“Here we go,” Micah said, setting Sloane’s coffee down and taking a seat next to her. His eyes met hers. There was something in her expression . . . “Everything okay?”
“Yes,” she said quickly. “I was just thinking. Your family is into music, right? Harper mentioned something. She said they were really popular. Concerts and records?”
“Ah.” Micah glanced toward the street musician as he took a sip of his coffee. It was almost as if she’d read his mind. He’d just been thinking how nice it was to meet someone who didn’t automatically ask.
“My father’s side,” he told her. “Uncle Clay . . . and his family. By Grace.”
Her brows pinched.
“By Grace is the name of the group. Sort of a double meaning. My aunt Grace is the songwriter, and it’s a contemporary Christian band.”
“Ah,” she said, borrowing his word. “I’m not that familiar with the genre. I’m sure I’ve heard of them, but . . .”
“They’re still popular but haven’t toured much in the past few years,” Micah said, appreciating her kind vagueness. He couldn’t count the times people hadn’t been. Kind or vague. “Oh, right. A Jesus jam. No thanks.”
“And you?” Sloane asked. “You seem to know about guitar strings. ‘Picking’—is that what you called it? Did you inherit the Prescott music genes?”
“Probably,” he admitted, grateful for it. Music had always been there for him, lifted him up in tough times. “I play some guitar. Not anything to brag about.”
“Here. Give me your hand,” Sloane said. “The left one.”
Smart girl. She knew—
“C’mon,” she said, reaching out. “Gimmee.”
Micah’s pulse hiked as Sloane took his hand in hers. Skin to skin. Warm, soft.
“Let’s see now.” She spread his palm and gently examined his fingertips.
Examined, right . . . Micah tried to put his mind in medical mode.
“I thought so,” Sloane said, lightly brushing her fingertips against Micah’s. It did something to his senses that didn’t feel clinical at all. “Calluses. Well-developed. You don’t just play guitar ‘some.’ You have a serious relationship with that . . . What kind of guitar?”
“Acoustic,” he said, remembering by some miracle. “A Martin.”
“Martin?” Sloane laughed, still cradling his hand. “I have a cat named Marty.”
He started to say something trite, like “small world,” or idiotic, like “cats are cool,” but her touch had made him mute.
“So . . .” Sloane released his hand to reach for her coffee. “You sing, too?”
“Like a bullfrog. With the croup.”
“Sure.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s a good thing you aren’t doing your own marketing campaign. Better stick to the Face of Hope.”
“Really. I don’t sing. But I’m trying to convince my aunt and uncle to compose a song in honor of the winner. And perform it at the gala event.” His heart thudded. He hadn’t confided that to anyone outside of his family. “I’d like to see By Grace in front of a live audience again. A sort of comeback.”
Sloane swirled the stir stick in her coffee. “Why did they stop doing concerts?”
He swallowed. Why . . . ?
“I’m sorry,” she said, meeting Micah’s gaze again. “Maybe that’s none of my business.”
“No. It’s okay. Most people know already if they follow Christian music.” He took a breath. “Their son, Stephen, my cousin, was killed in a car accident a while back.” Almost ten years. A decade and Micah still had trouble talking about it. “It hit my aunt and uncle hard—hit all of us hard.”
There was understanding in her eyes. “You were close.”
“Yes. My folks went to Oregon to be near them and stayed on. Dad got a job transfer.”
“But you didn’t go?”
“I was finishing up college. Communications at UCLA.” He thought of Coop, still running with that ambition. “I graduated and then took a little detour to the Middle East.”
“You were in the military?”
“No.” Micah shook his head, wishing he’d never started this conversation. His crisis training taught him to listen, but suddenly he couldn’t stop talking. “My uncle had some connections. I was offered an opportunity to go to Afghanistan with a TV news team.” He mentioned the name of a prime-time television news personality and Sloane’s eyes widened.
“Really? You were an embedded journalist on his team?”
“More gofer than legitimate journalist.”
“I remember some of that coverage. It was dangerous.”
It was. Micah had gone half a world away to try to forget the carnage that ended his cousin’s life, only to find far too much of the same. Gruesome death, shock, grief . . .
“It was the first time I saw chaplains in action,” he told her. “There was this corpsman, son of a Vietnam War chaplain. He called it ‘the bloody boot ministry.’”
“Like that old saying ‘There are no atheists in foxholes’ . . .”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Micah wasn’t sure why he was saying all of this. “But I saw how much it meant to survivors. To have somebody be there for them.”
“You wrote about it?”
Micah shook his head. How did he explain that he’d come home and stumbled around for an entire year, not sure of what he wanted in life? Not even sure what he believed anymore? He couldn’t explain it to himself.
Not even now.
Sloane saw something in Micah’s eyes that hinted at sadness. A depth, almost world-weary, that was completely at odds with his hospital persona. But then, so was his crisis work.
“I didn’t do any essays or war features,” Micah continued. “I had some calls from editors, some serious interest. Blew a big opportunity, maybe. Or so I’ve been told—more than once.”
Sloane caught Micah’s fleeting frown. She could understand that feeling of not living up to someone else’s expectations. Or in her case, confirming their worst over and over. “You started working for the Hope system after you got back to the States?”
“No. Not until a couple of years ago. When I got back, I did some marketing work for a local magazine, then a few years with a big health insurance company, and . . . now I write hospital ad copy,” Micah finished with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Yes. And you . . .” Sloane had to stop herself from taking his hand again. The sudden need was as strong as the one earlier when she’d stared at the wineglasses. “You put yourself in that alley tonight,” she said, unable to keep emotion from her voice. “I’m no journalist, but I’d say that’s worth a lot more than a series of war features.”
Micah’s eyes held Sloane’s long enough to make her heart stall.
“Plus, you play the guitar,” she added quickly.
“Yes.” A teasing smile tugged Micah’s lips. “Some.”
His eyes, warm and brown as their coffee, wrinkled at the edges as his smile spread. The light from the red paper lanterns strung overhead cast a soft, rosy glow over his hair, shoulders, and the very faint stubble of beard beginning to show along his jaw. It was almost like a freeze-frame from one of the countless old, romantic movies Sloane’s mother had sighed and wept over. The sappy stories of a good man with a big heart able to see beyond the troubled heroine’s mistakes. The hero in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, kissing a tearful Holly Golightly as she clutched her lost cat in that soaking downpour.
“We should probably get going,” Sloane said, crumpling her napkin. “The music is over. You’re on call. And . . .”
I’m a stupid fool.
“You have to work in the morning?” Micah asked.
“No. But I have some things to take care of.”
Like going over the draft of her prison speech, getting to an AA meeting . . . cleaning mysterious fingerprints off my window. Sloane bit her lip to keep from groaning aloud. Micah Prescott wasn’t the slick charmer she’d expected, but that discovery did nothing to wipe away all she’
d done and who she was. It only pointed it all out, her mistakes and shameful secrets strung like tattered lanterns across the night sky.
Micah’s phone buzzed on the table and he reached for it.
“Crisis call?” Sloane asked, not sure if she’d feel relief or regret.
“The Jane Doe situation,” Micah reported, scrolling down the text message. “Some people have shown up at the hospital. Folks with missing daughters. Runaways.”
“You’re going there?”
Micah nodded. “The detectives plan to show photos to them. We’ll be there for support. Two responders have already arrived. I’ll back them up.”
Sloane thought of those awful moments in the ER when the girl struggled to breathe despite the vicious, strangling throat slash.
“I think they’re trying to hold off releasing a picture to the media as long as possible,” Micah said. “There might be a link to local human-trafficking activity. I’m thinking they don’t want to go public and give the gangsters a heads-up to get away.”
“They found you. And you ran.”
Sloane shuddered, remembering her accusing words to Paul. His link to organized crime was gambling loans, and that was up north in Sacramento but—
“Are you all right?” Micah asked, concern in his expression.
“I was just remembering Jane Doe. I hope one of those people at the hospital is her family.”
And I hope Zoey Jones is in Bakersfield.
“Me too,” Micah said.
Sloane took one last sip of her coffee, thinking she might as well swallow the truth, too. The troubled little thief had as much chance of being safe and doing good works at the YMCA as Sloane had of finding that big-screen happy ending. She was no Holly Golightly. But at least Zoey had a few bucks in her pocket now. And thanks to the marketing man, Sloane had swum through one more night without giving in to the temptation to drown her secrets.
“Hey, Stack . . .” Zoey walked through the adjoining doorway and blew on her drying nails, a shade called Black Swan. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking?” He drained the last of his beer, belched. “That must be a strain.”
“Yeah.” She reminded herself to be as careful now as she’d been when she slid the polish into her jeans at Whole Foods—dark lacquer sharing pocket space with a Jesus cross.
“What is it?” he asked, back to fiddling with his laptop.
Her pulse quickened. “I guess it’s been like four months since we hooked up.”
Stack tossed her a look. “Don’t go all girlie-stupid about celebrating anniversaries.”
Celebrating? Nothing could be further from the truth. Especially with the bruise on her wrist and no word about Oksana. “I was just thinking about my mom.”
Stack raised his brows. “The druggie who moved you into her boyfriend’s place? Then grabbed the dope and left you behind when his biker buddies broke down the door in the middle of the night? That sainted woman?”
“They’re putting her through rehab in jail. She’s probably clean now.”
“And I’m Billy Graham.” Stack shook his head. “Kid, people don’t change.”
She shoved her hand into her pocket, risking the new polish to feel that cool, hopeful metal. “I don’t feel right about what we’re doing.”
Stack’s eyes narrowed. “You want to work for Viktor?”
“No.” Her throat tried to close off. “I want to go home. See for myself how she is.”
He shifted on the bed, staring at her. “And maybe tell the cops about me?”
“No way.” Zoey struggled to keep new, rising fear from her voice. “I don’t even know your whole name. Besides, that would be totally stupid. I’m as guilty as you are.”
“Bull’s-eye.” He raised his hand and pointed in a way that looked too much like a gun. “Don’t forget it.”
“I won’t.” She leaned into the doorway, willing her legs to hold her up. “I need to go, Stack. I can’t do this anymore.”
He closed the laptop, gestured to her. “Come here.”
“Stack . . .”
He patted the bed. “Here. Now.”
Zoey tried not to think of that girl, throat sliced in an alley. She tried to remember if she’d ever seen hope in Oksana’s eyes. She wished she believed any of the things those church people said about the piece of metal growing so heavy in her pocket.
“Good,” Stack said as she perched on the edge of the unmade bed. “Now stop shaking like a neurotic terrier and listen to me.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve got something big going,” he said, capturing her gaze as easily as he’d grabbed hold of her wrist a few hours earlier. “Something I’ve been waiting on for a long time.” His expression softened. “It’s what I want, kid. Sort of like the way you want to go home. This is that for me. Understand?”
Zoey nodded.
“All right then,” Stack said, the old cockiness back in his voice. “One more job—I need you for this. Then I’ll buy you a plane ticket home. I’ll give you some cash to get you started. I’ll even send a box of chocolates to your loser mom. How’s that? You with me?”
Zoey found a smile. “What color hair?”
“At least we had some time before a call came in,” Micah said as they neared Sloane’s parked car. He’d insisted on walking her there, though their vehicles weren’t far apart. “Saw a few sights.”
“Walked off some noodles.”
“Yeah, there’s that.”
Sloane turned to look at the sculptures sprouting up in this part of the district; all of Little Tokyo was maybe five large city blocks. In the distance was the space shuttle monument commemorating a Japanese American who’d been part of the Challenger team. Nearer, rising high and white in the darkening sky, was the sculpture called the Friendship Knot. Her eyes followed it from the base to the top.
“It looks like two huge drinking straws,” she said, “sort of tied in the middle. Or maybe breadsticks playing Twister.”
Micah laughed, touched his glasses. He didn’t always wear them, probably had contacts, too . . . “It’s been there since the eighties.” He stepped close and Sloane got a hint of his scent: the coffee, a lingering sesame fragrance from the restaurant, and sort of a woodsy clean. Micah regarded the knot. “It was originally from the Netherlands.”
“Guitars, sushi, and . . . sculpture?” Sloane’s eyes met his again. “You know everything?”
“Not even close.” He shrugged. “Crisis responders are sometimes on scene for big events. I’ve been here during Nisei Week and heard the spiel. The sculpture was moved to this site during a renovation, to represent the joining of two different cultures.” He smiled. “Or breadsticks playing party games. Whatever does it for you.”
Sloane nodded, thinking that this man’s smile did it for her, no matter how much she wished it weren’t so. She’d accepted the invitation for coffee because she’d been afraid of what she might do if she were left to her own temptations. They’d shared a meal, laughed, and then shared some things about themselves, he much more than she. Admittedly, the things Micah said had changed Sloane’s impression of him. Even gotten under her skin a little, the way no man had in a long, long time.
“I’ve enjoyed this,” he said, bringing Sloane’s attention back. “Getting to know you outside work. Though I think I was the one who monopolized the conversation. Next time, I’d like to learn more about you.”
Sloane’s stomach quivered. He wanted to see her again.
“I mean I’d like there to be a next time,” Micah amended, his voice soft and deep. “If that’s okay with you.”
“I . . .” Sloane hesitated.
What was she doing? They were as unalike as the cultures in that sculpture. Two very different people thrown together by some maniac in a parking lot. She’d simply be chalking up one more mistake if she—
“Maybe,” Sloane heard herself say. “I think so.”
Micah chuckled. “I’m going to take that as a yes. A
t least do a marketing follow-up.” He extended his hand.
Sloane reached hers out, hoping it wasn’t as trembly as she felt. The feeling increased, seismically, as Micah’s fingers grasped hers. Warm, strong, but gentle, too.
“Thanks,” he said, not yet letting go.
“Thank you . . . for the coffee,” Sloane responded, suddenly feeling like she was on a journey without a map. She was standing in near darkness with an attractive man who clearly stirred her senses with a simple touch of his hand. She didn’t know what to do with it. No, that wasn’t all true. She knew what she’d always done with it, but she couldn’t let that happen now.
“Let’s get you to your car,” he said, letting go. “I need to go on to the hospital.”
“Okay.”
Micah watched her get in, waited while she started the engine, and then walked to his own car a few rows down.
Sloane sat there, engine idling, waiting to see his car pull away. But mostly she was trying to make sense of what she was feeling. It was confusing, scary, but somehow good. Scary-good, maybe. And so unexpected. Only yesterday, she’d had nothing but contempt for Micah Prescott, certain she knew everything about his self-serving motives. She’d asked him to keep his distance. And now she’d agreed to see him again. Not in a desperate attempt to escape demons, like tonight, but because she was tempted by something that felt like nothing she’d known before. Something she’d stopped hoping for long before her car went over that cliff. She reached up, touched the scar on her face, and her breath snagged at a realization.
She felt new and different for the first time in the six months she’d been struggling to put her past behind her. She hadn’t accomplished it with the Volvo that replaced her demolished car, Marty’s adoption, the move to LA, her job at the hospital, all the chips from AA cheering her tenuous grip on recovery, or even the employee of the month honor. None of those had done what this short time with Micah Prescott had. A few sober hours with a man who wanted to know her, not simply . . . have me. Sloane’s throat tightened and she closed her eyes against the sting of tears. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to spoil the first time she’d felt this way. As if she’d never been Sloane Wilder, never—
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