Faithless Angel (19 page)

“And what brought you to Faith’s House?”

You
, his gaze seemed to say, but Faith knew it was just her imagination. How could she be the reason when she’d never even met him before he’d come knocking on her door for a job?

“I like kids and I needed a job.”

“And you missed your brother and sister?”

He took a long drink of beer before nodding. “That, too.” The sudden flicker of pain over his features sent an ice pick straight into her heart. Instinctively, she reached across the table and covered his hand with her own.

He stiffened and his gaze dropped to stare at the point of contact between them. When he caught her stare again, the flecks in his eyes seemed brighter, more mesmerizing. “I’ve been sort of out of it since they died, just drifting here and there. Then I saw the ad in the paper.” He took another drink and grinned, the pain gone as quickly as it had come. “Being at Faith’s House brings back a lot of memories for me. Ricky reminds me a lot of my kid brother. He’s about the same age, always into trouble.
But Bradley really knows how to handle him. He’s like a cross between Ward Cleaver and the Terminator.”

The way he shifted the conversation from himself to her kids was so smooth, Faith didn’t notice until it was too late. Until he’d made her smile with stories about all the kids, and remember her own times with them. Then she could no more shut out the past than she could have pulled her hand away from Jesse Savage.

The memories rolled through her mind, making her happy and sad all at the same time. She alternated between laughter and a nearly overwhelming sense of loss. On more than one occasion, her eyes filled with tears, but before a single drop could squeeze free, Jesse would stroke her palm or simply stare into her eyes, and her sadness dissolved.

“Thank you,” she finally told him a half hour later.

He grinned. “Don’t thank me until you’ve tried the main course. The shrimp fajitas are basted with a red pepper sauce that’ll set your mouth on fire. That’s what that stuff is for.” He gestured to the small bowl of pale golden liquid the waitress had placed between them. “It’s for dipping. Tastes like lemon and honey and cuts the effect of the pepper.”

“I wasn’t talking about the food. What you said last night, about me trying to pretend she”—she swallowed—“Jane never existed.” Her gaze locked with his. “You were right. I didn’t even want to say her name because I knew it would hurt.”

“Does it?”

“Yes and no. It hurts, but now it’s a good kind of hurt.” She closed her eyes for a long moment, expecting the tears. Oddly enough, they didn’t come. Instead, a strange sense of relief washed through her, soothing the grief. “She was only at Faith’s
House a short time, a little less than a year, but we became so close.”

“But you’re close to all the kids, according to Bradley.”

“
Was
close.” She shook her head. “Not anymore, and it was different with Jane.”

“How?”

“She had this look about her that was so different from the others. She had the same haunted expression they all have, the look of a victim, yet it wasn’t the same. She didn’t come from an abusive home. I knew it in my heart the moment I met her. She was lying in a hospital bed after emergency surgery to repair damage to her lungs—she’d been brought to the hospital with severe chest wounds. Anyhow, she stared up at me and I knew whatever had happened to her hadn’t been the result of an abusive home. She’d come from a loving household. The proof was there in front of me—a young girl with no bruises other than her wounds, no shadows lurking in her eyes. Nothing but the pain of losing all memory of her past.” Faith’s gaze locked with his. “I recognized that pain because it was what I’d felt when I’d lost both my parents in a car accident.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen, just a few years older than Jane. But I was luckier. I had my memories, at least, and my parents were well-off, so I didn’t have to worry about where my next meal was coming from. One of my father’s business friends, Mr. Wells, took over guardianship until I turned eighteen and collected my trust fund and inheritance. After college, I used part of the money to fund Faith’s House, my graduation present to myself.”

He grinned. “Most kids would have bought a new car.”

“I wasn’t most kids.” She shook her head, her gaze fixing on the small bowl of sauce. “After my parents died I never really related to everyone else. I always felt separate from my friends, like I was on the outside of a bubble looking in. They had their families and I didn’t have anyone. I had Mr. Wells, of course, but he was little more than a stranger. When my parents died, this man showed up out of the blue, claiming he owed my dad and I was his responsibility, according to my parents’ wills. I’d met him only a few times while growing up. I didn’t even know he and my dad were close.”

“Was he good to you?”

“He kept a roof over my head and designer clothes on my back, if that’s what you mean.”

“Was he nice?”

“I don’t really know. I guess he was. He was polite, the few times he actually spoke to me. But otherwise, he was a portrait hanging over the fireplace, a picture on the front of
Fortune
or
Houston Businessman
. He spent three-fourths of the year away on business, and the rest of the time at his office or the country club, anywhere but home. The only person I saw regularly was the housekeeper. I was basically alone, scared. Just like Jane.”

Faith’s gaze shifted to the stubby candle. She stared into the flame and saw Jane, the little girl’s brown eyes wide and frightened, her brow drenched in perspiration, her face twisted in fear. “She came to live at the foster home as soon as the hospital released her. I used to spend most of my nights at Faith’s House with the kids. I covered weeknights and Bradley did weekends. When Jane first arrived, I stayed every night so I could be near her. She would wake up crying and I would go in and hold her. We didn’t talk at first. Just held each other.” She
tore her gaze away from the image to look at Jesse. “I knew what she was feeling. The loneliness, I mean, and the fear. The nightmares lasted about a month or so; then they gradually stopped. She stopped being frightened and started living again.”

“Thanks to you.”

“Thanks to herself. She had strength about her, a will to live. I guess that’s what tore me up the most. Here was this girl who wanted to live, who fought for her life—only to have it snatched away again. It all seemed so unfair. I mean, I’ve lost kids before. Not to death, mind you, but to the streets. Those losses weighed on me almost as badly, but not quite, because those kids turned away by choice. Jane had no choice. She was taken.” Faith dashed away a tear and sniffled.

“So she liked teddy bears, huh?” Jesse’s voice broke the sudden quiet that had twined around them.

Faith smiled and dashed another tear away. “She collected them. All shapes and sizes. I gave her a purple one with pink polka dots for her birthday.”

“Sounds … colorful.”

“It was. She loved it. She always loved everything anyone gave her. She would get this great big smile on her face. Seeing her smile always gave me the best feeling—like standing outside in the sunshine after you’ve been sitting in the freezing air-conditioning all day.”

“The heat washes over you and seeps clear to your bones,” he said, and she smiled.

“Exactly. You know the feeling?”

He leaned over, the pad of his thumb smoothing away another tear. “It’s the same feeling I get when I look at you.”

The meaning of Jesse’s words stalled the air in Faith’s lungs, as much as his tender touch sent a ripple of awareness through her.

“Here we go,” the waitress declared, arriving with their food, and Faith couldn’t have timed it better.

No quiet, empty seconds to analyze her reaction to Jesse. No chance to chastise herself for responding physically, or warn her heart against anything emotional. Tonight she was determined to enjoy his company and the strange freedom surging through her.

Freedom from the anger and grief.

She’d exorcised them both now, and she was still in one piece. Still alive, and feeling more alive by the second with Jesse staring so intently at her.

“This looks really great,” she said, reaching for a shrimp. She dipped it into the succulent honey sauce and took a bite. A range of tastes, spicy to
sweet, exploded on her tongue, and she chewed slowly, relishing the flavor.

“I never would have guessed the food would be this good,” she said after she’d swallowed. “Not with the way this place looks on the outside.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“You’re telling me.” She dipped another shrimp into the sauce and stared pointedly at him. “You know, every time I look at you I get this strange feeling I know you from somewhere.” She licked at a dribble of honey that had oozed down the shrimp onto her thumb. “It’s not really your face. It’s your eyes, I think. They’re so … distinctive. I feel like I’ve looked into your eyes before.” She shook her head. “But then if I had, I can’t imagine not remembering.”

He gave her a slow, lazy grin and reached for a shrimp. “So I’m unforgettable, am I?”

“Unfortunately.”

“And why is that?”

“Well”—she licked a drop of sauce from her knuckle—“because guys like you aren’t the permanent kind—too many deep, dark secrets hiding in your closet. You’re more the love-’em-and-leave-’em kind, I think. One of those wild boys who thinks commitment is a four-letter word.”

“That’s exactly the kind of man I am,” he said, grabbing the shrimp from her hand before she could take another bite. “And you’d be smart to remember it.” He plopped the shrimp into his own mouth.

“And why is that?” She reached for another shrimp, dunked it, and licked at the sauce, her tongue swirling around the edges, catching drops of the bittersweet liquid.

His gaze fixed on her mouth, and the flecks in his eyes seemed to glitter brighter, hotter. “Because
we’re different,” he said in a growl. Gone was the comforting companionship they’d shared earlier. An edge sharpened his words. “You want the morning after, and I only want the night before.”

“You don’t know what I want.”

“I’m getting a pretty damned good idea,” he muttered, downing three-fourths of his beer before he pierced her with a frustrated glare. “Would you just eat the damn thing and be done with it?”

She paused, the shrimp at her lips. Sauce lingered on her tongue, and she quickly realized the cause of his sudden discomfort. Her cheeks burned. “Sorry.” She put the shrimp on her plate and reached for a napkin. “I didn’t realize …”

“That’s what makes it so damned hard to take,” he muttered. “So damned hard, period.”

At his words, awareness prickled her nerve endings, and she couldn’t help herself. She smiled.

“It’s not funny,” he bit out, shifting in his seat to ease his discomfort.

“Of course not.”

“A guy can only take so much.”

“Sure he can.”

“And with you … and those lips, and … well, it’s frustrating. Damned frustrating.”

“Certainly.”

He shot her an annoyed look. “Would you stop that?”

“What?” She batted her lashes innocently.

He glared at her long and hard for several seconds. “Nothing,” he finally said in a hiss. “Just have a little mercy, all right?”

“I didn’t mean to get carried away.”
Liar
. Okay, so she hadn’t been consciously licking the shrimp, but subconsciously?

She couldn’t deny that she liked the way his eyes
flashed midnight fire, the way the gold flecks sparked, flared when he watched her mouth.

“These were just so good, I couldn’t help myself,” she went on. Without breaking eye contact, she picked up the shrimp, went for the sauce, and raised the scrumptious morsel to her lips.

“Stop it.”

“What?” She gave him a wide-eyed stare and licked the edge of the shrimp.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, Faith.”

“I’m just eating.”

“You shouldn’t test a man like me.”

His voice carried an undisguised threat that sent a tingling of fear through her. Rather than deterring her, however, it prodded her on, feeding the excitement pumping through her veins.

“You mean a love-’em-and-leave-’em, commitment-fearing man like you?”

“Exactly.” He gripped her hand and plucked the shrimp from her fingers. “You won’t find a wedding band and a two-story house with a white picket fence waiting for you. There won’t be any tomorrows with me.”

“What about tonight?” Their gazes locked and she saw her own hunger mirrored in the depths of his eyes.

“It wouldn’t be enough.”

“Maybe it would be. Maybe tonight’s all I want.”

He laughed, a bitter sound that echoed a lifetime of lost dreams and sacrificed hope. “That wouldn’t be enough. Not for you.”

“That just goes to show how much you know. I’ve turned over a new leaf. I’ve decided to live for the moment. For now.”

He stared long and hard at her, through her, it seemed, and for a brief moment she felt another tingle
of fear, followed by a niggling doubt.

She forced the feeling aside. She wasn’t going to fear the future. Now, she told herself. And with that in mind, she picked up another shrimp and swirled it in the sauce. Then she suckled the tip in silent challenge.

“Damn, you’re stubborn.”

“No, just hungry.” She popped the entire shrimp into her mouth and chewed slowly while he watched.

“Tonight then,” he finally murmured, his voice hoarse and raw, and Faith had the feeling she might have bitten off more than she could swallow.

Especially when Jesse stood up and positioned his chair next to hers, so he sat at her left rather than across. He was so close.

Then his hand slipped under the table. He pulled at the hem of her skirt, pushing the fabric up to bare her knee, her thigh, until his fingers trailed over the silk of her panties. Her breath caught and he smiled.

“Last chance,” he whispered, his lips grazing her ear. “You might want this now, but you’ll regret it tomorrow.”

“There is no tomorrow,” she managed, her lips trembling, her body keenly aware of his. “Just now.”