Lovers and Strangers (14 page)

Her mouth was sweet. So sweet. And softer than anything could possibly be. He wanted more. He wanted it all. He wanted everything she had to give. He lifted his head slightly. "Open your mouth, Angel," he demanded, his voice a harsh whisper of need. "Let me in."

"Jack, please—" she began.

He took her mouth again, roughly, determined to force a response.

Faith resisted him for a brief moment longer. But it was no use. She could blame the arm around her back that held her as tightly as a vise. Or the hand curved around her skull that permitted not an inch of movement. Or the chest beneath her balled fists, as unyielding as stone. But the true reason that her resistance broke was that the mouth crushed to hers was too demanding, too hot, too... enticing. Faith whimpered and went lax in his arms.

The soft, helpless sound pierced through Jack like a knife. His hand instantly gentled at the back of her head. His arm cradled rather than restrained. He lifted his mouth from hers and looked down into her face.

Her eyes were closed. Her cheeks were pale. Her lips trembled. As he watched, a tear leaked from beneath one closed lid.

Jack felt like a ravening beast. A despoiler of virgins. The lowest kind of vermin. "Oh, God, Angel, I'm sorry. Don't cry. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry." He brought both hands to her face, cupping it between them, and brushed his thumb over her cheek to wipe away the tear. "Are you all right? Did I hurt you?"

"No," she breathed, her eyes still closed. Another tear followed the first. "No, you didn't hurt me."

"Dammit." His hands fell away from her face. "I should be shot down like a rabid dog."

"No." The fists that had been balled tight against his chest unfurled and then clenched again, curling into the fabric of his khaki shirt, keeping him from stepping back.

"Faith?"

She opened her eyes. "It was my fault," she said, her big eyes full of self-recrimination and the guilt that she hadn't quite managed to overcome, after all. "You warned me what would happen and I just kept pushing." She took a shaky breath. "I got what I deserved."

"No." He lifted his hands to grasp her shoulders. "Don't even think that," he said fiercely, aghast that she would take the blame for his actions onto herself. "You're not responsible for my lack of control."

"But you said—"

"I know what I said. It was stupid and cruel and—"

"And true." The words were an anguished whisper, a confession of guilt and complicity. It seemed she was what her father had always accused her of being, after all.

"No." Unable to resist, Jack cupped her face in his palms again. "Faith, no." He caressed away the tear that wet her cheek, brushed back a tendril of hair. "I won't have you blaming yourself. What I said was an excuse, pure and simple. It was me trying to find some way to justify doing what I've wanted to do since the first time I saw you at Flynn's. It had nothing to do with what you did or didn't do just now. If you'd taken the money and walked away I would have found some other reason for taking what I wanted."

What he still wanted. What, God help him, he was beginning to think he might always want.

He took his hands from her face, dropping them down to cover hers where they gripped the material of his shirt. "You'd better go now, Angel," he said, trying to insert his thumbs into her curled fists to loosen her grip. "Before I find another excuse to take advantage of you."

"No." She tightened her fingers on his shirt, evading his attempt to dislodge them. "Don't say that. You didn't take advantage of me. You kissed me."

"Yes, I kissed you. And if you don't leave right now, I'll go on kissing you and, sure as hell, you'll end up flat on your back, buck naked and spread-eagled on my bed," he said crudely, thinking it would put her off, once and for all. "I don't think you're ready for that, do you?"

Faith stared up at him, her gaze unwavering, searching his eyes for what lay beneath the deliberate vulgarity of his words. "What if I said I was?" she whispered achingly.

Jack stared at her for a long, charged moment. God, he was tempted. So tempted. But he wasn't that big a bastard; he still had some scruples left. "I'd say you don't know what you want," he said flatly.

"But I do. I-"

"No." He forced her hands from his shirtfront and put her away from him gently, but firmly. "You do what you want about cleaning the apartment," he said, his voice cold and hard and final as he stepped around her. "I'm going out."

Faith stood where she was in the open doorway, watching him walk away from her.
Now what?
she wondered.
Oh, God, now what?

Should she run after him and say she was sorry? Beg his forgiveness for putting him in an uncomfortable and embarrassing situation? Should she hide herself in shame and try to avoid ever running into him again? She stood there in the doorway for a long moment, indecisive and hesitant, feeling as lost and confused and guilty as she had one awful afternoon nearly ten years ago.

She'd thought she'd settled it all in her mind years ago, even before she'd left Georgia. Thought she'd figured it all out and come to terms with guilt and blame, of good and evil, of right and wrong in matters between the sexes. And, yet, obviously, she hadn't. Because being with Jack had felt so right, she'd been so
sure
it was right... but it looked as if she'd been dead wrong. Again.

Wearily, Faith closed the door of Jack's apartment, shutting herself inside, and went to finish the job she'd started. She was sure about that, at least. There was always work to be done; no matter what else had happened or how bad you were feeling, there was work to be done. And, usually, it helped.

* * *

Half an hour later, just as she'd finished polishing the chrome faucets on the kitchen sink, Faith heard the front door open. She froze in midmotion, like a deer caught in the glare of headlights on a quiet country road. He was back. Already. He hadn't stayed away long enough for her to finish cleaning his apartment. Ten more minutes and she'd have been gone, out of his life forever.

"I'm sorry, Jack," she called out nervously, hurriedly tossing the used paper towel into the trash can. She stripped off her rubber gloves, grabbed up her can of cleanser and the window cleaner and headed out of the kitchen. "I meant to be gone before you got back and I was just about ready to leave. I thought you'd—" She came to an abrupt halt at the doorway. "Mr. Mueller," she said, startled into backing up a step.

The building super was a small, unprepossessing man, an inch or two less than her own five foot six. He was rather thin and wiry, with a bald, shiny head and pale, almost colorless gray eyes. Not the kind of man, Faith thought, who should cause the small hairs on the back of her neck to rise up. But he did. There was something eerie about his eyes and he had the unsettling habit of appearing when and where you least expected him. Like now.

"Jack isn't here," Faith said.

"I know." Mueller nodded, and started toward her. "Saw him leave a while ago."

"I was just getting ready to leave myself," Faith told him, prepared to spray him in the eyes with window cleaner if he even so much as
looked
like he was going to touch her.

"Don't let me keep you," Mueller said, brushing past her.

Surprise held Faith still for a second or two, and then she turned and followed him into the living room, her finger still on the trigger of the spray bottle. "What are you doing?"

"Checking out the mirror. Shannon said somebody'd seen the lady a couple'a days ago." He turned his head to look at her. "That you?"

Reluctantly, Faith nodded. "Jack said it was probably a hologram of some kind. Is that what you're checking for? Wires or something?"

Carl Mueller snorted. "She ain't no hologram. She's a ghost."

"There's no such thing as ghosts."

The super didn't even turn to look at her. "Some say she used to live in this building, before it got made into apartments. Died in a bad way. Was she wearing a long pale dress?" he asked, as if he were seeing the ghost himself. "Almost white? And did she smile at you, kinda sad like?"

"Yes," Faith admitted. "Have you seen her, too?"

"No." His tone, Faith thought, was almost resentful. "Only people whose life is gonna change see her."

"Change?" Faith said, taking a step closer so that she could look into the mirror, too. Jack hadn't told her about that part of the legend. "Change how?"

"You see the ghost, it means either you're gonna have your greatest wish come true or the worst thing you can think of is gonna happen. I heard tell of it time and again. Seen it happen myself, too, lots of times since I started work here, so I know, firsthand. People's careers fall apart after they seen her, marriages break up, business deals fall through, sometimes people even die. A young actress was the first victim, back in the thirties. She drowned in the pool that used to be in the courtyard. The police never could decide whether she fell in by accident like, or if she drowned herself on purpose, or if somebody pushed her in and held her under 'til she stopped breathing." He shifted his gaze then, catching Faith staring at him in the mirror. "Kinda like Shannon's brother."

"There's no question about the way Jack's brother died," Faith said quickly. "He committed suicide."

Mueller shrugged. "So they say."

"You said good things can happen, too," Faith reminded him. "That a person's greatest wish can come true after they've seen her."

He turned around to face her then, his eerie gray eyes curiously flat and emotionless. "You worried?"

"No. No, I'm not worried. I told you—I don't believe in ghosts."

Mueller shrugged. "Don't matter much whether you believe or not. You seen her. Whatever's gonna happen is already set in motion and it's gonna play itself out, no matter what you say you believe or don't believe. Your life is gonna change, real soon, for good or bad," he told her, his voice as emotionless as his eyes. "And there ain't nothin' you can do about it."

Chapter 7

"Corona," Jack ordered, sliding onto a bar stool at Flynn's. He intended to get very drunk. So drunk, he wouldn't remember the taste of Faith's lips or the lost look in her eyes when he'd walked out on her. So drunk, he wouldn't be able to find his way back to his apartment until long after she had left it. So drunk, he wouldn't care that she wasn't there when he finally did make it back.

Except there weren't enough beers in the world to accomplish that trick.

Hell, maybe he should switch to the hard-stuff.

But that wouldn't work, either. He'd tried it, years ago in 'Nam, and it hadn't eased a single pain or erased a single memory. They had all been there, waiting for him, when he'd sobered up. He'd stuck with beer ever since then.

"Something wrong with the brew?" the bartender asked, gesturing at the untouched glass of beer.

"What?" Jack looked up, surprised by the intrusion. Tim would have known better; obviously the guy on the afternoon shift was a rookie. "It's fine." Jack picked the glass up and took a sip to prove it. "I'll let you know if I need anything else."

The bartender took the hint and moved down the bar, leaving Jack to brood over his beer and cigarettes. Nobody else bothered him either as he sat there, morosely nursing his beer. But the beer wasn't helping, the cigarette wasn't helping and the solitude he'd silently demanded only gave him more time with his own tortuous thoughts. And then some damn fool dropped a quarter into the jukebox and an old fifties love song filled the air. Jack swore and crushed out his cigarette.

Unhooking his boot heels from the bottom rung of the bar stool, he stood up and reached for his wallet to toss a couple of bills down next to his unfinished beer. Turning his back on a half-full pack of cigarettes, he walked out of Flynn's with the syrupy lyrics to The Penguins' "Earth Angel" assaulting his ears.

His hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, he headed off down the sidewalk,
away
from the Wilshire Arms. A good, long walk should give her plenty of time to clear out of his apartment. And out of his life.

* * *

She's still here,
Jack thought, his heart lurching into his throat as he opened his front door and saw her utility cart sitting in his tiny front hall. He stopped in the doorway, his hand on the doorknob. Should he go in? Should he turn around and walk out? Should he—