by Judy Duarte
When he turned to bring the last grouping of chairs in, she got in front of him for a third time. “Cruel to small children and medium-size animals?”
This time he did laugh. Depositing the last bunch of chairs against the wall, he looked at Brooke. “No.” Her point was made. “Okay, that qualifies you as a good man.”
She was so far from right. A good man would have somehow been able to see the signs and kept Dana from taking her own life. A good man wouldn’t be pretending to be something he wasn’t in order to get close to a trusting man and his daughter.
His face was very, very somber as he reiterated, “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Then tell me,” she urged again, adding quickly, “It won’t change my opinion of you, but it’ll satisfy my curiosity.”
“Your curiosity,” Mark echoed. He was accustomed to thinking of himself as a nonentity, as something that blended into the background. It seemed odd to him to have someone actually wonder about him. It gave his life depth and dimension, and he wasn’t altogether sure how to feel about that. “You’re curious about me.”
She looked into his eyes for a long moment. “Immensely.”
He supposed there was an argument for telling her things about himself. For letting her into his life, not all the way, but just enough to make her feel as if she did know him.
In a way it was manipulative of him, but she was asking and if he put her off, it might raise her suspicions. He didn’t want that.
And if he told her lies, if he fabricated things about himself, there was a chance one of them might trip him up.
He had already told her enough lies to try to keep straight.
So he made his decision. “You want to go somewhere and get some coffee after we finish up in here?”
Happiness went through her like a rubber ball set off inside of a rubber room.
“We can get coffee here after I finish with the register,” she told him, already walking to the front counter. “I can brew a fresh pot.” She’d turned the coffeemaker off for the night and had cleaned it out, but it would take nothing to start it again. “We don’t have to go anywhere else if you don’t feel like it.”
“No sense in wasting a whole pot,” he told her. He closed the door to the storeroom, locking it with the key she’d given him earlier. He crossed to her and handed the key back to her. “We’ll go out.”
She was hardly aware of putting the key back in the drawer. Their first date, she thought. Unofficial and last minute, but it was still a date. She’d always loved spontaneity.
On automatic pilot, Brooke went about the business of shutting down the register. Her mind was elsewhere.
There was something very romantic about being swept away by the moment. Just as she had been when she’d kissed him, she thought. It would have been nice to have had him make the first move, but she didn’t regret what she did for one second.
It felt as if she’d been born in that small instance. As if everything else she’d experienced had just been marking time until that moment.
Looking back, it had been a little like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, she mused, writing down the total sales for the day, waiting for true love’s first kiss. She was too old to believe in fairy tales, but not too old, she thought, slanting a glance toward Mark, to believe in the existence of Prince Charming.
That described Mark Banning to a T. A little scarred, a little world weary, but Prince Charming nonetheless.
And for the moment he was hers.
The small coffee shop he took her to was doing brisk business, despite the hour and the fact that it was a weekday and the next morning stood waiting in the wings with all that that entailed. It took a while before they finally got their order.
Brooke didn’t mind standing in line with Mark, didn’t mind waiting on the side until the order was filled. She wouldn’t have minded standing anywhere, as long as it was with him.
The day had been hot. Evening brought with it a slight lessening in the sticky humidity, but the air still moved as if it had been soaked in warm molasses.
She thrilled to the feel of his hand against the small of her back as he guided her to a table for two just outside the coffee shop’s front doors.
“I’d have thought there wouldn’t be so many people drinking coffee this time of night.” She could feel her heart all but jumping at his touch and tried very hard to keep her voice steady. “I guess it’s never too late for trendy coffee.”
He nodded his head in response, and she wondered if perhaps he was regretting agreeing to come out like this. She should have gone with her first instincts and just made coffee at the shop.
Sitting down, she looked at him, waiting until he took his seat. She didn’t want to lose the moment, didn’t care what he talked about, as long as he talked. “So,” she began, leaning forward, “what did you think of Holden?”
The hazy air had shifted, moving in his direction. He could just detect a whiff of her perfume. Didn’t things like that have a time limit? Weren’t they supposed to fade after a few hours? He could swear that he’d been breathing in the light scent all day, and at this point, he was dangerously on overload.
Dangerously at the point where reason was slipping into the shadows, deserting him.
He picked up his cup with both hands and concentrated on her questions, not on what he wanted to do. “It was entertaining.”
She laughed and he looked at her. “You hated him, didn’t you?” For an innocent she could be very intuitive. “Hate is a little strong.”
She cocked her head, her hair sweeping along her shoulder. He held on to his cup a little tighter. “Disliked a lot?”
He shrugged and took a sip. Bypassing the trendy coffee, he’d ordered espresso. As if sitting beside her wasn’t enough of an adrenaline kick. “He wasn’t worth the effort for emotion.”
She liked the sound of that. Liked what it said. In a way he’d succeeded in neatly putting the author in his place.
“I guess you’re right. Although I’m sure he thinks so.”
He had a hunch that she knew that for a firsthand fact, but said nothing on the subject. Instead he took another sip of his coffee, then said, “And he seems to have a lot of the audience buying into it, as well.”
Almost all of the audience had been comprised of women, a good many over the age of forty. She supposed that was one of the reasons Holden had played up to her in the beginning. She was always the youngest in the room. That made her a clean slate, as he liked to say, for him to write on.
But not anymore, Brooke thought with the kind of triumph one felt at finally getting rid of a bad habit.
“But not you.” It wasn’t a guess. Brooke was sure of it.
She was waiting for an answer. He tried to think of one that was suitable for the man he was pretending to be. Reading had not been a priority for him for a very long time, but he tried to recall the kind of thing that had once held his interest.
“I like my prose grittier. More real and less introspective.”
“Why?” The question surprised him. And the look in her eyes as she leaned her chin against her hand held him captive. “What are you afraid you’ll see if you look inside?”
“Everything I’ve lived through so far.” He could see the eager look that came into her eyes. She was a romantic, through and through. He didn’t want her romanticizing him. It just made things worse. “It’s not poetic or particularly tragic.” He had a feeling that was the way her mind worked. “It’s just my life.”
Like someone diving into icy water, she held her breath and plunged in.
“And you were going to open a tiny window into it tonight.” Pressing her lips together, she started him off. “You already told me that you were an orphan by the time you were ten. Was it terrible, living in foster homes all that time?”
Yes, it was terrible, he thought. He’d spent the next eight years living out of a suitcase, ready to leave at a moment’s notice if there was the slightest chang
e in the situation. He learned early on that his own behavior didn’t affect things greatly. Trying hard didn’t help, so he’d stopped trying.
But he didn’t want to get into that. Still, she was waiting for something, so he gave her a small piece. “I never got over the feeling that I didn’t belong.”
She drew her own conclusions. “So no one adopted you.”
There’d been one couple, a couple he’d liked, and they had been close to putting through the paperwork. They’d been childless for ten years and had all but given up. He’d thought he’d found a home, but then the woman had gotten pregnant and he was once again sent to another foster home, to begin the process of going from stranger to stranger all over again.
He shook his head and said simply, “No.” That covered it, he thought.
“And what did you do after you turned eighteen?”
What had he done, he thought, turning her question over in his mind. He’d gone to work, started attending CCNY and kept his eye out on his brother, waiting for Nick to turn eighteen so that his brother could come and live with him.
“I started my life,” he told her.
Chapter Nine
He’d started his life.
She knew Mark’s pronouncement was meant to cut her off, to put an end to that line of conversation. But she was nothing if not persistent.
The noise around them, as customers entered and left the café, grew in volume. Brooke found she either had to raise her voice or lean in, in order to be heard. She leaned in.
“By doing what?” she prodded. “Did you start writing right away? Or was that something you started slowly, after you tried other things?”
He stuck with the truth. “It’s a relatively new calling.”
She judged him to be in his late twenties, maybe even thirty. That left a lot of time unaccounted for. “What did you do before then?”
“I was a cop.”
She’d all but had to read his lips. The information, delivered quietly and without ceremony, caught her totally by surprise. But only for an instant. The moment she thought about it, being a policeman was the kind of thing she could easily visualize him doing. It went with her image of him: a protector. After all, a knight had been the policeman of his day.
The noise from the street and the shop directly behind them increased. Brooke moved her chair in closer to him. Their knees were now touching. The contact sent a small, delicious shiver through her.
“Is that how you got your scar?”
She saw him stiffen slightly. “Yes.” It was dark enough that she couldn’t read his eyes. “You’re just full of questions, aren’t you?”
Rather than take offense, she smiled at him brightly. “That’s how you learn things.”
In response, she saw him drain his coffee and set the cup down. It was a signal to leave. But she wasn’t ready to go just yet.
Stubbornly Brooke dug in. “You know,” she told him softly, “it’s really not as bad as you think it is.”
To prove her point, her eyes on his, she lightly glided her fingertips just beneath the scar.
He jerked his head back as if she’d touched him with a hot poker. The look in his eyes warned her off, but she refused to listen. He was a soul in pain and she wanted to help him.
“Actually,” she went on, “it transforms you into a rather romantic figure.”
He didn’t know if she was just being incredibly naive or incredibly kind. In either case, if she’d chosen him to have romantic fantasies about, she’d chosen poorly.
When she reached for him again, he closed his hand around hers, pushing it back down to the table. Mark’s voice was dark, low.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Brooke, but this is the real world. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.” His eyes told her to back off. “You don’t know who I am.”
And he wasn’t about to tell her, she thought. All right, so be it. That wasn’t the point anymore. He needed to be reached more than she needed details. “I know you’re a good man.”
Mark laughed shortly. She just didn’t give up, did she? “And how do you know that?”
Her expression was completely guileless. So guileless he found himself struggling against the temptation of leaning across the tiny table and kissing her. “Instincts.”
“Instincts.” What kind of instincts could a sheltered twenty-three-year-old have? It took effort to keep the mocking tone from his voice. “And these instincts, they’ve been infallible up to now?”
She knew what he was saying to her. That she really hadn’t lived yet, not the way he had. That she had no experiences to draw on. But you didn’t have to take up residence in hell to know you didn’t want to be there. And now, looking back at the other men who had captured her fancy, she realized that they had all been shallow. Not like Mark.
What she felt about him, for him, was different. He was different. “They’re getting better all the time.”
He needed to get her to back away before his own resolve crumbled. Before he gave in and allowed himself to get lost in the look in her eyes. Without preamble, he said, “I was married.”
She’d thought of him as a free spirit. Free spirits remained unattached. Brooke picked up on the key word. “Was?”
Mark studied his hands, trying to divorce himself from what he was saying. “She died.”
Brooke felt a lump growing in her throat. The romantic way she perceived him only became more enhanced. “Oh, Mark, I’m so sorry.”
He saw the sympathy in her eyes. And something more. He realized he’d only succeeded in bringing her closer to him, not further away.
She needed to hear the full story.
Mark braced himself. Dana’s death wasn’t something he talked about, wasn’t even something he allowed himself to think about. But maybe if Brooke heard, she’d stop thinking of him as some kind of romantic hero and see him for what he was: a man she should want no part of.
“I met Dana in college. She was everything I wasn’t. Bright, outgoing, stunningly beautiful.” As he said the words, he could almost see Dana, the way she had once been. He found it difficult to continue. “And she wanted to be an actress. After graduation, we got married.
“I joined the police force and she set about making her dream come true. Except that it didn’t.” He set his mouth grimly. “When she’d started out, Dana had been so incredibly full of hope. She was so sure she was going to make it. At first, she got a couple of jobs, but then nothing.” He sighed. Looking back, the signs had all been there. But he’d been blind to them. Blind to everything except the vision of life the way he’d hoped it would someday be. “With each rejection, she withdrew a little more.”
His voice became bitter. “I was so busy trying to make a difference out on the street, trying to make detective, putting in overtime so that she could have those new clothes for those auditions that didn’t pan out, I never saw it.”
Something cold and sharp slithered across her heart. Her eyes never left his face. “It?”
Mark barely nodded in response. “The way Dana was deteriorating. The way it became harder and harder to reach her, to communicate. There were crying jags. When she wouldn’t talk, I left her alone and didn’t think anything of it. Nobody likes being rejected, I thought she was just being moody.” His expression grew dark, unreadable. “And then one night, I came home to find her. She was in the bathtub.”
He realized that Brooke had taken his hand, her fingers curling around his. The slight pressure was meant to somehow give him the strength to get through his narrative. Something nudged at his heart, but he refused to acknowledge it. Not while he was talking about Dana’s suicide.
“The water was red.” If he closed his eyes, he could still see it, that horrible off-color red permeating everything within the tub. Leaving a thin layer on Dana. “She’d slashed her wrists.” Mark paused, trying to work his way through the pain he felt. He looked up at her. “There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t bring her
around. She was already dead.”
Words seemed so inadequate. Brooke tried, anyway. “Oh, Mark, I am so, so sorry.”
An ironic smile twisted his lips. “That’s what she said.” He saw the confused look on Brooke’s face. “In the note she left. Just that—‘Mark, I’m sorry.’” The sigh caught in his raw throat. He shook his head. “I was the one who had to be sorry. I never saw it coming. I should have paid more attention.”
She realized what he was saying. He blamed himself. That was so like the man she was coming to know. “It’s not your fault.” She said the words so firmly, he looked at her. “You can’t blame yourself.”
Who else could he blame? The producers who hadn’t wanted her? The directors who always wanted someone else? No, he knew where the blame could squarely be placed. On the doorstep of the man who should have been looking out for her. Who should have taken care of her. “I was her husband.”
“Right, her husband, not her keeper,” Brooke insisted. He couldn’t do this to himself, she thought. If he didn’t let go of the guilt, it would eventually destroy him. Suddenly her mission in life gained a new focus, to save him. “Every person is responsible for themselves.” As he looked at her in silence, she crawled out further on the shaky limb. “I’m sorry, maybe this sounds cruel, but she let herself get that way. She was the one who gave up. You had nothing to do with it. You didn’t beat her, didn’t imprison her, didn’t demand that she remain at your side, barefoot and pregnant—”
She was making a hell of a lot of assumptions. “How do you know that?”
For a second he’d taken some of the wind out of her sails. She rallied, looking at him unabashedly.
“Because I just do. You’re not that kind of person.” She saw him start to protest. She had no idea how she knew what she knew, but she did. She was that sure of him. “You’re not the kind of person who would force his will on someone else.”
Mark didn’t think he’d ever been as innocent as Brooke, not even when he was a young boy and had thought himself invincible. “You’re romanticizing again. You’ve known me for less than a month—”
