Bedding the Wrong Brother(64)

When she got home, she had a message on her machine. Her heart beating fast, she played it back, hoping it was Rhys. It was her mother, telling her to call her right away.

Melina picked up the phone and dialed the number her mother had left.

Her mother answered the phone.

“Hi, Mom,” she said.

“Hi, honey. Thanks for calling me back. We'll only have access to a phone for a couple of days until the Vietnam tour starts.”

“Vietnam? I thought you were still in China?”

“We left China days ago, dear. Now, tell me, how are you?”

Melina swallowed hard and tried to answer calmly. Instead, she released a ragged, pain-filled sob.

“Oh, no. Honey, what's wrong?”

It all poured out of her. Her feelings for Rhys. The challenge Grace had thrown down. Max’s set up with the rooms. The lake and the incredible sex and the way Melina had alternately felt welcomed and alienated once they'd arrived in Reno. By the time she'd stopped talking, her voice was raspy. There was only silence on the other end of the line.

Melina covered her eyes with her hand, appalled that she'd just unloaded on her quiet, reserved mother, especially when she was so far away and couldn't do anything to help anyway. “It's okay,” she reassured her. “I'm okay. I just need to accept who I am and what I want. You did that. That's why you left acting, isn't it? Because you were more suited to the type of life Daddy led.”

“Oh, please, Melina,” her mother said. “You don't really believe that, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I did not leave acting because that life didn't suit me. I left it because I thought that’s what I needed to do in order to keep your father. His parents were very conservative and didn't approve of acting. To them, it was the same thing as being a whore. I wanted their approval almost as much as I wanted your father. So I gave up my passion for acting and was fortunate to be blessed with a different kind of passion.”

“Passion again,” she murmured. Her mother was describing exactly what Melina had told Lucy didn't exist. Inside her, hope fluttered its wings like a butterfly just emerging from its cocoon. “So that's what I should do? I mean, you're obviously happy. You don't have regrets—”

Her mother laughed. “Honey, I have plenty of regrets. And I'm certainly not telling you to follow in my footsteps and give up your life just to be with Rhys.”

“So you're saying I was right to come back?”

“No.”

“No,” Melina echoed. Frustration made her next words harsher than she intended. “Well, what are you saying, Mom? Because I need to know what's the right thing to do.”

“There is no right or wrong answer, Melina. Things will be what you demand they be.”

Pulling the phone from her ear, she stared at it, certain a foreign creature must have inhabited her mother's body. Her mother didn't talk like that. Rhys did.

Walking into the living room, she put the phone back to her ear. “I don't understand,” she breathed. She picked up the picture of Max and Rhys with their dates, the one she'd focused on before propositioning Max. “I'm looking at a picture of Rhys and Max after they won their award in Vegas. They're with their dates, and I…I'm having a hard time picturing myself with them.”

“That's because you're looking at the wrong picture. You've got tons of pictures with just you and Rhys. Pull those out and look at them. Ask yourself what you see.”

“I know what I'll see. Me. As plain and boring as ever.” But she wasn't a dominatrix either, at least not one who liked to wear leather and use a crop. Not when Rhys wasn't into it. Even now, she winced at how she'd treated him, acting cold because she'd wanted him to feel as vulnerable as she did.

“If that's what you see, you're focusing on the wrong person. Instead of focusing on yourself, focus on Rhys. Then ask yourself what you see.”

“But Mom—”

“I'm sorry, sweetie, but I have to go. I love you.”

Her mother hung up, leaving Melina to ponder her final words. She put down the framed picture of Rhys and Max, and pulled out the boxes of loose photos she kept under her bed. Then she laid a bunch out, pulling out the ones that showed her with Rhys. Since she'd known him for years, there were enough to cover her queen bedspread. She walked around the bed, studying them, trying to ignore her own image and whether she looked fat or was having a bad-hair day. She focused on Rhys, on the expression on his face, on the way he was often looking at her rather than at the camera lens.