Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) (4 page)

“You want me to live in Charles Town, Daddy?” she asked, her eyes shimmering with tears.

“Hell, no!” Mr. Wheeler yelled, and then he turned on his wife. “Emiline, have you lost
your
mind?” he asked, forcing his voice lower. “I am not sending my seventeen-year-old daughter three hundred miles from home to go to school in the Eastern Panhandle.”

“Well, we have to do something,” Mrs. Wheeler whispered fiercely. “Before—”

“Before what, Mama?” Faith asked. Her tears evaporated in the heat of her growing anger. “Exactly what do you think I plan to do with Alex Brannon?”

Mr. Wheeler threw up his hands and slumped back in his maple Windsor chair. “She’s calling him Alex. Is that your pet name for him?”

“It’s his
name
name, Daddy!” Faith wailed.

“Faith, honey,” Mrs. Wheeler started, her voice quivering. “You’re known by the company you keep, and Alexander Brannon isn’t the sort of person you should be associating with.”

“You’re such a snob,” Faith mumbled.

Mr. Wheeler slammed his hands on the table, forcing plates, glasses and cutlery to jump. “Don’t you disrespect your mother! We haven’t raised you to call your mother out of her name, or to run around with the town hoodlum!”

“He’s not a hoodlum!” Faith shouted, showing that she had inherited his quickness to anger along with his rich brown skin and expressive eyes. “You don’t know him! You’ve never even talked to him!”

“I don’t have to talk to him to know that I don’t want his ass fooling around with my daughter!”

“You’re so unfair, Daddy,” Faith wailed, her tears reappearing. “You, of all people, should know how hard it is to live in a place where people cast you as a stereotype.”

Mr. Wheeler eyed her suspiciously, caught off guard by her savvy observation. “Don’t you dare try to compare my experience as a hard-working black business owner in this town with that trailer trash Alexander Brannon. Our people have lived and worked here for generations, since John Brown’s raid. That Brannon kid is one generation out of the hills, and he’s gonna end up a drunk like his daddy or crazy like his mama. You are strictly forbidden to see him again.”

“Daddy!”

“It’s for your own good, baby,” Mrs. Wheeler said in the placating tone Faith hated most.

“It’s for
your
reputation,” Faith said derisively.

She and her father stood at the same time, Mr. Wheeler knocking his chair over in the process. “Go to your room!” he ordered, his words overlapping Faith’s, “I’m going to my room!”

Just as she had when she was eight and had been sent to her room for farting at the dinner table, she stomped out of the dining room, through the living room, into the foyer, up the carpeted stairs, and into her pretty pastel-hued bedroom. She paced angrily, like a panther in a cage far too small.

How dare her parents tell her with whom she could be friends! How dare they forbid her to do anything! Faith was a good student, she was popular, she never broke curfew, and no matter what, she never embarrassed her parents. As the wealthiest family in town and one of only a few black families in Dorothy, the Wheelers were always careful to adhere to a higher standard of behavior. It wasn’t enough to be better; they strived to be the very best.

Faith loved and respected her parents, but their order completely fled her mind the next time she saw Alex—almost a week after her blow-up with them. She had been in ballet class in the studio above McGill’s Pharmacy. Executing a textbook arabesque penchée, she caught sight of Alex standing just inside the garage at Brody’s Auto Body. He was wearing a bluish-gray striped jumpsuit with Brody’s embroidered across the chest. Automotive grime smudged his chin and the backs of his hands. He appeared to be busy patching the inside of a tire, but he wasn’t watching his work. His face was tilted upward, and his eyes were on Faith.

His gaze was so intense, Faith broke her perfect position. It had been impossible for her to concentrate on class after that. Afterward, she hurried downstairs and out of the building, hoping to run into Alex. And she had, literally; he’d been waiting for her.

Without a word, Alex had taken her hand and pulled her into the shadowy gap between McGill’s and the Pearl S. Buck Community Book Exchange. That brief, secret meeting was the first of many between them, and they had managed to keep their innocent contact under wraps until the Thanksgiving Day football game between Dorothy and its archrival, Marsh Spring High.

Everything changed that day because that was the day they gave each other everything that mattered.

* * *

Faith stuck her foot out to stop the turning of her chair. She’d seen Zander Baron’s first movie,
Burn
, while on a blind date with some guy Daiyu had set her up with, and the poor fellow had suffered the misfortune of being in her company the night she rediscovered the boy she had loved and lost in high school.

Alexander Brannon, the bad boy of Raleigh County, was alive and thriving in Hollywood as Zander Baron, movie star.

It had taken a few days and every skill she possessed as a reporter, but she now had no real doubt that Alex and Zander were the same person. The absence of any verifiable personal information about Zander Baron only confirmed her suspicion.

A part of her had never gotten over the loss of Alex, and that part had roared to life with a vengeance after she’d seen
Burn
. The movie’s poster featured cars and weaponry rather than the characters in the film, and the studio had released no advance stills to the press. Since Alex was an unknown, the movie had been given a “soft” opening, showing in only a few theaters in New York and Los Angeles prior to its nationwide release on New Year’s Day.

He’d shaved his head for his role, but the absence of his dark, silky hair had only drawn more attention to his eyes. His eyes were the feature she’d studied most, had learned best. In that darkened theater, she realized that her fondest wish had come true: Alex was still alive.

Maybe she had known it all along. Perhaps that was why she had never fallen in love or experienced a serious relationship. For ten years, she’d believed her heart had been lost along with Alexander Brannon.

Now she knew better. Zander Baron had had it all along.

Two teams of her co-workers were chasing the inflatable beach ball from cubicle to cubicle, and as the playful chaos around her intensified, Faith focused more sharply on the materials covering her desk.

The box-office success of Zander’s first film had been phenomenal;
Burn
’s box-office receipts had set a record for a New Year’s Day opening. The film continued to hold the number-one spot two months later. Zander had two new movies set for release—
Reunion
in the next month and
Miss Wright
, which was slated for June.
Burn
’s success had convinced studios that Zander Baron was the answer to James Dean, someone whose star had begun to burn well before most of his work had even caught the public’s notice.

Zander was poised on the verge of superstardom, and the entertainment media hungered to turn him into their latest hot commodity. In just the past eight weeks, he had been on the covers of
People
,
Rolling Stone
,
Entertainment Weekly
, the
National Enquirer
, the
Star
and
OK!

Photos were pretty much all the magazines had to offer. Team Baxter had done a very good job of doling out small doses of information to widespread sources. Faith admired Olivia Baxter’s cunning. Zander had been interviewed by regional newspapers and magazines well before the release of
Burn
. Major media had picked up those stories and regurgitated the information, lending it credibility.

Faith knew it was all false.

She was sitting on a scoop that could send her career into orbit. If she told the world the truth about Zander Baron, she could write her own ticket. She had no desire to be the next great gossip maven, but a scoop was a scoop, whether it uncovered an actor or a political scandal. Writing a story that no one else had would give Faith the leverage and reputation she needed to get a job with a serious news agency, reporting stories that actually meant something.

All she had to do was kill Zander Baron just as he had killed Alexander Brannon.

Chapter 2

Olivia worked from her million-dollar Bel Air mansion, having turned the room with the best view into her office. From her platinum bob and steel grey eyes to her snow white pantsuit, Olivia favored the color palette of the proverbial ice queen. Her thick carpeting, which was the pale, barely blue hue of a glacier, muffled the sound of Zander’s heavy black motorcycle boots.

Sitting in an office chair ergonomically designed to coddle her lower back and ease her occasional sciatic pain, Olivia watched Zander, only her eyes following his slow, measured steps.

“You know, Zander, you really haven’t changed that much since we first met,” she began in the clipped, patrician accent that exposed her boarding school background. “You still have that discomforting energy about you, that sense of a caged tiger yearning for escape.”

He forced himself to stand still, choosing a place near the floor-to-ceiling window. Staring at the picturesque Santa Monica mountains, Zander tried, unsuccessfully, to quiet the restlessness that had plagued him since the press conference the day before.

“You know her.”

It wasn’t a question, so Zander didn’t answer. Keeping one hand in the pocket of his black leather motorcycle jacket, he raked the other through his hair. It had been Olivia’s idea to strip it of some of its color. She’d been convinced—correctly—that lighter hair would make his eyes appear more intense. Five years later, he still wasn’t quite used to it. There were times when he caught his reflection and saw a stranger.

After yesterday’s press conference, he had accepted the fact that he
was
looking at a stranger every time he caught his reflection.

“She certainly seemed to know you, Zander,” Olivia said.

She hadn’t raised her voice above her usual conversational purr, but Zander knew that she was worried. Concerned, rather. In the years she’d represented him, Olivia had never worried about anything.

“A crisis is merely a problem for which one is ill-prepared,” she’d told him early on in their relationship. “I’m always prepared.”

Zander doubted that Olivia was prepared for the appearance of Faith Wheeler. He certainly hadn’t been, although he thought he had played off his initial reaction very well. His carefully cultivated image would have taken a dramatic hit if he had passed out from the shock of seeing her.

Even thinking about her now, his knees weakened, and he might have actually slumped against the windowed wall if he hadn’t caught himself.

The past decade had been more than kind to Faith. She still had the silky skin that always put him in the mind of hot cocoa with just the right amount of marshmallows melted into it. He hadn’t recognized her voice at first. The shrill, native cry of the story-hunting reporter was nothing like the voice he would hear in his deepest, most vivid dreams over the years.

If warm honey had a voice, it would sound like Faith.

“She writes for
Personality!
,” Olivia said, pulling him from his reverie. “She took the job there close to two years ago after spending the prerequisite time at daily papers in New York City and Chicago and stringing for a few rags in San Francisco and Los Angeles. She graduated from New York University with a master’s degree in journalism, and although she comes from money, she earned a partial scholarship and paid for her schooling herself.”

Her information had no effect on Zander. So far, Olivia hadn’t told him anything he hadn’t already Googled himself.

“Her father, Justus Wheeler, is something of a self-made millionaire, having purchased the Duchess Waverly Coal Company in Dorothy, West Virginia, with part of the fortune he made after Proctor & Gamble bought the patents for two household detergents he developed. Justus renamed the mine for his wife, calling it the Lady Emiline Coal Corporation.”

The admiration with which Olivia recited Mr. Wheeler’s accomplishments increased when she spoke about his wife. “Emiline Wheeler was a stay-at-home mother who now fills her days with volunteer work at a hospital and an assisted-living facility in Raleigh County. She also chaired a committee that supported the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act a few years ago. I’ll bet that made for a few chilly nights in the Wheeler bedroom.”

Zander threw one of his characteristic dark looks at Olivia, who seemed proud of the reaction she had elicited.

“You knew her. Before?”

“Before…” Zander repeated. “Before” was Olivia’s name for the time preceding their meeting, and it encompassed the entirety of his true history, not the one Olivia had manufactured.

“Yes,” he said, “I knew her before.”

Neither Zander nor Olivia reacted when her door flew open and Brent rushed in. Where Zander and Olivia were two versions of the same type of reserved composure, Brent was all color, hurry and noise.

Olivia’s preference for wintry pastels had not been passed on to her son. Perhaps in response to her aversion to color, he always wrapped himself in it from head to toe. Impeccably dressed in the custom-tailored clothing he favored, he looked like a macaw on an ice floe when he stepped into his mother’s office.

“I thought you were going to wait for me,” Brent said to his mother, taking a seat in one of two white leather chairs facing her desk.

Zander pinched back a smile as he watched Olivia’s pale eyes scan her only child.

Brent’s short hair with its razor-sharp right-side part was a few shades darker than Olivia’s, but still lighter than it would have been if he spent less time on his surfboard and more in a temperature-controlled office like his mother’s. Everything about Brent was Southern California—his sun-bleached hair, perfect teeth and the surfer physique he kept dressed in every style from avant-garde Japanese couture to classically tailored Armani and Calvin Klein. Brent had the looks and charm to succeed in Hollywood as an actor. But he didn’t have the heart. In fact, he had too much, although it had taken Zander a while to realize it.

He had been in the middle of a session with a dialect coach when Brent, freshly graduated from the University of Southern California, had bounded into his mother’s study.

“Another one of Olivia’s strays?” he had asked the coach in a tone that had made Zander self-conscious about his worn-out work boots and the crescents of auto grease that seemed permanently imbedded under his nails. “I hope this one is housebroken,” Brent had added.

Zander had approached him, and perfectly mimicking his coach’s Australian accent, he said, “You must be Ms. Baxter’s pampered, pedigreed poodle of a son.”

Weeks of traded insults eventually formed the foundation of a fast friendship. Brent had come to respect Zander’s talent, particularly his chameleon-like ability to fully inhabit his characters, becoming them so convincingly that even veteran actors with whom he worked were impressed. And Zander had come to admire Brent’s determination to carve a niche of his own in Hollywood rather than coast on the reputation his mother had spent most of his life building. He was his mother’s equal when it came to business, which was perhaps why he opted to call her by her first name in all business matters.

Exceptional business acumen was all the mother and son had in common. They were as different in personality and dress as a spark is from a snowflake.

Brent’s light jacket was as red as fresh arterial blood, and Zander remembered Brent’s joy at its arrival from Japan, where artisans had hand spun the cashmere thread used to make the fabric. His black collared shirt was vintage GAP and his resin-rinsed blue jeans were Marithé+Girbaud. His shoes, though, were the conversation piece, and by the way he slowly set his right ankle on his left knee, Zander knew that Brent was waiting for someone to notice them.

Olivia did the honors. “Son,” she began evenly, “did you skin Bart Simpson to have those shoes made?”

“That’s an awful thing to say, Olivia,” Brent chuckled.

Zander thought Olivia’s question was fair. Brent’s latest kicks looked like they had been cobbled by a master but dyed by Dr. Seuss. Most of the upper was dark mustard-yellow leather; the outer side of the vamp was blue and the inner side was the same bright bloody red as his jacket.

“Italians,” Olivia sighed, shaking her head.

“So how are we going to handle Faith Wheeler?” Brent asked, turning their attention from his wardrobe to business.

Zander turned his attention to mother and son. “What do you mean, ‘handle?’ ” he asked. “You sound like you’re planning to put a hit out on her.”

“I hope it won’t come to that, but I certainly can’t rule it out,” Olivia said blithely, slowly rising from her chair. “With one
Personality!
headline, that pretty little minx could undo an image it took me years to craft and destroy a product perched on the edge of superstardom. I won’t have it all ruined because of some reporter trying to make a name for herself.”

“Faith isn’t like that,” Zander said.

“So you
do
know her,” Brent remarked. “Mom pulled her bio. What else can you tell us about her?”

It had been years since Zander last felt the urge to flee an uncomfortable situation, but the old instinct flared as he contemplated the best way to answer Brent’s question. If he would at all.

Zander absently switched places with Olivia, moving closer to her desk while she went to the bar near the office door. He let the majestic sight of the mountains carry him to another one in another time, a dying mountain overlooking a terminal town on the opposite side of the country.

* * *

Marsh Spring really didn’t have a chance, not with quarterback Rafe Hatchett at the helm for Dorothy. As if playing in the shadow of Kayford Mountain didn’t make the Marsh Spring Cardinals feel small enough, with a full quarter left to play, the Lincoln Black Bears of Dorothy led them by twenty-four points. Ordinarily, Black Bears coach Hiram Benton would not have run up the score, but the annual Thanksgiving Day game between Lincoln and archrival Marsh Spring was one of the few games that drew scouts from major collegiate football programs.

Rafe was having a good season, and a good “Turkey Bowl” performance was sure to earn him a four-year ticket out of Dorothy.

From the far end of the uppermost bleacher bench, Alex watched the game. Even though most of the town had turned out for it, Alex still managed to isolate himself. He was the only spectator dressed in black instead of Lincoln’s gold and blue on the sunny but chilly November morning.

His shoulders hunched against the cold in his worn and scarred motorcycle jacket, he rested his elbows on his knees. The smoke from the Marlboro pinched between his thumb and forefinger curled upward, mingling with his condensed breath to shroud his head and shoulders. His right knee bounced as if he were apprehensive over the outcome of the game.

Alex could not have cared less about the game. He’d come to watch Faith.

She seemed immune to the frigid air blowing off the mountain, although in deference to it, she and her cheermates were outfitted in their winter uniforms—fitted, long-sleeved jerseys in Dorothy’s colors of gold and blue—and blue skirts trimmed in gold with white spanky pants underneath.

Faith wasn’t head cheerleader, but she certainly stood out most. Her ballet training softened the stiffness of some of the signature cheerleading moves. A little punch of a shoulder when she raised her arms for the “V, V-I-C” half of the Victory cheer, followed by a saucy shift of a hip when she twirled into the V-I-C-T-O-R-Y part set her performance apart from the more robotic movement of her fellows. Even her tumbling moves were as elegant as they were powerful, and Alex wanted to applaud along with everyone else after she completed a roundoff-backhandspring-back tuck tumbling pass that was so polished, even Marsh Spring fans cheered.

She bounded back to the cheerleaders’ bench afterward, her smile warming the chilly Thanksgiving Day.

Alex had no idea what was happening on the field, but he could have provided a detailed play-by-play of Faith’s every smile, laugh, shiver and wave. The other cheerleaders had an eerie sameness—blue eyes, strawberries-and-cream complexions, and blonde or light brown hair pulled into severe ponytails adorned with blue and gold ribbon curls.

Faith was the one true individual among them, her fuller figure and distinctive hair setting her apart. The cheerleaders sat on their bench with their backs to the bleachers, and it was impossible for an onlooker’s eyes not to pause at the head of spiral curls in the middle of the bench. Untethered by satin ribbons, Faith’s curls bounced with her laughter and danced in the cold breeze. The ponytails on the other girls looked like dead things compared to the liveliness of Faith’s curls, which caught the sunlight and gleamed in a spectrum of browns ranging from dark gold to sienna.

All the cheerleaders were about five and a half feet tall and probably no more than a hundred and twenty pounds, but Faith seemed taller because she stood straighter, her hair giving her another several inches over the other girls. Her arms and legs seemed longer and certainly more graceful. As easy as thought, she lifted her right leg in a high kick that left Alex blushing.

A wolf whistle forced Alex’s attention from Faith to the group of young men sitting nearest him. They were natives, Dorothy High alumni home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Alex recognized all three of them because they had graduated in the same class.

The thought made him chuckle. Socially, he wasn’t in the same class. Justus Wheeler was the richest man in Raleigh County, but the three guys leering at the cheerleaders and whispering about them were the offspring of Dorothy’s few well-to-do families. Leland Birch, Travis Gates and Ritchie Platt had gone on to college—Leland and Ritchie to Montgomery University and Travis to Mountain Valley Bible College. Of all his classmates, these three were his least favorites.

“Al Brannon,” Leland said enthusiastically, displaying a smile crammed with crooked yellow teeth. “Man, what is up?” He held his hand up and out and waited for Alex to slap him a high five.

Alex left him hanging.

Leland lowered his hand and returned it to the pocket of his plaid flannel hunting jacket. He exchanged a shifty glance with Ritchie before he said, “Been keepin’ the home fires burning, man? I hear you’re working at Red Irv’s.”