Passion's Promise (47 page)

He sobered her up long enough to tell her. As best he could. But after her fourth cup of coffee, and opening the windows for ah-, the headlines did it for him, as her eyes scanned the type. She looked up into his face, and he knew that she understood. It couldn't get much worse for her now. It already had.

Luke was dead. Stabbed on the yard, so they said. "A racial disturbance . . . well-known prison agitator, Lucas Johns. . . ." His sister had claimed the body, and the funeral was being held in Bakersfield the day Kezia was reading the news. It didn't matter. It didn't change anything. Funerals weren't Luke's style. Neither were sisters. He had never even mentioned her to Kezia. The only thing that mattered was that he was gone.

"Do you know when he died, Alejandro?" She still sounded drunk, but he knew she was coherent

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"No, I don't know exactly. I guess I could find out"

"I already know. He died in court at the hearing. They killed him. But that day, the day he really died, he died beautiful and proud and strong. He walked into that hearing like a man. What they did to him after that is on their hands."

"I suppose you're right" Tears had begun to stream down his face. For what had happened to Luke. For what had happened to her. She was already as dead as Lucas, in her own way. Drunk, duty, sick, tired, ravaged by memories, and now his death. He remembered that day in the law library, before Lucas walked into the hearing. She was right he had walked tall and proud, and she had been so sure, so powerful beside him. They had had something he'd never seen before. And now, one was dead, and the other was dying. It made him feel sick. It was all like living a nightmare; his best friend was dead and he was in love with Luke's woman. And there was no way he could tell her now. Not now that Lucas was dead.

"Don't cry, Alejandro." She smoothed a hand across his cheeks to wipe off the tears, and then ran a hand over his hair. "Please don't cry." But he was crying for himself as much as for them, and she couldn't know that. She tilted his face up to hers then, and held him so gently he hardly felt her hands on his shoulders. She looked into his eyes, and then slowly, quietly, she bent over and kissed him, carefully, on the mouth. "The funny thing is that I love you too. It's really very confusing. In fact I've loved you for a very long time. Isn't that strange?"

She was still more than a little bit drunk and he didn't know what to say. Maybe she had finally gone crazy from the constant shocks and the grief. Maybe she was mad now. Or perhaps he was. Maybe she hadn't even kissed him . . . maybe he was only dreaming.

"Alejandro, I love you."

"Kezia?" Her name felt strange on his lips. She was Luke's. And Luke was dead now. But how could Luke be dead? And how could she love them both? It was all so totally crazy. "Kezia?"

"You heard me. I love you. As in, I'm in love with you."

He looked at her for what seemed like a very long time, the tears still wet on his cheeks.

"I love you too. I loved you the first day he brought you up to meet me. But I never thought ... I just . . ."

"I never thought either. It's like all the stuff you read in bad novels. And it's very, very confusing." She led him to the couch and sat down beside him, leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

"It's just as confusing for me." He watched her as she sat there.

"Then why don't we leave each other alone for a while?"

"So you can drink yourself to death a little faster?"

His voice was suddenly loud and bitter in the quiet room. She had shown him everything he wanted, but she wanted to destroy it before she would give it to him. What a horrible joke.

"No. So I can think."

"No drinking?"

"Mind your own business."

"Then get rucked, lady. Just get fucked!" He was on his feet and shouting. "I don't need to fall in love with you to watch you fucking diel To watch you commit suicide like some pathetic skid-row alcoholic. If that's what you plan to do with your life, then leave me alone! Oh God, Kezia . . . God damn you!" He pulled her to her feet and shook her until she felt the world shake under her, and she had to protest.

"Stop it! Leave me alone!"

"I love you! Don't you understand that?"

"No. I don't understand that. I don't understand anything anymore. I love you too. So fucking what? We get attached to each other and love each other and need each other and then the sky falls in all over again? Who needs it, goddamn you . . . who fucking needs it?"

"I do. I need you."

"Okay, Alejandro, okay . . . and now will you do me a favor and just leave me alone? Please?" Her voice was trembling and there were tears in her eyes again.

"Okay, baby. It's up to you now."

The door closed quietly behind him, and five minutes later there was the sound of shattering glass. She had taken the newspaper with the ugly article on the front page and thrown it at the window with such force that it had gone through the glass.

"Fuck you, world! Go to hell!"

At the end of that week, Alejandro saw the same picture as Edward. Edward saw it with pain, Alejandro with shock. Edward had known.
Women's Wear
carried it too. Kezia Saint Martin boarding a plane for Geneva. "For a rest from the rigors of the social season." The papers already seemed to have forgotten her association with Lucas. How quickly people forget.

The papers said she was planning to go skiing, but it didn't say where, and her hat was pulled so low over her face that Alejandro would never have known her if he hadn't seen the name. As he looked at the picture, he marveled again at the absence of reporters on then- last trip to San Francisco and back. In the state she'd been in, that would really have made news.

He sat for a long time in the small office with the paint peeling off the walls, looking at the picture, at the hat pulled low over the face. At the word, Geneva. And what now? When would he hear from her again?

He still remembered the kiss of the last morning he'd seen her, only a few days ago. And now she was gone. He felt heavy, as though he were nailed to the chair, glued to the floor, part of the building and crumbling like the rest of it. Everything was going to pot in his life. His job stank, he hated the city, his best friend was dead, and he was in love with a girl he knew he could never have. Even if Luke had wanted it that way, as Alejandro suspected he might have. . . . There was something about Luke's insistent summons to come out with Kezia that last time. Luke knew she'd need help. But it was never meant to be. He knew that, and Kezia must know it too. It was all very crazy, and he had to work out his own life. But he kept staring at die word, hating it. Geneva.

"Someone here to see you, Alejandro." He looked up to see one of the kids poke his head in the door.

"Yeah? Who?"

"Perini's probation officer, I think."

"Tell him to get fucked."

"For real?" The boy looked thrilled.

"No, not for real, asshole. Give me five minutes, and send him in."

"What'll I do with him for five minutes?"

"I don't know, dammit. Do whatever you want to do. Beat him up, roll him, kick him down the stairs.

Give him coffee .... I don't give a shit what you do." Alejandro threw the newspaper off his desk and into the garbage.

"Okay, man. Okay. Don't get all pissed off." He had never seen Alejandro like that before. It was scary.

The hotel in Villars-sur-Ollon suited her purposes perfectly,high up in the mountains and in a town that was crawling with schools. There were virtually no tourists there, except a few visiting parents. She stayed in a huge hotel that was mostly uninhabited, and took tea with seven old ladies to the sound of violins and a cello. She went for long walks, drank a lot of hot chocolate, went to bed early, and read.

Only Simpson and Edward knew where she was, and she had told them both to leave her alone. She didn't plan to write until further notice, and even Edward had respected her wishes. He sent her weekly letters to keep her abreast of her financial news, and expected no response, which was just as well, because he got none. It was the middle of April before she was ready to leave.

She took the train to Milan, spent a night, and then went on to Florence. She mingled with the early spring tourists, toured the museums, wandered in and out of shops, walked along the Arno, and tried not to think. She did the same in Rome, and by then it was easier. It was May. The sun was warm, the people were lively, the street musicians were funny, and she ran into a few friends. She had dinner with them, and found that the urge to jump up and scream had finally left her. Little by little, she was healing.

In the early weeks of June, she rented a Fiat and drove north to Umbria, and to Spoleto where later in the summer the music festival would be held. And then she drove through the Alps, and eventually into France.

She danced in St. Tropez in July, and gambled in Monte Carlo, boarded the yacht of friends in St. Jean-Cap Ferrat for a weekend, and bought new Gucci luggage in Cannes. She began to write again when she drove up through Provence, and spent three weeks lost in a tiny hotel, where the terrine was superb, better than any patg she had eaten.

Luke's book reached her there, hesitantly sent to her by Simpson, with the reviews. She opened the package unsuspectingly one morning, bathed in sunshine as she stood barefoot in her nightgown on the little balcony outside her room. She could see hills and fields beyond, and for almost an hour she simply sat cross-legged on the balcony floor with the book in her lap, holding it, running her fingers over the cover, but unable to open it. The jacket design was good, and there was a marvelous photograph of him on the back. It had been taken before she had met him, but she had a copy of the same photo on her desk in New York. He was walking down a street in Chicago, wearing a white turtleneck sweater, his dark, hair blown by the wind, his raincoat slung over his shoulder. One eyebrow raised, he was looking sarcastically into the camera with the beginnings of a smile. She had squeezed the photograph out of him the first time she kad seen it "What the hell do you want that for?" "You look so sexy in it, Luke." "Jesus.

You nut I hope my readers don't think so." "Why not?" She looked up, a little surprised, and he had kissed her.

"Because I'm supposed to look brilliant, not sexy, silly lady."

"Wen, you happen to look both. Can I have it?" He had waved an embarrassed hand at her, and gone off to answer the phone. But she had taken the photograph, and framed it in silver. It was a glimpse of the real Luke, and she was glad it was on the book jacket. People should see him as he was . . . people should. . . .

She had looked up after what seemed like hours, the book still cradled in her lap, unfelt tears rolling steadily down her face, misting the view. But she had been looking into the past, not at the fields in the distance.

"Well, babe, here we are." She spoke aloud and smiled through her tears, using the hem of her nightgown to wipe her face. She could almost see Lucas smiling at her. It didn't matter where she went anymore, she carried him with her in a warm, tender way. Not in the agonizing way that she had; now she could smile at him. Now he was with her, forever. In New York, in Switzerland, in France. He was a part of her now. A comfortable part. She looked far into the fields with a soft shrug and leaned back against the legs of a chair, still holding the book in her hands. A voice seemed to tell her to open it, but she couldn't, and then as she watched the face in the photograph yet again, almost expecting him to move along that long-forgotten street in Chicago, it was as though she could see his face growing stern, his head shaking in teas-ing annoyance.

"Come on, Mama, open it, dammit!"

She did, gingerly, carefully, not wanting to breathe or to look or to see. She had known, known it when she touched the book, but seeing it would be different She wondered if she could bear it, but she had to.

Now she wanted to see, and she knew he had wanted her to. He had never told her, but now it was as though she had always known. The book was dedicated to her.

Fresh tears ran down her face as she read it, but they were not tears of grief. Tears of tenderness, of gratitude, of laughter, of loving. Those were the treasures he had given her, not sorrow. Luke had never been a man to tolerate sorrow. He had been too alive to taste even a whisper of death. And sorrow is death.

To Kezia, who stands by my side wherever I go. My equal, my solace, my friend. Brave lady, you are the bright light in a place I have long sought to find, and now at last we're both home. May you be proud of this book, for now it is the best I can give you, with thanks and my love.

LJ.

". . . and now at last we're both home." It was true, and it was late August by then, and she had one final test Marbella. And Hilary.

"My God, darling, you look divine! So brown and healthy! Where on earth have you been?"

"Here and there." She laughed and brushed her hair from her eyes. It was longer now, and the harsh angularity of her face had melted again. There were small lines on either side of her eyes, from the sun, or whatever, but she looked well. Very well.

"How long can you stay? Your cable didn't even give me a hint, naughty child!"

Yes, she was back in that old familiar world. Dear, darling Hilary. But it amused her to be called a naughty child. Hell, why not? Her birthday had come and gone in late June. She was thirty now.

"Ill be here for a few days, Aunt Hil, if you have room."

"Thaf s all? But darling, how awful, and of course I have room, how absurd." She was currently having room for at least fourteen others, not to mention the staff. "Why don't you think about staying longer?"

"I've got to get back." She accepted an iced tea from the butler. They stood near the tennis courts where the other guests played.

"Get back to where? My, Jonathan has improved his serve, hasn't he?" "Undoubtedly."

"Of course, how silly of me. You don't know him. Perfectly beautiful man."

He looked like a carbon copy of Whitney. It made Kezia smile.