Flash and Fire (8 page)

Lucy was stuffing her face with chocolates. He decided to give the lions another try. Picking up the remote, he flipped through several stations. The lions had disappeared. In their place was a man in a beard, singing to a gathering of small children.

“Enjoy it while it lasts, kids,” Pierce muttered.

He shut off the television and rose to his feet.

Walking into the kitchen, he pitched the empty can into a box he kept on the floor next to the trash. He might be a bastard, as Cheryl had labeled him when he’d turned down her invitation for another “sleep-over,” but he was an ecologically minded one. Even bastards recycled, if they had a conscience. And he had one.

About some things.

With an ironic smile, he opened a kitchen drawer and took out a pack of cigarettes. There were ten cigarettes missing and the pack was half crumpled. He’d thrown it into the garbage, then fished it out again and tossed it into the drawer instead.

That had been last week, when he’d decided to give up smoking. It was a semiannual ritual he put himself through. Every so often, he figured he owed it to himself to try.

It never lasted more than a week. It wasn’t a craving so much as boredom that always brought him back to it. Boredom and restlessness. He’d bummed a cigarette from someone at the park today and the game had begun all over again.

Pierce shook out a cigarette. Digging through the jumbled mess in the drawer, he found a book of matches. He placed the cigarette between his lips, then cupped his hands around the slender shaft out of habit as he lit it.

He inhaled deeply, letting the smoke curl through him, soft and sultry like the limbs of a woman in the afterglow of lovemaking. He held it in until it seemed to fill up every part of him.

Damn, but he wanted her.

Blowing the smoke out slowly, he formed a ring and watched it hang in the air before dissolving like the dreams of a child grown to manhood.

He glanced down at the pack and read the perfunctory warning stamped on its side. It was nice to know, he mused cynically, that the surgeon general worried about him. Nice but unnecessary.

Hell, everyone had to die of something, he thought. It might as well be of a vice he enjoyed.

Chapter Seven

The alarm went off, and Amanda woke up feeling like hell.

The night had gone by choppy and fragmented, like shards of shattered glass. Pieces of disjointed dreams floated away from her, just out of reach, mocking her with half shapes.

She felt as if she hadn’t slept at all.

She didn’t even remember changing out of her clothes and getting into bed, but obviously, she must have. Probably five minutes ago.

The alarm was still ringing. Reaching out, she slapped the buzzer down. The whine slowly died away, and she sighed. She lay there, trying to piece together yesterday, working backward.

Christopher had wanted to play when she had returned home after seeing Whitney. For an hour, she’d lost herself in a world that was bound by toys, childish squeals, and sticky hugs. Desperate to escape into it, she’d played with her son on all fours, creating battle scenarios with him and sending multicolored building blocks toppling onto unsuspecting commandos.

When Christopher had finally shown signs of winding down, Amanda had bathed him and put him to bed while Carla lost herself in the second installment of a miniseries.

Amanda had read to him for another half hour, although she knew he wasn’t able to comprehend the story she’d selected. Snow White’s triumph over evil to live happily ever after didn’t make sense to the two-year-old, but Amanda had needed to hear the story once more herself. The sound of her voice was soothing to him and the forced, cheerful cadence she had assumed while reading eventually managed to soothe her as well.

She’d closed the book and watched him sleep. Amanda had sat there longer than necessary, her fingers wrapped around the plastic book cover. It was hard letting go of the last bastion of childhood, she thought, but everyone had to do it eventually.

A self-deprecating smile had curved her mouth. Some of us just do it a little later than others.

By the time she had left Christopher and headed for the den, she felt ready to do whatever had to be done to help Whitney.

It was the child within her who had reacted so violently to Whitney’s confession. Amanda knew that she had no right to make him into a plaster saint. After all, he was a human being, just like everyone else.

Well, perhaps not like everyone else, she had amended, smiling to herself.

No matter what he had done, he had done it for all the right reasons. Whitney Granger had always been and always would be a man with scruples. His very existence helped her to believe that goodness and decency still existed. It was easy to lose sight of that in her line of work. Doing the news, she was exposed to horrors on a daily basis. It sometimes felt as if everyone was just out for himself and no one cared anymore, no one loved.

Even her father and her ex-husband reinforced that feeling.

But she knew, because Whitney resided in it, that the world wasn’t all dark, all cold. Not even all black or white. There were shades in it, not just of gray, but of blue and red. Whitney was like the occasional human interest story that cropped up. He was the stranger who went out of his way to help a needy man.

The stories were few and far between, but they kept her going.

Slowly closing the door of the den behind her, Amanda had gone to her desk, sat down, braced herself, then slit open the envelope Whitney had given her and begun to read.

She’d made notes on a legal-sized yellow pad, searching for the right words to use in the news release she would give the next day. She had already made up her mind that she was going to do it without first mentioning it to the station manager. With any luck, she planned to treat this as if it was just a news bulletin, handed to her right before airtime.

Amanda knew she ran the risk of losing the news item if she talked to Grimsley first. They both knew he held a grudge against her, and he wasn’t a forgiving man. More than likely, Grimsley would give the story to someone else to follow up on and then release.

Or he’d decide to turn it into a closing feature, possibly even an expose. None of those alternatives would be fair to Whitney. Complying with what he had asked of her was the least she could do for him.

The situation was going to be hard enough for Whitney to deal with as it was. The news release would generate waves, horrible waves that couldn’t be escaped. It would open a Pandora’s box for Whitney that could never be shut again. People remembered scandals long after they forgot the good a person did. There would be an investigation. Perhaps a trial and even a prison sentence.

Amanda shivered.

The public would be quick to cast stones. There was nothing the people loved as much as a hero—unless it was a scapegoat.

And Whitney would be their newest candidate, until someone else came along.

Reading Whitney’s statement, she’d had to blink back tears.

Amanda had no idea how long she worked. She’d fallen asleep at her desk, her fingers resting on the computer keyboard, her head nodding. A neighbor’s dog, barking at what she presumed was probably a cat dashing across someone’s yard, had woken her. She’d dragged herself to her feet and managed to stumble off to bed.

And now dawn had arrived, a great deal faster than she was happy about.

She took a deep breath, then slowly opened her eyes. Thick shafts of light sliced their way through the drawn light blue blinds.

It was morning.

Today she had to make Whitney’s announcement. An oppressively heavy blanket of despair wrapped itself around her, trapping the very air in her lungs.

Wishing for the merciful oblivion of sleep, Amanda closed her eyes again. It didn’t do any good. She knew that even if she were able to fall asleep again, there would be no escaping this. Whitney had made it plain that the announcement had to be made as soon as possible, before his blackmailer leaked the story to the press.

And she was the one who had to do it.

Amanda kicked her sheet back, angry at the world, and sat up. Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was almost seven. Christopher was usually up by now. Why hadn’t he come barreling into her room the way he usu
ally did, ready to bounce on her bed and on her stomach?

Thinking back, she vaguely recalled hearing noises outside her door just before the buzzer had slashed sleep aside. Now that she thought of it, that had probably been Christopher trying to get into her room. Carla must have dragged him away. The woman definitely had her virtues.

Amanda forced herself out of bed and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe door. Her hair was wild, her face pale and puffy. She had looked better in her life. A lot better. And a lot more human.

For some perverse reason, she thought of Pierce. Maybe she should let him see her like this. One look and he would certainly back off, she thought with a smile.

In a careless movement, she ran her hands slowly over the swell of her hips and wondered, just for a fleeting moment, what it would be like to make love with him.

Hot. Passionate. And fast. So fast that the breath would undoubtedly be knocked out of her.

Well, it was something that she didn’t intend to find out about. She’d wondered about bungee jumping too, but there would be no leaping off cliffs in her future. Making love to Pierce, she thought, would probably have the same effect.

What was he doing in her head at this hour of the morning, for God’s sake? She had work to do.

Amanda dragged her hand through her tangled hair, pushing it out of her eyes. What she needed, she decided, was a good run to clear her head.

She reached into the far recesses of her closet and pulled out a pair of faded denim shorts and a baggy sweatshirt. She’d cut off the sleeves when the weather had turned sultry. It was a purely functional outfit, meant to be serviceable, not to impress. She ran for her health, not to be fashionable. There was a tear under the right armhole that she had been meaning to sew. She had just never found the time.

Throwing off her nightshirt, she tugged on the shorts and then the shirt. There were a lot of things lately, she thought, that she never found the time to do. She wondered if life was ever going to slow down to the sort of pace where she could finally catch up to it—and catch her breath as well.

Probably not. If it did, she’d probably be complaining that she was bored. Amanda laughed to herself.

Once dressed, she got down on her hands and knees to search for her running shoes. They were lost somewhere amid the chaotic mess that existed at the bottom of her closet. She chewed on her lip, annoyed. Another tiling she meant to get to.

She flung a rubber bone out as she went on parting shoes and clothes that had been pulled down from their hangers. Her closet was obviously Christopher and Muffin’s new play area.

She was rewarded several trying minutes later with two running shoes. The laces were partially undone and tangled together at the ends. More of her son’s handiwork. How could one little boy be in so many different places in such a short space of time?

It took her another five minutes to untangle the laces and get ready. Time was ticking by quickly and there were a hundred things she had to do. Amanda tried not to think about it.

“I’m going out for a run,” she called out to Carla as she came down the stairs.

She heard the sound of dishes coming from the kitchen. Christopher was having breakfast. Almost at the front door, Amanda stopped. For a moment, she was tempted to go in and say good morning.

But she knew that if she went in to say hello, her chances of getting out to run would be instantly cut in half. Christopher would insist on going out the front door with her, then down the driveway, and probably down the block as well. Then he’d wail because she wouldn’t let him come out onto the greenbelt with her.
A fast getaway was the only sensible move.

“Sorry, sweetie,” she said under her breath as she pulled her hair through a rubber band, “but this is about preserving your mommy’s sanity.”

Glancing over her shoulder toward the kitchen, Amanda made her escape.

She pulled open the front door and tripped as she crossed the threshold. “What the—?’

On the doorstep was a magnum of champagne in a silver bucket. Attached to it was a single red rose.

Chapter Eight

There was a note attached to the neck of the champagne bottle. Amanda carefully pulled it off, folded the tape under it, and looked slowly around to see if anyone was watching her. The greenbelt was deserted and there was no one out on the cul-de-sac. But she couldn’t shake the eerie sensation that she was being observed.

Still holding the rose, Amanda fingered the folded note. Maybe Whitney had sent this. But she doubted it. She looked down at the flower. This was a romantic gesture, and Whitney had a lot more important things on his mind at the moment.

Shifting the flower to her other hand, Amanda unfolded the note. It was written in an easy, wide hand. It wasn’t from Whitney. And it wasn’t anonymous.

The note was from Pierce.

She wouldn’t have thought this was his style. He seemed like someone who was inclined to reach out and take what he wanted, or who sat back and waited till the woman fell into his lap. This gesture was far too romantic for someone like Alexander. He certainly didn’t strike her as the type who would write poetry for a woman. Dirty limericks, maybe, but not poetry.

This was a poem.

Nothing fancy, yet it was eloquent in its understatement. Eight short lines in iambic pentameter comparing her to the wild rose she held in her hand. The gist of it was that wild roses weren’t as beautiful as their more sophisticated cousin, the rose, but they had a certain untamed, compelling charm that was enhanced by their determination to survive, untended.

Amanda folded the note.

Wild, am I? Mess with me, Alexander, and you’ll find out just how wild I can be
.

Amanda frowned in order to keep from smiling. At least he doesn’t use hackneyed cliches.