From the Beginning

by Tracy Wolff

  Nothing real? It took every ounce of willpower he had not to physically stumble away from her. Was that what she really believed? That his relationships with her, with their daughter, were nothing but shams? They were the only real things he’d ever had in his entire life. To think that she thought so little of him—so little of them—cut like the sharpest of knives.

  Enraged, hurting, desperate to convince her—and himself—that her words were a lie, he grabbed on to her arms above the elbows and hauled her toward him.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, and he noted for the first time that her voice contained something other than anger.

  Instead of answering, he lowered his mouth to hers.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  EVEN AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, he tasted exactly as she remembered. Like coffee and cinnamon and sweet, ripe oranges. Despite her best intentions, and the little voice in the back of her head telling her that this was a really bad idea, Amanda allowed Simon to coax her lips apart.

  To nibble on her bottom lip for long, leisurely seconds.

  To slip his tongue inside her mouth and explore the hidden recesses.

  Her hands came up to his shoulders—to push him away, she told herself. To stop this madness. And it was madness—painful, out-of-control insanity that was going to stop right now.

  But her hands didn’t work the way she wanted them to. Instead of pushing him away, they ended up tangling in the soft cotton of his T-shirt.

  This was wrong, Amanda told herself, even as she tilted her head to give Simon better access. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Even if Gabby’s death wasn’t between them, there was still too much history. Too much pain and anger and confusion to ever make this a good idea.

  Despite knowing all that, she couldn’t find the strength to pull away. Not when the memories, good as well as bad, were swamping her. Not when she felt her body—really felt it—for the first time in longer than she could remember.

  His hand crept up to cup the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair the way they’d done so many times before. It felt so good, so familiar, that she allowed herself to relax into him, allowed her body to rest lightly against his as she slid her own hands up to his shoulders.

  He was as lean and hard as she remembered, his body bordering on skinny except for the rangy muscles that covered every inch of him. Muscles that came from lugging packs full of camera equipment in some of the most remote areas of the world rather than regular workouts at the gym.

  She flexed her fingers, dug them into the muscles of his upper back, and he groaned. His hands tightened in her hair as he walked her across the room until her back was pressed against the wall. Then he leaned into her, and he felt so good, so hot, that she gasped. His body heat worked its way deep inside of her, soaked all the way through her until the core of ice at the center of her being began to melt. A core that the searing heat of Africa hadn’t come close to touching.

  She wanted the kiss to go on forever, wanted to hold on to this delicious warmth inside her for as long as possible. If she could stay here, right here, with her body alive and her thoughts wrapped up in something other than Gabby, she would be okay.

  Simon started to pull away and she whimpered, tried to hold his mouth against hers for just a few more seconds. She wasn’t ready to lose this connection, this heat, wasn’t ready to start thinking again. He must have understood—and felt the same way—because his touch suddenly became a million times more aggressive. His hands slipped down her arms to her sides and then up to cup her breasts as he pressed himself firmly against her.

  She gasped at the feel of him, hard and fully aroused, and for a moment she wanted nothing more than to touch him. To let him touch her. To take the sudden inferno blazing between them all the way.

  But then, when she least expected it, he wrenched his mouth from hers. As he did, whatever spell had woven itself between them was broken. Shocked, and more than a little horrified at her behavior, Amanda shoved Simon away from her, stumbling along the wall in an effort to get away from him.

  What was she doing?

  What was she letting him do?

  And more important, why?

  At Gabby’s funeral, she’d promised herself she was done. Sworn to herself that this would never happen again. And yet here she was, letting him do whatever he wanted to her. Letting him use her all over again.

  Bitterly disappointed in herself, she crossed the room, went to look out at the city below. Today, it was bustling with traffic and people and noise and light, the view as different from the one she’d observed last night as she was from the woman she’d once been.

  “Did that feel like guilt to you?” Simon asked, and he was still breathing heavily. Of course, so was she.

  Without turning, she answered truthfully, “It felt like desperation.”

  A soft curse was his only answer. His footsteps whispered across the carpet and she braced herself for the feel of his hand on her shoulder again. She wouldn’t react this time, she promised herself. She wouldn’t let him get to her.

  Except, his touch never came. Instead, there was only the soft click of the door as he let himself out.

  Still, she refused to turn. To stare after him like a lovesick girl who didn’t know any better. Though her body ached for him, she didn’t turn. Instead, she stood by the window and tried to pretend the past few minutes hadn’t happened.

  She’d never been one for self-delusion, but this time it was a matter of self-preservation. If she had any hopes of putting the broken pieces of her life back together, she had to stay away from Simon. Because every instinct she had told her that letting him back in wouldn’t just break her this time. It would destroy her completely.

  SIMON STOOD IN the parking garage and stared around the space with unseeing eyes. He knew he needed to find his car and get out of there, but at that moment he couldn’t do anything but relive the past few minutes in Amanda’s room. Not the kiss, which had been as explosive as he remembered, but what had happened afterward.

  A kiss that had meant so much to him, that had brought him back to a place where he was loved and wanted and desired, had done nothing for her. Oh, she’d reacted physically, but that was no big deal. The chemistry between them had always been explosive.

  But the coldness she’d shown afterward, the wall she’d thrown up between them without saying a word, had hurt him more than he’d believed possible. He’d thought they were connecting for the first time in a long time, while Amanda had just felt as if he was tearing her apart.

  He didn’t know what to think about that, or how to feel.

  Forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other, he finally found his car and climbed in. A glance at the dashboard clock told him that it was after two. He’d wasted most of the day waiting around for Amanda and had nothing to show for it except the uneasiness still churning in his gut.

  Not sure what else to do, he did what he always did when he was confused—headed into work. He’d come back early from Afghanistan, and the network was going to expect the special he’d promised them right on time.

  When he’d flipped the news on after getting home last night, he’d seen the promo spot for his special at least three times. Which meant he needed to get his ass in the box and piece the whole thing together, including the voice-over work. He’d played around with it a little when he couldn’t sleep last night, but now it was time to get serious.

  Besides, dealing with the horrors of Afghanistan was a hell of a lot easier than dealing with the mess he’d made of his own life.

  When he got to the studio, he really wanted nothing more than to do just that. Maybe then he could forget the churning in his gut, not to mention the confusion that had put it there.

  But his back-to-back trips to Afghanistan and then South America had kept him out of the office for a few weeks and everyone seemed to want to check in with him. To check on him, since news of his unexpected trip to Africa had spread through the office like wildfire. Even tho
se who didn’t want to poke and pry—and when it came to journalists, they were few and far between—were happy to sit around and chat until he was nearly out of his mind.

  By the time he finally made it into one of the editing rooms, he was close to snarling. He’d never been a huge talker at the best of times, and today it had felt as if every conversation, every word, was a slice across his already raw flesh.

  Sinking into the nearest chair, he closed his eyes for a moment. Just sat there in the dark, resting, and tried to get out of his own head. This special was his baby, after all, and one he’d bugged the network for months to let him do. He needed to hit a home run with it. To begin with, a lot of time, money and effort had gone into the documentary, all of which demonstrated the higher-ups’ faith in him, even though he hadn’t worked for the network for a full year yet.

  More important, the story he had to tell—the story of the children of Afghanistan—was one that needed to be told. The atrocities they suffered as the war ripped through their country had to be made public.

  But every time he closed his eyes, he didn’t see the footage he and his cameraman had so painstakingly shot. He didn’t see the people he’d interviewed, the stories he’d recorded.

  Instead, he saw Amanda. Fragile, dry-eyed, devastated as she faced him down. He saw Gabby, listless, miserable, in more pain than any child should have to bear.

  He saw himself, running away, because that’s what he did in situations he couldn’t control.

  Unable to deal with the guilt ripping through him yet again, he opened his eyes, shook it off, refusing to get bogged down in the memories of his daughter. He’d been running from the way he’d failed her for over eighteen months now. Seeing Amanda brought it all back, but that didn’t mean he had to dwell on it.

  Didn’t mean he had to focus on what had been instead of what was.

  Shaking his head to clear it, he shoved the emotion, the baggage, down where it belonged. And got started doing what he did best.

  He worked for about an hour and a half editing the story, piecing bits of film together for the cleanest look and the biggest emotional payoff. He knew the feeling he was going for, knew the stories—the people—he wanted to use to best illustrate what was going on over there, but still, there was so much footage to go through. So much pain to document. So many incredible sound bytes that it was much harder to narrow them down than usual.

  When Mark Douglas, his cameraman and friend, walked in, Simon was deep in the middle of footage of Tarek, a fourteen-year-old boy he had met in Afghanistan. The kid was blind in one eye, scarred on the left side of his face from being shot when he was eleven and not receiving the proper medical care. Like so many of the Afghan children, he was orphaned, having lost both his parents to violence in the past eleven years.

  “I remember that kid,” Mark said, tapping the screen. “He was a fighter.”

  Simon nodded, not bothering to look up until he’d inserted the interview piece he wanted into the beginning of his documentary. When he finally got it right, he turned to Mark with his first genuine smile of the day.

  “Glad to see you made it back in one piece,” he told the other man.

  “I thought that was my line. You’re the one who had to fly in and out of Somalia. How’d that go, anyway?”

  Simon thought of Amanda, strung out and exhausted, and of the fight they’d had that afternoon. But all he said was, “It went good. Everything’s fine.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Mark clapped him on the back to emphasize his point. “I’ve never seen you like that before.”

  “Like what?”

  “Freaked out. I mean, you’re always so cool, no matter what’s going on. It’s one of the reasons the others are jealous that I get to go into the field with you.”

  Simon shook his head. “I watch this station every day. The other field reporters are just as good as I am.”

  Mark shook his head. “Some of them are, some of them aren’t. But none of them is as good at keeping their head when things go to shit around them. You always manage to detach from what’s happening, to stand aside from it and figure out what to do, no matter how chaotic or screwed up things get. Which, as someone who has benefited from that on more than one occasion, I appreciate.”

  Simon wasn’t sure how to respond to that—wasn’t sure his supposed detachment was a compliment. The uncertainty must have shown on his face because Mark clapped him on the back again and said, “I mean, that’s a good thing. It’s an awesome trait to have when you’re a reporter.”

  Yeah, but maybe not such an awesome one to have as a human being. Simon almost said as much, but bit his tongue at the last minute. It wasn’t Mark’s fault Simon was such an utter bastard. Wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own.

  As if sensing that he’d gone too far, Mark cleared his throat and nodded at the screen. “Can I see what you’ve done?”

  “Sure.” Simon cued the footage and it started at the beginning. He had only about twenty-eight minutes of the forty-seven-minute documentary laid down, and about five of those weren’t yet set in stone. But as he watched the scenes play out in front of him, he couldn’t help nodding. Already the voice-over parts were weaving themselves together in his head. His crew had done a good job.

  He glanced at Mark, intending to congratulate him, but saw that his cameraman had tears in his eyes as he watched the screen. Of course, Mark caught him looking and flushed a little. He was obviously embarrassed, but he didn’t say anything. Neither did Simon. The stuff they were watching was tough, some of it almost impossible to imagine despite the fact that they had been there.

  That was the whole point of the special, to bring the reality of life over there into people’s living rooms. To touch them, to make them think. To help them understand.

  He should be proud of what he’d done, proud of what they’d all done. He could see that Mark was. And Simon supposed that he was, as well. But that satisfaction was cushioned by the detachment he always felt, by the buffer he kept between himself and the people he reported on.

  If he was honest, he would admit that it was the same buffer he’d kept between himself and Amanda all these years. The same buffer he’d kept between himself and Gabby, though she was his daughter and he had loved her very much. He hadn’t allowed himself to show that love, at least not in the way that other fathers did.

  Oh, he’d brought her things from all over the world, had taken her to amusement parks and movies and even on vacation to Hawaii, though she’d been too young to appreciate the beauty of the island. But he’d never been very demonstrative, never been one to hug her unless she hugged him first and expected it in return. Never been one to think about her when he was away from her.

  Not like Amanda, who had let so much of her life revolve around their little girl. When Gabby was a baby, Amanda had turned her whole life around to stay in the States and work until Gabby was a year old and able to go with her to Jamaica and Mexico and Haiti.

  And when Gabby had gotten sick, Amanda had turned into a tiger mom. She’d rushed their daughter back to the States, called in every favor she could from the best oncologists in the country, all in an effort to make Gabby well. She’d put her whole career, her whole life, on hold for their daughter.

  Unlike him. Simon had rushed in with toys and sympathy, but had never managed to stick around for the hard stuff. For the aftermath of the chemo appointments, the bone-marrow transplant that didn’t take, the last weeks and days as Gabby faded quietly away.

  It had hurt him when his daughter had died. But he hadn’t let it devastate him or even slow him down. He hadn’t allowed his heart to break. Not the way Amanda’s had.

  God, he really was an utter failure as a human being, so concerned with being in control that he never really let himself feel.

  With that knowledge in the forefront of his mind, Simon worked long into the night, long after Mark had taken off to be with his own wife and daughter.

  As he loaded more footage, he
had to stop several times when images of those last few months with Gabby kept slipping into his mind. He’d never let himself dwell on them at the time, or take them out and examine them after she had died.

  Images of her wasting away to nothing, unable to eat because of the chemo-induced nausea.

  Gabby crying from the pain. Sitting on her mother’s lap, holding on to her for all she was worth as Amanda did everything she could to keep the nightmares—and the Grim Reaper—at bay.

  Picture after picture after picture came to him as he tried to bury himself once again in work. The images weren’t all sad, and maybe that was worse, because seeing her healthy and happy was somehow even harder.

  Hours passed as he tried to work, battling back the emotions he’d suppressed for so long. When he couldn’t take it anymore, when he thought he might actually go insane if he stayed in that editing room for one more second, he burst out into the main studio to find the offices all but abandoned. Only the skeleton crew that worked overnight was left.

  He traversed the building quickly, striding onto the sidewalk just as dawn burst across the sky in a multihued spectacle. He paused for a moment, stared at the red-orange-and-purple-streaked sky, and very nearly broke down for the first time in his adult life.

  Deliberately turning away from the dazzling beauty of the sunrise, he walked in the opposite direction. Not really caring where he was going, just wanting to be somewhere else. Wanting to be someone else, if only for a little while.

  He walked for well over an hour, wandering the streets as Atlanta slowly came to life.

  The narrow boulevards of downtown began to fill with cars and people. Traffic in and out of the skyscrapers that lined the sidewalks increased exponentially. Lights came on in restaurants and he found himself stopping at a coffee shop on the same block as the Loews, buying two huge cups of coffee and a couple of muffins.

  Then, unsure of his reception but knowing there was nowhere else he’d rather be, he headed up the street to the hotel. To Amanda.