“And you two were friends?”
“I can’t tell you exactly what we were because I don’t know. But it was more than friends. It was better than friends. The only time I was ever happy in Dorothy was when I was with her. She treated me like…like…like I mattered.”
“I don’t get it,” Brent said, wrinkling his brow. “Why did you leave?”
“I had to.” Zander stood, his quick and decisive motion making it clear that he wanted to change the subject. “So when and where am I supposed to meet Faith?”
Brent gave him a tiny smile. “Ten tomorrow morning at Krasco’s Deli.”
“Krasco’s Deli. Are you kidding?”
“Would I kid about a thing like that?”
“If your mom is trying to tell me something, I wish she’d just come out and say it and not play games with me.”
“You know Olivia,” Brent sighed. “She only plays games she knows she can win. Sending you to Krasco’s might just be her way of trying to teach you a lesson.”
“What kind of lesson?”
“Hell if I know,” Brent chuckled. “I gave up questioning Olivia’s methods years ago when she got me out of summer school by flipping my trigonometry teacher a walk-on in Ally McBeal.”
* * *
Zander sat in a booth in the back of Krasco’s. Five years ago, he’d come to the same deli—the same booth, in fact—for a meeting with Olivia Baxter. That meeting had changed his life, and now he was back full circle to meet another woman who had the power to change his life again. For better or worse.
Nursing a cup of Krasco’s signature black coffee, Zander picked at a crack in the blue vinyl seat. Krasco’s was the real deal, a genuine 1950s-era diner that had been run by the Krasco family for fifty-five years. It was so authentic, in fact, that Zander’s stomach had twisted a little bit upon walking through the door and inhaling the aroma of fried meat and onions cooked on an open grill. The scent reminded him so much of his years spent at Red Irv’s, and it reminded him of nothing good.
Except for Faith.
There was no doubt Olivia had been a godsend. In the years since that first meeting, Olivia Baxter had taken control and given him a life he had never imagined.
He’d made his way from Dorothy to Los Angeles a few bucks at a time, hitchhiking when he dared, walking when he didn’t. Finding work had never been any trouble, but keeping it proved problematic when he couldn’t provide a social security card or any ID other than an expired out-of-state driver’s license.
He was Alex Brannon back then, and home was a pay-by-the-hour or -week motel. He’d been earning a meager living as a part-time mechanic and day laborer when he had run into Olivia—literally.
One of the few perks of working for a custom garage in Los Angeles was delivering cars to their owners once the work on them was completed. On a clear and sunny June day, he’d been cruising along Roxbury Drive in a champagne-silver Jaguar belonging to an actress when Olivia Baxter, her face partially concealed by oversized Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, shot out of the driveway of a big Tudor house hidden behind birch trees.
Alex hit the brakes, managing to lessen the Jaguar’s impact on the front passenger door of her white Mustang convertible, spinning it in a half circle. Shock, embarrassment and fury sent him into the wide, tree-lined street, where he shouted at Olivia.
With her benevolent yet playful smile and perfectly coiffed hair, Olivia reminded him of actress Betty White, and for a moment, he’d thought he had crashed into a Golden Girl.
To her credit, Olivia had calmly exited her car and leaned against it, her steely gaze dissecting him as he had ranted about cats, women and how neither should ever be allowed behind the wheel of a car.
When she reached into her damaged car to retrieve her handbag, Alex was sure she was about to give him her license and insurance information, which pressed his panic button. The garage paid him under the table, and he was driving uninsured on an expired license. If he’d been alone he might have wept at the irony of a day that had started so beautifully finishing with him in jail—the very place most people in Dorothy had expected him to end up.
But instead of accident information, Olivia had flipped out a thick cream-white business card pinched between her impeccably manicured index and middle fingers.
“Call me,” she had said, pressing the card into his hand.
The black crescent of his thumbnail stood out starkly against the pristine white card, which read:
Olivia Baxter
Founder & President
Baxter Publicity and Promotions
In the lower corners of the card were phone, fax and cellphone numbers newly smeared with traces of automotive grime from his fingers.
“The accident was my fault,” Olivia had said with the same concern she might have shown in reporting the time. “Once your boss calms down after you tell him what happened to Robia Hart’s Jaguar, have him call me and we’ll work out the arrangements for the repair of the car.”
Alex looked up from the card. “How did you know who this car belonged to?”
“Robia Hart is one of my clients,” Olivia said, smiling serenely. “She bought that car with the paycheck from her first film. I look forward to hearing from you, Octavio.”
“Hey, lady, my name isn’t—” But Olivia had started her car, spun her wheels, and peeled out of sight.
Tucking the card into a front pocket of his borrowed jumper, Alex circled the vehicle, inspecting the damage. The front of the Jag was scratched and dented, but the Mustang had come off the worse for its encounter with the British import. The vanity license plate Alex hadn’t noticed earlier now made sense: RBAHRT.
His boss had been livid when he saw Alex returning with the freshly battered Jag, but his rage vanished within the first twenty seconds of his phone call to Olivia, who had verified that the accident had occurred exactly as Alex had claimed. Alex had no idea what she’d said, but from what he gleaned from his boss’s end of the conversation, Olivia was paying triple his rate to have Robia’s ride repaired as soon as possible.
As for Robia Hart, Hollywood’s reigning period-movie princess had been royally pissed about the accident, but even she had come to Alex’s defense when told that Olivia Baxter had caused the new damage. Evidently, every licensed driver in Robia’s neighborhood knew to literally steer clear of Olivia’s white Mustang when they heard it roaring down Roxbury Street.
His boss had flung Olivia’s business card at him—after firing him. Even though he had praised Alex’s skill at working with cars, he couldn’t take the risk of keeping on an employee with no social security card and no driving insurance.
With Olivia’s business card and his last day’s pay in his pocket, Alex walked the four miles home to his motel. Everything was so expensive in Los Angeles, and he already felt the sting of unemployment. His weekly rent of one hundred and forty dollars was due, his Harley was sitting idle because he lacked the money to purchase the parts he needed to repair it, he was down to his last package of ramen noodles and the six dollars cash and eighty-five dollar check he had in his pocket was all the money he had in the world.
He walked past his motel and went to the corner bar, Jose’s Hideaway, to drown his sorrows in one-dollar shots of watered tequila. He allowed himself six shots to figure out his next move.
There were other repair jobs, but the last one had been relatively close to home, and he’d enjoyed his coworkers. By his third shot, he had just enough of a buzz to convince himself that things wouldn’t look so bad in the morning. Two shots later, when he realized he needed his last buck to tip the barkeep, renewed anger at Olivia Baxter killed the warm fuzzies he’d talked himself into.
He was out of a job, he’d soon be without food, and unless he could talk the motel manager into letting him do odd jobs around the building, he’d be homeless, too. In one careless strike of her hot Mustang, Olivia Baxter had seriously dented his pathetic life. Insurance would take care of the Mustang and the Jag, but who w
ould compensate him for the damages he had suffered?
Searching his pockets, hoping to find a stray bill hiding somewhere, Alex patted a stiff wad of paper in his hip pocket. He smoothed it out on the water-marked counter.
Olivia’s card.
Call me.
Alex had gone back to his room. In his old jeans, work boots and ribbed undershirt, he’d sat on his sunken mattress, his head and shoulders propped against the stained wallpaper, staring at the little card in his hand.
And then he’d stopped staring. He’d picked up the phone, dialed the number and, the next morning, he’d met Olivia in a back booth at Krasco’s.
He’d left Alexander Brannon in that booth, and the rough lump that would become Zander Baron had walked out with Olivia Baxter.
And now Zander Baron was there to meet the one woman Alexander Brannon had ever loved.
It was easy to admit that while masquerading as Zander Baron.
“Quit it,” he whispered to himself. “Only crazy people talk about themselves in the third person. Or is it the fourth person, since I’m talking about someone who doesn’t really exist? Or—”
Noticing the pretty waitress watching him mutter to himself, Zander slumped deeper into the booth and turned his face toward his cold coffee.
He glanced at his watch, a heavy silver and black Oris that one of the producers had given him at the close of filming for Burn. A simple Timex would have been more in line with his tastes, and certainly easier to read. He had to angle the numberless face of the watch just so to catch enough light to read the time.
It was 9:55, and knowing that Faith would soon walk through the door sent a surge of anxiety through him. He didn’t want to watch the door, but he found himself staring at it, his eyes fixed immovably on it.
His palms began to sweat, so he wiped them on the legs of his jeans. Afraid to blink and miss the moment she came into view, his eyes went dry. Without realizing it, he clamped his jaw hard enough to compromise the integrity of the smile Olivia had bought for him. Even though he had later reimbursed her for every penny she’d spent on his transformation, she still referred to his smile as hers.
The tense agony of waiting left him rigid enough to snap, but then the glass door swung open, and Faith entered the deli.
Zander sat up straighter.
She seemed to move in slow motion, which gave him the time to take in everything about her.
She looked taller, but that might have been a trick of her shoes, black pumps with ankle straps that drew his eye immediately to her legs. A slim-fitting black skirt hugged her hips and complemented her white blouse, which was buttoned low enough to instantly make his mouth water. She removed her black sunglasses, a pair of sensible plain RayBans, and slipped them into her oversized handbag. With a flip of her shoulder-length hair, which she now wore straight, she zeroed in on him, her dark eyes narrowing.
Zander’s heart pulsed in one hard, painful beat, and a low moan escaped him. Meeting her at Krasco’s was agony enough without seeing that the pretty cheerleader he couldn’t forget had grown into an impossibly beautiful woman.
She slowed a step when he stood. He opened his mouth to greet her, but no sound came out. “Hello” didn’t seem to be adequate, not after ten years, and certainly not considering the conditions under which they had separated.
Faith took the initiative. “Mr. Baron,” she said pointedly.
She plopped her bag on the booth seat and slid in beside it. After placing a slim, stylish microcassette recorder on the table, she laced her fingers and studied Zander.
Her knuckles whitened under the effort it took to keep her hands from trembling. She fought the urge to chew a corner of her lower lip, one of her most obvious signs of nerves. She had so many things to say to him, but she dared not open her mouth until she was sure she could do so without screaming, crying or kissing him.
“Can I get you something to drink, or—”
The appearance of the waitress startled both Zander and Faith, and their sudden jumps in turn alarmed the waitress, who leaned heavily against the table behind her, clutching her order pad to her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she laughed nervously. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You should be scared,” Faith said, keeping her eyes fixed on Zander. “It’s not every day you get to serve a dead person.”
“Uh, could I get a fresh pot of coffee, black,” Zander requested hastily. “And a three-egg white omelet, no salt, no oil, with spinach. Fresh spinach, not frozen.” He turned back to Faith. “Would you like something?”
“No,” Faith said, the lone syllable as friendly and warm as the snap of a crocodile’s jaws.
Zander swallowed hard. “Thanks,” he said to the waitress. “I think we’re set.”
“I’ll be back in a few with your order,” she said brightly.
She started off, but turned back twice to peer at Zander before disappearing behind the swinging door to the kitchen.
“I think she recognized me,” Zander said quietly.
“That makes two of us then,” Faith responded. “Egg white omelets? No salt or oil? You’re all kinds of California now, aren’t you? It couldn’t have been easy giving up Red Irv’s ‘psghetti and patabas.’”
He loudly cleared his throat. “The coffee’s good here. You—”
“The coffee at Red Irv’s was good, too,” Faith said stubbornly. “He still talks about you, you know. Every time I go home for Christmas or Thanksgiving, the two of us sit in the diner and talk about you. My old dance teacher Miss Lorraine still talks about you, and so does Art Brody.”
“I was his best grease jockey,” Zander said. “And I worked cheap.”
“I’m not the only one you left, Alex,” Faith said. “I’m not the only one who missed you.”
Zander grimaced. He had no right to expect her to make this meeting easy, but he had hoped that she wouldn’t make it so hard, either.
“You hated Booger Hollow as much as I did, so don’t—”
“Back then, yes!” Faith said. “I was a kid itching to get out into the world I saw on MTV! But guess what, Alex? I’m not a kid now. And every time I go to Booger Hollow, I’m going home. My parents are there. The dance studio I loved is there. The guidance counselor at Lincoln High invited me to speak on careers for writers two years ago, when I was still at the L.A. Times.” Unshed tears strained her voice as she quietly added, “All my memories of you are there, and that makes Booger Hollow very special to me.”
Zander plucked a napkin from the container resting against the leather-covered wall, and he mopped his damp brow.
Faith watched his every move. She had noticed the subtle changes in his appearance at the press conference. His lower teeth were no longer slightly crowded. His nose had been broken twice in Dorothy, but it appeared to have been rebroken and properly set to remove the tiny bump he’d once had. His hair was much lighter, brightening his face and softening the intensity of his gaze. The old scar near his right eye was virtually undetectable.
The one thing he hadn’t been able to alter, the one thing that had given him away, remained achingly the same. His eyes, as vivid and captivating as the last time she’d looked into them, had been left unchanged, a blessing for which she offered a silent prayer of thanks.
“Look,” she began, refocusing her attention, “I know who you are, and—”
“That makes one of us then,” he interrupted.
“Please. Drop that phony accent. It’s not you.”
“My accent isn’t fake.” He leaned across the table. Lowering his voice, he seamlessly reverted to his native West Virginia dialect. “Zander Baron was born in Australia. He was left an orphan when his parents were killed in a motorcar accident. Young Zander was taken and raised by an American uncle in Wyoming, where he learned to ride horses and rope cattle and—”
Her hands clenched into fists, Faith cut him off. “I’ve read your biography. I don’t need that fiction recited to me.”
&
nbsp; “What do you want from me, Faith? Money?”
“Are you dumb?” she asked, incredulous at the suggestion.
“Then what are we here for?”
“A damn explanation!”
“For what?” he hissed.
She slammed her palms on the tabletop. “For everything! For leaving, to start with! For letting everyone believe that you were dead!”
“Making a scene here will hurt your career far more than mine, Faith, so calm down,” he warned. “Lower your voice and I’ll answer your questions, if I can.”
Her appearance had changed, but she was still the straightforward, stand-up Faith he had known in another life.
“Did you ever think of me?” she blurted, frustrated with herself for losing her cool and exposing a wound that had never quite healed.
“Yes,” he answered immediately.
She dropped her eyes and blinked back tears of relief that threatened to give away how much of her heart she had invested in his response. She lightly cleared her throat. “Zander Baron is a puzzle wrapped around a secret, but I’ve pieced most of it together,” she said. “I know enough about Olivia Baxter to recognize her fingerprints all over your transformation. The cosmetic work must have been easy, but it’s a lot harder to weave the facts of your life into the fabric of your fictional one. She didn’t hide the seams well enough.”
“Really? Enlighten me.”
She leaned back, inadvertently giving Zander an inviting view of her décolletage. “Olivia has a knack for finding talent for her son to represent. Her boys aren’t just easy on the eyes. Most of them can actually act, too. She collects stars the way other people stumble upon good luck pennies, only she makes her stars what they become.”
“She’s a good publicist,” Zander said. “You make it sound like it’s a crime.”
“If my research is at all accurate—and it is—here’s what happened,” Faith went on. “You left West Virginia for whatever reason and came out West. Olivia Baxter saw you at some point. I can’t begin to guess where, but the when is a bit easier. You had surgery to correct your nose and at least one procedure to straighten your chompers. Then there was the removal of the scar from your face, but the coaching probably took the most time. Dialects, foreign languages, deportment, etiquette and acting. Have I missed any?”
Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) Page 6
