"Faith, it is a two-seater roadster. Imported and custom-made. It's not supposed to have a back seat."
Most women adored this exquisite, expensive vehicle. She merely wrinkled her nose in disdain. Would she never stop surprising him?
When they were in the car, Ali said, "Now, Faith, you cannot start out this weekend scowling." Smiling, he traced a finger down her nose. "It will spoil the trip. I thought we'd drive along the coast, take our time and enjoy the wonderful afternoon. It will give us a chance to talk."
"Talk?" Faith repeated as if she'd never heard the word before.
"Yes, you know, exchange pleasantries, pretend we are having a good time." He reached out and covered her hand. She looked at his hand, so strong, so masculine, and yet so gentle over hers. "After all, we are supposed to be engaged, remember?"
How on earth could she forget? She wouldn't be here now, with him, if she wasn't pretending to be something she wasn't, something she could never be.
Blowing out a breath, she ordered herself to relax. She had agreed to this charade and she might as well make the best of it.
"I bought you a present," he said a bit mysteriously.
"A present?" she repeated with a wary scowl.
He laughed. "Faith, you are the only woman I know who would be suspicious of a gift. Most women would be thrilled."
"Well, in case you haven't noticed, Ali, I'm not most women."
"I've noticed," he said quietly, letting his gaze scan her features, sending a shiver racing over her with his dark, intense look.
With a smile, he reached to the floor, lifted a brown paper bag and handed it to her.
"Open it."
"Nothing's going to jump out at me, is it?"
Shaking his head, he laughed. "Faith, you are precious." He flipped on his directional, expertly changing lanes, then glanced at her. "Trust me, nothing will jump out at you." He waited a beat, until she'd unfolded the top of the bag. "Probably," he added with an amused smile, watching her back away from the bag warily, making him laugh once again.
"Open it, I promise you will like it."
"Why are you buying me presents?" she asked, stalling.
He shrugged. "Why not? A man should buy presents for his betrothed."
"Ali, this is pretend, remember? We're not really engaged, and presents aren't necessary."
"Ahh, but trust me, this present is." He nodded toward the bag. "Open it."
With another suspicious glance in his direction, Faith opened the bag, then laughed. "Oh, Ali."
Touched, she pulled out two cold cans of cola, a bag of chips and two candy bars, holding them up like a trophy.
"The sustenance of life," he said, delighted by her response.
"You remembered?"
"I remember every single thing you've ever told me." He glanced in his rearview mirror as he overtook a pickup truck, then turned back to her, his gaze soft, serious. "And everything you have not yet told me."
She popped the top on one of the cola cans, handing it to him. "What do you mean?"
Carefully, he sipped his drink, then slid it into the cup holder. "You told my mother that you spent some time at the Hopechest Ranch."
Faith sipped her own drink, wondering where he was going with this. "Yes, that's true. I did."
"Why?" With a frown, he glanced at her. "Where were your parents? Your family?"
He watched her face change, her body stiffen.
"I don't have a family." The flatness of her tone had him cocking his head, looking at her curiously.
The change in her expression caused him to study her more carefully. There was pain there, he realized, pain and something else shadowing those gorgeous green eyes.
He closed his hand over hers now, engulfing it in his, warming her with his touch. "Everyone has a family, Faith," he said gently, not wanting to pry, but wanting to know what had caused such pain.
He'd seen it before, both times when she'd thought he'd deliberately lied to someone he loved.
Obviously something very troubling had happened to her, something very troubling indeed.
It touched his heart, made him sad and curious to see her looking so fragile, so vulnerable. His protective instincts were so strong, especially when it came to Faith, he had to curb the urge to swing the car over to the shoulder and take her in his arms and just hold her.
"No," she corrected, her voice slightly brittle. "Not everyone has a family. I don't."
She didn't like talking about her past, especially her family, if that was what you wanted to call it.
She'd worked hard, very hard to overcome all the anguish of her childhood and she certainly didn't want to start dredging it up and all the painful memories with it.
"Tell me about it," he said quietly, stroking her hand in a soothing gesture, encouraging her to talk to him. "Do you have brothers and sisters?" he asked when it was clear she was not going to volunteer the information.
She shook her head.
"So you are an only child, like me."
She almost choked. "Like you?" Laughing, she shook her head, but there was no humor in her laughter. How on earth could he even imagine they had anything in common? "Hardly."
"But you are an only child?"
"Yes."
"But so am I."
"But I guarantee you that's where the similarities end."
"What about your mother? Surely you have a mother?"
Realizing he wasn't going to let it drop, Faith sighed, deciding she might as well just get this over with since the man seemed intent on prying into her personal life.
"She's dead." Her words hung in the air for a moment, echoing around them in the quiet confines of the car.
"I'm so very sorry." He gave her hand a comforting squeeze. "It is very difficult to lose someone you love, Faith. Very difficult." The thought of Jalila flashed through his memory, but only for the briefest moment. "And your father?"
"My father?" Her eyes flashed and her voice went cold. "My father killed my mother." She said it matter-of-factly, then made the mistake of looking at Ali and saw the horror on his face.
"Not literally," she clarified. "With his actions. But regardless of how he did it, it still had the same results."
She shrugged, trying to dismiss the feelings of anger and bitterness that rose when she thought of her father.
"I really don't know where my father is," she admitted, turning to face Ali, tucking her legs under her on the seat and sighing. "My father never had much interest in me. He abandoned my mother and me when I was fourteen."
"I see." Ali continued to hold her hand, in comfort, in empathy, not liking the unadulterated sadness echoing in her voice.
He wasn't going to ask the details, she knew, because he was far too polite, far too cultured. But Faith had gone this far, she might as well go the distance. It had been so long since she'd allowed herself to talk about this with anyone, to think about it, she found the memories suddenly flooding back.
"My father was handsome, charming and a conman. He couldn't hold a decent job, couldn't stay faithful and couldn't tell the truth to save his life, but my mother was totally and completely devoted to and dependent on him." Her voice had turned bitter and Faith blew out a breath, still unable to understand or fathom her mother's blind devotion.
She shook her head. "My mother believed him, no matter what outrageous, ridiculous lies he told her. No matter what cruel things he did. She still believed him and believed in him." Her voice had gone very soft. Ali was still holding her hand, and she found herself clinging to him, to his comforting warmth, perhaps because she'd had so little comfort in her life.
"But you did not?"
She shook her head, a faint hint of a smile on her lips. "Nope. Even as a kid I wasn't an idiot. I'd heard every lie he'd ever told, knew he could charm birds out of the trees. I recognized at a young age exactly what he was. Perhaps that's why he never had much use for me."
Ali could see her at that age. Serious, responsible, j
ust as she was now. And not a person to suffer fools.
He felt a sharp stab of pride and admiration for her.
But he also felt a wealth of sadness for her. To learn such realities at such a tender age must have been very difficult.
Faith stared off into the distance, absently watching the beautiful coastline fly by, remembering that painful time.
"Even as a child, I guess I always felt responsible for my mother," she said quietly. "She was just so…emotionally fragile, and so dependent on my father. She believed he was the prince charming all the fairy tales had promised." She shook her head. "I guess I always felt as if it was my job to prevent her from getting hurt." She sighed heavily. "I would have had an easier time stopping the sun from rising." She smiled sadly. "My mother was like…like an innocent child—always hopeful, always believing that everything would turn out all right. She believed in the fairy tale, the happily-ever-after." Inhaling a deep breath, Faith tried to push back the overwhelming sense of sadness that engulfed her whenever she thought of her mother. "But there was no happily-ever-after, at least not for my mom."
"What happened?" Ali asked, his voice soothing.
Reaching for her soda, Faith took a long sip, needing to soothe her dry, aching throat.
"When I was about fourteen, after another one of my father's very public affairs—affairs he didn't bother to hide from me, my mother or anyone else—he finally returned home, apologized and begged my mother to take him back, promising it would never happen again, that he loved her—us—and had big plans." Faith's laugh was bitter and she shook her head. "She believed him."
"But you did not." It wasn't a question, merely a statement.
"A leopard doesn't change his spots."
"What happened?" he prompted.
"He had my mother pack up the house, and all our belongings, said he had some big fancy job in New York. That he'd rented a house for us, with a big backyard, and that we were finally going to live the good life, be a real family."
Faith's eyes burned with unshed tears so she closed her eyes for a moment, trying to gather her composure.
Wisely, Ali said nothing, merely held her hand in his and waited until she was ready to continue.
"I remember…" She smiled. "I remember how excited I was at the time. I secretly hoped that this time was different. He wouldn't lie to us again, not about something so important. I desperately wanted that house with the big backyard, and a real family like all the other kids had. A father who didn't lie or run around with other women, who came home after work and did nothing but sit in a chair and watch ball games, or took me out for ice cream once in a while. Just that once, I allowed myself to…hope." She rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the tension. "He said he had to go to New York to finalize the deal, but he'd be back in less than a week to get us." Her voice had dropped to a choked whisper, causing Ali to tighten his hand on hers.
"There was no job?" Ali asked softly, wishing horsewhipping was still legal. He would personally take a whip to her father for his cruel behavior.
"Not only was there no job, there was no house, either. It had all been lies, nothing but lies." She pressed her fingers to her eyes for a minute, took a deep breath then continued. "I was devastated and so ashamed. I knew better. I knew I shouldn't have hoped or believed him. I felt stupid and humiliated, and as gullible as my mother." She blew out a long, deep breath. "I felt old, weary and just a bit too wise for my age."
Looking at her, he could still see the devastated fourteen-year-old child, her dreams shattered, her hopes dashed, her heart broken. It made his own heart ache in a way it had not in many years.
"My mother had dutifully packed up all of our belongings. The boxes were stacked very neatly in a row in the living room just waiting to be carted out. Then we waited. Every day I'd come home from school and my mother would just be sitting by the front window, staring out, waiting for him like a little kid waiting patiently for Santa Claus." She turned to Ali and he could see the sparkle of tears in her eyes.
"He never came back?"
"No." Her voice was whisper-soft. "We never heard from him again. My mother never got over it. She never stopped staring out that window, never stopped waiting for him." Faith wiped at the tears that filled her eyes, annoyed that this could still hurt after so many years. "Day by day I watched the life ebb out of my mother bit by bit, and nothing I did seemed to help or stop it. I didn't know how to make it better, how to make her better." Her voice caught, and she had to swallow hard.
"I am sorry, Faith. So very sorry." The sadness, the hopelessness in her voice tore at his heart, and he brought her hand to his lips and held it there.
She had only been fourteen, just past childhood, but not yet an adult. A time when life should have been filled with friends, parties, boys and wonderful carefree memories.
He thought of his own wondrous childhood. He'd spent three months of his fourteenth year cruising the Mediterranean with his parents on the royal family yacht, never once giving a thought to anything more serious than what to order for lunch, or what color trunks to wear for his afternoon swim.
Knowing how different their lives had been, realizing how blessed he'd been to have the kind of life and parents he had humbled him and made him enormously grateful.
He kissed her hand, wanting to give comfort as well as receive it.
"What could you do, Faith? I mean, you were a mere child."
She took a moment to gather her thoughts, her composure.
"I had to do something, so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I grew up. Fast." She shrugged her shoulders restlessly. "I had no choice. I had to take care of my mother because after a while, it became clear something in her had finally snapped."
For the first time, her throat clogged. She hadn't cried about her mother in years. Hadn't cried or thought of the terror she felt, knowing that day by day her mother was slipping further and further away from her, into her own little world where no one could reach her.
Not even her daughter.
She'd been terrified, alone, not knowing what to do, whom to turn to. Faith shivered now as the memories surfaced. Sometimes when she closed her eyes at night she could still see her mother, sitting, waiting, with her nose pressed against that window.
"Within two months, the bank foreclosed on the house because the mortgage hadn't been paid."
"You lost your home?" he asked, horrified.
She nodded. "Once we lost the house, we had nowhere to go. I was in my freshman year of high school and my baby-sitting jobs were barely enough to keep food on the table, let alone pay a mortgage."
She sounded so guilty, Ali's anger at her father stirred again. "You should not have had to even deal with such responsibilities at that age, Faith."
"Yeah, well, what I should have had and what I had were two very different things."
"What happened after you lost your house? Where did you go?"
"With the help of the county, I was able to get my mother into a medical facility. She'd suffered a complete breakdown." Faith glanced down and absently pleated the crease in her slacks. "I cried for days and days after I had to leave her there. I knew she'd be scared, terrified." Pressing a hand to her mouth, she refused to let the tears fall. "Hell, I cried for days because I was scared and terrified." She pushed a tumble of curls off her face, then took a slow, deep breath.
"I went to see her almost every day, and every day when I arrived, I'd find her sitting at the window, even in the institution, waiting, certain my father was coming for her. She sat in that window waiting every single day until the day she died." Faith glanced at Ali. "He never came back."
"Oh, Faith." There were no words that could ease the sorrow and pain that she had endured, nothing that would ease or erase the awful memories that had etched a place in her heart. If there was, he would find it.
"What happened to you after your mother…passed away?"
"Right after she was institutionalized, the county social workers se
nt me to live at the Hopechest Ranch. After her death, I had nowhere else to go so I lived there until I finished high school. When I turned eighteen, I left for college, working my way through fixing computers. I'd become interested in them while I was living at the ranch." She shrugged. "After college, I applied for a Small Business Administration loan and opened my own computer consulting firm. The rest is history."
"Faith, I am so very, very sorry."
"Don't be. What happened is in the past, but I did learn a valuable lesson from it."
"What lesson?" he asked with a frown.
"I learned that I'd never, ever make the mistakes my mother made, certainly not about a man. Not any man," she added firmly, looking at him. "I'd never trust or believe a man I knew to be a womanizer or a liar. I'd never trust or believe a man who cared so little for others' feelings that he'd deceive people he loved."
Guilt washed over Ali like a tidal wave. From her tone, he wasn't certain if she was talking about her father or him.
"Faith, you cannot possibly believe for a minute that I am anything like your father." The thought horrified him as nothing in his life ever had before. "Surely you cannot believe that I would—"
"Would what, Ali?" she asked softly. "Deliberately lie to someone you love? Deliberately deceive them?"
Disheartened, he stared at her for a long moment, realizing what she said was true, in the strictest sense, but both times his lies, his deceptions had been to spare a loved one's feelings—Maureen Jourdan's and his parents'—not to hurt them. He could not even conceive of such an action.
But clearly, Faith did not see or want to see the distinction. And he knew he had no defense against her words.
But now, now, he finally understood why she reacted so strongly each time she believed him to be deceiving someone he loved.
But how on earth would he ever get her to see the man he truly was?
Twelve
Palm Springs
"Your home is magnificent," Faith said in amazement, as Tibi showed her around the El-Etra estate.
Set on five secluded acres, the home was a two-story stone and brick Tudor surrounded by lush gardens, fountains and enormous gardens.
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