’clock. Tea and cake. Room Service. But that still didn’t explain what Zeke was doing here—unless she had imagined it, of course.
Zeke was very real when she opened the door to the sitting room. Too real. Melody’s senses went into hyperdrive as she registered the very male body clad only in black silk pyjama bottoms. Not that Zeke had ever worn pyjamas to her knowledge.
It was clear he’d just had a shower before answering the door. His thickly muscled torso gleamed like oiled silk where he hadn’t dried himself before pulling on the pyjama bottoms, and the black hair on his chest glistened with drops of water. He was magnificent. Melody had forgotten just how magnificent, but now she was reminded—in full, glorious Technicolor.
She swallowed hard, telling herself to say something. Anything. But her thought process was shattered.
‘Hi.’ His smile was ridiculously normal in the circumstances. ‘Did the knock at the door wake you? It’s our tea and cake.’
She tried, she really tried to rise to the occasion, as one of the sophisticated beauties he’d dated before he’d met her would have done, but she knew she’d failed miserably when her voice held the shrillness of a police car siren. ‘What are you doing here?’ she yelled. ‘You’re supposed to have left.’
His expression changed to one of wounded innocence, which was all the more unbelievable in view of his attire—or lack of it. Before he could voice the reasonable and utterly false explanation she just knew was hovering on his lips, she continued, ‘And why is the tea and cake for two, considering you ordered it hours ago?’
‘Ah…’ He smiled, a smile of singularly sweet ingenuousness. ‘I can explain.’
‘Please do,’ she said with biting sarcasm.
‘I never intended for you to be alone on Christmas Eve, so I thought I’d stick around for a while, that’s all.’
He raked back his hair, which had fallen quiff-like across his brow, and she was reminded how much it suited him that bit longer than he normally wore it before she hastily pushed the thought aside. ‘I didn’t invite you to stay,’ she glinted angrily. ‘And why are you dressed—’ perhaps undressed would have been a more appropriate description ‘—like this?’
He glanced down at the pyjama bottoms, as though he was surprised at the obviousness of the question, and then met her furious gaze with a serenity that sent Melody’s stress level up a few more notches. ‘I was having a shower when Room Service came with the tea and cake,’ he said patiently.