by Tiana Cole
A long, slow breath calmed her nerves but didn’t solve her restlessness. She got up and paced the room as she finished her orange juice. It burned a little in her stomach. Acid? Whatever, it didn’t sit all that well with her. As she went by the desk, she noticed a familiar name—Shen Liang. She remembered that was the name of the man James was doing business with, or was trying to. Next to the name was a phone number. It had an interesting progression to it and a Los Angeles area code. She liked number sequences and had always enjoyed memorizing them. She still remember the combination to her locker from grade school, her parents’ phone number, and lots of other useless numbers. And now she knew this one.
Just then, the door opened and James walked in carrying a package. He stopped in the doorway, looking shocked. “You came back.”
“I went and saw my sister.”
“Where was she? Milwaukee?”
“Here. It’s complicated.”
“And you are ready to explain?”
She nodded. “If you’ll let me talk, I’ll tell you everything. When I finish, I’ll answer any questions you have. Then I’m ready to do whatever you want. I’ll do whatever I can to make things right.”
James put his package down and went to a chair. “Great. Shall we sit down? I have a hunch this talk could take a while.”
“It probably will.”
* * * *
All things being equal, James thought Deja’s story was rather reasonable and almost anticlimactic. It was an unexceptional explanation for her actions.
Assuming it was true. He knew some of it was. Her telling him that Alan was behind the events confirmed what he’d worked out for himself and Shen Liang had alluded to. That he had practically browbeaten her into marrying him fit what he saw once he braced himself to watch his own humiliating behavior in the video of the wedding.
But now she’d also told him why she’d taken the job—that was what marrying him had been—and that was the only thing he hadn’t guessed. It needed to be verified. It made a good story, though.
She said, almost without emotion, that she had learned to care for him too, and was heartbroken at what she’d done. While she seemed to enjoy making love with him, that was another part of the story he couldn’t be sure of.
She seemed sincere and he believed that, in the course of events, she’d decided he was likable, if not anything more. That she liked him and enjoyed sex with him were nice to hear, and soothed his ego. Again he was struck with how attractive she was, the way she stirred his emotions. But none of that meant anything, not anything important anyway.
When it came down to brass tacks, he could do without her affection. What he needed was her cooperation, and she’d promised that. She’d said she was ready to do whatever he wanted.
If she was being honest, maybe they could work together. If nothing else, she’d sign the paperwork once he figured out what paperwork he wanted to file. He couldn’t see any way she could help him rescue the deal though. In fact, he couldn’t think of anything anyone could do to restore Shen Liang’s confidence in him, and that was what had been destroyed. Maybe letting Liang know that Alan was a weasel and had orchestrated his own giant fail would keep the deal from going to Alan, but he doubted that would make it possible for him to get it back. Losing Liang’s trust and respect hurt more than anything—more than whether or not he got the deal.
Maybe that was just pride speaking, but James was proud. Making an ass of himself was bad enough; doing it in front of a person he admired made him feel small. James hated feeling small. He’d worked hard to be larger than life.
And then he’d screwed it up when it really mattered.
He watched Deja’s face carefully while she talked, took in her tone of voice, and was distracted by measuring the rise and fall of her breasts. Lovely breasts though they were, paying attention to them only got him aroused. His trained negotiating skills failed him in deciding if this lady was a liar or a duped woman. And what was worse, he didn’t even know if it made a difference.
Of course it made a difference.
He wanted believe her. Why he wanted her story to be true had something to do with his ego and that undeniable attraction. She’d fooled him, but if she were telling the truth, her motives were pure. There was a strange satisfaction in that idea, and also in the idea that the woman he’d fallen for, that he’d married, even if she wasn’t who he’d thought, was a good person who’d screwed up, not some conniving slut. That would mean his ability to judge people had faltered, not failed him entirely.
“Nothing I say can make up for what I did, but I wouldn’t have done it, not even as a prank, or maybe especially as a prank, if I hadn’t been desperate to help my sister,” she said.
As she paused with her hands in her lap, James decided he needed to find out if her core story was at all true. Even if it didn’t make a difference, he needed to know. There were so many loose ends, but here was one he could tie up once and for all.
“I want to meet your sister,” he said.
Her eyes opened wide. “You want to meet Barbara?”
“Yes. From what you say, she’s at the heart of this, isn’t she? Your concern for her, at least.”
Deja nodded.
“You strike me as a resourceful and reasonable person. I want to meet the person who could make you take leave of your senses—and your values.”
He notice the way she cringed at that assessment, and he watched her face as she took in his demand. If she was telling the truth, he’d meet this sister and find out about this terminal illness. Then he’d know more.
After a moment, Deja slowly nodded again. “That’s a very good idea. We can go right now.”
James was stunned. He’d only half believed the sister existed, and part of him was braced for Deja to refuse, to throw up some reason she didn’t want him to meet her. She’d called his bluff.
“Okay. No time like the present.”
* * * *
Apprehension accompanied his walk down the hospital corridor. In his experience, hospitals were nasty places. He didn’t understand how people could work in them day after day. Saving lives was okay, wonderful even, and he was all for the medical profession, but hospitals themselves struck him as ghastly affairs. Cold, impersonal, sterile, buildings devoid of feeling. He hated them. As he walked he fantasized about things he’d do to make a hospital more hospitable.
He walked slightly behind an impatient Deja, finding himself admiring her and being distracted by the way her ass moved in her dress. They’d been through a lot—he’d ridden a roller coaster of emotions with her now, and the ride was still going on.
Through it all, she’d remained poised and shown him that she was a together person. He clung a bit to the hurt she’d done to him, but that was an affectation--he was being precious.
He tried to see things from her point of view to understand that she’d needed money and agreed to help with a prank. She couldn’t have known that she was being hired to sabotage a commercial deal, although he wasn’t certain knowing that would’ve made a difference. Why would it?
Her passionate attempts to help her sister seemed amazing to him. If she was telling the truth, she’d given up all her dreams to see that her sister got the care she needed. The best Deja could get her.
James had no siblings, and an only child viewed family quite differently. He loved his parents. He considered them good, kind people. But he wasn’t devoted to them. He had never felt the kind of love that would make him sacrifice everything for another person.
Not that he lacked compassion. He gave to charities and his heart went out to anyone who suffered, but one person couldn’t save the world, and his donations were superficial—what he gave, he could easily afford. He thought it was the same for everyone. You gave what you could, which meant you didn’t have to suffer.
And now, in Deja, he saw a remarkably different attitude.
“She’s in here,” she said over her shoulder, turning into a room. He follow
ed her into a hospital room that held two beds and a variety of humming, clicking equipment. The machinery was connected to the women in the beds and it displayed graphs and numbers. The woman closest to the door scowled disapprovingly at him as they passed by her bed, then she turned her attention back to a game show being shown on a television mounted on the wall.
As they approached the woman in the second bed, she turned a smile on them that was almost magical. A more intense version of Deja’s soft smile.
“Deja,” she said happily. Then she gave James a quizzical glance.
“This is James. James Andrews. James, this is my sister, Barbara.”
He saw a strong family resemblance—Barbara was an older version of Deja and quite attractive. She gave him a warm smile that suggested the woman was truly pleased to see him. He wondered why.
“I’m so delighted to meet you. Of course, you have to take that with a grain of salt. I’m afraid that in my state, I’m delighted to meet anyone. It means I lasted that much longer.” He saw tiredness in the lines of her face.
“James asked to meet you,” Deja told her.
“Of course he did. Otherwise, now that he knows he has to be careful in trusting you, how else would he know you didn’t make me up?”
Her casual acceptance of his need to see she was real surprised and pleased him. As he tried to think of something clever to say, a tall brunette in surgical scrubs came in. She stopped momentarily at the first bed and talked quietly with the woman in the other bed, then came to Barbara’s bed. “You are looking chipper.” She turned to Deja. “Your visits do brighten her up.”
“That woman is a stinking ray of sunshine all the time,” the woman in the other bed said, wheezing. “Too good to shut up, accept God’s will, and die.”
“Good for you,” James told Barbara. “And by the way, you do seem very real.”
“You see, doctor, my sister brought me a handsome young man to look at. Is that a real kindness or what?”
“Unfortunately, I’m afraid we need to kick you all out,” the doctor said. “I need to do a couple of final checks on the test results we got the other day. It’s just follow up work, but I want to be complete and it will take an hour.”
“Of course,” Deja said. “I’ll be back tomorrow, sis.”
“Bring good-looking with you,” Barbara said. “You come back when we can talk, you hear?”
James waved. “I look forward to it.”
As they left, Deja was close by him, wrapped in her thoughts. Without thinking, James put an arm around her. “What tests?”
“I told you that Alan left a thousand dollars for me at the desk for the first payment. I used it to pay for the tests they needed to run to see if she could benefit from that new procedure I told you about.”
“And they came out good?”
“Well, the initial results were promising. The doctor is finishing them up, but she was optimistic. Not that it matters now.”
“I can’t imagine you are giving up.”
She grinned. “No, of course not. I’m just faking a bit of pessimism to balance out my sister’s infernal and eternal optimism. The doctor tells me she has a few more long-shot ideas, some possible grants and experimental programs for me to apply to. And I’ll look into other possibilities, although at the moment I have no idea what that means or where to start looking.”
“You are resourceful. You’ll find something.”
“I am?” she wondered, but it was nice to know he thought so. That James thought she was resourceful was a compliment, and she needed all of those she could get.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After a lovely dinner in the hotel restaurant, a meal that seemed pastoral compared to their first evening together, they went back to the suite. Suddenly, Deja felt awkward being alone with James.
The entire time with him, she felt drawn to him by some ethereal magnetism. Letting herself get too close frightened her. She had seduced him once, and tricked him. If she were to sleep with him now, she worried that it would destroy the fragile truce they seemed to be operating under.
She was a long way from having his trust. Or from deserving it.
“I’m wiped out,” she said. “I think I’ll go to my room and go to sleep early.”
She caught a flicker of something in his intense eyes, but it vanished. “Of course. Feel free to call room service if you need anything. You are my wife for the moment, after all.”
For the moment.
Being his wife seemed unreal, ephemeral. Being reminded that it was also transitory hurt.
In her room she undressed and showered, and then slipped naked into her bed. When she moved between the silk sheets she remembered a night, not that long ago, when he’d been naked with her.
The memory grew more vivid, until she thought she could feel his presence, and a shiver of desire for him coursed through her. That it was a desire of the heart as well of the body made her feel vulnerable. No matter what happened, her chance for future happiness seemed to be entangled with James Andrews and what he thought of her. She cared for him, and she cared what he thought of her.
* * * *
Deja sat bolt upright in bed. Something had wakened her abruptly from a deep and troubled sleep. It was something terrible that left her trembling, feeling weak and helpless.
There had been a scream. But whose? She wiped her face of the sweat that had beaded up on it and blinked her eyes. Sitting there, stunned, she tried to focus. She couldn’t remember this room. Where was she?
The door came open, and light flooded in from the adjoining room. James burst through wearing boxer shorts. As he came to the bed, he grabbed her arms. She saw concern on his face, worry in his eyes. Something had him more upset than she’d seen him, and when he spoke, she heard a tremble in his voice. “Are you all right?”
She shook her head to clear it. “I heard something. It woke me up. Someone screamed. It was horrible.”
He came over and sat on the bed, took her shoulders in his hands, and looked into her eyes. “It was you, Deja. You were screaming.”
She tried to make sense of it. Why would she have screamed? “No, it wasn’t me. I heard the screaming.” She looked around the room, trying to piece things together. “I wasn’t here, though. I was at the hospital.”
“That was this morning.”
“No, just now.”
“You went to bed an hour ago.”
“The corridors of the hospital were empty. I was walking through them, barefoot, trying to find Barbara. All the rooms and the beds were empty, except for one room that was filled with doctors, or at least men and women in white coats. They were all talking together, and when I came in they looked up at me and asked me if I was ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t make sense, so I asked them where Barbara was and they said she was waiting for me, but none of them seemed to know where. I was starting to leave, to find her. I knew she needed me. Then several of them grabbed me, and tried to keep me from leaving that room. As I broke away they told me I’d never find her in time.”
James wrapped his arms around her and held her. She sank against his chest gratefully. “I kept looking and a man who was painting a wall told me that if I didn’t get to Barbara soon, they’d have to disassemble her. Then he laughed and showed me a chest filled with saws and drills. He said that he wanted to operate on her and make her better, but if he couldn’t do that, he’d sell her for parts. Then he picked up a knife and waved it at me. That’s when I heard the scream.”
“Your scream,” he said softly. “I heard it too.”
“She’s going to die, James.”
“It was a dream.”
“I owe her so much and I failed her.”
“You have done a lot for her.”
“Not enough. And now I can’t do any more. I don’t know what to do.”
“You had a nightmare.”
“It seemed so real.”
She le
t herself sink into the warmth of his embrace. He offered her his strength and she took it.
“I’ve put you through a nightmare too.”
He smiled down at her. “You made a difficult choice. I’m not sure what I would’ve done in your place. I’ve never had family that I felt so much love for. It’s making you hurt because you let her into your heart. Your sister means so much to you and you’re afraid of losing her.”
With her ear pressed to his chest, she listened to the pounding of his heart. The concern in his voice, the way he held her, made her love him. And that’s what it was that she felt for him. “I hurt you. I thought I felt guilty about it, James, but that wasn’t it at all. As stupid and impossible as it sounds, I’m in love with you. And what I thought was guilt was the pain from thinking that by doing what I did I lost the chance to win your love. I betrayed you and that is unforgivable.”
“A matter of character?”
“I suppose so. I showed you a side of me I didn’t know existed, and I wish it didn’t.”
“And you’ve shown me a side of you that is loving and passionate. Passion isn’t always the best guide for our actions, but there’s nothing dishonest about it.”
“Then you don’t hate me?”
He touched her cheek. “I probably do from time to time, but that is not a big hate and it’s all mixed up with a lot of other emotions.”
She felt a ray of hope. “Then you feel something for me?”
“I feel a great deal for you. I am drawn to you, and even when I get angry about what happened, I am still amazed that we found each other.”
She put her hand on his chest. “Then will you kiss me? I need something real to drive away the nightmare.”
He hesitated for a moment, then put a hand on the back of her head and brought his lips to hers. She felt the wet warmth of his mouth on hers, and she knew that the one thing she wanted at that moment was for him to make love to her.
* * * *
His kiss lasted a wonderfully long time and she felt his hot passion wend its way through her, warming her, making her open up. Feelings of anger, concern, her worries, and even her sad feelings about Barbara were swept aside by the rising tide of emotion that welled up to meet that wandering passion.