Lovers and Strangers (22 page)

Jack reached out across the table and grasped her chin, turning her face to his. "You can't believe that. Faith, look at me, and tell me you don't believe that load of b.s."

"I didn't say no," Faith reminded him, her lashes down to shield her eyes from his piercing gaze. "I participated fully. He didn't force me."

"That's crap!" Jack exploded. "Pure crap. He forced you by virtue of his position. He intimidated you into having sex." Jack took his hand from her chin and ran it through his hair. "Charges should have been filed, the bastard should have been arrested.
Both
of them," he said savagely.

"Oh, no. No. If that had happened..." Faith shook her head. "Normally, I would have had to stand up in front of the congregation to confess my sins and ask for forgiveness, but since I would have also been expected to name the man I'd sinned with, my father and the reverend decided it wouldn't be necessary to shame me publically."

"Convenient for them," Jack sneered.

"And for me. I couldn't have stood it if everyone had known what I'd done. It was bad enough that I had to look at my father every day and know that he did."

"And the good reverend? What happened to him?"

"He married Mrs. Nelson's oldest daughter Margaret seven months later. They'd just had their fourth child when I left Pine Hollow."

"You mean he's still preaching? In the same church?"

"Every Sunday."

"And your mother? How did she handle what happened?"

"I don't know if my father ever told her. If he did, she never said anything to me about it."

Jack was unbearably moved. "My poor little Angel," he murmured, staring at her across the width of the table. His voice was soft with sympathy, softer than she'd ever heard it. "You didn't have anyone, did you?"

She put a stop to his incipient pity with a look. "I didn't tell you this to gain your sympathy, Jack. It's over and done with and, for the most part, I've managed to put it behind me," she said, although that wasn't quite true. She still struggled with the guilt, with the sense that she
could
have done something to keep it from happening, if only she'd really wanted to. "And behind me is where I want it to stay. I don't want anyone feeling sorry for me. I especially don't want you feeling sorry for me. I told you what happened because I wanted you to understand that I'm not some innocent little girl who needs to be protected. I haven't been innocent since I was fifteen years old."

"Innocence isn't only a matter of virginity."

"I know that," Faith said, exasperated. Why did the man
insist
on seeing her as some shy, delicate creature? "Don't you think I know that? It wasn't just my sexual innocence I lost that day, it was—" she spread her hands "—more. I stopped being a child, with a child's innocent dreams, and became an adult."

"You were forced to become an adult."

"Maybe. But what's done is done. And it can't be changed." She leveled a look at him across the table. "Just like what happened to your brother."

"No," Jack said. "It's not like what happened to Eric at all. The situations are completely different."

"The situations, yes," Faith agreed, "but not the feelings. Not the guilt and the shame and the hurt. Those are the same." She reached out across the table, grasping his hands before he could rise and turn away. "Nobody's perfect, Jack. Nobody's
life
is perfect. We've all said things we regret. Done things we're horribly ashamed of. But we can't go back and change it. All we can do is learn to live with what we've done, and try not to make the same mistakes in the future."

They stared at each other for an eon's long heartbeat, gazes locked across the table. Jack thought of all the things he could say, all the things he
should
say to convince her that his view was right. Their mistakes weren't the same, no matter what she said. She had been an innocent victim in what had happened to her. He had been the cause of what had happened to his brother. In the years since, she had worked hard to redeem a sin that wasn't even her own, while he had sunk deeper into the pit, without even trying to climb out.

But he knew, looking at her, that she wouldn't listen.

"Stubborn." Jack shook his head. "You're as stubborn as a Missouri mule. I don't know how I missed it before."

Faith smiled. "You let yourself get distracted by what's on the outside. I'm not a fragile flower. I never was."

"No," Jack agreed. "I'm beginning to think you're not."

Chapter 11

Because I love you.

When was the last time anyone had ever said those words to him? Or had anyone, ever? He was sure his parents must have, some time, but he'd been so young when they died, he couldn't remember it. His Aunt Barbara and Uncle Mick certainly hadn't ever said it. Nor had Eric. He knew Eric had loved him, of course, just as Jack had loved his older brother. But the word wasn't one either of them had ever spoken to the other.

Because I love you.

In his whole life, Faith was the only person who'd ever said those words to him. The only person he'd ever wanted to say them back to. But he hadn't. And he vowed he wouldn't.

He didn't deserve to have anyone love him, especially not Faith, especially not now.

He looked down at the sheet of paper in his typewriter, the one on which he had just typed
The End.
It was the final irony, really, he thought, staring at it without a shred of humor in his eyes. He'd found a way to make at least partial amends to his brother and betrayed the woman he loved, all in one fell swoop.

He'd walked her home last night—this morning—escorting her across the silent courtyard in the wee hours, delivering her safely to the other side, despite her laughing protest that it wasn't necessary.

"Nothing's going to happen to me between your apartment and mine," she said. "You don't need to walk me to the door."

"I'm trying to be a gentleman here, so humor me. Besides," he said backing her into the dark silent shadows of the overhanging balcony. "If I don't walk you home, I can't kiss you good-night. And I've never stood at a girl's front door and kissed her good-night before."

"I've never been kissed good-night at my front door by a boy, either," she said and lifted her mouth to his.

The kisses they shared were sweet and warm; soft nuzzlings and delicate nibbles interspersed with sighs and murmurs of appreciation and approval. They stood there for thirty minutes or more, kissing and caressing each other, both of them loath to say goodnight.

Finally, Jack tore his mouth away from hers. "Inside," he ordered raggedly, urging her into the hallway and to the door of her apartment. "Inside or I'm going to forget all about being a gentleman and drag you back to my bed."

"I wouldn't mind," Faith whispered, and proved it by standing up on tiptoe to nip his chin with her little white teeth.

Jack groaned. "Have a little mercy, Angel. I'm twenty years older than you. I need my sleep."

"Eighteen," she corrected, nestling info him with a little snuggling movement that nearly drove him crazy. "And we could sleep together."

"Not likely," he said drily.

And Faith giggled and let him go.

"I'll come by Flynn's tomorrow—tonight," he corrected himself, "—when you get off, so wait for me, okay?"

"Okay," she agreed.

He kissed her one last time, then pushed her and her cart of cleaning supplies inside before he could change his mind.

He'd walked back to his apartment a happy man, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, whistling softly, thinking that maybe—just maybe—they could make it work. They could move out of the Wilshire Arms, with all its unhappy associations, and into a bigger apartment together near UCLA so that she wouldn't have too far to go to school. He would find a real job, a normal, nine-to-five kind of job that didn't involve death or destruction. Or writing. There were lots of things he could do, he thought idly. And Faith wouldn't care what it was as long as he came home every night.

And then he'd entered his apartment, heading for the kitchen to scrounge up one more cup of coffee—and there was his old portable typewriter and the cardboard box with his script, sitting on the floor beside the table.

And his shiny new bubble burst.

He could write again, just looking at the typewriter, he knew he could write again. He knew, too, exactly what he was going to write. With just a few changes he could fix the script. They wouldn't be the changes Eric had wanted. But, once he had made them, it wouldn't be the script Jack had insisted they not change at all. It seemed like a fair compromise, a satisfactory way to settle a small part of the debt he owed his brother.

Except for the fact that it would be a betrayal of the woman he loved with all his aching heart.

Because the story he was going to tell was her story. The one she'd put behind her. The one she wanted left in the past. The one she wanted only to forget. He was going to write it all down, put the black words on the white paper and show it to the world. Oh, he wasn't going to use her name or her town or anything that would identify her to the world at large. Nobody else would know it was her story. But she would. She would know he'd taken a private sorrow, revealed in confidence, and used it in his writing, as callously as he'd used the pain and suffering of hundreds of untold others to write his stories in the past. And she would hate him for it.

Is that what he wanted?

God, it was what he deserved!

Jack wrote frantically, furiously, manically for the next nineteen hours, changing, revising, writing whole new scenes. And when he was finished, he knew it was the best thing he had ever written. The most honest. The most real. Because he'd written it with feelings instead of facts, with his heart instead of his brain. He rolled the final page out of the typewriter and laid it, facedown, on top of the other finished pages.

Now what?

He considered burning it, telling himself it was the writing that had been important—but that wouldn't fulfill his debt to his dead brother. He could submit it to an agent and hope that it never saw the light of day and Faith would never have to know what he'd done—but that would be a lie. And he would spend the rest of his life afraid that someday, somehow, it would come to light and he would be exposed. Stranger things had happened in the movie business.

No, there was really only one thing he could do. He had to tell her, had to show it to her and let her read it. Better that she turn away from him now, rather than later, when he wouldn't be able to stand it. And, hell, who was he kidding, anyway? She would realize her mistake sooner or later, with or without the script.

Last night, hell, the last two days, had been a dream and it was time to face it. He'd let his imagination and good sense go hog-wild for a little while there. She wasn't for the likes of him. And he was no good for her. End of story.

The script he'd just written proved it.

He picked it up and turned it over, securing it with the two brass fasteners taken off of the old one. Slipping it inside a large manila envelope, he turned that over, too, and addressed it with the name of a top Hollywood agent. He'd have to find the time to get it copied before he could mail it. He could do it before he stopped by Flynn's to pick her up. There was a twenty-four-hour copy place about four blocks down the street.

* * *

He ran into Jill Mickelson as he was coming back from the copy shop, a thick eleven-by-fourteen-inch manila envelope tucked under his arm. She was just coming out of the Wilshire Arms, her back to him as she pulled the door closed. She jumped when he said her name, causing the door to bang loudly as she swung around.

"Goodness. Don't you know enough not to sneak up on a woman in the dark?" she complained, her voice shaking a little as she lowered her hand. "You almost got a face full of pepper spray."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you." The look he gave her was mildly censorious. "Kind of late to be out taking a walk by yourself, isn't it?"

"I'm working overtime on a project for a charming client with bags of money but absolutely no taste who thinks she wants English country chintz and Art Deco in the same room—sometimes on the same piece of furniture. I thought I'd head on down to Flynn's for a Brandy Alexander and some conversation before I resort to tearing my hair out."