Commitments

by Barbara Delinsky

  She paused to take in a quivery breath. “We’re thinking of freelancing, but we’re not sure where to begin. We have story ideas—all those stories that are waiting to be told but have no spokesman without you. We even have contacts. We’re good at finding facts when someone tells us where to go, but we have no idea how to pull the whole thing together. We need a mentor.” Her eyes flickered, as though she wanted to blink or look away but wouldn’t allow herself to do either. “We’ve chosen you.”

  Derek studied her long after she’d stopped speaking. Then he said, “You’re serious.”

  “Very.”

  His expression, which had grown more sober as Ann talked, was close to grim. “If you mean mentor, as in using me for an entree, you’re in trouble. My name isn’t worth much at this point.”

  “It is now that Greer’s out of the picture.”

  “Out?” Sabrina asked. “Isn’t it the reverse?”

  Justin was the one who answered. “Not in our field. As a candidate for the Senate, Greer will have to separate himself from the network. Otherwise, he’ll have a conflict of interest.”

  For some reason, Sabrina hadn’t considered that, but in doing so, she realized what a risk Greer was taking. If he resigned his position at the network and then lost the campaign, he’d find himself out in left field. Based on all Derek had told her, she doubted Greer was a man who’d care for that. Which meant that Noel Greer had been pretty sure about winning the election before he’d declared his candidacy. Which meant that if anyone screwed things up, he could well be out for blood.

  If Derek was at least in part responsible for that lost campaign, she could begin to understand the satisfaction at stake for him … and the risk.

  With that in mind, she looked at him. He met her gaze for a dark and knowing moment before turning back to hear what Justin was saying.

  “With Greer once removed from the network, his power is suddenly diffused. Sure, his people are still there, and one or another of them may prove to be strong, but nowhere as strong as he was. There are an awful lot of people who were freed by Greer’s announcing for office.”

  Bracing his mug between his hands, Derek adjusted his spine to the curved back of his chair. What Justin and Ann were saying made sense, but more than that, they were two of those who had remained loyal to him. Both had written him when he was in prison. Both had talked with him that day in the studio in New York. He respected and trusted them. And he saw some merit in their personal plans. “This freelancing of yours,” he ventured. “Are you talking television?”

  “Possibly,” Ann said in a quiet tone. “But we thought it would be easier, from a purely technical point of view, to start with newspapers and magazines and build from there.” She sent him an apologetic look. “We’re not working with a very broad fund base.”

  “You don’t need one. If you don’t have to involve yourselves with filming, the only significant expenses will be travel and phone bills. A typewriter and paper, a word processor if you want one; beyond that, your greatest resource is up here.” He tapped his head. His hand fell back to his mug. He squinted into it. “You’ve totally severed yourselves from the network?”

  Justin nodded. “We didn’t want to be drafted to work on Greer’s campaign.”

  “Would that have happened?” Sabrina asked.

  Derek was the one to say, “You bet.”

  Ann turned to her. “It had already started—the order was sent around that all staff members were to be there when he announced his candidacy. That was when Justin and I knew it was time to quit. We’d been thinking of doing it for a while. We’d both been increasingly frustrated.” She looked at Derek. “After you stopped by last November, things got more tense.”

  “What do you mean?” Derek asked in a low, still voice.

  “You were a living, breathing example of what happened if one didn’t toe the line.”

  Silently Derek held her gaze, willing her to go on. She shot a nervous glance at Justin, then swallowed and faced Derek again, this time with determination. “We know, Derek. We may not know all the details, much less have concrete proof, but we know that Greer had something to do with what happened to you. Everyone at the studio knew it. No one knew quite how he did it, or why, but everyone knew it.”

  “The antagonism between you two was legendary—” Justin began.

  Ann cut in. “But it didn’t account for the lengths to which he went to put you away.”

  “We’re not asking that you tell us—”

  “Maybe you don’t even know—”

  “But we wanted to say that we’d be glad to help—”

  “If you decide to go after him.”

  In the profound silence that followed the rapid exchange, Sabrina realized she was holding her breath. She released it slowly and looked from Ann’s face to Justin’s. Both were focused expectantly on Derek, and Derek was giving nothing away. In a flash, Sabrina was back in Parkersville on the day of her first visit. She recalled sensing a barrier between Derek and her, Derek and the world. The barrier had been shored up by anger and hostility. His thoughts had been his own. He hadn’t welcomed any intrusion.

  Now, too, there was a barrier, but it was one of caution. While old wounds weren’t raw, they were far from healed. Derek seemed suddenly set apart, separate from the rest of them. He was the ex-con, the one who made monthly calls to his parole officer, the one with visible scars for time spent with violent men. He was the intimidator.

  They all waited for him to speak. When he did, his tone intimidated only through its utter control. “There was talk at the studio, then?”

  After a moment’s pause during which Ann accepted that he wouldn’t immediately take them up on their offer to help, she answered, “Very little, and that was one of the things that was so odd. There’s always talk at the studio—nonsense chatter in the lunchroom, gossip in the halls—but this time there wasn’t. It was like no one knew who to trust and who not to.”

  “We could probably make some pretty good guesses about who was involved,” Justin added, “but we have no proof. After years of scrabbling to pay the bills, Johnny Hoddendez was suddenly able to move his family out of the city, but who was to say that the money he used didn’t really come from his uncle in Cincinnati, as he said? Word went around that Suzanne Lyons’ appointment as an anchorwoman in Charleston came at least in part because she was sleeping with the producer down there—and who could question that?”

  Derek’s fingers were tight around his mug. His lips were pursed, the muscle in his jaw working to betray his thoughts as he wouldn’t do in words.

  “He’s a tyrant,” Ann said, and they all knew she was talking about Greer. “Someone has to stop him.”

  “I know,” Derek muttered, “I know.”

  “We’ll work for you,” Justin repeated the offer. “Say the word and we’ll do it. Somewhere there has to be proof that he set you up. If not that, there has to be proof that he blackmailed Ned Welnick into resigning as news director, or that he was responsible for sabotaging his major competitor’s coverage of the last presidential election, or that he cheated on his income taxes—something, anything. I’m not ready to believe that the man is as invulnerable as he thinks.”

  Ann had come forward in her seat. “But we need direction in that, too. You know what you went through. You have to have suspicions. We’ll do the legwork if you tell us where to go.”

  Derek knew that he should tell them to go straight to hell. They were butting in where they didn’t belong. This was his hurt, his war. And even beyond that, they had no concept of the danger involved. If Sabrina hadn’t been sitting right there, he’d have spelled out that danger in living color.

  But it probably wouldn’t have mattered to Justin and Ann. They were young and zealous. They wouldn’t be put off by danger. They’d probably get even angrier on his behalf if they knew all that Greer had done.

  “I think,” Derek said, taking a tempering breath, “that you’re getting ahead o
f yourselves.” He shifted a level gaze from one face to the other. “I thought you came here because you wanted to set up a business.”

  “We did,” Justin said. “Do.”

  Ann added, “We just thought you could be our first story.”

  “But I already have a biographer.”

  Three pairs of eyes turned toward Sabrina, who promptly shrank into her chair and—holding both hands up, palms out—told Ann and Justin, “He’s got me hamstung, too,” which was in some respects a very revealing statement, but one she didn’t regret. She looked at Derek, gnawed on her lower lip for a minute before suggesting, “There’s the barn.”

  She thought she was being vague. She thought that Ann and Justin couldn’t possibly know what she meant, and therefore Derek could freely decide one way or another. To her chagrin, Ann jumped at her suggestion.

  “We’ll take it. All we need is a little corner. The thing is, Justin’s apartment in the city just went condo, and mine is too small to do anything but sleep in, and we know that we’re going to have to find something to use for a home base, but this has all happened really suddenly.” She took a quick breath. “If we could use your barn until we get our plans straight—not long, just a few days, maybe a week—that’d be great.”

  “We’ve got sleeping bags for warmth,” Justin said, “so the barn would be great. Just a roof over our heads while we brainstorm.” He looked at Derek and sheepishly amended that to, “While we pick your brain.”

  Ann turned to Sabrina and said as quickly and quietly as she could, “I know this is a terrible imposition, but we’d work to make it not so. I’ll pick up groceries. We’ll eat out there. You wouldn’t even have to know we’re around.” She swallowed, then added more meekly, “Except for the time we’re … picking Derek’s brain.”

  Sabrina thought the idea sounded just fine. She liked having a houseful of people. Not that it was actually the house that was going to be full. She looked at Derek. He was thinking the same thing.

  “There’s only one problem,” he told Justin and Ann.

  Justin held up a hand in smooth assurance. “I grew up on a farm in Kansas.” He splayed the hand over his chest. “You got animals in that barn, I can handle animals.”

  “Not exactly animals,” Derek said.

  “An arguable point,” Sabrina murmured.

  Leaning close, Derek murmured back, “He’s behaving, isn’t he?”

  “If you call emerging from the barn once a day to sit in a trance at the dinner table behaving…”

  “He’s writing. You said it yourself, that’s his style.”

  “But I thought we’d see a change. He’s been better about other things.”

  “You’re looking for miracles.”

  “Mmm. Maybe.”

  Derek turned to Justin and Ann. “We have another guest. J. B. Monroe. Ring a bell?”

  For a split second, both faces looked stunned. Then, simultaneously—and comically so—they came alive.

  “The J. B. Monroe?” Justin asked excitedly.

  Derek’s nod set them off.

  “I have read,” Justin said, conveying his awe in the separate emphasis he gave each word, “every single one of his fourteen novels.”

  Ann’s eyes were wide. “He’s made the New York Times list, the Publishers Weekly list, two of his books have been made into movies, another one adapted for TV, and another used as the basis for a Saturday morning cartoon show. He’s incredibly successful—”

  “And he’s in your barn?”

  Derek nodded.

  Justin went limp. “I can’t believe you put a man like J. B. Monroe in your barn.”

  “On the other hand,” Ann said, “I’m not sure I’d want him in my house. His books are too scary for me, and I understand that the man himself is—”

  “I feel it only fair,” Derek interrupted, “to warn you that J. B. Monroe is my brother-in-law.”

  Justin straightened. “Your—”

  “Brother-in-law?” Ann finished, cheeks flaming. Her eyes flew to Sabrina, who’d been watching in amusement. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound critical. I understand the kind of skill it takes to do what he does. It’s just that I … I have a vivid imagination … I get nightmares … so I can’t read what he writes.”

  Sabrina smiled. “No problem there. But J. B. is living in the barn—which is pretty well fixed up, by the way, so there’s no danger of your freezing. There are several extra rooms. You’re more than welcome to use them as long as you promise not to disturb J. B.”

  Ann and Justin promised.

  * * *

  It was late that night when Derek finally went to bed. Sabrina had been lying beneath the quilt, waiting for what had seemed an eternity when she finally heard his footsteps. He undressed silently, slid between the sheets and drew her to him. She snuggled against familiar lines to find that while his body was warm, his feet were like ice. He’d obviously sat at the hearth long after the fire died.

  “Are you okay?” she whispered.

  “Uh-huh,” he whispered back.

  “You seemed preoccupied when you came in from the barn.” He’d gone out much earlier to see that Ann and Justin were settled.

  “Just thinking.”

  Sabrina didn’t need to ask about what. It hadn’t taken Ann and Justin’s arrival to make him think of Noel Greer. The man had become a presence. Sabrina always knew when Derek was thinking of him because his eyes would get angry, his body tense. Increasingly there were spells of tossing and turning during the night. Sometimes Sabrina would awaken to find him standing stark naked before the window, surrounded by the blue glow of the moon’s reflection on the snowy landscape. He would look eerie. Forbidding. Like something from one of J. B.’s books. Unwilling to acknowledge the reality of the image, she would turn over and wish it gone, and by morning it was. Until the next time.

  It was inevitable that Ann and Justin’s arrival intensified his thought.

  On the one hand, Sabrina liked Derek’s friends. She thought Derek would enjoy being their “mentor” until he decided on the direction he wanted to take, professionally, himself. If, on the other hand, Ann and Justin’s presence was going to be an emotional barb in his side, she’d as soon have them leave in the morning.

  “Was I right to make the offer?” she asked, referring to the use of the barn.

  “Sure. They’re nice kids.”

  They lay silently for a time. Sabrina could tell Derek wasn’t sleeping. She was far from sleepy herself, so she asked, “Were they always a pair?”

  “They’ve always been close, like two peas in a pod, but they’re not romantically involved.”

  She raised her head from the pillow of his chest and eyed him through the moonlight. “That’s strange. I just assumed they were.”

  “That,” Derek said with a crooked smile, “is because you are a very conventional lady. You see men as sex objects.”

  The smile relieved her tremendously, so much so that she decided to follow up on the train of thought. Returning her head to his chest, she said, “Well, hell, I’m not blind. Justin is a good-looking man, and Ann is adorable. If they work together and travel together, why aren’t they romantically involved?”

  “Ann is shy.”

  “Not with Justin.”

  “Maybe she isn’t looking for involvement with anyone at this point in her life.”

  “But why not?”

  “Maybe she had a bad experience once.”

  “Maybe the problem isn’t with Ann but with Justin. Maybe he’s gay.”

  “Possibly,” Derek said without pause.

  Sabrina’s head bobbed up. “I was only kidding.” She studied Derek’s face, but it showed no sign of a smile. “Do you really think so?”

  “There was always rumor to that effect, and Justin never went out of his way to deny it.”

  “Did it bother you—working with him?”

  “Are you kidding? He’s one hell of a researcher and loyal. I always fought to g
et him on my team. The way I saw it, his sexual preference had no relevance to our work; therefore it was none of my business.” He pushed her head down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Worried he’ll attack J. B.?” he asked, and this time she didn’t have to look at his face. She heard the smile that said he was teasing and answered it by rubbing his chest with her hand. She never tired of touching him.

  “Then you don’t mind that they’re here?” she asked, suddenly a bit distracted.

  “That depends on how long they stay.” He turned on his side to face her and ran his hand from her bare shoulder to the base of her equally bare spine. “I’m not sure I’m going to like sharing you so much.”

  “You won’t be sharing me.”

  “Sure, I will. First J. B., now Justin and Annie-Fitz”—he nipped her nose—“and here I was hoping that you could subsist on a diet of me and me alone.”

  She kissed his chin. “I can.”

  “But you have so many other people to talk with now. Don’t deny it. I heard you laughing with Ann while you were making dinner.”

  “I enjoyed having her there, which is not to say that I would have chosen her over you, because I wouldn’t have done that. But you were carting wood to the barn, so you weren’t around.” She took his chin between her thumb and forefinger. “I love you, Derek. I enjoy having other people around, but only if I know that we’ll have times like this. Just the two of us. Quiet, relaxed, peaceful—”

  Derek kissed her silent before she could say something that would make him feel guilty, but the kiss, as always, affected him, and before long he was seeking more. He loved her taste and texture. He loved the way she sighed when he touched her, whimpered when he stroked her, writhed when he tongued her most sensitive spots. He loved the way she took command at times, the way she made love to him with her hands and lips, the way she used her body, rubbing sleekly, rocking slowly, to drive him wild. He knew that if he searched the world, he’d never find another woman to satisfy him as she did. When he was joined with her, he felt complete. When he brought her to a climax, he felt victorious. When he reached his own, he felt that he’d died and come back to life a richer man.