Passion's Promise (13 page)

"Ready, darling?" Whit was waiting for her outside the elevator, and she had stood there for a moment, not moving, just looking at him, but seeing Luke's eyes, hearing his voice.

"Sorry, Whit. I must be tired." She squeezed his arm as they walked out to the waiting limousine.

By ten she was drunk.

"Christ, Kezia, are you sure you can walk?" Marina was watching her pull her stockings up and her dress down as they stood in the ladies' room at the El Morocco.

"Of course I can walk!" But she was weaving badly and couldn't stop laughing.

"What happened to you?"

"Nothing since Luke. I mean, Duke ... I mean breakfast dammit." She had hardly had time to touch her lunch before catching the plane at O'Hare, and she hadn't bothered with dinner.

"Kezia, you're a nut. Want some coffee?"

"No, tea. No ... coffee. No! Chaaaaamppagggne." She dragged the word out and Marina laughed.

"At least you're a friendly drunk. Vanessa Billingsley is crocked out of her mind and just called Mia Hargreaves a raving bitch." Kezia giggled and Marina lit a cigarette and sat down, while Kezia tried desperately to remember what Marina had just said. Mia called Vanessa a ... no, Vanessa called Mia ... if she could just hang on to it, it would be good for the column. And what had she heard earlier about Patricia Morbang being pregnant? Or was that right? Was it someone else who was pregnant? It was all so hard to remember.

"Oh Marina, it's so hard to remember it all."

Marina looked at her with a half smile and shook her head.

"Kezia, my love, you are smashed. Well, hell, who isn't? It must be after three."

"Christ, is it really? And I have to get up so early tomorrow. Crap."

Marina laughed again at the sight of Kezia sprawled on the white wall-to-wall in the ladies' boudoir, looking like a child just home from school, the white lace dress frothed around her like a nightgown, the diamonds glittering on her wrists, like something borrowed from her mother to dispel the boredom of a rainy day.

"And Whit's going to be very cross if I'm drunk."

"Tell him it's the flu. I don't think the poor bastard would know the difference." They both laughed at that, and Marina helped her to her feet. "You really ought to go home."

"I think I'd much rather dance. Whit dances very nicely, you know."

"He ought to." Marina looked at her hard and long, but the implication of the message was lost on Kezia.

She was too drunk to hear, or to care.

"Marina?" Kezia looked still more childlike as she stood watching her friend.

"What, love?"

"Do you really love Halpern?"

"No, baby. I don't. But I love the peace of mind he could give me. I've about had it with trying to make it on my own with the kids. And in another six months I'd have had to sell the co-op."

"But don't you love him a little?"

"No. But I like him a lot" Marina looked cynical and amused.

"But don't you love anyone? A secret lover maybe? You have to love someone."
Don't you?

"Do you? Well, fancy that. Do you love Whit?"

"Of course not." Some small alarm went off in her head then. She was talking too much.

"Then who do you love, Kezia?"

"You, Marina. I love you lots and lots and lots and lots!" She threw her arms around her friend's neck and started to giggle. And Marina laughed back and gently untwined her from her neck.

"Kezia sweet, you may not love Whitney, but if I were you, I'd get him to take me home. I think you've about had it." They walked out of the ladies' room arm in arm. Whitney was waiting just outside. He had noticed the ominous sway in Kezia's walk as she left the room half an hour before.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm wonderful!" Whit and Marina exchanged glances, and Whitney winked.

"You certainly are wonderful. And I don't know about you, darling, but I'm also wonderfully tired. I think well call it a night."

"No, no, no! I'm not tired at all. Let's call it a morning!" Kezia found everything suddenly terribly funny.

"Let's call it a get-your-ass-out-of-here, Kezia, before you wind up in Martin Hallam's column tomorrow: 'Kezia Saint Martin, drunk as a skunk as she left El Morocco last night with. . . .' Wouldn't that be lovely?" Kezia roared with glee at Marina's warning.

"That couldn't happen to me!" Whitney and Marina laughed again and tears began to slide down Kezia's face as she giggled.

"Oh, couldn't it? It could happen to any of us."

"But not to me. I'm . . . I'm a friend of his."

"And so is Jesus Christ, I'll bet." Marina patted her on the shoulder and went back to the party, while Whitney put an arm around Kezia and piloted her slowly toward the door. He had draped her black cape over his arm, and was carrying her small black beaded bag.

"It's really my fault, darling. I should have taken you to dinner before we came here."

"You couldn't."

"Of course I could. I left the office early today to play squash at the Racquet Club."

"No you couldn't. I was in Chicago." He rolled his eyes and placed the cape over her shoulders.

"That's right, darling. That's right. Of course you were." She went into another fit of giggles as he gently led her outside. She patted his cheek sweetly then and looked at him strangely.

"Poor Whitney." He was not paying attention. He was far more concerned with getting her into a cab.

He deposited her in her living room, and gave her a gentle slap on the bottom, hoping to propel her into her bedroom. Alone.

"Get some sleep, mademoiselle. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Late! Very late." She had just remembered that she would be in Washington all day. With a terrible hangover.

"You bet 'late'! I wouldn't dare call you before three."

"Make it six!"

She giggled at him as he closed the door behind him, and she sank into one of the blue velvet living room chairs. She was drank. Hopelessly, totally, wonderfully drunk. And all because of a stranger named Luke. And she was going to see him tomorrow.

The print was blurred and the features were indistinct but it was definitely Kate. The way she carried herself was unmistakable, the tilt of her bead, her size. The Honorable Keria Saint Martin in what looked like some sort of black-and-white outfit By Givenchy, the paper said, and wearing her late mother's famed diamond bracelets. Heiress to several fortunes; in steel, oil, etc. No wonder she had laughed when she called him and said she was wearing "something funny." It looked pretty funny to Luke too. But she looked beautiful. Even in the papers. He had seen her in the papers before, but now he paid close attention to what he saw. Now that he knew her, it mattered to him. And what an odd life she must lead.

He had sensed the turmoil beneath the poise and perfection. The bird in the gilded cage was dying inside, and he knew it. He wondered if she knew it too. And what he knew most acutely was that he wanted to touch her, before it was too late.

Instead they had that damn meeting to go to, and he would have to go on playing her game. He knew that she would have to be the one to end the game of "K. S. Miller" between them. Only she could do that. All he could do was give her the chance. But how many more chances? How many more excuses could he dream up? How many more towns? How many more meetings? All he knew was that he had to have her, however long it took. The problem was that he didn't have much time. Which made it all the more crazy.

When Kezia arrived, she found Luke in an office, surrounded by unfamiliar faces. Phones were ringing, people were shouting, messages were flying, the smoke was thick, and he hardly seemed to know she was there. He waved once and didn't look at her again all afternoon. The press conference had been rescheduled for two o'clock, and the rooms were chaotic all day long. It was six before she found a place to sit down, shoved her notebook into her bag, and gladly accepted the other half of a stranger's ham sandwich. What a day to survive with a hangover. Her head had gotten worse by the hour. Phones, people, speeches, statistics, photographs. It was all too much. Action, emotion, and pressure. She wondered how he stood it as a regular diet, with or without a hangover.

"Want to get out of here?"

"That's the best offer I've had all day." She smiled up at him and his face softened for the first time in hours.

"Come on, I'll get you something decent to eat."

"I really ought to get out to the airport."

"Later. You need a break first. You look like you were hit by a truck." And she felt it. Rumpled, tired, disheveled. Lucas did not look much better. He looked tired and he had worn a scowl for most of the afternoon. He had a cigar in one hand, and his hair looked as though he had been running his hands through it for hours.

But he had been right. The day had been a total contrast to the two meetings she had seen in Chicago.

This was the meat of it, the gut, as he called it. Impassioned, frenzied, fervent. This was more intense, less polite, and far more real. Luke seemed totally in charge here. He was almost a kind of god. There was a fierceness about him she'd only glimpsed in Chicago. The air was electric with his special kind of energy, and the toughness in him was no longer muted. But his face gentled a little as he looked at her on their way out.

"You look tired, Kate. Too much for you?" It wasn't a put-down; he looked concerned.

"No, I'm fine. And you were right. It was an interesting day. I'm glad I came down to see it."

"So am I." They were walking down a long busy corridor, among streams of homebound people. "I know a quiet place where we can have an early dinner. Can you spare the time?" But his tone told her he expected her to.

"Sure. I'd like that." Why rush back? For what? For Whitney? ... or for Mark? But suddenly even that didn't seem so important. They walked out onto the street, and he took her arm.

"What did you do last night, by the way?" He wondered if she'd tell him.

"As a matter of fact, I got drunk. And I haven't done that in years." It was crazy, this urge to tell him everything, without really doing so. She could have told him the whole of it, but she knew she wasn't going to.

"You got drunk?" He looked down at her with amusement all over his face. So she had gotten drunk in that black-and-white number with her mother's diamond bracelets . . . and with that f Maggoty-looking dude she was with no doubt scowling his disapproval. He could just see her. Drunk on champagne. Was there any other way to go?

They were walking briskly, side by side now, and she looked up at him pensively after a brief silence.

"You really care about the prison thing, don't you? I mean, in your gut."

He nodded carefully. "Cant you tell?"

"Yes. I can. It just amazes me a little, how much of yourself you pour into it Seems like a lot of energy expended in one place."

"It's worth it to me."

"It must be. But aren't you taking a hell of a chance just being involved in these issues, and being so outspoken about them? Seems to me I've heard they can revoke a parole for less."

"And if they do, what have I lost?"

"Your freedom. Or doesn't that matter to you?" Maybe after six years in prison it no longer mattered to him, although it seemed to her that that would only make freedom more dear.

"You miss the point I never lost my freedom, even when I was in the joint Oh sure, for a while, but once I found it again I kept it It sounds corny, but no man can take your freedom from you. They can limit your mobility, but that*s about all they can do."

"All right, then let's say they try and limit your mobility again. Aren't you taking a heavy chance with the kind of agitating you do on the outside—speeches, conferences, your books, the prison labor-union issues? Seems to me like you're walking a tightrope." Unconsciously, she was echoing Simpson's speech to her.

"Seems to me that a lot of people are. In prison and out Maybe you're even walking a tightrope, Miss Miller. So what? It's cool as long as you don't fall off."

"And no one pushes you off."

"Lady, all I know is how fucked up that whole system is. I can't keep my mouth shut about it. If I did, my life wouldn't mean a damn thing to me. It's as simple as that. And if I pay a price in the end, it was my own choice. I'm willing to take that chance. Besides, I'd say the California Department of Corrections is not exactly dying to invite me back for a return engagement. I gave them one giant, jumbo, A-Number-One pain in the ass."

"You're really not afraid of getting revoked?"

"Nah. Never happen." But he didn't look at her as he said it, and something about him seemed to stiffen.

"You like Italian food, Kate?"

"Sounds lovely. I'm not sure, but I think I'm starving."

"Then pasta it is. Come on, let's catch that cab." He raced across the street holding her hand, and dutifully held open the door for her, before following her inside and cramping his legs into the narrow back seat. "Man, they must build these for midgets. And Jesus, you look so comfortable. You should thank God you're a pygmy." He gave the driver the address of the restaurant over her outraged protests.

"Just because you're a freak of nature, Lucas Johns, does not mean you vent your problems on ..."

"Aww, now now. Nothing wrong with being a pygmy."

She looked at him awesomely and sniffed. "I ought to punch you in the eye, Mr. Johns, but I'm afraid I might hurt you."

That set the tone for the evening. Light, playful, companionable. He was easy to be with. And it wasn't until the espresso was served that they both grew more pensive.

"I like this town. Do you come down here often, Kate? I would if I lived in New York."

"I come down once in a while."

"What for?" He wanted her to tell him the truth. They couldn't even begin till she did.

And she wanted to tell him that she came down for parties, for balls, for dinners at the White House. For inaugurations. For weddings. But she couldn't say any of it. No matter what

"I come down on stories occasionally, like this. Or just to see friends." She caught a glimpse of something disappointed in his eyes, but it was fleeting. "Don't you get tired of traveling so much, Luke?"