Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) (15 page)

“Thank God for cotton lycra blends,” she murmured, swinging her left leg forward and lifting her arms to generate the momentum to raise herself on demi-pointe. “I haven’t done this in years. Partner me, Alex.”

She held a hand out to him, and for a moment, he couldn’t move. In her white shirt and jeans, this Faith kept blurring with the younger version he’d so longed for back in Dorothy. That she would be standing in a room in his own house, with her welcoming him into the poetic beauty of her dance, was a dream made real.

“Are you okay?” she asked, wearily dropping out of her pose. “You look funny.”

“I’m fine.” Scratching his head, he closed the distance between them. “I don’t dance, you know.”

“So what do you do in this room?” She rested her forearms on his shoulders. “Just stare at your pretty self in the mirrors?”

“I practice.”

“You practice staring at yourself?” She grinned.

He led her to a door concealed in the wall facing the windows. He pressed it slightly inward, and it popped open to reveal the closest thing Faith had ever seen to a medieval armory outside of a museum.

“Are these real?” She ran her fingers along the flat of a broadsword.

“Real enough,” Zander said. “I don’t want the fighting in my movies to look fake.”

“It is.” Faith picked up a set of ebony nunchucks. She swung them, and would have whacked herself in the head if Zander hadn’t caught the free end.

“But it doesn’t have to look like it. My fights and stunts are well choreographed, but it’s up to me and the other actor or stuntman to make them convincing.”

“The fight between you and the bad guy in
Burn
looked convincing,” Faith said as Zander returned the nunchucks to their hook and closed the door to the storage room.

“Probably because Archer Eddings and I didn’t get along during filming,” Zander said. “He’s a prick.”

“I’ve heard that,” Faith said. “He’s got an ego on him. Word is, he wanted the part that you got.”

“Yeah, and he let me know it every chance he got. He’d watch the dailies and try to tell the director how I should be performing. Are you hungry?”

“Sure,” Faith said. “What are we having?”

With a sly grin, he gripped her shoulders and turned her to face the lake. “I won’t know until we catch it,” he murmured in her ear.

* * *

Zander had been teasing her about catching their dinner in the lake. A gorgeous fillet of salmon rubbed with lemon, garlic and minced fresh basil would spend a few minutes on the indoor grill, carefully tended by Zander, while Faith stood in front of the open pantry.

She had volunteered to retrieve the raspberry vinegar Zander wanted to use in his homemade salad dressing. She had opened the pantry only to be confronted by a wall of food. Sugar-laden breakfast cereals lined the uppermost shelves, cases of soda in every flavor were stacked like cinder blocks on the floor and in between stood products representative of a supermarket Who’s Who.

“I thought you lived here alone,” Faith said.

“I do,” Zander said over the sizzle of the salmon he’d just put on the grill. “I’ve been thinking of getting a dog, but I don’t really spend enough time here to properly take—”

“You’ve got lots of housemates.” Faith read off their names. “Betty Crocker. She looks like a fun gal. Uncle Ben. I hear he makes a good bowl of rice. Mrs. Butterworth. I don’t know about her, she looks like the jealous type. I’ll bet her head spins every time Aunt Jemima sits next to Orville Redenbacher.”

“I like to keep a well-stocked panty,” Zander explained. “You never know when people will come by.”

“When was your last party?”

Zander dropped his eyes and concentrated on slicing a shallot. “Never had one.”

“Are you having one soon?” Faith again looked at the contents of the pantry.

“What’s with the questions?”

“I worked at a food co-op in college. Your pantry is better stocked than the co-op ever was.” Taking the raspberry vinegar from the area it shared with five other kinds of vinegar, Faith brought it to Zander.

“I thought only black people drank grape soda,” she commented, handing him the vinegar.

“You want one?” Zander grinned. “I bought it special for you.”

He dodged the light punch Faith threw at him and unscrewed the cap of the vinegar. He poured a couple of tablespoons of it into a small plastic canister with a plunger built into the lid. “Mind giving this a few pumps, to mix the dressing?” he asked, pushing the canister over the surface of the fireslate counter they were sharing.

The aromas of fresh oregano, basil and garlic mingled with the fruity scents of cold-pressed olive oil and vinegar as Faith set the contents of the canister spinning. “This smells good enough to drink straight,” she remarked.

“Personally, I’d rather have wine,” Zander said. “I’ve got a few nice whites in the basement, if you feel like picking one.”

“Work me to death, why don’t you,” Faith smiled, rolling her eyes. “Which way to the basement?”

Zander pointed to a door off the rear of the kitchen. Flipping the light switch just inside the stairwell, she stepped lightly onto the pine steps. The staircase was steep, but the varnished steps were wide and so well made that they kept their silence under Faith’s weight.

The basement was carpeted and chillier than the main floor, but it wasn’t the cool air that gave Faith unpleasant goosebumps when she reached the last step.

The basement ran the length of the house. The furnace and hot water heater were tucked in a corner opposite a room with pine walls and a glass door. The rest of the space was occupied by five-tier, stainless steel shelving units. One section was filled with canned goods, another with boxed goods, still another with cases of bottled water. Plastic bins, the same shade of penal grey as the cinder block walls, contained bags of potatoes, onions, apples and oranges. Faith squatted to peep into the nearest bin and she saw an assortment of fresh carrots, beets, squash and cabbage.

“Did you get lost?”

Startled, Faith popped up to her full height and spun to face Zander. Before she could shape her expression into something less revealing, the merry light in Zander’s eyes flickered out.

“What’s the matter?” he asked warily.

Faith turned, once more scanning the fully stocked shelves and bins. The one question she wanted to ask died on her lips as its answer blossomed in her mind.

I can’t afford to pay you more money, but I can let you have two meals per eight-hour shift.

As easily as she recalled his voice, Faith closed her eyes and pictured Red Irv, his sweaty bald head gleaming pink in the cold, blue-white light of the fluorescent bars of his diner. From her usual seat in a rear booth, she’d had an unobstructed view of the dishwashing station in the cluttered little kitchen.

She had just started her senior year at Lincoln High, the same school from which Alexander Brannon had graduated a year earlier. Knowing that she would no longer be able to eyeball him at school every day, she’d started going to Red Irv’s after her ballet class, ostensibly to grab dinner and study. The thing she studied most was Alex as he went about his work.

Red Irv opened his diner every day at five
a.m.
dressed in blinding white—chef’s jacket, trousers and floor-length apron. He resembled a giant marshmallow. But by the close of dinner service, his cooking whites were so smudged with food and grease that he ended his workdays looking like Poppin’ Fresh’s indigent brother.

Faith had been checking and re-checking her calculus homework, deliberately dawdling until Red Irv’s closed so she could leave when Alex did. She was the only patron left in the place, but Red Irv and Alex seemed to have forgotten about her as they spoke in loud voices from the kitchen.

“I don’t need your charity,” Alex had said, his voice dark with defiance.

“Then you’re the only Brannon who doesn’t, because your daddy begs his coffee and eggs off me every morning, and your ma comes in every Saturday night asking for scraps for her dog,” Red Irv responded, his blunt, Irish-accented words delivered with his meaty fists set at the place where his massive gut hung over the ties of his apron.

Alex’s reply was so quiet, Faith struggled to hear him. “My mother doesn’t have a dog.”

“Don’t I know it,” Red Irv boomed. “Look, Alex. You’re a good kid, a real good kid. You deserve better than what you got. I ain’t tryin’ to prickle your pride, but you gotta eat. I don’t want you pickin’ leftovers off my customers’ plates after you bus tables. I can’t give you a raise, and even if you had the money to pay me for meals, I wouldn’t take it from you, not with your daddy fleecin’ you every week. Two meals per eight-hour shift. Deal?”

Faith hadn’t seen Alex, not with Red Irv’s big stomach filling the doorway. Her face had grown hot in the way humiliation and embarrassment had of roasting one’s flesh from the inside. Alex’s quiet pride, honed by the harassment and ostracism he routinely received from the town, saved him now in the face of Red Irv’s offer.

“It’s a deal, but only if you let me do the windows twice a week,” Alex said confidently. “Save you some money on the service you normally use.”

Red Irv smiled gratefully. “The bastard has doubled his prices in the past two years, so I’ll take you up on that offer, Alex. Thank you.”

Red Irv had stretched out a hand, and Faith assumed that he and Alex were shaking on it. She jerked her head back to her math book when the two men started out of the kitchen. Alex had wiped down three tables and Red Irv had completed counting out his cash drawer before either noticed her.

“Faith!” Red Irv called boisterously. “I thought you left. How’re you gettin’ home, honey?”

Alex had studiously rubbed circles into the nearest table, his white towel flapping over the edges.

“I’m walking, I guess. I’d better get going, before it gets too dark.”

“Alex, call it a night and get the lady home safe,” Red Irv directed.

“It’s okay,” Faith had said, standing to shove her text and notebooks into her backpack. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’d feel more comfortable if you had an escort,” Red Irv insisted. “Go on, Alex, get outta here. I’ll get the floors and lock up.”

Without a word or a look at Faith, Alex had gone back into the kitchen, emerging a few seconds later having traded his dirty apron for a weathered leather jacket. Giving Red Irv a nod good-bye, he’d gone to the door and waited for Faith.

“Where’s your bike?” she’d asked, nearly running to keep up with Alex’s long, quick strides.

“At Brody’s,” he’d snapped. “It needs a new battery.”

“Batteries are easy to replace, aren’t they?”

He had stopped and shoved his fists deep in the pockets of his jacket. “I can’t afford food. What makes you think I can afford a battery for my bike?”

His gaze was chillier than his voice, and a shiver moved through Faith.

He started walking again and Faith trotted alongside him. He wouldn’t look at her, and he said nothing else to her. He didn’t slow his pace until they were well beyond the center of town.

“You’re not fooling me, you know,” he said softly.

“What are you talking about?”

He stopped, confronting her twenty yards from the entrance to her cul-de-sac. “You’re not the first chick in this town to hang around Red Irv’s because you’ve got a hankerin’ for white trash.”

“Red Irv isn’t white trash!”

“I meant me, goofball.”

“I’m not a goofball.” Faith stubbornly raised her chin. “And you aren’t trash.”

Her assertion seemed to nudge the chip on his shoulder. “Everyone else in town seems to think so.”

“I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve been called a lot of things, but you’re the first person to ever call me a goofball,” Faith said.

He rolled his eyes and groaned. “I was talking about what people think of me.”

“Well, I don’t think that about you.”

They spent an awkward moment of silence as night deepened around them. On the other side of the
Welcome to Kayford Estates
sign, golden light burned from the windows of the four- and five-bedroom houses. Alex watched a family of four sitting in their dining room, the man at the head of the table reading a newspaper while a woman Alex assumed to be his wife poured his coffee. His son and daughter seemed to be having an animated debate to which both parents seemed deaf.

Back the way they had come, far on the other side of town, Alex’s home sat nestled at the end of a dead-end road, the only light provided by a cracked street lamp. He clamped his jaw and breathed heavily through his nose, steeling himself for the long walk to a home that felt more like a prison.

“You’re supposed to be walking me home,” Faith said. “Red Irv said.”

“He’s not my boss once I leave the diner. This is far enough. Your porch light is on, and I can watch you walk the rest of the way from here.”

“Okay, then…thanks for walking me most of the way home.” Faith took a few steps, but then turned to face him again. “You could walk me to the front door, you know. My folks won’t kill you.”

“Are you sure about that?” he called.

It wasn’t until later, after they’d begun meeting in secret on the mountain, that Alex told her he had followed her, at a distance, every night she’d walked home from Red Irv’s. Dorothy was a friendly small town, but it was just big enough to attract an element that occasionally liked to stir up trouble. In following her home, Alex had wanted to ensure that no harm ever came to Faith.

They had never discussed what Faith had overheard at Red Irv’s, but after seeing his pantry and basement, Faith realized that Alex had yet to outgrow his fear of again going hungry.

He walked stiffly to the wine cellar and threw open the door. Wincing in anticipation of hearing glass shatter against the wall, Faith sighed in relief when she noticed that the door was on a pressure hinge, which saved it from Zander’s temper. She entered the room before it closed and found Zander standing in front of a long, chest-high wooden rack. Each diamond-shaped cubbyhole contained a bottle of wine, but Zander seemed to stare beyond them. Faith assumed that his mind was where hers had just been.