All A Man Wants For Christmas: Chapter One
1:46:00 PM
How could you have longed for something with all your heart, lived through endless minutes, hours, days and weeks anticipating the moment it happened, and be numbingly terrified when it finally happened?
(At the Hospital)
Mandy shut her eyes tightly, wrinkling her face as she told herself to get control, she could do this…she slowly unclenched her hands which had been fist at her sides and opened her eyes. The small room which had been one of four, off the main ward had been home for three months since the accident. She remembered the damage she had done to her spine and leg one morning when she stepped in front of a lorry, wasn’t going to be a quick fix she thought. She also remembered one of the nurses attending to her earlier on, telling her it was mostly long-term patients who were placed in the private en-suite rooms. She suspected the nurse was trying to warn her not to expect miracles. She had known she’d changed her life forever when she looked into Zeke’s contorted face as she emerged from the fog of the anaesthetic after the initial emergency operation.
Mandy: "That's enough, don’t think of him, you need to be strong this morning" (Reaching for the thick warmly insulated jacket)
Despite the warmth inside the hospital it was freezing outside, it was going to be a white Christmas, it had already snowed that morning and the sky was low.
(She walked across the window and gazed at the view she was going to be seeing for the last time)
The carpark was busy, it was always busy, and the street of London stretched away, full of houses and people going about their everyday businesses, girls who wouldn’t mind wearing a short skirt in the summer or a bikini, she had been like that once but now every advertisement on TV and every magazine she read seemed full of perfect women, girls with long beautiful legs and flawless skin.
Enough.
(She turned from the window, hating herself for the self-pity that always seemed to hit when she least expected)
She had vague memories of Zeke sitting by her bed side holding her hands in the intensive care, but it had been a full week before she had woken up and found her mind was her own again…
She limped across the narrow bed staring down at the suitcase she had parked earlier that morning
She had all the relevant documentations and had said all her goodbyes, she's ready to leave the hospital… But here it didn’t matter that she walked with an ungainly gait, the nursing staffs were so proud of her that she’d fought to walk at all…They didn’t wince at the sight of her scars but praised her for the way she tackled the painful physiotherapy days… But outside was the real world, Zeke’s world…
(She swallowed hard at the thought)
…A realm where the rich and beautiful had the power and nothing less than perfection would do. She had inhabited that world once, briefly.
(She straightened her shoulders, telling herself such thoughts will only weaken her when she needed to be strong).
Zeke James - Entrepreneur extraordinaire, king of the show-business world he ruled with ruthless detachment. He was tall at 6ft 4 and big with it. Although Mandy knew for a fact there wasn’t an inch of surplus fat on the muscled male body, his broad shoulders and tough physique dwarfed most other men, and his face was hard, too strong featured to be called handsome by any stretch of the imagination. But he had something much more powerful than pretty-boy-good-looks: a magnetism that emphasized his raw masculinity and cynical sex appeal. The sharply defined planes and angles of his face were unsoftened by his jet-black hair and dark ebony eyes framed by his thick short lashes, but it was his mouth which has always fascinated Mandy. It was deliciously uneven and attractive and his voice, oh, on their first date she felt she could listen to the deep smoky tones forever, and she still did.
He had grown up in the foster care system from the age of eight when his single mother had finally abandoned him after years of neglect and disappeared to who knew where. He freely admitted he had been a troublesome child and even a troublesome youth, and remembered one teacher predicting he will either be a villain or a millionaire or maybe both. Zeke was a master at disguising his emotions, it was one of his attributes which had made him so hugely successful. There were plenty more, he had been building his empire since he was twenty years young with a ruthless determination devoid of sentiment, he was no respecter of persons. In the two years since they had been married, she had walked down the aisle on her 25th birthday.
Mandy had come to realize that whether one was a big star or a virtual novice, Zeke treated each artist exactly the same, he expected total dedication and 100% commitment and if he got that, he was charm itself. Undoubtedly, the charisma he exudes was as natural as breathing helped, especially with the ladies. She had heard of him long before she’d met him while auditioning as a dancer for a new show.
She remembered she had arrived late for the audition, an absolute no-no if you were serious about a job especially in show-biz. For every dancer selected there was over a hundred or more disappointed, competitions were fierce and jobs were scarce but Mrs. Wood, the elderly widow who lived on the ground floor of the house Mandy was living in, had found her beloved cat dead that morning and had been so upset she hadn’t been able to leave her until the frail little woman’s married daughter arrived. She had raced into the theatre where the auditions were being held, breathless and red-faced and had been given a dressing-down by the dance director in front of everyone without even allowing her explain why she was late. By the time she ventured onto the stage to dance her piece she had given up all hope of gaining a place in the chorus line talk less of the lead female dancer role which was what she applied for. When she started dancing, she felt her body was a musical instrument tuned and played as finely as a violin, and she’d responded to the piano, any nerves melting away as she flowed with the rhythm, her timing was flawless….
The first time she had seen Zeke was when she finished the audition and someone had risen from the small group sitting in the auditorium and begun to clap slowly. She stood there, panting slightly and unsure how to respond and her gaze was focused on a tall, broad shouldered man with dark hair and rugged features…
Zeke: "Excellent, Miss…"
(he looked at the note in his hand)
"Brown, better late than never, or do we have a prima donna on our hands who expects us to be grateful she bothered to turn up at all?"
Zeke: "Excellent, Miss…"
(he looked at the note in his hand)
"Brown, better late than never, or do we have a prima donna on our hands who expects us to be grateful she bothered to turn up at all?"
She had instinctively known it was Zeke James and she disliked him on the spot. She detested sarcasm and the deep faint husky voice had been oozing with sarcasm. Drawing herself to her full 5ft 10 inches, something that would ruin her chances of becoming a successful ballet dancer but which hadn’t interfered with her career as a modern day stage dancer, she tried to keep her voice from betraying her when she said…
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