by Susan Ward
I stood, turning toward her, but didn’t follow. “What just happened here?”
That she couldn’t look me in the eye hurt. “Nothing happened, Jack. But I don’t want you to stay. I like you and I’m not the right kind of girl for you. Please go.”
Like me? Tossing me out was an odd reaction to that admission. I shook my head as I tried to figure out what had changed to make her show me the door.
“Nope, not doing it. I make up my own mind about people. That’s something else you’ll figure out about me in time. And I don’t give up without giving things a chance, so why don’t you just tell what it is that I don’t know?”
Her face jerked up, her eyes flashing. “I don’t owe you any explanations.”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Did I ask for any? What I asked you to tell me is why you’re suddenly showing me the door.”
Her shoulders squared, her fingers tight on the knob of the open door. “Because I want you to leave.”
“Nope, not buying that one either.”
Her delicacy and dignity at this moment made my heart ache for her, even more than my body did, and I struggled to find a way to get her to lower her guard and trust me enough to let me stay.
Her lips stiffened and she looked away, but she didn’t tell me to leave again.
I took one slow step toward her. “Why don’t you come back and sit down and just talk to me? You want to. I can see it in your eyes. Don’t pretend you don’t. Girls never want me to leave. I’m”—I grinned—“charming and even if I weren’t, one of the things I am is a really good friend.”
She half choked, then a small laugh escaped her and her posture relaxed. “Oh, Jackson Parker, you are an interesting and frustrating boy.”
Boy.
I didn’t like that.
It was the furthest thing from how she made me feel.
My smile came fully. “Oh, Lena Mansur, you are an interesting and frustrating girl.”
Her laughter, like breath-filled exasperation, flooded the room. Challenge rose in her eyes. “If I let you stay, do you promise not to be frustrating?”
“If I stay, do you promise to stay interesting?”
She gnawed on her lower lip so she wouldn’t smile. But she was thawing.
“Oh, that one I can guarantee.”
Her eyes locked on mine, shimmering.
Then the sparkle disappeared and she looked worried and unsure again.
“Close the door, sit down, and tell me everything you think should scare me off you. And when you’re done maybe you’ll see what kind of man I really am.”
Chapter Seven
In 1960, women—even famous, extraordinary, and gifted women—still fell from grace, but what I didn’t understand before Lena told me her story was how feckless and sudden the fall could come and that the climb from the abyss wasn’t always kind…or logical.
Correction.
The latter part, about how a woman scrambled upward from the bottom, I didn’t learn that first night with her. I came to understand that months later.
We sat on the couch for several minutes saying nothing to each other. Lena’s defensive posture was gone, but not her reluctance to share with me what had happened to her.
Lena made a tense laugh followed by an exaggerated face I now recognize as a defense mechanism. “I don’t know where to start and you’re not helping things.”
I quirked up a brow. “Tell me what I’m doing wrong and I’ll change it.”
She smiled, then laughed and placed a hand over mine. “Do you always manage such a quick comeback for everything?”
“Not usually. No, wait. I probably do.”
She unbent a little more, and her head tilted, touching my shoulder briefly before she straightened and crinkled her nose.
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “everyone always wants to be the one in control of the unpleasant things about themselves, what they share and let people know, but when they are, it’s damn near impossible to do. Maybe that’s why we’re all so secretive.”
“I’m not secretive. I’ve never wanted to be open with anyone as much as I do with you.”
It was the truth, but I couldn’t imagine why I said it or how I found the courage to say it then.
“What a strange pair we are to have found each other, if only briefly. You’re the opposite of me. A sweet boy with a devil-may-care attitude. Not everyone is as trusting of the world as you are, Jack. Not all of us live lives of only sunshine and happy moments.”
That comment stung because it felt like she was trivializing my very sincere want to be here for her and then after, to be always with her.
“I don’t live a life like that either, Lena.”
She flushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. Far from it. How you are, it’s something I envy. How much you believe in your own right to be who you are. How people look at you. How fearlessly you look at them. Oh, Jack, you were a thing of splendor as you worked that crowd during intermission for your father. More than the senator could have ever hoped for from a son. Destined for great places and great things. You shine with promise. Born on the inside of the room and already in command of it. However, I was born staring through the window. Different rules. Different expectations. And people judging you differently. I can’t see as how you are going to understand anything that I tell you. You can’t. We’re different kinds of people.”
“I don’t judge anyone.”
She smiled large and sad. “I know. That’s what makes you so appealing and intimidating. You are a very intimidating boy.”
“I’m not either one of those things. Intimidating or a boy.”
Her eyes flashed. “But you are, and that you don’t know that about yourself only makes it more so. It’s why I can’t figure out how to explain my circumstance, or even if I should. You’re too young to understand and too good to judge me. I’m not sure I should tell you anything, and if it wouldn’t be better if I sent you on your way now.”
“Are you trying to annoy me so I leave or just trying to be condescending? The first is not happening. The second you’re doing remarkably well.”
She stiffened and stared at me with those deep brown eyes, and I must have mentally kicked myself a hundred times for that last remark before she melted into my arm, held it tightly, and said, “Two years ago, when I first started with the Philharmonic, one night at a party after a performance I met a man. Older than me, but dazzling like you. I fell in love with him, even though my father didn’t want me to see him. But the man was a patron of the arts and a friend of Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. A brilliant cellist, philosopher, and poet. A dreamer, and he could make me laugh and he made me happy. More than I had ever been before. I fell in love with him. I had no choice. And it didn’t end well, but I don’t regret loving him, no matter what people think of me now because of him.”
That confession was no surprise. I’d expected an extraordinary story, since nothing about Lena was ordinary, and had pretty much already figured that a man was mixed up in her tale in some way, but how she said it made a heavy rock lodge in my stomach. It left me with a sharp awareness that she knew both pain and love in a way I hadn’t experienced before. It was the first and only difference I would ever note between us.
I waited for her to continue, and when she didn’t, I asked, “What happened to him?”
She lifted her cheek away from my arm. “He died. Three months ago.”
“How?”
She pulled away. “The how doesn’t matter, Jack.”
“It must. Otherwise you would tell me.”
“I never said I would tell everything.”
I met her stare evenly. “Who was the man and how did he die, Lena?”
“Does the name Gustavo Reyes mean anything to you?” she asked quietly.
Icy pricks ran my body.
Jesus Christ.
Gustavo Reyes.
I lived in California, not on the moon.
Of course, I knew who he w
as.
My father, while a congressman, had been on the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Reyes was practically a four-letter word for the senator.
“The man I loved was Gustavo Reyes.”
A well-known political dissident.
A communist.
A brilliant poet and philosopher.
This year, the voice for the newly formed Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
“It’s why I’m not with the Philharmonic any longer and why people stayed away from me tonight. I was the lover of a communist revolutionary murdered for his support of the Cuban Revolution. A man considered an enemy of our government. He wasn’t that, Jack. He was a man of great brilliance. But it’s why your father didn’t want you to be photographed with me—and yes, Jack, I saw the senator stop you from approaching me. It’s also why you shouldn’t be here.”
Each point she made was logical and right, but from her the result was the opposite; her history made her only more captivating and me more determined to know her.
“Are you a communist?”
A heavy silence settled between us like a wall.
I didn’t know why I asked that.
Maybe for no other reason than I didn’t know what else to ask.
She shook her head, angry and annoyed. “No. I’m not. You don’t have to believe in a man’s politics to love him.”
“No?”
“No!”
I studied her, the defiant lift of her chin, and I wasn’t sure she was telling me the truth. “How can you love a man if you don’t agree with what he believes?”
“If you’d ever been in love you wouldn’t ask me that.”
She was right—I’d never been in love—so I ignored that jab. “Are you the woman who was with him when he was shot?”
It had been in all the papers. I’d read about the shooting, the woman with him, and somehow not remembered Lena’s name.
I knew the answer before she spoke.
It was written on her face.
She pressed two fingers into her temple as if to hold back tears. “It’s how people found out I was his lover. It was splashed across the papers. And then I was put on leave from the Philharmonic. Most of my friends no longer speak to me. I’m routinely questioned by the FBI and covered in suspicion. My father keeps me practically locked in our apartment and is afraid to let me out of his sight in fear that something may happen to me. This trip to Santa Barbara is the first time I’ve gone anywhere without my father or performed since Gustavo died, and I wouldn’t have had even this if the conductor, Yuri, wasn’t a loyal friend and my father hadn’t had to stay behind in New York because of work.”
Her life had every piece of a Greek tragedy.
It suited her.
“Do you still love him?” I asked.
Again, the answer was on her face.
“I will always love him.”
My insides went cold because it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but the lingering sadness in her eyes kept me there even before her body curled in to me, pressing close and holding on.
“I will always love him, Jack. But that doesn’t mean I won’t ever love again.”
We didn’t talk after that, we just held each other. And I spent my first night as Lena’s lover without having sex with her. Yet, strangely, it was the most intimate night I’d known with a girl, and I hadn’t so much as lay on a bed with her.
Chapter Eight
I woke the next morning with a throbbing erection. Pretty much a foregone conclusion for a guy of eighteen, only this boner was excruciating because I woke with her.
We were still on the couch, me sitting stretched out as much as I could with my legs on the coffee table and Lena pressed into my body, using my thigh as a pillow and my crotch as a resting place for her hand. She was peaceful, something I hadn’t felt in her before, and having her still holding on to me felt good.
It was the first time I’d ever woken wrapped in the limbs of a woman, and I couldn’t imagine a morning ever again where I woke up any other way and not with her, to open my eyes and not have her face as the first thing I saw.
Foolish.
Yes—I’d known her less than twenty-four hours.
Uncharacteristic—oh, definitely, since up to this point I was pretty much Jack hit-it-and-quit-it.
A mistake to take this further—probably, but I didn’t care.
Had I fallen in love this quickly? I wasn’t sure, the feeling was new, but the desire I felt for her that keyed up my body wasn’t, though beyond anything I’d felt before, and my body made it impossible to clearly define any other thing going on with me this morning.
There was something about this girl beyond her scandalous history and beauty that made me want to never let her go. As I stared down at her face half hidden by curls, I knew I’d go as long and as far with her as I could if she’d let me.
A knock on the door made me tense, and her to open her eyes and pull away. She was fully alert before I finished adjusting my slacks to hide my overly obvious full alertness in my lower region.
I started to speak, but she covered my mouth with her hand. “Shush.”
She froze, as if waiting for something, then shifted her gaze back to me. I was about to lean in for a kiss when another knock sent her to her feet.
“Damn. They’re not going away,” she murmured, aggravated. She moved her hand to my cheek. “Would you mind going into the bedroom, please? I don’t want anyone to see you here.”
I wasn’t sure that request was for my benefit or hers; either way it didn’t matter, except that I really didn’t want to stand and have her see…
More knocking.
“Jackson, please!”
Fucking great.
Round two of Jack humiliating himself about to commence. Crap. But by the time I was on my feet, she was already at the door, fingers on the latch and waiting for me to get out of sight.
Just outside the bedroom I paused and whispered, “I’m only doing what you asked because you look stunning right now. And by the way, good morning.”
Sparkle filled her eyes and just enough smile claimed her lips. “It is a good morning, isn’t it?” Her low purring voice ran my nerve centers like a caress. “And hopefully a better day. I promise to be better company than I was last night.”
There was so much promise when our gazes met I would have hidden under the bed if she’d asked me to. Even if she laughed at me later. Nope, it wouldn’t have mattered.
“Oh, it’s definitely going to be a good day,” I said, hopeful now that it would be, as I left the room.
I hadn’t shut the door completely and I could hear Lena talking to someone, but not well enough to make out any words and only enough to know that the other voice was male. That a man showed up first thing in the morning at her hotel room bothered me, though I didn’t have a right to and I knew that.
Eavesdropping on her would have been an immature thing to do, so I didn’t. Instead, I went the bathroom, swished some toothpaste with water in my mouth, and then smoothed my hair with my fingers.
My shirt was a little wrinkled and so were my slacks, but I looked almost presentable so that would have to do. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was leaving her for a minute, not even long enough to go to my house and retrieve a few things. That the senator had most likely left for the road and Gloria was most certainly waiting to pounce on me made me determined to avoid home as long as I could.
I didn’t always treat Gloria with the full respect some surely thought I should, but I never defied her. I’d disappeared overnight without a phone call and missed my dad this morning—not good, Jackie, not good—giving her more than ample cause to ground me. And as much as I would want to ignore her, I wouldn’t. That’s just how things worked. I played by the rules even when I didn’t want to or didn’t agree. And I was sure Gloria would think grounding me was fair opportunity.
Life was chock-full of irony if you had a want to note it. The woman who should hav
e thought of me as a boy didn’t. And the woman I wanted to think of me as a man couldn’t. It was past time to fix part of that equation.
Whatever was happening in the sitting room was still going on, so I sank down on Lena’s bed and called room service for breakfast. I also asked for someone to come collect my keys to grab my car from the Arlington parking lot.
It didn’t occur to me that by doing those two things I just made happen the very thing Lena was trying to avoid: letting people know she had a man in her room. My impulse had been to take care of her, maybe move her into seeing me in a different light, then take her somewhere for some fun—Christ, if any girl needed to laugh it was her—and then some place more romantic so I’d have a better shot of ending this day in her bed.
The sitting room had been silent for a while, so thinking it safe to return, I headed to rejoin Lena. I froze with one foot not quite in the room.
She was on the sofa with the conductor, Yuri, sitting close with their faces even closer, gazes locked as his thumb lightly stroked her cheek. I hadn’t really noticed Yuri last night; I sure as hell was noticing him today.
A handsome, dark-haired man somewhere near his forties, I estimated. She’d called him a loyal friend, but that status changed to good friend in my head based on their body language.
“I’m sorry I can’t do more for you, Lena,” he said.
“You’ve done enough. Truly, I appreciate anything you can do.”
He pulled her against him. “These things pass with time. You just have to be patient. People forget. People move on to other things. You’re too gifted for the music world to shut you out forever. You’ll be back. First chair, somewhere, in no time.”
She sniffed and it was then I realized whatever their discussion he had made her cry. I didn’t like that any better than anything else I was seeing.
His palms closed on her cheeks and she nodded.
“I should go. I just wanted to check on you and make sure you were OK before I left for the airport.”
She smiled. “I’m fine.”
