Curve Struck (A Celebrity Stepbrother Romance) (22 page)

Melanie walked over, took the phone and pressed the
decline
icon. Then she powered her phone back on and sent Declan a short text before powering down again.

I am safe. Leave Cammie out of this.

Shoving the phone and her passport in her bag, she turned back to her roommate and best friend for the last three years.

"Can you give me one last ride?"

Having Cammie drop her off at the JetFly terminal at LAX, Melanie bought a ticket to Atlanta with a connecting flight to London after she had checked the requirements for entering the country. With six hours remaining before the flight to Georgia, she went to the stands outside the baggage claim area and jumped on a shuttle bus bound for the Courtyard Hotel that was only a mile away. Once there, she paid two hundred dollars for a room she would use for slightly less than three hours, just long enough to shower and take a nap before leaving the hotel to find her first meal in more than a day.

She left the Courtyard wearing a big, floppy sunhat, Declan's beloved Boston Red Sox cap left with Cammie after extracting a promise that the dancer would mail it to him right away. The sunglasses, of no known importance to Declan, she kept because they helped hide her face.

And leaving didn't hurt so much when she could hold them, her heart momentarily fooled into thinking he'd just stepped out of the room and would soon be there to reclaim the glasses -- and Melanie.

Ninety minutes before her plane was scheduled to depart, Melanie slid the glasses on and approached the security line at her terminal. She handed the guard at the front of the roped off area her boarding pass and ID as she looked at the two hundred or so people between her and the x-ray machines.

"Remove your glasses and hat, miss," the TSA officer ordered.

Forcing a smile, she took off the hat and glasses, nestling the Ray-Bans in the hat's crown. The man, young and eager looking, studied her ID and her face a few more seconds until the elderly woman behind Melanie cleared her throat.

Thank God for impatient people, Melanie thought as the officer returned her boarding pass and driver's license.

She slogged along ten minutes, then twenty, the line in front of her only reduced to maybe a hundred bodies because the airport seemed to be on a higher alert level than usual.

"You," an authoritative voice called out.

Just like the hundred people ahead of her and the hundred behind, Melanie looked up to see if she could spot the person being singled out. People shuffled and she saw another TSA officer, his arm extended and one damning finger pointed in her general direction. She scanned the people directly next to her, looking for the potential smuggler or international bad guy.

"In the hat and glasses."

A young man with a ball cap but no glasses lifted his brows in her direction. She shook her head. She'd already been subject to scrutinization at the front of the line.

"He means you," a cute, geekish girl with glass-free frames said to Melanie as she paused half a second while swiping through her iPhone.

Looking at the officer, Melanie touched her index finger to her chest. Nodding, he crooked his finger, calling her out of line. Apologizing her way past a dozen or more people, she reached the rope barrier. The officer unhooked it and gestured for her to step through.

She paused on the other side, studying him as he hooked the rope back in place. Despite the cool temperature of the air conditioned terminal, the man had started to sweat profusely. Beyond that, he was relatively unremarkable. Standard good looks, medium height, medium build, somewhere in his late thirties or early forties, the hair visible beneath his TSA cap shaved close.

"Boarding pass and ID."

Already clutching them in her fist, she handed the documents over. "The gentleman at the front of the line checked them."

Her lips sealed tightly together as soon as the veiled protest left her.

"Come with me, Miss Archer," he ordered, his voice dipping low before he said her last name.

With a feeling of deja vu from the Colorado flight home washing over her, Melanie planted her legs apart and crossed her arms over her chest. "Where are you taking me?"

She could vividly imagine how the officer at the front of the line would have responded to her flash of resistance. But the man standing before her looked like he wanted to pass out.

"To my office, where I will explain why I pulled you," he answered, his voice low and intended for her ears only.

Before he turned, she caught a flash of several badges hanging on a lanyard attached to his right shoulder button. There was the magic green LAX card that would open all the doors in the airport. In front of it was his TSA badge identifying him as a supervisor. Beneath the picture was his name.

M. Greggs

By the time they reached the office, Officer Greggs' earlier perspiration had turned into a waterfall. She'd never seen someone sweat so much just from walking at a slow pace.

"I'm not sure you're cut out for this kind of work," she said, taking the seat he offered.

Snorting, he sat down after removing a handkerchief from his back pocket. He dabbed at his moist forehead and upper lip.

"Catching bad guys, keeping the skies safe," he answered after a few more dabs. "Piece of cake, I assure you."

Reaching under his desk, he hesitated a second. "I need to step out for a moment. Can I get you anything to drink?"

"I'll wait until I'm on the plane."

The look on his face as he stood and reached into his pocket before leaving the office told Melanie she wasn't getting on the plane, at least not the one listed on her boarding pass.

Alone, she folded her hands in her lap and looked around the room. It clearly wasn't a temporary work space for him. Pictures lined the wall. She saw what looked like a younger, more muscular version of him in desert camouflage, another of him completing TSA training of some kind, and a third with him standing next to a wheelchair occupied by a young boy.

After a glance over her shoulder, she reached forward and rotated one of the picture frames on the man's desk. Same boy, a few years older, the wheelchair newer than the one in the picture on the wall and pimped out in the same colors as the Boston Red Sox cap she had left in Cammie's care.

She turned another frame, the man and the boy on the deck of a large boat with what looked like deep sea fishing rods behind them and maybe a marlin, the boy's hand gnarled into a thumbs-up gesture and a grin on his face that was bigger than the fish.

Rotating the frames to their original positions, she folded her hands in her lap once more and waited for the officer's return.

He came back a few minutes later with a sealed water bottle that he placed in her hands before taking a seat on the other side of the desk. She thought about reminding him that she couldn't take the bottle past the security lines, but they both knew that was no longer a consideration.

"So you went from the Army to the TSA," she said with a nod at the pictures on the wall behind him.

His throat bobbed nervously and then he nodded.

"Pay sucks," she mused, her gaze pointedly sliding to the third picture. "But I imagine the healthcare coverage makes up for it."

His face pinched forward but he remained silent.

"Does your son like movies?"

"Doesn't everyone?" he asked, his expression shifting yet again, the guilt momentarily washed away to be replaced by caution.

"Does he like Declan Bain movies?" she clarified.

He blinked and she knew she wasn't paranoid.

"The ones he's allowed to watch," the man admitted. "Funny thing, we had no idea who Declan was until the first time he helped Jamie out with a fundraiser."

First time...

Melanie closed her eyes for a few seconds, searching for composure and an extra measure of resolve. When she looked at the man again, she nailed him with a firm stare.

"I'm not interested in getting you in trouble," she started. "I just want to get to Atlanta."

"I've been assured you will," he answered, his return gaze unwavering. "Since that's what you want."

Her head dipped. Trying to outstare the man was tiring, especially after the last few days of torment.

"Did he call you?"

"No, ma'am," Greggs answered. "I called him. Tim -- the officer who checked your documents at the front of the line, is new. I was evaluating him on camera when he asked you to remove your hat and glasses. I recognized you immediately."

Great, she was famous.

Infamous, rather, and for all the wrong reasons.

Greggs' phone vibrated in his pocket. He fished it out, tapped at his screen for a second and silenced the device. Rising from his desk, he jerked his head at the office door.

"I need to step out again."

Passing where Melanie remained seated, he thrust his hand toward her. "I'm Mike, by the way."

She sighed, hesitated the length of a slow blink, then accepted the handshake. Whatever happened next, she wasn't going to cost Mike his job -- or the healthcare he needed for his son. She just wished he wasn't already certain she would not complain. She knew he was certain, too -- he had stopped sweating.

Hearing the door shut, she tried to relax her shoulders. She considered praying that Declan had come to his senses since her text to him at Cammie's place, but someone had assured Mike that she would get to Atlanta despite her getting held up in security. And she knew he had already talked to Declan at least once.

She didn't want to talk to Declan at all. She was too weak, would be too weak for a long time.

The door opened and she turned in her seat to make one last appeal to the TSA supervisor's common sense. Instead of the starched medium blue shirt with its black and gold TSA epaulets and black polyester pants, she saw an expensively tailored silk jacket and dress slacks.

Having memorized the narrowed waist and muscular thighs, she didn't need to look up to know that she would be having her talk with Declan after all.

She looked up anyway.

Less than nine hours had passed since she last saw him. He looked like it had been nine years. His eyes seemed hallowed out. The skin, warm and golden even when he wasn't being bronzed on set, looked pale and jaundiced under the yellow fluorescent lights of the office.

Which meant that she looked even worse than he did.

Cammie's words from that afternoon swam up and slapped Melanie.

They'll stop reminding you that you don't look like that Shayna bitch.

Right, she chided. She didn't care how washed out she appeared or how good Declan looked despite the sudden gaunt cast to his face.

She waited until Declan closed the door and sat down before she said anything.

"You should have told your friend to go back to doing his job when he called."

"Desperate men do stupid things."

His comment earned a snort from Melanie. "So do grateful ones."

The snort turned into an annoyed huff. "I'm not going to report him."

"I didn't think so," Declan confessed. "That's not who you are."

Right, she had proven herself to be a pushover any number of times, first on the set with Suzanne then with the way she had let Declan treat her at the last airport they'd been in together and how she had let him boss her into leaving her apartment on Normandie.

Not wanting to think about all the lesser surrenders she'd made in the past few weeks, she directed her thoughts elsewhere.

"If the press finds out about this, they'll draw a parallel to what Strake is claiming you did."

His hand slid to wrap around the arm rest of her chair. "But we both know differently. Isn't that what's important?"

"I keep trying to save your career--"

His fingers curled lightly around her wrist. "I'm happy to be one of those 'Whatever Happened to' headlines if it means being with you."

Freeing her wrist, she planted her head against her hands. "You are--"

Her mouth snapped shut as thoughts of Skye and Willie surfaced.

"Crazy?" he supplied. "It's okay to say it, Mel. I don't mind cluing you into the fact that you are at least a little bit crazy, too."

"No." She fluttered both hands at him. His feelings, whatever they were, depended on her being sane, an even keeled pushover who didn't introduce any drama into his life.

Her whole damn theory depended on her being sane.

"You are here with me, risking your heart," he argued. "It's the craziest thing I've ever done."

She tried to turn away, squirming in her seat, but he reached across her lap with one hand, seized the other arm rest and wrenched the chair so that they faced each other, her shorter legs tangling with his.

He leaned forward until his gray eyes were a hand span away from hers, their noses even closer.

"Since I brought you into my bed," he scolded, "I've been attacked professionally and personally on a daily basis. If I wanted a quiet, drama free life, I would have dumped you back in your Normandie Avenue apartment."

Melanie straightened and slunk as far away as the chair's back would allow her to move.

"Since I've met you," he pressed on, "I've done things no rational man would. Including allowing Mike to risk his freedom and his ability to support his son."

Her face corkscrewed, the lips pushing out in a quiver. "You don't have to shout."

"You don't listen when I say it softly," he countered, his tone gentling. Releasing his hard grip on the arms of her chair, he cupped her chin.

"Touch my nose."

Melanie felt her brain swoosh and tilt inside her perfectly immobile head at the odd command.

"What?"

"Touch my nose."

She hadn't misheard him and he appeared earnest in the command.

"Why?"

He pulled away, his hands returning to rest against his thighs. His tongue swiped once between his lips and then he rolled them together.

"From the first time I realized there was something deeply wrong with my mother until you told me you love me, I've been waiting to find out that I was a late bloomer for schizophrenia or some other mental illness."

She shook her head. She had more or less accused him of acting like a crazy man, but she didn't think he was actually crazy. He was creative, intense, and a great many other things, but Declan Bain was not mentally ill.

"Think about how I was raised in a paranoid atmosphere. You remember what I said to you at your mother's house -- the very first thing that left my mouth?"