Faith took the hint. "I'll see you tomorrow, then," she said, turning toward the door as she spoke. "At one o'clock sharp."
"Tomorrow at one," Jack agreed and ushered her to the door.
After she had gone, he came back to stand directly in front of the mirror, trying to imagine what kind of movie trickery could possibly account for what she thought she'd seen in its silvery depths. Offhand, he couldn't think of any existing technology that could have produced such an effect, especially not any technology that had been available back in the thirties. He took a step back, then forward, to the left and right. Nothing happened. He ran his fingers over the elaborate scrolls and rosebuds decorating the heavy pewter frame, searching for wires... something... anything that might account for the appearance of the lady in the mirror. There was nothing. He tried lifting it down from the wall but it was stuck fast. And, yet, there were no nails, no screws, no hooks that he could see.
"Super Glue?" he murmured, his eyebrow askew as he stepped back to stare at the mirror.
Hell, he didn't know why he was wasting his time looking, anyway. He knew it wasn't a hologram; holograms didn't work that way. And it sure as hell wasn't a ghost, either; there was no such thing as ghosts. Most probably, Faith had heard about the supposed lady in the mirror from someone, despite what she'd said to the contrary, and had innocently hallucinated the whole thing. But if that was the case, he thought, she'd been very sangfroid about being singled out by the mysterious lady.
Or maybe she just hadn't heard the whole story.
Because legend had it that anyone who saw the woman in mirror was about to be blessed with their fondest dream. Or cursed with their worst nightmare.
Chapter 3
"You can do this," Faith told herself as she approached the door to Jack Shannon's apartment with her newly purchased collapsible cart full of cleaning supplies. "You've been doing it all your life." Except that no one had ever paid her for it before. "It's not going to be any different than cleaning 2-C." Except that 2-C had been empty while she worked, if you didn't count the parrot the absent tenant wanted her to talk to while she cleaned. "There's absolutely nothing to be nervous about," she assured herself. Except that Jack Shannon—even the thought of Jack Shannon—made her very nervous, indeed.
In an exciting kind of way.
A way she'd never felt before.
Well, no, she corrected mentally, always scrupulously honest with herself, even within the confines of her own head. She had felt something like this once before, a long, long time ago. At least, it had started out feeling like this. There'd been the same fluttery sense of anticipation, the same sort of butterfly nervousness that had her smoothing her hair and straightening her T-shirt when it didn't need straightening. And then it had all gone horribly wrong. And what had come after had erased the sweet feelings of schoolgirl giddiness, making everything ugly and profane. But this was different, she told herself.
The time was different.
The situation was different.
Jack Shannon was different.
Most importantly, she was different.
And the fact that she'd actually had the gall to pressure him into hiring her to clean his apartment proved it. She'd never pressured anyone to do anything before. She wouldn't have dared.
"Well," she said aloud. "This is the new you. And the new you is going to dare a lot of things from now on. Things the old you never even dreamed of."
Taking a deep breath, she lifted her hand to fluff her newly cut bangs, then knocked sharply on Jack Shannon's front door.
* * *
"THIS IS NEVER going to work," Jack mumbled to himself, surreptitiously watching Faith while she scrubbed his kitchen counters. "I must have been out of my mind to think it would."
It had been marginally okay when she was working in the bedroom and bathroom. It had been approaching almost fine when she disappeared for those two half hour segments of time to do whatever she'd done with his dirty clothes and linens in the basement laundry room. It had even been bearable—just!—when she was working in the living room behind him, vacuuming and dusting and rearranging his books and magazines into neat rows and piles. But now he realized that it just wasn't going to work.
He couldn't sit there at his typewriter and accomplish anything at all while she stood less than twelve feet away, in plain sight, scouring his kitchen counters with lemon-scented cleanser and a big pink sponge.
He tried to tell himself to ignore her. She was just the maid, after all. And he'd sat in front of his typewriter in dozens, probably hundreds of hotel rooms over the years, working on a story while some woman from housekeeping cleaned around him. Hell, he'd sat and worked while mortars exploded around him and never even looked up to see how close they were. If he could ignore mortar fire, he should be able ignore one little maid who wasn't doing a single thing to try to attract his attention.
Except... Dammit, Faith McCray didn't look anything like a maid—or cleaning woman or domestic employee or whatever the hell the politically correct term was these days—was supposed to look. And everything she did absolutely riveted his attention.
He'd been surreptitiously, obsessively studying her every gesture, every little nuance of her appearance, every time she came into his view. She'd done something different to her hair, he'd decided, styling it so that a new layer of feathery bangs called unnecessary attention to her huge gold-flecked eyes. And she was dressed differently, too—still plainly but with a little more of the laid-back style Southern California was known for. She'd replaced the starched white blouse of the other day with a soft yellow cotton T-shirt that subtly molded the curves of her breasts, instead of hiding them. It was neatly tucked into the waistband of a pair of old, faded and, he suspected—judging by the too tight fit across the hips and the neatly rolled hems— borrowed blue jeans.
When she bent over to put a clean plastic bag in the garbage can, he was captivated by the way those jeans clung to the curve of her bottom and the long smooth line of her thighs. When she leaned over to scrub the stains in the bottom of his kitchen sink, he was mesmerized by the movement of her breasts under the material of the plain yellow T-shirt and the flowered bib of her apron. The way she lifted her arm to brush at a stray wisp of hair with the back of her wrist fascinated him. The way she bit her lower lip and furrowed her brow when some spot needed an extra bit of elbow grease delighted him. The way she paused, every so often, to tug her yellow rubber gloves more firmly onto her hands entranced him. Even the way she wrung out the sponge, giving it a last emphatic little squeeze each time, charmed him.
And she wasn't even his type!
Jill Mickelson, the interior designer from 2-B, now she was his type. Sexy, sophisticated and savvy, she was just the kind of woman he'd always liked. Jill was a grown-up who'd been around the block and had no schoolgirl illusions, no unrealistic expectations, no shining innocence to be shattered by ugly truths. They'd gone out a couple of times soon after he'd moved into the Wilshire Arms. They'd shared a meal or two, a few laughs—and enough more that any fantasies he might have had about Jill Mickelson standing in his kitchen wearing nothing but an apron would be a lot more accurate than the pictures his perverted mind conjured up of Faith McCray in the same outfit.
It was sacrilege, what he was thinking.
It was depraved and twisted.
And innocent, wholesome Faith McCray would probably run out of the apartment screaming if she had any idea of what was going on in his head right now. Hell, he was about to rim out of the apartment screaming himself. From sheer, unadulterated frustration. And guilt.
He had no right, thinking what he was thinking about her. He hardly knew the girl. And girl she was, he thought stubbornly, despite her twenty-four years. He'd never met a woman more unawakened, more truly innocent than she appeared to be. That much innocence was almost a liability, especially in a snake pit like Los Angeles. There were sleazebags and con artists on every street corner. She could be taken in and taken over be
fore she even knew what had happened to her.
Look at the way she had come into his apartment, completely open, completely trusting, without giving so much as a thought to the harm he could do her. Then, no, he thought, smiling to himself as he remembered, she'd hesitated for a moment before accepting his invitation. But only a moment.
She shouldn't have come in at all.
She shouldn't have looked at him the way she had.
She shouldn't be here now.
The girl, he decided abruptly, needed a good talking to about the facts of life in the big city. She needed a few lessons in survival. She needed a keeper.
Jack swore, the word coming out as a strangled sound somewhere between a snort of cynical amusement and a low growl. "Not you, Jack," he said to himself. It was more a warning than anything else. "Not you."
"I'm sorry." Faith looked up from her task, her expression hopeful. "Did you say something to me?"
Jack rubbed his face with the palms of his hands, wondering just what in the hell was the matter with him. He'd never been attracted to innocence before, even such attractively packaged innocence. "Just thinking out loud," he said gruffly, hoping to forestall any conversation between them. He wanted her to finish what she was doing and go. And the less contact between them while she did it, the better.
Faith put her sponge down and came around the end of the counter that divided the kitchen from the dining room, irresistibly drawn by even the slightest indication that he might be willing to talk. He hadn't said a word to her all afternoon that wasn't directly related to the job she was doing, but she'd felt him watching her while she worked. She'd wanted to respond to his interest, to let him know she was watching him, too. But she didn't know how. Sammie-Jo's brief lesson hadn't covered attracting the males of the species, only discouraging them. And she'd never had a chance to learn the finer points of flirtation on her own. Nor even, really, any of the basics. Usually, she wouldn't even have had the courage to try, but this wasn't usually.
This was the new Faith, she reminded herself. She'd begun a new life. And she wasn't going to let the old fears and the old rules stop her from living it to the fullest. Jack Shannon fascinated her and she wasn't going to be a hypocrite and pretend otherwise.
He was, as Sammie-Jo had so eloquently put it, the perfect tough-guy hero. But there was more to him than that, Faith thought. Much more. She'd seen it for just a moment the other day when he'd invited her in for coffee. There was another man under that tough-guy facade, a tortured man hiding the sadness in his eyes behind a careless manner and a cynical sneer. Faith wanted to think that was all that drew her to him—that hidden sadness that somehow made them kindred spirits—but her conscience wouldn't let her get away with such a whopper.
He was beautiful, too.
On the outside.
Where she'd always been told she wasn't supposed to notice.
But she had noticed. She couldn't help but notice.
Jack Shannon's body was tall and lean and strong, the muscles moving under the soft fabric of his T-shirt and faded jeans as lean and supple as those of a sleek and powerful cat. His face was lean, too, with squint lines around the eyes and deep grooves in either cheek. His jaw was chiseled. His chin was square. His brows were straight, heavy slashes above his eyes. His hair, as dark as the coffee he drank too much of, was long enough to curl softly against the nape of his neck. The shape of his mouth was masculine and well-defined, yet tender, too, like a child's in repose. And he had the long-fingered, elegant hands of a concert pianist.
How could she not be fascinated?
"Is your article giving you trouble?" she asked him, remembering some long-ago bit of girl lore that had to do with getting a man to talk about himself.
Jack looked up at that, surprised. "What makes you think I'm working on an article?"
Faith smiled at him, pleased that her ploy had worked. "Sammie-Jo said you were a reporter. So I just assumed that's what you were writing." She paused expectantly, waiting for him to toss the conversational ball back her way. "Is it?" she asked, when he didn't.
Jack scowled down at the nearly blank paper in his typewriter to avoid looking at her. That shy little smile of hers was as irresistible as sunshine peeking through the clouds. "Is it what?"
"What you're writing. Is it an article for one of the newspapers?"
"No," he said curtly.
Faith felt her cheeks heat. "Oh," she said in a small voice. Obviously, he didn't want to talk to her. Obviously, she was bothering him. Would she never learn? Embarrassed, she picked up her sponge and began scrubbing the counter. Hard.
Oh, hell, Jack thought, suddenly feeling like a prize heel. Now look what you've done, you jackass. There'd been no need to crush her like that. No need to stomp all over her self-esteem. There were gentler ways to squash her interest in him. "Look, I'm sorry," he said to her bent head. "I didn't mean to snap at you. I can get a little cranky when the work's not going right."
"That's okay." Faith's gaze was glued to the counter. "I understand. I shouldn't have interrupted you."
"You didn't interrupt me. I'd have to have been making progress for you to interrupt me. And, believe me, I wasn't." He massaged the back of his neck with one hand, trying to think of something to say that would make her look up and smile at him again. "What I need is a break." He stood, pushing the chair back with his legs. "How about some lunch?"
Faith risked a quick glance at him. "Lunch?" she said skeptically. It was nearly four o'clock. Who ate lunch at four o'clock in the afternoon?
"I had my breakfast around noon," Jack said, easily reading her look. "I know sloth is supposed to be one of the seven deadly sins but... what do you say?" He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Join me for lunch? Or have you eaten already?" he added when she hesitated.
"No, I haven't had lunch yet," she admitted. Or breakfast. She'd been too nervous to eat.
"Well, then?"
She put her sponge down and began stripping off her rubber gloves. If he wanted lunch, she'd give him lunch. The housework could wait. "I really haven't had a good look in your cupboards but I think you have the makings for tuna sandwiches. Would that be okay? Or would you rather have peanut butter and jelly? Or soup? I think I saw a can of chicken noodle."
"Hey." He reached out and put his hand on her arm, stopping her as she reached for the handle of the refrigerator. "I didn't mean for you to make it for me."
"Oh, that's all right," she said breathlessly, her gaze on his hand. His long, elegant fingers were dark against the paleness of her arm. "I don't mind." She lifted her lashes and looked at him. "Really."
Jack pulled his hand back and stuffed it into his pocket to keep from grabbing her and kissing her senseless. Did she have any idea of what she invited with that sweet, steady look? Any idea at all? "I thought we could go out."
"Out?"
"To a restaurant?" Where there are lots and lots of people around.
"Oh." A restaurant, she thought, a little thrill of excitement thrumming through her as she considered it. She'd never gone to a restaurant with a man before. Never been on a date. Not that this was a date, exactly. Still... "I'm not dressed for going out," she said, gesturing at her jeans and sneakers as proof of her statement.
"This is Los Angeles, Angel." Jack couldn't help it; he let his gaze flicker down the length of her body. "You're dressed just fine."
"But-"
"But nothing. Just take off your apron and let's go. I've been cooped up in this apartment all day and I'm starving." He turned and headed for the front door with every expectation that she would follow him.
And, after a brief moment's hesitation, she did. Whipping off her apron, she tossed it onto the kitchen counter and sprinted after him.
It was a typical Southern California summer day outside. The sky was piercingly blue, the temperature hovered in the mid-eighties, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It was a perfect day for strolling hand in hand with your girl. Jack fought the urge to link his fing
ers with Faith's as they pushed through the wrought iron gate that guarded the Wilshire Arms' courtyard and started up Wilshire Boulevard toward Westwood.
Still, he couldn't resist the temptation to watch her out of the corner of his eye as they made their way down the street. The sidewalks weren't as crowded and colorful as they would have been on a weekend but there was enough diversity among their fellow pedestrians to make a sheltered Southerner's eyes widen.
"I'll bet you haven't been to Venice Beach yet, have you?" Jack said, delighted—and amazed, given her strict religious upbringing—with her unprejudiced reactions to everything she saw. She drank it all in like a thirsty sponge, appearing neither to condemn nor to judge but merely to absorb.
Faith shook her head in answer to his question. "Sammie-Jo said we'd go as soon as she has a weekend off." She drew her fascinated gaze away from a same sex couple wearing studded leather and nose rings to look at him. "She says weekends are the best time to see it because that's when all the crazies are there." Her smile was bright with anticipation. "I can hardly wait."
"She's right," Jack agreed, ruthlessly suppressing the urge to say he'd take her there himself, whenever she wanted to go. "So," he said, forcibly reminding himself of the reason they were together. Food. And a serious talk about the inadvisability of any... relationship between them. "What would you like to eat? Italian? Chinese? Mexican? Indian? Middle Eastern? Thai? Vietnamese?" His brow rose questioningly. "Feel free to stop me if anything sounds good."
"It all sounds good."
"Then what sounds best? What kind of food do you like?"
"Well, as far as ethnic food goes, there were three pizza parlors back in Pine Hollow. And one Mexican restaurant. And I liked them just fine when I got to go. But I've never tasted any of the other kinds of food you mentioned." Her tone was unconsciously wistful. "So you choose. Whatever you want will be fine with me," she said, and meant it.
Lovers and Strangers (The Hollywood Nights Series, Book 1) Page 5
