Having Faith (8 page)

But he had no idea what she could possibly be doing standing by the side of his bed draped in a sheet.

Then he realized that the setting was wrong. Moving his head by short, pained inches, he saw that he wasn't in his own bedroom at all. His bedroom was done in navies and browns. This one was heavy on whites and hurt his eyes something awful. And the bed was too small. His heel was caught on the bottom edge of the mattress. That never happened with his extra-long king. And he would never, never sleep on flowered sheets under a flowered quilt, but unless his eyesight was truly going, that was what he saw above and below his hip. His naked hip.

Bolting upright, he winced and caught himself for a minute, then grabbed the quilt from the bed and, though he was plenty warm on his own, wrapped it around him as he hurried to stand on the opposite side of the mattress from Faith. Memory was fast returning, coming in flashes like a strobe tormenting his brain.

"What happened?" he rasped. He hoped she'd tell him that he'd simply had too much to drink, so she'd put him to bed. Somehow, between the look on her face and the images that were flashing in his mind, he doubted that was the case.

"We did it," she whispered in dismay. Then she paused and allowed herself a last-ditch doubt.

"Did we?"

Sawyer looked down at the bed. They'd just awoken in it. Clearly they'd spent at least part of the night here. But the pictures flickering into his mind were of someplace darker, like the living room, and someplace harder, like the floor.

"Do you see any clothes?"

he asked cautiously. He didn't. There was nothing draped over the white wicker chair in the corner, nothing thrown on the white wicker dresser, nothing dropped on the pale green carpet.

"No. I think they may be, uh, in the other room."

Sawyer's headache gave an extra-strong pulse as though in punishment for what the evidence was strongly suggesting. He raked a hand through his hair.

"Were we drunk?"

"I don't know. I've never been drunk before. Do you remember much?"

"Bits and pieces."

"Did we...?"

Sawyer tuned into several of those bits and pieces. He remembered talking about Joanna but seeing Faith. He remembered touching her. He remembered that she felt very good to hold. He remembered that she was very tight inside.

"I think so."

"Oh Lord." She twisted down onto the bed, putting her back to him, which gave her a token protection from the embarrassment she felt. She rested her splitting head in her hands.

"Oh Lord. I've never, never done anything like this. I'm sorry. Sawyer."

"It was my fault as much as yours," he snapped.

She hunched her shoulders.

"No need to be snippy about it."

He rubbed a hand over his eyes and was a while in answering.

"Sorry."

"Are you always this charming when you wake up?"

"I'm not feeling great. Everything from my neck up is hurting. Even my tongue doesn't feel right."

"Maybe it overexerted itself."

"Look who's being snippy."

For a minute, she sat in quiet dejection. Then she shook her head--which was a mistake. Everything inside seemed to rattle. After another minute's recovery, she said, "I guess I was trying to be cute, only it didn't work." She closed her eyes and whispered, "I don't believe this." Her voice rose.

"I don't believe I let all that happen. Let it happen. I did it. I goaded you on.

I know I did. Why did I do that? "I've never been sexually aggressive in my life!"

"You'd had too much to drink. We'd both had too much to drink. Neither of us was thinking clearly."

"But to--make--love." She tripped over the words, as though the sound of them hitting the air made the fact of what they'd done so much more real.

"Making love is the most intimate thing two people can do. But we're not lovers, you and me," she cried.

"We're friends!"

Sawyer winced.

"You don't have to yell."

"We're friends," she repeated, but more softly.

"Some say that friends make the best lovers."

"Or that the best of friendships are ruined when friends become lovers. I don't want that to happen, Sawyer." She swore softly.

"I

don't believe this. "

"We were tipsy." "We were awful. Some of the things we said. What we did to Jack and Joanna. That was the lowest. Who are we to go on and on about them that way? To talk about the way they made love?" She buried her face in her hands and moaned.

"I am so embarrassed."

"We were tipsy."

"They didn't deserve that. Do you think they're off with new lovers, talking about what we did in bed? I'd die if I knew Jack was doing that. Some things are sacred." She made a snorting sound.

"Boy, we blew sacred, didn't we?"

"The problem is that I know Jack and you know

Joanna. We used to go places, the four of us. It's almost natural that we make comparisons. "

"It's terrible! How can you condone what we did?"

"I'm not condoning it. But we were tipsy."

"I know we were tipsy, still what we did was awful!"

"I know." He held his head.

"I take that back. I don't know. Things are coming back to me, and some of them are pretty nice."

Faith whirled on him, but the sudden movement wrenched everything inside her. For a split second she feared she was going to be sick.

Mercifully the feeling passed.

"I think," she said with her eyes lowered, "that I'd like something for this headache and then a cup or two of very strong coffee."

Both ideas sounded good to Sawyer. He didn't move, though. He didn't want to do anything to anger Faith. She wasn't in the best of moods and neither was he. So he watched her walk from the bedroom with surprising grace, given that she was swathed in a bedsheet. He saw her go into the bathroom and shut the door. It seemed forever that she was in there. He began to wonder whether she was all right, but he didn't move. He simply stood by the side of the bed, holding the flowered quilt wrapped around his lower half.

Finally the door opened and she came out. He guessed she'd thrown water on her face and brushed her hair, because she looked a little more awake. She was also wearing a robe.

"Here," she said quietly. Keeping her eyes low-in deference to her headache rather than deference to him, he was sure--she dropped several tablets into his hand. Then she turned and, walking gingerly, headed for the kitchen.

As soon as she'd disappeared, he took his painstaking turn in the bathroom. When he joined her in the kitchen a short time later, he was wearing the sweatshirt and jeans he'd recovered, with more than a little chagrin, from the living-room floor.

The smell of perking coffee wafted about and would have been welcoming if Faith hadn't been standing so still, facing the counter, keeping her back to him. He slipped onto a bar stool. His legs weren't feeling as steady as usual. The support was welcome.

As he sat there, waiting for the pills to calm the noise in his head and take the raw edge off everything else, he wondered if Faith wanted him to leave. She had every right to be alone if she wanted. It was her house. She wasn't feeling well, and his presence was a reminder why.

But he couldn't leave. The cold water he'd doused his head with in the sink had cleared his mind that much. He and Faith had to talk.

He didn't do a thing, though, until the coffee was done and she handed him a steaming mug. He'd always thought of life as being more civilized over morning coffee, and Faith's coffee was strong. If it didn't make him more civilized, he didn't know what would. He figured it would also go a long way toward settling his stomach and dulling the ache in his head.

It did both for Faith. After a few minutes, she was able to carry her mug to the counter, take the companion stool to his and face him. ' "Guess we missed dinner," she said. She was relieved to see that his eyes had the same sickly red look hers did.

"Guess so."

"If we'd had something in our stomachs, the champagne wouldn't have hit so hard."

"Either that, or we'd have been bounced from the restaurant."

She started to smile at that thought, but the movement of her mouth somehow reached her eyes, which still hurt. So she made a quiet sound to acknowledge what he'd said and closed her eyes for a minute.

"I

feel very foolish," she whispered.

"That's two of us."

"I have never, never done anything like this before. I mean, even aside from what we did to Jack and Joanna, the sex was something else." She opened her eyes to his.

"I don't sleep around. Sawyer. I never have. There was one guy before I met Jack, and there haven't been any since. Except you."

Sawyer thought about that for a minute.

"I'm flattered."

"I didn't mean it as flattery. I meant it to tell you the way I am.

I'm not loose. I'm not a frustrated divorcee. I don't go around getting drunk and begging men to make love to me. "

"Is that what you thought you did?"

"Yes."

"Well, you didn't. In the first place, you didn't get drunk. If you'd done that, you'd have been incapacitated. You'd probably have passed out. Neither of us was drunk. We were tipsy.

That's all. "

"Is there really a difference?" she asked.

The faint bitterness in her voice annoyed him.

"Yes, there is," he insisted.

"There's a big difference. If we'd been drunk we wouldn't have been so lucid."

"Lucid? You think we were lucid?"

"To some extent, yes. The things I said about Joanna were true. I probably shouldn't have said any of them. But they were true. She did a job on me sexually. There were times when I wondered whether I lacked something in that department, since I couldn't make her respond. I never would have planned what happened last night, but once we got going I must have had an inner need to keep going. You were my friend. I'd had just enough to drink. I was loose. I wanted to know if I could turn you on. So maybe I used bad judgment, and I blame that on the drink, but on some level I knew what I was doing." He paused.

"My guess is you did, too."

Faith let his words sink in. Much as she tried, she couldn't completely deny them. Quietly she said, "Then we have to accept the responsibility. So that makes it worse."

"Yes and no."

She stared at him.

"Explain."

"Yes, we have to accept the responsibility. We're mature adults. We can blame what we did on the wine, but that doesn't excuse it. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't so terrible."

"Are you kidding?" she cried.

"Sawyer, we slept together last night!

You and me. Best friends. Best buddies. We made love. We went all the way. We scr"-He cut her off.

"Don't say it. Faith. Don't even think it. You're right. We're best friends. Best buddies. We shouldn't have done what we did, but it wasn't some ugly, faceless, nameless thing, and I'm sure as hell not dropping a C-note on your counter and walking out."

Faith flinched. She bowed her head and pressed two fingers to her temple. Feeling quickly contrite, Sawyer gentled his voice.

"All I'm saying is that this isn't the end of the world."

"What if I'm pregnant?"

The thought caught him off guard. He swallowed. "Is there a chance of that?"

"Yes. I don't use birth control. I haven't had any need." She grew defensive.

"I don't go around doing this kind of thing."

Rattled as he was, her defensiveness hit him the wrong way.

"Damn it, I know that, Faith! Will you stop saying it? I know you're not loose.

I know you don't sleep around. I know you place value on physical intimacy. We may never have been romantically involved, but I do know you, and better than most, I'd wager. "

"You must think I'm awful."

He threw his hands in the air; they came down on his hips.

"It takes two to tango, y'know." "But I kept pushing you on. I kept asking you for more." Her eyes grew moist.

"I swear, Sawyer, I've never been like that before."

The tears did it. He'd had no intention of touching her, but when he saw the tears he couldn't sit by and stay physically aloof. Not after what, right or wrong, they'd done. And not when every one of his instincts as a friend and as a man directed him otherwise.

Taking a step to her stool, he wrapped his arms around her. "I want you to listen to me, Faith. You're a bright woman, probably one of the brightest I've ever met. I want you to listen and listen good. Okay?"

She nodded.

He spoke slowly, keeping his voice low and gentle. "I do not think less of you for what we did last night. If anything, the opposite is true. I'm flattered to know that there haven't been any other men but that you let me be the first since the divorce. I'm relieved to know that you're human, that deep down inside you have some of the same needs as me--even if the need is as lousy as criticizing our ex-spouses. I am not disappointed in you. I don't think I could ever be disappointed in you." He paused.