“You’ve got lots of housemates.” Faith read off their names. “Betty Crocker. She looks like a fun gal. Uncle Ben. I hear he makes a good bowl of rice. Mrs. Butterworth. I don’t know about her, she looks like the jealous type. I’ll bet her head spins every time Aunt Jemima sits next to Orville Redenbacher.”
“I like to keep a well-stocked panty,” Zander explained. “You never know when people will come by.”
“When was your last party?”
Zander dropped his eyes and concentrated on slicing a shallot. “Never had one.”
“Are you having one soon?” Faith again looked at the contents of the pantry.
“What’s with the questions?”
“I worked at a food co-op in college. Your pantry is better stocked than the co-op ever was.” Taking the raspberry vinegar from the area it shared with five other kinds of vinegar, Faith brought it to Zander.
“I thought only black people drank grape soda,” she commented, handing him the vinegar.
“You want one?” Zander grinned. “I bought it special for you.”
He dodged the light punch Faith threw at him and unscrewed the cap of the vinegar. He poured a couple of tablespoons of it into a small plastic canister with a plunger built into the lid. “Mind giving this a few pumps, to mix the dressing?” he asked, pushing the canister over the surface of the fireslate counter they were sharing.
The aromas of fresh oregano, basil and garlic mingled with the fruity scents of cold-pressed olive oil and vinegar as Faith set the contents of the canister spinning. “This smells good enough to drink straight,” she remarked.
“Personally, I’d rather have wine,” Zander said. “I’ve got a few nice whites in the basement, if you feel like picking one.”
“Work me to death, why don’t you,” Faith smiled, rolling her eyes. “Which way to the basement?”
Zander pointed to a door off the rear of the kitchen. Flipping the light switch just inside the stairwell, she stepped lightly onto the pine steps. The staircase was steep, but the varnished steps were wide and so well made that they kept their silence under Faith’s weight.
The basement was carpeted and chillier than the main floor, but it wasn’t the cool air that gave Faith unpleasant goosebumps when she reached the last step.
The basement ran the length of the house. The furnace and hot water heater were tucked in a corner opposite a room with pine walls and a glass door. The rest of the space was occupied by five-tier, stainless steel shelving units. One section was filled with canned goods, another with boxed goods, still another with cases of bottled water. Plastic bins, the same shade of penal grey as the cinder block walls, contained bags of potatoes, onions, apples and oranges. Faith squatted to peep into the nearest bin and she saw an assortment of fresh carrots, beets, squash and cabbage.
“Did you get lost?”
Startled, Faith popped up to her full height and spun to face Zander. Before she could shape her expression into something less revealing, the merry light in Zander’s eyes flickered out.
“What’s the matter?” he asked warily.
Faith turned, once more scanning the fully stocked shelves and bins. The one question she wanted to ask died on her lips as its answer blossomed in her mind.
I can’t afford to pay you more money, but I can let you have two meals per eight-hour shift.
As easily as she recalled his voice, Faith closed her eyes and pictured Red Irv, his sweaty bald head gleaming pink in the cold, blue-white light of the fluorescent bars of his diner. From her usual seat in a rear booth, she’d had an unobstructed view of the dishwashing station in the cluttered little kitchen.
She had just started her senior year at Lincoln High, the same school from which Alexander Brannon had graduated a year earlier. Knowing that she would no longer be able to eyeball him at school every day, she’d started going to Red Irv’s after her ballet class, ostensibly to grab dinner and study. The thing she studied most was Alex as he went about his work.
Red Irv opened his diner every day at five a.m. dressed in blinding white—chef’s jacket, trousers and floor-length apron. He resembled a giant marshmallow. But by the close of dinner service, his cooking whites were so smudged with food and grease that he ended his workdays looking like Poppin’ Fresh’s indigent brother.
Faith had been checking and re-checking her calculus homework, deliberately dawdling until Red Irv’s closed so she could leave when Alex did. She was the only patron left in the place, but Red Irv and Alex seemed to have forgotten about her as they spoke in loud voices from the kitchen.
“I don’t need your charity,” Alex had said, his voice dark with defiance.
“Then you’re the only Brannon who doesn’t, because your daddy begs his coffee and eggs off me every morning, and your ma comes in every Saturday night asking for scraps for her dog,” Red Irv responded, his blunt, Irish-accented words delivered with his meaty fists set at the place where his massive gut hung over the ties of his apron.
Alex’s reply was so quiet, Faith struggled to hear him. “My mother doesn’t have a dog.”
“Don’t I know it,” Red Irv boomed. “Look, Alex. You’re a good kid, a real good kid. You deserve better than what you got. I ain’t tryin’ to prickle your pride, but you gotta eat. I don’t want you pickin’ leftovers off my customers’ plates after you bus tables. I can’t give you a raise, and even if you had the money to pay me for meals, I wouldn’t take it from you, not with your daddy fleecin’ you every week. Two meals per eight-hour shift. Deal?”
Faith hadn’t seen Alex, not with Red Irv’s big stomach filling the doorway. Her face had grown hot in the way humiliation and embarrassment had of roasting one’s flesh from the inside. Alex’s quiet pride, honed by the harassment and ostracism he routinely received from the town, saved him now in the face of Red Irv’s offer.
“It’s a deal, but only if you let me do the windows twice a week,” Alex said confidently. “Save you some money on the service you normally use.”
Red Irv smiled gratefully. “The bastard has doubled his prices in the past two years, so I’ll take you up on that offer, Alex. Thank you.”
Red Irv had stretched out a hand, and Faith assumed that he and Alex were shaking on it. She jerked her head back to her math book when the two men started out of the kitchen. Alex had wiped down three tables and Red Irv had completed counting out his cash drawer before either noticed her.
“Faith!” Red Irv called boisterously. “I thought you left. How’re you gettin’ home, honey?”
Alex had studiously rubbed circles into the nearest table, his white towel flapping over the edges.
“I’m walking, I guess. I’d better get going, before it gets too dark.”
“Alex, call it a night and get the lady home safe,” Red Irv directed.
“It’s okay,” Faith had said, standing to shove her text and notebooks into her backpack. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’d feel more comfortable if you had an escort,” Red Irv insisted. “Go on, Alex, get outta here. I’ll get the floors and lock up.”
Without a word or a look at Faith, Alex had gone back into the kitchen, emerging a few seconds later having traded his dirty apron for a weathered leather jacket. Giving Red Irv a nod good-bye, he’d gone to the door and waited for Faith.
“Where’s your bike?” she’d asked, nearly running to keep up with Alex’s long, quick strides.
“At Brody’s,” he’d snapped. “It needs a new battery.”
“Batteries are easy to replace, aren’t they?”
He had stopped and shoved his fists deep in the pockets of his jacket. “I can’t afford food. What makes you think I can afford a battery for my bike?”
His gaze was chillier than his voice, and a shiver moved through Faith.
He started walking again and Faith trotted alongside him. He wouldn’t look at her, and he said nothing else to her. He didn’t slow his pace until they were well beyond the center of town.
�
�You’re not fooling me, you know,” he said softly.
“What are you talking about?”
He stopped, confronting her twenty yards from the entrance to her cul-de-sac. “You’re not the first chick in this town to hang around Red Irv’s because you’ve got a hankerin’ for white trash.”
“Red Irv isn’t white trash!”
“I meant me, goofball.”
“I’m not a goofball.” Faith stubbornly raised her chin. “And you aren’t trash.”
Her assertion seemed to nudge the chip on his shoulder. “Everyone else in town seems to think so.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve been called a lot of things, but you’re the first person to ever call me a goofball,” Faith said.
He rolled his eyes and groaned. “I was talking about what people think of me.”
“Well, I don’t think that about you.”
They spent an awkward moment of silence as night deepened around them. On the other side of the Welcome to Kayford Estates sign, golden light burned from the windows of the four- and five-bedroom houses. Alex watched a family of four sitting in their dining room, the man at the head of the table reading a newspaper while a woman Alex assumed to be his wife poured his coffee. His son and daughter seemed to be having an animated debate to which both parents seemed deaf.
Back the way they had come, far on the other side of town, Alex’s home sat nestled at the end of a dead-end road, the only light provided by a cracked street lamp. He clamped his jaw and breathed heavily through his nose, steeling himself for the long walk to a home that felt more like a prison.
“You’re supposed to be walking me home,” Faith said. “Red Irv said.”
“He’s not my boss once I leave the diner. This is far enough. Your porch light is on, and I can watch you walk the rest of the way from here.”
“Okay, then…thanks for walking me most of the way home.” Faith took a few steps, but then turned to face him again. “You could walk me to the front door, you know. My folks won’t kill you.”
“Are you sure about that?” he called.
It wasn’t until later, after they’d begun meeting in secret on the mountain, that Alex told her he had followed her, at a distance, every night she’d walked home from Red Irv’s. Dorothy was a friendly small town, but it was just big enough to attract an element that occasionally liked to stir up trouble. In following her home, Alex had wanted to ensure that no harm ever came to Faith.
They had never discussed what Faith had overheard at Red Irv’s, but after seeing his pantry and basement, Faith realized that Alex had yet to outgrow his fear of again going hungry.
He walked stiffly to the wine cellar and threw open the door. Wincing in anticipation of hearing glass shatter against the wall, Faith sighed in relief when she noticed that the door was on a pressure hinge, which saved it from Zander’s temper. She entered the room before it closed and found Zander standing in front of a long, chest-high wooden rack. Each diamond-shaped cubbyhole contained a bottle of wine, but Zander seemed to stare beyond them. Faith assumed that his mind was where hers had just been.
Her gentle touch on his arm started his words. “I used to wake up every morning feeling as if I were serving time for a crime I didn’t commit. There were days when…” His words caught in his throat as hot emotion swelled inside him.
“Those days are gone now,” she soothed, gathering him in an embrace meant to show him that she could share the burden of his pain. She did, always had. When she had seen Orrin Brannon slap him outside Red Irv’s because he’d failed to turn over his paycheck fast enough, when he’d sponged up his heavily medicated mother from the curb in front of Buzzy’s Tavern, and when his former classmates came home from college and sat in the diner ordering Alex around as though he were their personal slave, Faith had wanted to scream and shout, to do all the kicking and punching that he couldn’t.
She hadn’t known how to comfort him then. Her little jokes, smartass comments and horrible nicknames for his tormenters seemed to amuse him, but the moment they parted ways, his melancholy returned. She now had other skills at her disposal, and she readily employed them to return him from the place and time he had worked so hard to keep in the past.
She took his hands and brought them closer to her face. Surgery and medication had softened the appearance of the scars she had learned beneath the tall evergreens on Kayford Mountain, but the stories of their origins still weighed on Faith’s heart. She pressed her lips to them, hoping that her kisses would show him that she cherished everything about Alexander Brannon.
He curled his hand over hers, pressing kisses to her loosely folded fingers. Inching backwards, he put some space between them to avoid getting too carried away.
“I’ve got a pinot noir rosé that should match well with dinner,” he said, pulling the bottle from its cubby hole. “It can carry its own against the strong flavor and fat of salmon.” He selected another bottle and dusted the label before displaying if for her. “Or if you’d prefer a white, this sauvignon blanc has notes you’ll find intriguing.”
Respecting his wish to tread on less personal ground, Faith hooked her thumbs through her belt loops and asked, “When did you learn so much about wine?”
“When Olivia Baxter decided that Brent and I needed a bit of refinement,” he grinned. “She put us in dance classes, a cooking class—”
“The ABCDs of the modern renaissance man,” Faith chuckled. “Acting, booze, cooking and dance. You’re fully armed to seduce, on screen and off.”
“That’s the nice thing about acting,” Zander said. With two bottles of wine tucked under one arm, he held the door open for Faith. “I can be anything I want.”
“Or anyone,” Faith muttered as she passed him.
Chapter 8
Faith had accepted Zander’s invitation to go for a hike to work off the salmon, couscous and wine they had gorged on for dinner. The thin trunks of close, young poplars provided excellent handholds for her to pull herself higher and easily keep pace with Zander. Her Keds were ill-suited for the trek, but the trail Zander had chosen was free of fallen branches and large stones and was thickly cushioned with desiccated pine needles. A few steps ahead of her, Zander breathed heavily, his lungs working harder the higher he climbed. When he stopped, Faith drew up beside him, smiling even as she panted for breath.
“Okay,” Zander said. “Turn around.”
Taking her by the shoulders, he gently spun her. What little breath Faith had left caught in her chest at the sight of the San Bernardino mountains with Big Bear Lake at their feet. Serenity washed over Faith, and she relaxed against him.
“This is disgusting,” Faith beamed, taking a deep breath of cool air scented with freshly disturbed earth, pine sap, and damp cedar bark. “It’s so beautiful, but it’s a different kind of beauty from back home.”
Zander shrugged. “Mountains are mountains.”
Faith grunted.
“What?” Zander asked.
She turned her head, catching his gaze. “It’s purely accidental that you bought a house in one of the prettiest mountain ranges in California,” she remarked with a skeptical pinch of her lips.
“Sure. Half the state is mountains. They’re hard to avoid.”
Faith kept further speculations to herself, particularly her suspicion that Zander lived in the mountains because they reminded him of home.
“People back home say if you flattened West Virginia, it would be bigger than Texas,” she told him. “West Virginia is more vertical than horizontal.”
“You’re just a walking Mountain State encyclopedia, aren’t you?”
“I’m just trying to suggest that if you like mountains, West Virginia is the place to be. Fawnskin reminds me a lot of Booger Hollow. It’s just got a sexier name.”
He would have openly balked at her suggestion that he return to West Virginia if her remark hadn’t been accompanied by a smile so lovely that their mountain view dimmed in comparison.
> “The only thing I would have ever gone back there for is right here,” he said.
The sun sank further behind the mountains, taking the last of its warmth with it. But Zander’s words, and the finality with which he spoke them, warmed Faith all the way through.
“Why didn’t you?”
Zander hoped it was a trick of the sunset stealing a bit of the light from her dark eyes.
“Why didn’t I what?” He took a few steps away from her and leaned against a mature fir tree.
“Why didn’t you ever come back? For me.”
“Faith,” he groaned, wincing. “I’ve told you already—”
“I know, you hate Booger Hollow, but that’s not good enough.” She went up to him, standing toe to toe. “You didn’t hate me.”
“What’s done is done,” he uttered in exasperation.
“I thought I was going to die,” she persisted.
“I wouldn’t have let anything happen to you,” he said.
“You’re the reason I thought I’d die!”
“That’s not how I remember it,” he mumbled.
“I don’t mean then.” A tremor crept into her voice. “After. When I believed you were dead. They never found your body, obviously, so I didn’t even have a grave to visit. You just disappeared. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep.”
“Yet you recovered in time to start classes at NYU in the fall,” he said blithely.
Faith pinched him. Hard.
“What the—” Zander protested, grabbing at the aggrieved flesh on his upper arm.
“I had to get away from Booger Hollow! It was the only way I could stop thinking about you all the time! When I came home for Christmas that year, I hurt so much that I—”
A soft, silent raindrop cut her off.
Faith swallowed hard, her ire giving way to a flare of panic.
Zander curved an arm around her shoulders and began guiding her back down the mountain. “We’ll make it back before the storm hits,” he assured her. “This mountain hasn’t been mined to death. The rain doesn’t have the effect here that it does in Booger Hollow.”
Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) Page 14