All of Me (15 page)

Alec took two flutes of champagne off a tray and passed her one. “Drink this fast. I’ll get you another one to sip slowly after.” His hand slid from her elbow to her waist and held her to his side. The move was possessive, a claim that she was with him.

She resisted the urge to rest her head on his shoulder and hide in his familiarity. “Why do I need to drink this quickly?”

He turned his head and offered the faintest of smiles. “You’re nervous. It’ll help.” To demonstrate, he downed his glass in one swallow and set it on a tray as a waiter passed. Without missing a beat, he swiped another full glass.

Knowing he was uncomfortable as well didn’t soothe her nerves much, but she did as he instructed and drank the champagne. The sweet bubbles floated down her throat and heated her stomach.

Alec took her empty flute and handed her a full one. “Just sip that one until we can get some food in you. Come on, I’ll introduce you to my editor.”

Over the next hour, she stood by his side, mostly quiet and feeling like arm candy, but that was fine. He was the star and she wasn’t comfortable in the crowd. If Alec was uneasy, he hid it well. He laughed and discussed literature with people whose names she’d never remember. Occasionally she piped in when cued, although the company appeared uninterested in her comments.

When he was distracted, Faith slipped away from Alec’s side and made her way over to the display to get some breathing room. Feigning interest in the books and posters, she eyed the items on the table and drew in a slow, deep breath.

While she was checking out some of the swag, a hand at
her lower back startled her, and she whirled, nearly sloshing her champagne onto the man in front of her.

He held up a hand and chuckled. “Sorry, miss.” The man reeked of cologne and his girth was busting out of his blue pinstriped suit. A pudgy hand ran over his sleek black hair to smooth it down.

Faith slid a glance over at Alec, but he was deep in conversation and didn’t see her. Her stomach flopped and twisted, but she forced a smile. “That’s okay. You just startled me. Are you here for the signing later?”

He laughed without mirth. “I’m Alec’s agent.”

Her smile slipped a fraction at the condescending tone. She swore Alec had said that he’d fired his agent, but Faith kept that to herself. Maybe she was wrong. “Good turnout.”

“Winston draws a crowd, that’s for sure.” His dark brown gaze raked over her chest before traveling back to her eyes. “And who are you, exactly? Your accent is southern.” He made it sound like being from the south was distasteful.

The guy made her skin crawl. “I’m a friend of Alec’s.”

“A friend, eh?”

Before he could say any more, Alec sidled up beside her and wrapped his arm around her waist. “I see you’ve met Henry, my former agent.”

When Alec stressed “former,” Henry’s eyes narrowed. “You find another agent yet, Winston? Although I suppose that would mean you’d need to actually write another book.”

Alec stiffened beside her, and Faith had the overwhelming urge to defend him. Weren’t agents, even former ones, supposed to be supportive?

She lifted her chin. “He’s already more than halfway through the next book. He’ll be finished in under two months.”

Henry darted his gaze between them. “And how would you know that, miss? He doesn’t let just anyone read his manuscripts.”

“I never said I read it. But I have seen him working on it.”

Henry’s brows rose. “Have you?” He looked at Alec. “You
let your newest plaything near your material? You’ve never let your toys anywhere near your apartment. What gives?”

Alec growled low in his throat. “Watch yourself.”

Henry took no heed of Alec’s warning. In fact, he looked at Faith as if trying to dissect her and find the missing element. “Not like you to bring a date to these functions. She doesn’t look like your usual.”

Alec took a step forward, but Faith gripped his arm and he got himself in check.

“I told you, I’m a friend,” she said.

Henry snorted. “Sure, sweetheart.” He waved his hand to dismiss her. “You’re all friendly until you learn he won’t commit. Then you run for the next wallet. Ain’t that right, Winston?”

The arm around her waist tightened further. “Enough, Henry. She’s different, not that it’s any of your business anymore. Leave her be.”

Faith watched the interaction, her unease growing. Alec’s agent was probably throwing barbs as a response to Alec letting him go. Between the books and movies, Alec had no doubt made the man a pretty penny. Losing that solid income would raise anyone’s hackles. There was no sense in feeding into his bitterness.

Slowly, she ran her hand under Alec’s open suit coat and rubbed a circle over the tense muscles coiling in his back. “Let’s go grab a bite to eat before your reading, shall we?”

Henry didn’t take the brush-off. “Different? How different can she really be with your fiancée still around? Odd threesome that would make.”

Alec went so still Faith thought he would snap. Panic rose in her chest. She’d never seen him angry, not like this. Irritated, perhaps. There was no way for her to gauge how he’d respond to this latest jab, or how he typically behaved when angry. His previous engagement was already a sore spot. Why did Henry feel the need to pick at that scab?

She struggled to diffuse the situation. “I think you mean ex-fiancée, Mr . . . ?”

“Swift. The last name is Swift.” His gaze narrowed before he harrumphed. “Ex? Is that the line he fed you?” He barked out a laugh. “I assure you, he’ll never leave her.”

The room froze. Or seemed to. Maybe it was just her.

As the words sank in, her gaze flew to Alec’s. His wince was confirmation enough of the accusation. Alec stepped forward, apology in his eyes, but at the same moment his editor crossed the room to intervene. Words were exchanged.

Faith barely noticed what happened in the next few moments. Voices blended together. Air trapped in her lungs. Her temples throbbed. She took several steps backward until she bumped into a waiter.

“Sorry, ma’am. Are you all right?”

She looked at the group of men in front of her, deep in a heated discussion, and then at the champagne in her hand, only half gone.

He’ll never leave her . . .

No. No, she wasn’t all right.

She placed a hand on her forehead to stop the spinning. What was she doing here? With Alec? A man who had so obviously lied to her. Had lied for several weeks. He’d told her the engagement was over. Had been for several years by the sound of it. Where was this woman if they were still together? Did she not care if Alec saw other women?

Oh, God. What if they had one of those relationships? An open one where they could sleep with other people?

Faith’s mouth dried to dust. Dear Lord, could she have been any more naive?

Stupid, stupid
.

With a shaking hand, she set her champagne flute on the waiter’s tray and made the long, long walk to the door. Only a few people stopped their conversations to stare at her obvious haste. Most continued on as if nothing had transpired, as if she hadn’t just been betrayed in the worst imaginable way.

Alec panicked and cursed when he caught Faith’s retreating form out of the corner of his eye. “Mark, take care of this. I need to deal with something. I want him gone when I get back.”

Trusting his editor to handle his former agent, Alec strode toward the door. He should’ve told Faith the whole story sooner. What must be going through her mind right now? And to hear the truth like that, in such a cold, calculating way . . .

Part of the truth.

Fuck. He was an asshole. Part of him knew he never should’ve brought her here, into this world that
he
didn’t even want to live in sometimes. But the more time he spent with Faith, the more she pushed the darkness away. She made him want things, to be something he couldn’t. Yet he’d plowed forward and hadn’t even had the balls to inform her of what she was getting tangled in.

He pushed through the lobby doors and stepped outside, alarm seizing his gut when he didn’t see her right away. He scanned the sidewalk, across the busy street. Sweet Faith, alone in this city. The things that could go wrong.

Wait.
There.

She stood at the corner of the building, arms wrapped around herself and shivering as if it weren’t eighty degrees. He hesitated, then walked over to her.

Her teary gaze lifted to his and away. “Go back inside, Alec.”

He tried to take her arms but she wrenched away. “Faith. I’m sorry. I need to explain, I know . . .”

“Explain,” she said in a hollow voice. “What more is there to say? You lied to me.”

Panic morphed into desperation. “I should’ve told you everything sooner. I’m sorry.”

She stepped away from him as if he’d slapped her. “Sorry just doesn’t seem to cut it, Alec.” She rubbed her forehead with a shaking hand. “I’m such an idiot.”

“No,” he growled, stepping closer. “I’m the idiot.”

A cab pulled up to the curb and she stepped forward. No way. No way in hell was she going anywhere alone in this city. Not even in the posh Upper West Side.

“Faith, wait.” He rushed over and told the doorman to have his driver pull around, then hurried back. “My car will take you back to my apartment. Here.” He fumbled in his pocket for his keys and took her hand. Forcing her fingers to unclench, he slapped them into her palm. “Go back to my place and wait for me. I can’t leave just yet, but I’ll get out of this as soon as I can. We’ll talk.”

Her jaw trembled as more tears coursed down her pale cheeks, her gaze focused on the street and the passing cars. After a very tense silence, she finally nodded.

He let out a shuddering exhale, only somewhat relieved. “Please, don’t leave the apartment. I’ll meet you there.”

His driver pulled up and walked around the hood to open the back door. Faith wasted no time sliding inside. Her gaze trained down, she twisted her fingers in her lap.

Alec closed the door himself. “Take her back to the apartment. Watch until she gets inside.” He paused. “You know what?” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. “Walk her to the apartment door and make sure she gets in safely.”

“Will do, sir.”

Jaw clenched, he watched her pull away, staring at the street long after she’d disappeared from view. He was damn close to saying the hell with it and taking a cab right after her, but his publisher had given him quite a bit of leeway with the new series and he owed them. Although he loathed the crowds, it was part of his job and damn unprofessional to walk away.

Turning, he caught Henry Swift hailing a cab.

“You son of a bitch . . .”

Henry’s eyes widened. He dove into the cab and slammed the door.

Alec yelled through the window. “We have a confidentiality agreement. You break it again, I’ll sue you for twice the amount I made you the past ten years. You hear me?”

The cab pulled away, but not before the color drained from Henry’s face and the slimy bastard nodded his understanding. He wasn’t looking so smug and superior now.

Jesus. The damage was already done. Alec should’ve fired him years ago. Why the hell hadn’t he?

Behind him, a few patrons exited the hotel, reminding him he didn’t have time for brooding. The sooner he got the party over with, the sooner he could try to explain Laura to Faith.

He made his way back inside the ballroom and, upon seeing him, his editor quickly walked to the podium to make introductions. Through his brief reading, pats on the back afterward, and subsequent two-hour signing, Alec was ready to tear his hair out. By the fistful. His mind kept straying to
what Faith might be doing, thinking. Part of him feared she’d be gone when he returned. She’d been so damn calm. She was always calm. Why didn’t she yell at him? Slap his cheek? Hell, any significant sign of anger would’ve been better than the shell shock.

As his driver guided them through the busy streets, acid ate away at his gut. Aside from Jake, he’d never talked about Laura with anyone. Not when it happened and not after. By process of elimination and through the grapevine, his parents and former agent knew the details. But their prompts to try and get Alec to discuss the accident fell on deaf ears. What happened was off-limits.

Until now.

A thousand explanations tore through his mind, but none of them measured up. There was no sugarcoating this story. Once Faith knew the whole of it, she would walk away from this relationship before it had even begun. He was sure of it.

And why did that bother him so much? It wasn’t as if he could put a ring on her finger and promise her forever. Even if he wanted to—which, Christ, did he?—there was no future beyond August.

He rubbed at his tired eyes, not recognizing this sensation that had been swirling in his chest since he first saw Faith on the beach weeks ago. It was a warning he should’ve heeded. Laura had never, not once, made him feel like this. Like he needed to see her to breathe freely, to touch her to prove she was real. To crawl inside her mind to find all the clever, quirky little thoughts within. The need to claim her, have her begging and chanting his name while he drove into her, had the blood roaring through his veins.

Falling for Faith would be selfish. Inevitable, it seemed, but selfish nonetheless.

Alec waved off the driver when he pulled to the curb outside the apartment and started to get out to open the door for him. He gave the man a hefty tip for his trouble and opened the door himself.

Alec paused before exiting. “The lady, how was she when you drove her back?”

The driver turned in his seat and regarded Alec with sympathetic eyes. “She cried quietly the entire way, sir. Never said a word. I went with her up to your penthouse and made sure she went inside.”

Alec nodded and thanked the man. Nausea churned in his stomach until a cold sweat broke out on his forehead and his palms grew clammy.

He’d made her cry. Faith had enough in her life to cause that—she didn’t need him adding more reasons.

The lobby attendant stopped him before he hit the bank of elevators. “Mr. Winston. I have your keys, sir.”

His keys. Right. He’d given them to Faith. His heart puttered behind his ribs, just wanting to get to her. “Did she leave?”

“Not that I saw, Mr. Winston. She handed them to me and said to make sure you could get back inside.”

He shook his head. Damn her to heaven and back. How could she be so considerate after what he’d done? Hell, any other woman would have trashed his place and left fifty screeching voice mails on his phone. With every given right.

Alec took the keys and rode the elevator to the penthouse, hoping to God she hadn’t left. Where would she go? The airport? A hotel? He’d find her, regardless.

The apartment was dark and quiet. Too quiet. His anxiety upped ten notches. He strode through the living room and to his bedroom where a bedside lamp cast a soft glow into the hall. He stopped short.

Not only had she not left, she hadn’t even changed clothes. The elegant black dress still adorned her thin frame, but her heels were placed neatly by the closet door and her hair was out of the twist. Soft brown strands fell around her shoulders. She stood by the bay window with her back to him and her arms crossed.

At a loss, he just stood there.

“I hate this place.” Her mermaid voice wafted over to him.

He understood. Most of the time, he hated the city, too. He wondered if he stayed to punish himself. For someone like Faith, New York would be overstimulation. Too many people, too much noise, just . . . too much everything. Strangely, he could relate.

Taking a hesitant few steps into the room, he sighed. “Faith, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for lying to me or sorry I found out?”

How very little she thought of him. Not that he could blame her. “I’m sorry I lied and I’m sorry you had to find out like that. I had every intention of telling you, but the words just never came.”

She turned, and the red of her eyes had his chest tightening. “Two words, Alec. Just two words.
I’m. Engaged.
”

When she put it like that . . .

“How have you kept this a secret? I mean, you’ve got a woman on your arm in nearly every tabloid. There’s not many people alive who don’t know your name, even in passing.”

He swiped a hand down his face and allowed the hurt to rise up. He had to explain to Faith in a manner she could somehow find a way to understand. He
needed
her to understand. Making his way to the corner, he sat in a chair to give her room and himself time to stall. He tossed his suit coat over the arm. Best to start at the beginning, he supposed.

“When I moved to the city, I’d just signed my first book deal and was living in this shitty apartment in the Lower East Side. Laura was a struggling artist who lived across the hall.” He picked at the skin around his thumbnail with his index finger. “We struck up a friendship of sorts that quickly turned into more. Neither of us expected anything other than what it was. Sex. We were young and stupid with too many dreams and not enough money.”

Faith walked over to his bed several feet away and sat on
the edge of the mattress, her steady gaze holding his. Quiet understanding emanated, urging him to go on.

Closing his eyes, he braced himself for the next bit. The pain from those days washed over him and stole his air. “A couple months later, she got pregnant. Being a southern boy, I did what I thought was right and proposed to her. She wanted to wait to get married until after the baby was born.” They’d merged apartments and household items, but never their hearts. Not that Faith needed to know that part. “Things went from bad to worse. We couldn’t have been any more wrong for each other. We fought constantly. My first book was a month from releasing and I was deep into edits on the second when she called me from the doctor’s office to say she’d miscarried.”

The baby, just a fetus, was still a fresh loss in his mind. He’d barely had time to adjust to the pregnancy, but damn. He’d loved that baby with everything he had. The hot sting of tears threatened as he looked at Faith, his control wavering.

She pressed her fingertips to her lips and looked at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. If possible, her already tense shoulders grew even more rigid. But the anger creasing her brow smoothed away when she returned her amber gaze to his.

She still had yet to say anything, and his fucked-up tale wasn’t over, so he leaned back and drummed his fingers on the chair arm.

He blew out a breath. “Laura blamed me for everything. The miscarriage, not loving her, not making enough money, her art not selling. It got to the point we couldn’t be in the same room without screaming at each other. One night, she yelled it was over and stormed out.”

Alec could still hear her words inside his head, beating like a drum against his temples. He couldn’t muster the courage to look at Faith, so he had no idea if she felt the same contempt for himself that he did.

After several minutes he cleared his raw throat. “When
she left the apartment, she got drunk with an old friend and wrapped her car around a utility pole. The friend died and Laura wound up a vegetable on life support. She’s in a nursing facility here in the city.”

Seconds ticked by.

Slowly, Faith rose and walked to the window. She offered him her back and nothing more. Said not a syllable. She looked so damn fragile standing there. Breakable. Then again, weren’t they all?

He rubbed the back of his neck, waiting to find out what she’d do, say. Faith never seemed to react as he expected, so he held some residual strand of hope she wouldn’t clock him and leave.

Nearly ten minutes passed, and nothing. Unable to stand it, he leaned forward. “Say something, Faith. Anything. Tell me you hate my guts. Tell me not to touch you again. Tell me—”

“That my heart hurts for you.”

He jerked straight. “Come again?” he croaked.

She turned around, leaned against the windowsill, and crossed her arms. “You still consider yourself engaged to . . . Laura?”

Hearing Laura’s name from Faith’s lips did something terrible to his insides. “Yes. The accident was nine years ago and there’s no hope of her recovering. The doctors say she’s brain-dead.” He opened his mouth again, but couldn’t finish the thought. Honestly, he was still waiting for Faith to throw her shoe at his head.

“You were going to say more.”

Clever, insightful Faith. “Laura’s parents are very religious. They won’t take her off life support even though she’s not in there anymore. I hit the bestseller list several months later, which is why we were able to hide what happened from the media— the accident preceded the fame. I can afford her care at the facility. They can’t.”

Faith stared at him through those amber eyes. Blinked. “And out of duty, you won’t leave her. Because you view this whole dreadful tragedy as your fault.”

Alec didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at her astute intuition. Whether to shake her or kiss her for her calm understanding. If he wanted, he could leave Laura behind and still pay for her care, but he wouldn’t, because Faith was right. Guilt and remorse would forever bind him to that night nine years ago. He wouldn’t or couldn’t ever let it go. It was his own sick, twisted way of making amends.