Page 9 of Ice Cold Christmas
“Find your place? Your place? You had a place! That makes no fucking sense.” He reached for her. Caught himself. His hands lingered in the air. She’d been wrong before, when she thought that he’d cut his hand on the broken wine glass. That had just been dark, red wine on his skin. Not blood.
She could not breathe because Victor stared at her as if he’d very much like to commit murder. Is it going to be this easy? Will he just admit the truth? This easy…or this crazy. Because she was alone in the opulent room with him. And he was so much bigger than she was. Could he kill her before she could even cry out for help?
“You had to go…away from me?” Victor bit out.
She didn’t move. “Why are you in my room right now?” Do not show fear. Do not.
“Oh, I don’t know, Melody, maybe because I’ve spent the last year of my life tearing the world apart looking for you? Could that possibly be it?”
Her heart raced even faster. She was surprised that he couldn’t hear its frantic beat. The hard pounding certainly echoed in her own ears. “You looked for me?” He’d just stunned her.
“A slew of private investigators couldn’t find you.”
Probably because they’d been looking in the wrong places.
“No trace. That’s what they turned up. Nothing. False leads and bullshit. You drove away, and you weren’t found.”
Her lips pressed together.
He growled. An animalistic sound. His gaze slowly rose to pin her eyes. “You left me.”
“Uh, newsflash.” She needed to be aggressive. Sharp. Melody had never been a pushover, or at least, she didn’t think she had been. “I left everyone. I hardly see why my dad’s business partner or protégé or whatever you want to call yourself—I hardly see why you’d get your silk boxers twisted up over me taking some time to go out and have myself some fun.”
The last year had not been fun. The last year had been a nonstop nightmare. But she had a role to play, and she was going to play that role to perfection.
Melody Mage had been a bored socialite. Always flitting from one bit of drama to the next. She’d loved the high life. She’d been self-absorbed. She’d partied with rock stars. She’d dated artists. She’d caused havoc and mayhem, and her own father had long since sworn she’d never get her hands on the family business. Or at least, those had been the stories flashed online so frequently.
In other words, Melody Mage had been…someone I don’t know. Someone I don’t understand. A woman with her face. Her body. But someone she only knew through online research. Research she’d started after bits and pieces of the past had begun to flit through her mind. For a while, there’d been nothing in her mind when she tried to focus on the past. Nothing but darkness and fear and screams.
Then she’d begun to have flashes of…more.
“You hardly see…” Victor blinked. Stared at her as if she had two heads. “You thought I wouldn’t look for you?”
From what she’d seen, no one had looked. Was she supposed to just buy his story about the PIs? “There were no major news reports about me vanishing. Clearly, you knew I wanted time for myself.”
“I got the fucking text, Melody.”
Her heart slammed into her ribs. “There’s that word again. You are naughty, aren’t you? Guess you just have a very dirty mouth.”
“Don’t look for me.”
Her body jerked.
“That’s all you told me. One text. In a year. Then your phone was turned off a day later. It never turned back on. Not in a whole year.”
Goosebumps rose on her body. It was so cold in that room. Cold in the house. Cold outside the house. She could hear the roaring of the wind. Heaving and twisting. With the news of the heavy snowfall, she’d almost canceled her plans. Almost turned tail and run away at the last moment. But…then she’d seen Victor arrive at the house.
Yes, I was watching outside. I saw you arrive, Victor. I shivered in the cold, and I hid and I watched you and Dario and Olivia. She knew the players in this game.
“Where is your phone, Melody?”
Excellent question. She had no idea. “I…threw it away.”
His left hand reached out. This time, he touched her. His fingers slid beneath her chin, tipping her head up even more, and she didn’t expect the charge of absolute heat to flood through her body at his touch. But it did. So much heat. A sensual electricity flooded her veins, and she was suddenly, completely terrified.
Because he stared at her as if…as if…
“You threw it away?” Victor breathed. “The same way you threw me away?”
