The Signature (A Perfect Forever Novel)

by Ward, Susan

  Pushing the tangle of blond hair from her face, Krystal settled cross-legged on a large box, which contained—to her displeasure—toilet paper.

  Devon’s timing, it seemed, wasn’t always perfect. One would hope for more elegant surroundings at a moment like this. But then, one made do with what one had.

  Settling her chin in her palms, she said lightly, “Hello, stranger, we do have a way of meeting in the most unlikely of places.”

  She took a breath, the air slightly musty, heavy with the tang of cleaning solvents, and lifted her face. Her happiness at seeing him, though, was short-lived.

  There had been too much to absorb at first, so she had missed it. Somehow in her joy of seeing him she had failed to notice that there was no smile in those bright eyes, and his expression was anything but welcoming.

  Nervousness came like a cold knife pressing into her stomach. Devon was not at all happy about being here...or was it being with her?

  Fear hid behind her overly bright smile, as she said, “I can’t imagine what they’re all thinking about this!”

  Devon was settled back against the closed door in his loose-limbed way that did nothing to mask his own tension. Tension. It saddened her to note it for what it was.

  She hadn’t expected to step back into a comfortable pattern in one fell swoop, after three months apart, but she hadn’t expected this either. This feeling of incredible remoteness from him.

  “Oh, I don’t think we’ll have to imagine it for long,” Devon said tersely. “I have a feeling we’ll be reading about it in tomorrow’s papers.”

  Her eyes did a quick search of his face. Was that it? He was angry she had made a spectacle of him? Instinct told her it went deeper than that. Hope refused to let her accept that.

  “Then it’s a good thing I never read the papers, except for a certain column I’ve developed an affection for.”

  There was pounding on the door and Devon turned toward it.

  Krystal shook her head in exasperation. “Just ignore it! That’s Colin. I can tell by how imperative it sounds. I’m not at all ready to deal with him. In another second he’ll be screaming...”

  A thick, heavily accented British voice came muffled through the wood of the door. “Kryssie, sweetheart, open the damn door! In case you don’t know it, you ain’t got the kind of clout any more to pull off these kinds of stunts!”

  More pounding. Devon’s eyes, a little less dim, turned toward her. “Your manager?”

  “Oh, no, he’s the Mad Hatter.” Still striving for lightness over panic, she gestured dramatically at their surroundings. “And in case you weren’t aware, this is Wonderland and I’m Alice.”

  “Thanks for the clarification. I wouldn’t have recognized it for what it is, with all the mops and cleaning buckets.”

  He was still leaning up against that damn door, but at least a slight smile twisted his lips.

  “And Morgan? Who’s he in all this?”

  She was too nervous to catch the sudden sharpness of Devon’s gaze.

  Laughing, not needing to give it any thought, she announced, “Oh, he’s the Cheshire cat! But we can’t tell him that! He won’t appreciate being likened to a cat at all.”

  His smile was stiff at the edges. “If you tell me I’m Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dumb, I’ll have no ego left at all to bruise.”

  Why were they doing this? This inane chatter bordering on the absurd. There were so many things she wanted to say and time was precious and short. Why couldn’t she seem to get it out in the open between them?

  Colin would have her head for running out on her screaming public. She shook her head, lightly brushing a feather duster against her chin. “No, you’re the rabbit!”

  Lackluster curiosity crinkled his brow. “Because I run?”

  Another shake. “No, because you’re late!”

  Three months too late. Why didn’t you come sooner, Devon? I needed you.

  The banging became fiercer. “Maybe you should open the door, Krys. There’s a small matter of about eighteen thousand people waiting for you to go onstage that you seem to have forgotten about.”

  “After all the trouble it took me to get you alone, not a chance,” Krystal teased. “You know, I was beginning to despair over ever seeing you again. I thought maybe a war had broken out somewhere that no one had mentioned, and they had sent you overseas on assignment. Then I saw the write-up on the Los Angeles Press Club Dinner.” Her voice caught for an instant as the image flashed in her mind of Devon standing with another woman at the awards banquet. “But then, you’ve been busy yourself, haven’t you?”

  He matched her humor with humor. “Prison sometimes has the oddest way of making a man very popular.”

  “Well, then that explains it!” With an exaggerated sigh, she gave him a mock-indignant look. “I know I shouldn’t have expected you to come the instant I arrived in Los Angeles, after the way I treated you, but really, Devon. Three months?”

  “Three months, six days, twelve hours,” Devon countered and she felt a pulse leap inside of her.

  She dared to meet his eyes squarely then, and behind that gaze of such strangeness she saw something familiar and warm, and latched onto it for courage.

  “Ah, and here I’ve been pining away, worried that you haven’t been thinking of me at all!” She twirled the feather duster beneath her chin. “Have you been thinking of me?”

  “You know I have. Every day, practically nothing else. Whatever else has changed, that hasn’t, Krys.”

  She would have found pleasure in that if there had been something in his voice to match his words. Her composure deserting her, she snapped, “Then can you explain to me what we are doing? Why we’re here having nonsense conversation? Why you are staring at me as if you are not at all pleased to see me? If you don’t want to see me, why did you come to the concert tonight?”

  Those wonderful, gemmed eyes softened, ever so slightly. “I needed to see you,” he said it simply. She didn’t like the way that sounded at all. Detached. An act of curiosity. Nothing more.

  “Heck, you could have popped in a video if that were all you wanted,” she countered glibly. “There must be something more to it than that.”

  For the first time Devon looked uncomfortable. “Let it go, Krys. I don’t know why I came.”

  Hurt made her say things she didn’t want to. “Then if you don’t know why you came, you shouldn’t have bothered.”

  His smiled was amused, but sad at the edges. “It wasn’t a bother. I’ve never watched a concert from backstage before. It’s been educational. Besides, it seemed the best way to get rid of Morgan. I had a horrible feeling that if I didn’t show tonight, I would be forced to endure another visitation from Mount High.”

  That comment would have made her laugh if there had been any humor, any warmth in his words. So it was Morgan’s meddling that had brought Devon here, not her message left with Kara. She made a mental note to deal with Morgan later. Morgan—a hard little laugh escaped her—fate in its most bizarre, impossible incarnation.

  “So you came, you saw, you’re leaving? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  His silence gave her the answer she didn’t want.

  “What happened to your word, Devon?” she demanded sadly. “You promised you’d never hurt me. Don’t you think my finding out you were here and leaving without speaking to me wouldn’t hurt me? Why do this?”

  Somehow, during their argument, Krystal had come to stand between Devon and the door. She had come near enough to him so that now he could run a gentle tip of his finger over the smooth slope of her cheek.

  “Lady, what do you think I’m trying to do, but keep my word? I needed a healthy dose of reality for both our sakes. Thanks to Morgan, I got that tonight. It’s what he intended to have happen with me coming here. It just isn’t possible, Krys. I can see that now. It would have been kinder to both of us if I had left before any of this had happened. I don’t belong here, Krys. I never will. We’re different people,
with different wants and different lives. That’s not going to change. We won’t ever fit together as people, not in the way we should.”

  She had thought if anyone could see through all this, it would be Devon. Disappointment swam like a shark in her stomach.

  Furiously, she countered, “You didn’t have any problem with the way we fit in Coos Bay.”

  “We’re not in Coos Bay, Krys. Look at where we are. How can you not think this changes everything? I can see it, even if you won’t. I can’t change enough to live the way you do, Krys, and I won’t make you happy the way I am.”

  “I don’t want you to change. It’s just environment, Devon. The external. What does it have to do with anything?”

  For a moment, he just stared at her, incredulous, amused, without hope. Then finally he asked, “How close do you think I’d be to you tonight if Morgan hadn’t stepped in as a bridge? I wouldn’t be any nearer to you than whatever seat I could have purchased for your concert, Krys.”

  Those blue eyes stared at him, angry, confused. “I wasn’t aware that you wanted to get close to me. One phone call since I returned to Los Angeles would have done nicely as reassurance, in case you didn’t know!”

  He was frozen, arms crossed stiffly at his chest, staring down at her with eyes that looked as if she were sorely trying his patience.

  “A phone call? A phone call! How, Krys?”

  Frustrated, she snapped. “How? How!” Krystal looked at him as if he had just asked her to explain the intricacies of nuclear physics. “You know, pick up receiver. Dial, dial, dial...” she did an exaggerated mime to punctuate her words. “...Ring, ring, ring. Talk, talk, talk! You have heard of the phone haven’t you? It’s generally considered a rather good communication device!”

  “You’re right, of course,” Devon said simply, and she thought she had won the point. But he added, “It was stupid of me not to thumb through the yellow pages to the section where they bury the unlisted phone numbers of recording stars and give you a call. Do you think if it were that simple, I wouldn’t have called you?”

  He could see on her face that the pieces were slowly taking shape in her mind.

  “Have you lived so long, Alice, in this crazy Wonderland you think is reality, that you’ve forgotten that nothing is ordinary here? Did you think running out on your fans to talk with me would make who you are any less real? Sycophants and screaming fans and high-walled prisons and relationships that come and go on a whim are not part of what I see in my future. I know it seems bizarre to you, but I like simple things and simple pleasures. I want to be able to pick up the phone and get someone on the other end. Walk down the street with a lady’s hand in mine, and not have a dozen people jumping from bushes to snap pictures. I like my life quiet and a woman at least to be accessible!”

  And I like my women faithful, Krys. He swallowed down the words, not wanting to bring out this hurt, this very, very deep hurt, when there was no point. Whatever else, he wanted to at least walk away with a small shred of his tattered pride.

  There was more banging on the locked door, and Devon’s smile was sad. “I can’t live like this, Krys. We can’t even have a moment alone without the world pushing to get at you.”

  “Colin hardly constitutes the ‘world,’ and if you hadn’t waited three months for the worst possible moment to seek me out, then we could be having perfect quiet right now. This is my job. In four hours, it will be tucked away, not a bother to anyone unless we let it be. It’s your timing that’s bad, Devon. That’s all!”

  “It’s not timing, Krys. In fact, I didn’t have any choice in the timing of this at all.” His smile became even sadder. “It may sound like false pride, to you, Krys, but I expect at least to be able to manage the most elementary aspects of my relationships on my own, without the divine intervention of Morgan, who has made it his bizarre entertainment to be my benefactor.

  “But here I am, in your life again, by Morgan’s doing. He had the warped impression that your seeing me was something you wanted. Closure, perhaps. I don’t know. I swallowed my pride when I came here, Krys. I missed you so damn much, that I thought I would do anything to be with you. I just didn’t know that the cost would be this.”

  Dammit, if Colin didn’t stop banging on that door, she would rip his head off. Was he trying to pry it open?

  “You knew who I was in Coos Bay,” she furiously countered. “You knew what it would mean if this was our life. And now we’re here, and you see me as the sum total of the external, an external you don’t like, and you’ve stayed away from me because you don’t want me if you have to deal with this! Every moment we spent together was a sham! You’re a liar, Devon. I believed everything you said to me. I believed you when you said nothing would change!”

  “I don’t know that woman I saw in the hallway with Colin, and I’m not certain that I want to. You were right, Krys, when you said you were different here. The Krys I know is gone. But here we are. Reality. The world back in its perfect order and you in the center of it. And there isn’t anything I could be here that I would want to be. You need someone you can pack up neatly, like one extra suitcase you cart around in your life, and I won’t reduce myself to becoming your hanger-on, the patient man on the sideline you take out and play with when the urge strikes. I won’t reduce myself into becoming your sometimes lover just to be a part of your life!”

  For a moment, she couldn’t actually believe he said that.

  “If that were all I wanted, there are a hundred men out there I could choose from since you’re the one who thinks I’ve somehow turned into a shallow narcissist who only needs a play toy in my life. What a fool I am. You never loved Krystal Stafford. Why did I think there was any point in trying to hold on to us?”

  She had never made Devon furious before, and his tightly leashed anger startled her.

  “Exactly how have you been trying to hold onto us, Krys? You ran back into your life with Morgan without a backward glance, leaving me dangling on the outskirts of your existence, unable to even reach you!”

  The door rattled. Devon reached out behind her and undid the latch. People flooded the room like a gush of air.

  “So that’s it? You’re leaving? You’re not willing to stay and talk this through?” she demanded, not caring that they were no longer alone.

  Colin was between them, like an angry ferret, snapping at Krystal in fury. Over his tirade, Devon’s voice, almost too quiet to be heard, whispered, “Dammit, Krys. You have your life back. You have Morgan. Why want me too? Is two men in your life not enough, now that you’re Krystal Stafford again?”

  “Morgan?” She searched his face, hoping against hope that she had misunderstood him, even though it was clear what he thought. “Is that really what you think? How can you believe that?”

  “You went to him in San Francisco. He was by your side when you came home. You’ve been together day and night ever since, and in three months you never called me. Never thought of me. What’s the point of this? You’ve got your life back! You don’t need me.”

  “If I were with Morgan, do you think I would have wasted three months calling you?”

  “Not just Morgan. How many other men since me, Krys? Have you forgotten the man living with you? What are we to do about him? Usher him out and me in? Or is he not important? A convenience? Or are you into three-in-a-bed these days? Is that why Morgan tolerates him, and you wanting me?”

  Her blue eyes were pools of hurt and rage. “You stupid, blind, jerk! Do you actually think I’d sleep with Jason? That I could mess with a boy? Three in a bed...”

  Devon wasn’t sure he heard her clearly. “Jason? Jason from Coos Bay? Jason is living with you here in Los Angeles? What do you mean you’ve been calling me for three month? Krys—”

  It was too late to catch the confusion in Devon’s voice. Mindless of the frantically flashing cameras, she concentrated every ounce of energy in her hand, curling her fingers, and with the circular upswing of her arm she planted a bruising pun
ch on Devon’s chin.

  The room exploded around them, and it was Colin who covered Krystal, shielding her from the press. If there had been any doubt what the headline from tonight’s event would be, Krystal had just sealed it. An inch higher and she would have broken Devon’s nose.

  Questions were shouted all around them as everyone tried to determine why America’s resurrected darling of the recording industry had just belted the press’s most celebrated journalist of late.

  In a severe hiss, Colin whispered into her ear, “Are you out of your mind, Kryssie? What the hell is the matter with you! Why don’t you just slit our bloody wrists and be done with it!”

  People were on them all the way down the hallway, as Colin dragged her toward the stage. “No comment! Damn it, let us by.”

  Colin was half dragging, half carrying her up the steps. Krystal was shaking so hard, was so horrified and mortified, that her legs refused to support her. She had never hit anyone in her life! And of all people, she’d hit Devon. Her strength fled her limbs and she sank on the steps to the stage.

  Shaking and humiliated, she couldn’t manage to rise, even though Colin was above her, like a pecking, angry rooster.

  “Damn it, pull yourself together!” Colin barked.

  “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?”

  “I mean,” she said with dazed disbelief, forcing a painful, little laugh. “That I can’t! I think...I think I just broke my hand! How could I have done such a thing! I...”A hard gulp. A hiccup. “…I hit him. I’ve never hit...anyone...before!”

  “Look on the bright side, Kryssie, it ain’t like you got anything for him to sue you for!”

  Damn! He only succeeded in making her tears worse. Swearing under his breath, Colin shouted, “Jesus Christ, can someone get Morgan to slip over here? Pull him offstage between songs if you have to. She’s going to pieces...”

  As it was, no one had to pull Morgan from stage. The minute he saw her huddled with Colin on the top step, he knew something was wrong and did a quick check in his mind as to how he would get to her.