“No,” he said, grudgingly impressed. “Do continue.”
“Once you were remodeled, buffed and polished, Brent sent you out, and you were cast in Burn as part of a ten-million dollar deal. It’s been skyward and onward since. If Reunion performs as well as forecasted at the box office, chances are pretty good that you’ll become the newest member of the twenty-million-a-movie club. Not bad for the bad boy of Raleigh County. From mountain boy to superstar in…five years?”
He tapped the table with his knuckle. “Just about to the day. You’re a good researcher, Faith.”
“I’m surprised that Brent has gone along with this deceit. As agents go, he’s pretty decent. He’s got a great reputation for genuinely caring about his clients and for having a conscience. I think Olivia relied on that to give substance to the crap she’s been peddling about you.”
“Before we go any further, let’s get one thing straight,” he said sternly. “Brent is my best friend. He’s my only friend. It was never my intention to deceive…to misdirect anyone in any way.”
“Then let me tell the truth about who you are. It’s going to come out anyway.”
“Are you threatening me?
“I’m warning you.” She sat forward, reaching for his hand, but then withdrawing her own quickly. “I’ve been assigned to write a story on Zander Baron. It would make the cover if…if I wrote it in full. It would be my biggest cover story, and given the public interest in you, it would garner a great deal of publicity. For both of us.”
The waitress returned and set Zander’s meal before him, but he no longer had any taste for what little taste the omelet had. “Do you really hate me that much?”
She winced. Her nostrils twitched, another telltale sign that tears were close. “This is the nature of the business, Alex,” she said softly.
He shoved his plate aside. “Don’t call me that.”
“That’s your name.”
“Not anymore. It’s all legal. I can even show you a driver’s license to prove it.”
“I know,” Faith said. “It was issued in Cheyenne, Wyoming, five years ago.”
“How long have you been planning this grand exposé?” he asked.
“That first close-up in Burn…” She shook her head and smiled wistfully. “I felt like I was having a heart attack. I knew it was you. I asked my editor to let me cover your Reunion press conference. I wanted to see you.”
“I’ve wanted to see you too, Faith. You have to believe that. My memories of you were the only things that kept me going at times when—”
“Zander Baron has no memories of me,” Faith cut in, her tone jagged. “Don’t you dare pretend that you’re the same person I knew back home.”
“Home,” he repeated with a bitter laugh. “Home to you was hell for me, and you know it.”
“Is that why you ran?” Her voice broke. “Is that why you left me?”
He rested his elbows on the table and covered his face with his hands for a moment. “I didn’t—” He sighed sharply and tried to explain. “I saw a chance to start over that night, and I took it.”
“What about all the days and nights after that, when you could have called or written me just to let me know you were still alive?” She couldn’t stop her tears this time, and she angrily swiped them away. “Did you even know when your mom died? You hadn’t been gone two years when she was rushed to the medical center with her head split open—”
“I was living on a lettuce farm, sleeping in a bunk with twenty other guys,” he said through gritted teeth. “I was in no position to help anyone else, especially a woman whose idea of quality childcare was to strap me to my bed so she could hang out at Buzzy’s Tavern. Don’t criticize my choices until you have all the facts. It was easy to leave Dorothy, but it killed me to leave you.” He reached forward to brush away her tears. “I never wanted to leave you.”
She pushed his hand away from her face, but he took hers and held onto it. “But you did! You left me behind. I wanted out of Booger Hollow just as much as you did back then, but I wasn’t willing to kill to do it!”
“I was willing to die,” Zander insisted. “Not kill.”
“You got rid of Alex Brannon just the same, though, didn’t you? You must have thought you’d hit the lottery when you met Olivia Baxter. You had your very own fairy godmother to turn you into a whole new person.”
“I never begrudged you your rich parents,” he said. “Don’t begrudge me Olivia Baxter.”
“My ‘rich’ parents cut me off when I decided to go to New York University instead of the University of West Virginia,” Faith said. “They wanted me to go to school in state and marry Jefferson Winslow and be his dutiful wife, raising our kids in Dorothy and living in the biggest house while Jefferson took over the running of the coal company.”
“I put myself through school,” she told him. “I did what you did, Alex. I worked. There were times I was so tired, I couldn’t work up the strength to complain about how tired I was. When I graduated, I worked my ass off at regional newspapers until I had enough clips to impress an L.A. Times recruiter I met at a job fair. I worked there for six months, and two years ago, I got a job at Personality! I’ve worked hard and paid quite a few dues, but the only way I’ll truly be able to write my own ticket is to break a story with serious weight. Loving Alexander Brannon is in my past. Exposing Zander Baron could be the key to my future.”
Pulling her hand from his, Faith grabbed her recorder and handbag and slipped out of the booth, leaving Zander helplessly watching her walk away.
Faith pushed open the door and stumbled into the sunlit morning, hoping that Alex would come after her. Putting on her RayBans to hide her puffy eyes, she slowed her stride to her car. So many times she had prayed to see him once more, and she had fantasized that she would. But in her fantasies, the meeting had taken place in Heaven or some other otherworldly realm, not in a back booth in one of L.A.’s famed dining establishments.
The location hadn’t mattered, not nearly as much as her reaction to the meeting. Her body had responded to him as if starved for the sensations it had known with him in their youth. Fanning herself with one hand, she leaned back and faced reality—that her exposé might not be as easy as she had hoped it would be.
Chapter 4
Faith climbed Kayford Mountain to the secluded wooded area high above her parents’ backyard. She had brought one candle with her. Faith wanted to make her birthday wish far from the curious stares of her family and friends, so now she was sitting on a thick, fragrant bed of pine needles and damp earth at the highest point in town, looking up at a sky full of twinkling stars waiting to hear her wish. Surely the heavens would grant her the one thing she wanted if her request had so little distance to travel.
As dusk fell, heavy rain clouds moved in to darken the purple-pink sky, giving it an ethereal beauty made more extreme by the rustic location she’d chosen to make her wish. With the wind picking up, the orange flame of her tiny pink candle had struggled to live long enough for Faith to accomplish her task. With her one desire filling her heart and a long draw of air expanding her lungs, she pursed her lips and blew, trading the life of the flame for that of her wish.
The wisp of smoke vanished into the wind, and Faith drew her knees to her chest, hugging them tight. Pinpoints of starlight tried to break through the cloud cover, and Faith thought the hectic sky her loveliest birthday gift. The wind picked up as though determined to drown out the music of the crickets and owls serenading her as she closed her eyes and tilted her head back, musing on her wish.
“Hey.”
That single syllable startled and exhilarated her as she whirled around.
Alex had come up on her like a creature born to the mountain woods, magnificent in his faded blue jeans and threadbare T-shirt.
“It came true,” she said breathily.
“What?” he asked.
“Hi.”
“Hey,” he repeated. “What are you doing up here?”
/> “Just watching the sunset. The sky is so pretty tonight. I’ve never seen it like this. All troubled and restless.”
He sat close to her, lacing his fingers together with his elbows braced on his knees. “I never get tired of the view from up here,” he said. “It’s like a scene from a movie.”
“Today’s my birthday,” she blurted, suddenly nervous.
He turned toward her, his eyes violet in the twilight. “Well, happy birthday, Faith.”
“Thank you.”
“Eighteen,” he murmured. “Bet your folks gave you something real nice.”
“Yeah, they did.” Not particularly anxious to discuss her gift, she cleared her throat. “It’s a combination birthday and graduation gift.”
“The Camry is a good, solid car,” he said, keeping his eyes on the tumultuous sky.
“How did you know they got me a Camry?”
He shrugged. “Everybody knows everybody’s business in Booger Hollow. Of course, some things can be kept secret, if you’re careful.”
“I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to keep our thing a secret,” she sighed. “Darlene Cross keeps asking me where I’ve been ‘disappearing’ to after school lately.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That if she didn’t stay out of my business, I’d tell her boyfriend that she’s got your old yearbook photo taped up in her gym locker and that she kisses it every day.”
Alex chuckled dryly. “Cool.”
Faith gave him a poke with her elbow.
“Would you really rat her out like that?”
“Only if she forces me to,” Faith said. “I can keep a secret, but not at the expense of having my own leaked. How did you know I was up here?”
He picked up a cluster of fragrant white pine needles and passed their length between his thumb and forefinger. “I followed you.”
Her parents and those of her friends always talked about Alex as though he were the boogeyman. But painting him as an ill-bred, uncouth vagabond who roamed the nights peeking into their daughters’ bedrooms had the opposite effect of what they had intended. Rather than scaring the girls away from him, the warnings had fed their fascination with him, and Faith’s fascination had led to friendship.
“I saw Jefferson Winslow pestering you after your dance class today,” Alex said. “Thought I would have to sock him in the jaw if he didn’t leave you alone.”
“I can handle Jeffy Winslow,” she responded, referring to him by the name she’d used since their first day in kindergarten. “Our folks married us off in the crib. Trouble is, I’d rather throw myself off this mountain than spend the rest of my life in Raleigh County married to a bratty Winslow.”
“Me, too,” Alex replied wistfully.
“You mean you don’t want to marry a bratty Winslow either?” Faith teased.
Alex blessed her with a rare smile. She took his arm and rested her head on his shoulder.
“I’d rather die than spend the rest of my life in Dorothy,” Alex sighed.
The yearning in his voice tugged at Faith’s heart. She shivered, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of Alex or the sudden chill in the wind.
“You can leave town anytime you feel like it,” she said. “I still have another month of school, but come fall I’m starting at New York University. One more summer in Dorothy, and my life, my real life, really begins.” She quietly cleared her throat. “You know, you could leave too, if you wanted.”
“Where am I supposed to go, Faith?” he asked sadly.
“There are lots of things a resourceful guy could do in New York City.”
“With what money? I got nothin’, Faith. I couldn’t even get hired at your daddy’s mine. What makes you think I could get a decent job someplace else?”
“You could go to college,” she suggested. “You’re smart, you—”
“You just don’t get it, kid,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t understand how the world works.”
“I understand plenty,” Faith said, stubbornly crossing her arms over her chest. “And don’t call me kid. You’re only a year older than I am.”
“I didn’t have the grades for college,” he said. “Honors American history didn’t compensate for the way my grades fell toward the end of my Lincoln High career.”
“Only because you were out sick so much.” She took his left hand, her fingertips grazing the network of scars that represented the nature of his sick days. “I could talk to my dad,” Faith offered. “If he met you, I know he’d give you a job.”
He’d looked at her then, and his sadness brought tears to her eyes. Alex had touched her face just below her ear, and his gentle caress raised her to her knees, drawing her face closer to his.
The wind had gained in force, bending the trunks of the youngest trees and thrashing them with the branches of the bigger ones. Faith’s hair lashed her face and Alex’s hand as they moved closer together, aware of nothing other than each other.
“You’re legally an adult now,” Alex murmured. “A grown-up woman.”
He brought his lips to hers, touching them with such tenderness she felt the tremble in them. Alex wasn’t like the boys at school because there was so little boy left in him. Faith had been kissed before, but never like this. Never had a boy gently parted her lips with his tongue to touch hers, the resultant jolt of electricity leaving her breathless and limp as she melted into his arms.
She was loath to separate from him even to breathe, her mouth seeking his as his head shifted, his nose sweeping hers in passing. She smiled through their kiss, thrilled by the rasp of the stubble above his upper lip and the taste of his mouth.
She could have reveled in his kisses from that moment until forever if he hadn’t torn away from her.
“We should go,” he said.
The gravity of his tone returned her to the mountainside, and for the first time she noticed the rumbling sky. The sky, which had been as pretty as a present, was angry, black, and layered with storm clouds that seemed to weigh heavily on the treetops.
Alex took her hand, pulling her roughly to her feet. Faith moved into the protective circle of his arms, blown there by instinct or by the violent wind now forcing the trees to dance crazily. When the rain came, it fell all at once, as though the sharpened tips of the tallest evergreens had ripped open the cloud bellies.
Carefully picking their way down the mountain, Alex stayed in front of Faith, helping her maintain her footing even as torrents of rain made their path precarious. He lifted her over hollows and caught her when she stumbled over a large rock. The rain saturated their clothing instantly, leaving his T-shirt nearly invisible and plastered against the hard muscle of his arms and torso. Her sweet pink blouse and blue jeans soaked through, Faith shivered.
Cold was the least of her worries when the ground began to shudder. “Alex?” she called over the howl of the wind. “What’s that?”
His fearful expression sent terror through her. “The mountain.”
His terse explanation made no sense until she looked behind them. Her first impression was that a tidal wave of hot cocoa was bearing down on them. But then she grasped what Alex had already figured out—the storm was washing away part of Kayford Mountain.
Alex’s grip on her hand tightened, and he began running. His hold was the only thing that allowed her to keep up with him, but as the water overtook them, Alex drew her closer and braced their bodies against the thick trunk of a white pine.
Her face hidden in his chest, Faith was too frightened to do anything other than cling to him. The muddy wave carried debris past them, the trunk of a dead tree battering their white pine hard enough to shake Alex’s hold on its lowermost branches. The cloudy brown water reached Faith’s waist and was climbing steadily higher.
“We can’t stay here,” Alex sputtered, shaking filthy water from his long dark hair. “The water is going to take this tree down the mountainside.”
Faith sobbed. She saw nothing of the idyllic
mountain she had known all her life. The patchy groves of hardwood trees, the fields of sparse grass—all swallowed by the onrush of angry water.
“I know this mountain,” he said, his brittle smile doing little to ease her fear. “We can’t outrun the water, but we can hide from it.”
He made a move to leave the safety of the tree, which had become increasingly unsure as each wave of water left it bending closer to the ground. Too scared to move, Faith clung to its branches.
“Will you trust me?” he shouted over the roar of the water and a booming crack of thunder.
She nodded, blinking tears and dirty water from her eyes. Her teeth chattering from fear and cold, she could barely squeeze out the words, “With my life.”
Alex maintained his hold on the tree with one hand and used the other to shift Faith. “Climb on my back,” he told her. “And when I let go of the tree—”
“Don’t let go!” she cried. “We can wait here until the rain stops! My parents will be looking for me, and someone will find us.”
He roughly took her chin and forced her to look at him. “The roots aren’t going to hold this tree in place much longer.” As if to illustrate his point, the white pine lurched, sweeping Alex off his feet. “None of your father’s heavy machinery can do anything until after the water crests. Our best chance is to ride the runoff to the mudstone at the hollow. The rock will shelter us until the flooding stops.”
“I can’t,” she whimpered. The pine made another wrenching shift, and Faith screamed.
In that instant, Alex simultaneously flipped her onto his back and let go of the tree. Faith pressed her face into his shoulder and held onto him with all her strength. The current was so strong, her legs floated behind her as the water threatened to rip her away from him. With her arms wrapped around Alex’s neck so tightly, she wondered how he could breathe as he rode the murky wave toward the side of the mountain.
Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) Page 7