Lovers and Strangers (9 page)

Chapter 4

Once they were seated in the restaurant, Jack meant to have a serious discussion with her about the total impossibility of there ever being any kind of relationship between them, however fleeting or tentative. He meant to tell her, as gently as possible, that he really thought it would be best if she didn't even come over to finish cleaning his apartment. He meant to warn her about looking at him the way she did. And smiling at him the way she did. He meant to point out the disparity in age and experience between them. And he meant to suggest—as subtly and tactfully as he could—that if Freddie Bowen's lukewarm advances had upset her, then being on the receiving end of his vastly more heated overtures would probably send her into catatonic shock. He meant to pat her figuratively on the head, tell her she was a lovely girl, and send her on her way before anyone could get hurt.

He really meant to.

But she looked at him over a tableful of Chinese delicacies, her soft lips curved up in a delighted smile, her gold-flecked eyes alight with anticipation, and he forgot.

"Here, try some of these steamed pearl balls," he said instead, tipping a few of the tiny rice-coated meatballs onto her plate from the serving dish. "They're great with a little of the
hoi sin
sauce. And try using the fork while you're at it," he added, shaking his head over her attempts to operate the chopsticks. "You aren't going to get very much to eat that way."

"I've almost got the hang of it," Faith insisted, doggedly chasing a pea pod around her plate with the chopsticks. "There, see?" she said triumphantly, as the tip of one chopstick accidentally speared a meatball. She held it aloof for a moment, as if exhibiting a hard won trophy, then popped it into her mouth, obviously delighted with her success.

Jack felt a surge of protectiveness well up inside him. She was so open. So fresh. There was no artifice to her at all. No barriers. None of the emotional defenses that most people developed to protect themselves. "Where does someone like you come from?" he asked, awed.

Faith took his question literally. "Pine Hollow, Georgia."

"No, I mean—how can someone get to be twenty-four years old in this day and age and still be such a wide-eyed innocent?"

"Innocent?" She wasn't innocent. Far from it. But she thought she knew what he was saying. She lifted her chin, giving him the narrow-eyed glare she'd had a chance to perfect since Friday night. "You're calling me a hick, aren't you?"

"No, not at all."

"That's okay," she assured him, her expression melting into a sweet smile. "I am a hick. You can't hardly be from a place like Pine Hollow and
not
be a hick." The look in her eyes turned to one of steely determination. "But I don't intend to be one forever."

"No?" he murmured encouragingly, fascinated by the emotions that passed over her face. She didn't hide a thing.

"No." The word was emphatically stated. "As soon as I have a job I can count on, and enough money saved up—" she already had almost five thousand dollars safely socked away in a Los Angeles bank "—I'm going back to school. Actually, I'm already signed up. I'll be starting at UCLA when the fall semester begins. The woman in admissions said I can probably qualify for a student loan. Maybe even a grant of some kind. I've already sent off all the applications."

"For acting classes?" he asked, although he couldn't imagine it. She didn't strike him as being even remotely the dramatic type.

Faith laughed at that, flattered by the assumption. "Good heavens, no. I'm not nearly pretty enough to be an actress. I'm not the least bit talented, either," she added before Jack could respond to the statement about her looks.

It saved him from embarrassing himself with some stupid remark about the perfect luminescence of her lovely face.

"I'm more than happy to leave the acting classes to people like Sammie-Jo," Faith said. "She's the talented one." Her smile beamed with pride in her friend. "She's going to be a famous director some day."

"Not an actress?"

Faith shook her head, swallowing another meatball before she answered. "Sammie-Jo says acting is only a stepping-stone to bigger and better things."

"You and Sammie-Jo don't just work together at Flynn's. You're roommates, too, right?"

"Temporarily," she said, poking at a spring roll with her chopsticks. It was too big to pick up with the slender wooden implements and she couldn't figure out how she was supposed to cut it into smaller pieces without a knife. "I was only planning to stay with her a few days, or maybe a week, just until I could find a place of my own, but Miranda—that's her regular roommate, Miranda Muir—got a part in a movie. She's going to be on location for at least six weeks, so I'm staying with Sammie-Jo until she comes back. It works out perfectly for me," she told him, trying to saw through the spring roll with the edge of a chopstick, "because now I'll have a chance to learn my way around a little bit before I decide where I want to live."

"Do you have any ideas as to where that might be yet?" Jack asked, casually picking his spring roll up with his fingers.

Faith smiled and put the chopsticks down on the edge of her plate. "Something close to the campus, probably, since I don't have a car. I'd rather not get one if I don't have to, because of the expense and all. Although I guess I'll end up getting one eventually, anyway. Sammie-Jo says a car is—" She paused suddenly, eyeing him over the spring roll she held poised halfway to her mouth. "You must be a really terrific reporter," she said admiringly.

Jack cocked an eyebrow at her.

"You've got me sitting here, babbling away about myself like I've known you forever. I don't usually do that."

"You don't?"

"No, I'm not usually much of a talker. And I tend to be kind of cautious with people I don't know well." She bit into her spring roll, smiling blissfully as the new tastes exploded on her tongue. "Especially men," she said, after she'd chewed and swallowed. "But I feel very..."
Comfortable
had been what she was going to say but it was the wrong word. The way her nerves were humming had nothing to do with comfort. "...Safe," she decided. "I feel very safe with you. Isn't that strange?"

Jack snorted inelegantly.
Safe,
she said. When he was sitting there thinking about how much fun it would be if they were eating their dim sum back in his apartment. In his bed. Naked. Offhand, he could think of about a half-dozen more interesting uses for
hoi sin
sauce than wasting it as a dip for Chinese meatballs.

"Were you really a war correspondent?" Faith asked, breaking into his lascivious reverie.

Jake pulled his mind out of the gutter; Faith McCray wasn't the kind of woman you fantasized about smearing foodstuffs on. Not unless you were a complete degenerate.

"That's as good a label as any, I guess," he said reluctantly, abruptly wishing he had a cigarette. But he'd already had his limit for the day. "Mostly, I just call myself a reporter. I don't cover wars exclusively."

"What other kinds of things did—" Faith hesitated uncertainly. Sammie-Jo had said he
"used
to be some kind of newspaper reporter" but he'd spoken in the present tense. "What kinds of things do you cover?" she asked.

"Death, destruction, corruption, political upheaval and general mayhem." He shrugged and reached for his teacup, picking up the tiny, handleless cup between his thumb and index finger. "All the usual things that make the news every day. And it's
did
and
will do,
but not currently
doing,"
he added firmly, taking a sip of tea. "I'm on an extended leave from the paper at the moment."

"So you're not working on something for your paper now?" she said, referring to whatever was causing him to spend so much time hunched over the typewriter on his dining room table. She'd asked the question before, earlier, but maybe he'd answer it this time.

"No," he said shortly, closing off that avenue of discussion. He set his teacup down with a sharp click. "I'm not."

Faith pushed a dumpling around on her plate. She really should let it drop, she thought. It was obvious he didn't like to talk about himself or his work. Especially whatever he was working on now. But she was unbearably curious about him and his life. She wanted to know everything there was to know about him.

"Would I have read anything you've written?" she asked shyly, diffident but determined. "From before, I mean," she added quickly, before he could take offense, "from when you were writing for your paper?"

"In Pine Hollow, Georgia?" he said, lifting his eyebrow at her again.

Faith decided that she loved that eyebrow. It was endlessly fascinating, the way he used it to convey so many different moods and emotions. Right now it was teasing her.

"We have newspapers in Pine Hollow," she told him primly, pretending insult. "Some of our more high-tone residents even subscribe to the big city Atlanta papers. And the library usually has back copies of the
New York Times
and the
Washington Post
for those of us who can read them. I read all about the Gulf War. And Somalia. Bosnia. Haiti." Her voice lowered. Saddened. The playful light faded from her eyes. "Rwanda."

"You shouldn't have," Jack said harshly, his eyes suddenly gone cold and hard. "Someone like you should never have to read about things like that."

"No one should have to," Faith said softly, wishing she dared to reach out and touch him. He looked so alone, suddenly. So stern and aloof and... just alone. It was if he'd abruptly shut himself off behind a glass wall. "Were you in all those places?" she asked, compelled by something inside her to ask. "All the—" What was the term she'd heard used? "All the hot spots of the world?"

Jack nodded and reached for his tea cup again. "Starting all the way back in Vietnam."

"Vietnam? But that was so many years ago! Surely, you couldn't have been old enough for—"

"I was eighteen," Jack interrupted. "That was plenty old enough."

She didn't make the obvious statement about him not looking his age. Because when she looked into his eyes, he did. "It must have been awful for you."

He lifted his shoulders, shrugging it off. "Not as awful as it was for most of the guys who went," he said, absently turning his half-empty cup round and round against the table with his long, elegant fingers. "I knew my way around a newsroom because of the free-lance work I'd done for a couple of underground rags here in L.A., so I got hooked up with the
Stars and Stripes
even before I made it out of boot camp. That's the military's version of a newspaper," he told her. "As a reporter, nobody ever expected me to charge up some godforsaken hill with a rifle in my hands while the enemy lobbed artillery shells at my head."

"But you make it sound as if it were easy," she objected. "Reporters get shot at, too. They even get killed. I've seen it on the news."

His eyebrow lifted, conveying fatalism and wry humor in a single gesture. "Not on a regular basis."

Faith stared at him, unable to believe he could really be so cavalier about the risk of getting shot at. Or worse.

"It's just part of the job," Jack said, attempting to explain it to her. "You don't think about it. You can't." He lifted the cup to his lips and drained it. "Not if you want to get the story."

"And the story's important enough to risk your life for?"

"Sometimes it is. Most of the time." At least, he used to think so. "The thing is, you usually don't know what you've got until after you've got it, so you go after every story as if it's
the
story. And, anyway..." he shrugged again. "The story's what you're there for. It's the job."

Faith just shook her head in amazement. "Did you always want to be a reporter?"

"It's what I've always done," he said, neatly sidestepping the question. He put the empty cup down and picked up his chopsticks. "What about you?" he asked, taking the spotlight off himself and putting it back on her.

"Me?"

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" he teased.

"Well, I..."

"You must be planning to major in something over at UCLA."

She stared at him for a moment, the caution she'd laid claim to finally surfacing. He could see her wondering whether to trust him with information about her plans for the future.