Lovers and Strangers (The Hollywood Nights Series, Book 1)

by Candace Schuler

  "Everything's fine," Faith said, and wondered why it felt as if she were telling a lie.

  * * *

  Two and a half hours later, the crowd at Flynn's had thinned considerably, leaving only a handful of customers at the bar and a couple at the back booth who appeared to be more interested in exploring each other's tonsils than finishing their drinks.

  "How about pouring me a cup of coffee, Tim?" Sammie-Jo said as she hoisted herself onto the corner stool at the bar. "I could use a good stiff shot of caffeine."

  "One coffee, comin' up," Tim said obligingly. "Faith?"

  "Yes, please," Faith decided. "Heavy on the milk."

  "So, okay, give," Sammie-Jo ordered when they both had their cups on the bar in front of them.

  Faith glanced at Tim out of the corner of her eye. "Excuse me?" she said to her friend and roommate, with just exactly the same inflection she might have used to put down a too forward customer.

  Sammie-Jo wasn't impressed. "That good, huh?" she said wryly. She picked up both cups. "We're taking this discussion over to one of the booths," she said to the bartender. "Girl talk."

  Faith had no choice but to follow her.

  "Okay, give," Sammie-Jo said again when they were settled into a booth. "Where were you all afternoon? Or need I ask?"

  "I don't know." Faith carefully stirred two spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee. "Need you?"

  Sammie-Jo grinned. "Don't try that look on me, Faith McCray. I taught it to you, remember? So cut it out and tell me what's going on."

  Faith met her friend's gaze across the table. "I spent the afternoon with Jack."

  Sammie-Jo nodded. "And?"

  "And we, ah..." She looked down into her cup and then up again, determined to face it without guilt. It had been a beautiful experience and there was nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing. "We slept together."

  "Oh, boy."

  "Well, we didn't actually sleep, we, ah..."

  "No need to go into the details, honey, I get the picture." Sammie-Jo cut her off with a wave. "Are you all right?"

  "Of course, I'm all right," Faith said, indignant on Jack's behalf. "He's not a wild animal, you know." Why did everyone—including Jack—seem to think she was some kind of delicate flower who needed to be handled with kid gloves? "He was very..." a soft glow came into her eyes "...gentle."

  "Oh, I'm sure he was great and it was a wonderful experience. If you were anybody else I'd probably be pea green with envy. But that's not what I meant. I meant, how are you feeling now. Are you all right with it?"

  Faith stared back at her friend for a long second, wondering what she was getting at. "I'm fine. Really."

  Sammie-Jo picked up her coffee cup and took a sip, obviously giving herself time to gather her thoughts. She put the cup down with a sigh. "Can I give you some advice?"

  Faith smiled at that. "Can I stop you?"

  Sammie-Jo smiled back. "No," she admitted.

  "All right, then," Faith invited. "I could use some advice. Shoot."

  "Well, first off, did he use a condom?"

  "Sammie-Jo!" Faith blushed beet red. "I thought you didn't want any details."

  "Just that one. Did he?"

  "For heaven's sake," Faith said, flustered. "I hardly think that's any of your business."

  Sammie-Jo just stared at her, waiting.

  "Oh, all right, yes. He used a condom. Satisfied?"

  "Every time?"

  "Bobbie—" She gave a resigned sigh. "Yes, every time. Do you want to know how many that was?"

  Sammie-Jo ignored the attempt at sarcasm. "Okay, then, we don't have to worry about your health. Only your heart. And, Faith, honey—" she reached across the table to touch her friend's hand "—men like Jack Shannon were put on this earth to break women's hearts. Mostly, it's our own damn fault that they get away with it," she admitted. "We're suckers for the bad boys of this world, especially when they're as gorgeous as Jack. Normally, my advice to you would be to stay as far away from him as possible but I know it's too late for that. You're already hooked. All you can do now is batten down the hatches and hold on tight to your heart until it's over."

  "I think it's too late for that, too," Faith said. "I think I'm already in love with him."

  "Oh, boy." Sammie-Jo stared at her for a moment, worrying at her bottom lip with her teeth. "I don't want to sound patronizing or anything but..." She shrugged uneasily, then plunged ahead. "You've just had what I'm sure was a premiere sexual experience with a sexy, gorgeous guy who probably knows his way around a woman's body the way most men know their way around the block. And I understand. I really do. We should all be so lucky at least once in our lives. But sex—even really great sex—doesn't necessarily equal love."

  "And you don't think I can tell the difference?" Faith said, hurt—and insulted—by the assumption.

  "No, frankly, I don't," Sammie-Jo said kindly. "Not when you're still glowing like a candle from the experience. And I don't mean that as a bad reflection on you, because few women could, especially not one who'd been raised in a sheltered environment, the way you were. That's why I think you need to back off a little. Give yourself some room to think about what happened and sort out your feelings before you make any declarations to anyone about them." She squeezed Faith's hand. "You might also give some thought to the well-known fact that the sex doesn't equal love equation goes double for most men. There are some guys, when they're in bed with a woman, who can make her think she's the woman, the only one in the whole world for them. Some of them even halfway believe it themselves, while it's happening. But the next night, or week, or month, they're making love to another woman the same way."

  "Do you think Jack's that kind of man?"

  "Honey, I don't know what kind of man he is. And the point is, you don't know, either. So, just be careful. Okay?"

  * * *

  DAMMIT, I think I'm falling in love with her!

  Jack swore and kicked at one of the crumpled balls of paper that once again littered his dining room floor. He didn't want to be in love. Love hurt too damned bad. Everyone he had ever loved had died.

  His parents had been killed in a car accident when he and Eric were six and eleven. Frightened and alone except for each other, they'd been sent to live with their Uncle Mick, a ham-fisted binge drinker who wasn't above knocking his nephews around a little when he was in the midst of—as their timid Aunt Barbara so delicately put it—one of his "spells."

  It was Eric who'd created the secret refuge in the basement where they'd hidden when Mick drank. It was Eric who'd tried to protect his younger brother when they hadn't been fast enough to escape their uncle's wrath. It was Eric who'd gotten Jack out of an increasingly untenable situation as soon as he could, bringing his fourteen-year-old brother to live with him in his first apartment, despite the hardship it caused.

  And then Eric had died, too.

  And Jack had gone to 'Nam and watched his best buddy get blown away by a sniper's bullet in the middle of downtown Saigon. He'd stopped having best buddies after that. And then even friends, because not caring was easier when people were dying all around you. He got so good at not caring that, pretty soon, all he had were acquaintances and professional colleagues, and the focus of his existence, his whole attention, narrowed down to whatever story he was working on. He'd convinced himself it was better that way. Safer.

  His single-minded concentration on getting the story, no matter what it took, earned him the respect of Saigon's international press corps and when his tour of duty was up, he mustered out of the Army and returned to Vietnam as a member of the civilian press. He reported on the action in Laos and Cambodia and was there when the U.S. finally pulled its troops out of Southeast Asia.

  He'd been in most of the hellholes of the world since then, seen most of the world's ugly skirmishes firsthand. Nicaragua. The West Bank. Belfast. Iran. South Africa. Somalia. The Persian Gulf. Bosnia. Rwanda. Death and destruction were his beat and he was good at it. He was good because he didn't
let it get to him. Didn't let it get under his skin like some guys did. He recorded the facts and nothing but the facts, and went on to the next story.

  And then one day, standing on a street in Haiti, gathering material for what was supposed to be a simple background story on how the U.N. embargo was affecting the terrorized and poverty-stricken population of the island country, it had all gotten to be too much. The pain, the suffering, the death and destruction, the utter wastefulness of it all. The next thing he knew, he was back in Los Angeles, in the apartment where his brother had died, looking for a way to put everything back together.

  And then Faith McCray had walked into his life with her innocent sweetness, her trusting nature, her open heart, and made him suddenly start to feel things again. Things like hope. And love. And need. And those feelings hurt, dammit. They burned into his soul, making him want things he couldn't have.

  Things like a normal life. A family. A wife. Her.

  But the Faith McCrays of the world weren't for the likes of Jack Shannon. And he knew it. He was a washed-up has-been, nearly twenty years her senior. A dirty old man as of that afternoon, taking advantage of a naive young woman's unselfish offer of warmth and sweetness. She had her whole life ahead of her, brimming with plans and goals for the future. Most of his life was behind him and he had no plans at all, beyond getting from one day to the next as best he could. She had broken free of her past. He was mired in his.

  And yet, despite everything, just the thought of her made him feel almost... happy. Worse, she made him feel he had a right to feel that way when he knew, full well, that he didn't. He knew he had to do something about it—about her—soon, before it all blew up in his face.

  * * *

  Faith showed up at his door later that night, after her shift at Flynn's, with a foil-covered platter in her hand. "I took a chance that you hadn't fixed yourself any dinner," she said, her smile both hopeful and hesitant, her eyes sweet and shy as she gazed up at him. "I've got potato skins, chicken wings and nachos, ready to be warmed up. And there are two Coronas in my bag," she added, touching the tan canvas-and-leather tote dangling from her shoulder. "I thought we might have a late supper and then, ah..." Uneasiness crept through her as he just stood there, looking at her as if he didn't quite know who she was. "But if you've already eaten, that's all right," she added quickly, beginning to feel foolish and stupid. "You can just put these in the refrigerator and heat them up again later. When you're hungry. I can, ah... I can stop by tomorrow and pick up the plate, or you can drop it off at Flynn's the next time you're there."

  Oh, God, why hadn't she stopped to think? He hadn't asked her to come back tonight. He hadn't said one word about seeing her again. Sammie-Jo was right, she was reading way more into his attentions to her than was actually there. It had just been sex, after all. A one-night stand, just like she'd said.

  "I'm sorry. It's late," she said, taking a step back. "You were probably already in bed." He was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and nothing else. "Asleep," she amended hastily, embarrassed. "I shouldn't have bothered you."

  Jack shook his head slightly, as if coming out of a trance. "No. No, you aren't bothering me." Driving me crazy, but not bothering me. "I was just working." He ran a hand through his shaggy hair. "Trying to work, anyway." If he was honest, he'd tell her he hadn't put a usable word down on paper in months.

  "Oh, I'm sorry." Working, she thought with relief, of course. He'd told her he worked at night. "I didn't mean to interrupt your writing schedule. I'll go."

  "No." Jack reached out and wrapped his fingers around her upper arm. "You're not interrupting anything, Angel." She could hardly interrupt a schedule he didn't have. "In fact, I was just thinking about heating up a can of soup. Maybe throwing together a sandwich." He drew her across the threshold of his apartment as he spoke. "This is much better, believe me."

  "I could just leave these here with you and go," Faith protested as she let herself be drawn in. "That way you could eat quickly and get back to work. Or eat while you work. Really, I'll go. I don't mind."

  "I'd mind," Jack said and closed the door behind her.

  Thus proving, he thought, what a weak-willed sleaze he really was. He had the perfect opportunity to send her packing, to put an end to an impossible relationship that should have never gotten started in the first place. A word or two, that's all it would have taken, and she would think him a cruel, heartless monster. A user. She would be hurt, but she would get over it, more quickly now than later. And that, eventually, would be that. She would be safely out of his life. And he would be safe.

  But he hadn't. He couldn't. Just one look at her, standing there at his door, smiling up at him like an angel sent straight from heaven, and he'd forgotten every one of the hard lessons he'd ever learned about caring for anything but his own hide. All he could think about was peeling her out of the pretty little dress she had on and making love to her again. Repeatedly.

  "You're a hopeless degenerate, Shannon," he muttered, disgusted with himself.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I'm starving." He waved her toward the kitchen. "And the microwave's that way."

  "It'll only take a minute," Faith promised, and hurried into the kitchen ahead of him. She was almost giddy with delight, reveling in the chance to "do for her man." Although, she reminded herself as she peeled the foil from the plate, he wasn't her man. Not really. Not yet. And maybe—most likely—not ever. But a girl could dream, couldn't she?

  "I hope you don't mind," she said when she heard him come into the kitchen behind her. "The chicken wings are extra spicy." She stabbed the On button with the tip of her finger and turned around. "I've discovered lately that I really like spicy food."

  Jack couldn't help but smile back at her. She seemed to find such joy in the small pleasures, such delight in new experiences. "Is that all you've discovered you like?" His eyebrow rose. "Lately?"

  Faith felt her insides melt like sweet butter on a baked potato. "I like coffee, too," she said with a shy smile. "Well, as long as it has lots of milk and sugar in it. And dim sum. And dancing. And..."

  "And?" Jack prompted, staring at her lips.

  Faith's courage failed her. "I have two Coronas in my bag." She turned away, reaching out to drag the tote across the counter toward her. "I remembered you had a Corona at Flynn's, so I thought that would be a safe choice." She pulled the two beers, cushioned in a bar towel, out of her bag and set them side by side on the counter. "Maybe I'll discover I like beer, too."

  "Maybe," Jack agreed. He picked up one of the bottles by the neck and twisted the top off. Lifting it to his lips, he took a long, lazy swallow, downing nearly a quarter of the contents. Then he reached out, snagging Faith around the waist, and drew her to him. "Let's find out, shall we?" he said, and kissed her.

  Faith went utterly still for a moment, and then she opened her mouth the way he'd taught her and kissed him back. She tasted the beer first—sharp, yeasty and not entirely unpleasant—and then the flavor of man came through, of Jack, obliterating everything else. His mouth was hot and heady, the flavor dark and wild. Untamed. Tempestuous. Demanding. Needy.

  Faith wrapped her arms around his neck, her body going pliant against the hardness of his, and gave. Everything she had. Everything she was. It was his for the asking. For the taking. Unconditionally.

  He took, ravenously, devouring her soft, willing mouth with a seemingly insatiable hunger. His arms were tight around her, like a vise, holding her to him as if he were afraid she might try to escape or disappear into thin air. She could feel the beer bottle in his hand, cold against her back through the thin material of her dress, and his erection, rock hard against her stomach. She went up on tiptoe, tilting her hips into his, pressing her breasts into his bare chest, trying to get closer, trying to give him whatever it was he needed so desperately.

  I'm here. I'm here, she thought, curling her hands into his hair to anchor him even more tightly to her. I'm right here, she telegraphed silently.
/>   And then the buzzer on the microwave sounded, three sharp beeps that seemed to echo like cannon fire through the tiny kitchen. Jack dropped his arms and stepped back.

  "So," he said, lifting the bottle to his lips. "Do you think you might like beer?"

  Faith stood just as she was for a moment, struggling to understand. Had she imagined the desperate need? Was she so needy herself that she had somehow transferred her feelings to him, conjuring up the emotions she wanted him to feel?

  And then she realized that the hand holding the beer bottle wasn't quite steady. And his breath was coming just a bit too fast. She could see the pulse beating at the base of his neck, hammering against his skin. The small dark nipples hidden in his chest hair were as rigid as hers were beneath the fabric of .her simple rayon challis dress. The fly of his jeans was stretched as tight as the skin of a drum.

  He wasn't nearly as unaffected as he wanted her to believe. The knowledge comforted her in some way she couldn't even begin to explain, making it easier for her to follow his lead. If he wanted to pretend the kiss hadn't affected him, then so be it.

  "Looks like dinner's ready," she said, reaching up to open the microwave. "Why don't you get a couple of plates down while I find some silverware and napkins."

  "Silverware's in the drawer next to the sink," he said gruffly, embarrassed by the fervor of his passion. He'd acted like an untried boy, desperate for his first taste of a woman. "Paper towels will have to do for napkins," he said, indicating the roll of paper by the sink.

  Faith nodded, silently accepting the plates he handed her. They were cheap plastic, the kind people bought to make do until they got real ones. For some reason, they made her want to cry. "Do you want to clear off the dining room table or should we eat right here?"

  "Here's fine." It was where he usually ate, unless he was sitting in front of the television set watching two teams—any two teams—compete against each other.

  Faith dished up a plate for him, giving him the lion's share of what she'd brought from Flynn's.