32

Jason awoke in Brenda’s bed and felt Serena standing in the room with them, behind him.

No. It was absurd. She couldn’t be here. Not here in Brenda’s apartment with the front door bolted. Not now.

“Jason, what’s wrong?” Brenda’s hands moved to his shoulders. Her fingertips flamed on his skin.

Serena’s eyes, the force of her character, her intellect always a step ahead of him—she was there.

Jason took his eyes off Brenda and looked over his shoulder.

“What is it, Jason?”

He rolled away from her.

Brenda came up on one elbow and stroked his head with her other hand. “Did I do something wrong?”

He turned to her. She’d wanted the lights off. Her modesty made her even lovelier to him. He’d insisted on leaving the lights on so he could see what he took in now in the softer light coming through the window. The green of her eyes, lashes long and flickering. Her skin luminescent. Just below her collarbone a single mole like a pinpoint of chocolate in cream.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said. “You’re perfect.”

She lifted the sheet, and her face flushed delicately. “Then what’s wrong?”

“I just . . .”

Her hair was tousled, pressed and combed by his own fingers. He let his hand rise to it, allowed his fingertips the pleasure of touching it.

She took that hand, kissed the palm, held it to her cheek. “It’s okay, Jason. Whatever it is. We’ll make it okay.”

Brenda shifted toward him and brought his arm around her.

But Serena’s presence still loomed. In spite of Brenda’s skin on his, her citrus fragrance in his nostrils, the taste of her on his lips, he sensed Serena here, haunting him. He told himself that what had happened to their marriage was not his fault. It was hers. Serena had done this herself. The proof wasn’t debatable. Forget her denials. She had cheated on him.

Brenda lifted her face to him. “I wish it could always be like this.”

He stroked her shoulder, smooth like a china cup. “Me too.”

“Really? I’m not just . . . you know.”

“Of course not.” He kissed her forehead.

“There’s a lot of complications.”

“Yeah.”

“But we can make it okay, Jason. Can’t we?”

“Sure we can.”

Serena argued against it. Silently, invisibly, her presence debated him as forcefully as she would if her legal mind could voice its argument here and now. Her first exhibit would be their marriage license. She would call every witness who had sat through their ceremony. Before a judge, she would repeat the vows they’d taken. Till death do us part. Till death.

But when she took a lover, she’d put to death the marriage itself. That was the death that parted them. She’d surrendered her rights as a wife when her arms went around Pete Rossi. Jason had evidence. After what she’d done, she had no right to interrupt this moment of happiness.

He turned to Brenda. “We can make it work. We just have to be careful.”

Close now, her hot breath mingled with his. “We’ll be careful. No one will know.”

“They can’t know. I’d be fired. I’m already on shaky ground.”

She backed away an inch. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind. It’s not important.”

“Of course it’s important. It’s your career.”

Across the room, the clothes he’d worn all day at the office were draped over a chair. From the floor next to the chair, his shoes gleamed dimly.

Brenda’s hand on his chest brought him back. “What do you mean about the shaky ground?”

He sighed. “Let’s not get into it. Okay?”

Thumping steps elsewhere in the building drew closer and faded away. At any hour of day or night in LA, someone was always moving around and disturbing the peace. He looked at his watch. The display read 2:30.

“Don’t go. I won’t ask any more questions about work. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s just this city. Something’s always grinding away out there. It never stops. I was just thinking it would be great to get away.”

“You were?” Brenda reached for a T-shirt. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot.” She sat up in bed and slipped into the shirt. “Ever since that kiss in your office, I’ve been thinking if only we could get away together. Really away, not hiding around like this. Not just for a few days, either.” She reached out and nudged his shoulder. “Where would you go? If we could go anywhere in the world?”

Jason put his hands behind his head. “Anywhere?”

“If you had the whole world. Where?”

Traffic noise filtered through the window. Two cars shooting past on the street outside Brenda’s apartment, a third. Where could people be going at two thirty in the morning? “What’s the opposite of LA?”

Brenda sat up straighter. She tapped at her knees. “Opposite of LA. Let’s see. Norway?”

“Maybe not that opposite. I don’t mind warm weather.” The Caribbean meant Serena. Not there. “Ever been to the South Pacific?”

“Like Tahiti? Mmm. Sounds great. I’d go there with you. How about the Far East? Would you like to go to Japan and see pagodas? Or China?”

“Sure. After the South Pacific. We could rent a sailboat down there, just go from island to island. There’s thousands of them. Fiji. Tahiti. Tonga. Bora Bora. I’ll bet there’s islands where there’s nobody at all. It could be just you and me on the beach.”

“And then, when we want some company, we could jump on a plane and go someplace until we got tired of other people again. Then where would we go?”

“Africa. We’d go on a safari.”

“I don’t want to shoot anything.”

“A photo safari. Just take pictures. They have guys that’ll drive you around and show you the lions and rhinos. But not like in a zoo, where they’re cooped up. Out where you can see them hunt and see the herds of wildebeest. Stuff like that.”

Brenda hugged her knees close. “You know I’ve never even been outside the US?”

“Not even Mexico or Canada?”

“Not even Hawaii or Alaska.”

Jason stroked her ankle. “We’ll have to change that. By the time we’re done, the US will be just another place in a big world.”

She stared at him, eyes gone distant. For a moment, the playfulness disappeared. Those lips drew straight and her brow hardened.

Jason sat up. “What is it?”

“What? Nothing. Nothing.”

And she was back, the Brenda he knew, the forehead smooth and lips curled up at their edges.

“For a second there you were a million miles away.”

Her eyes held on him. It was as if she was thinking of how to answer him. “It’s all too good to be true. You here, with me. This talk about traveling together. I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“That this won’t last. That it won’t come true.” She eased down beside him and brought her arm across him, her face pressed to his shoulder.

“Don’t be afraid. I’ll make it work. We’ll make it work. Other people have done it.”

She spoke into his shoulder, her hair tickling his chin. “It’s not just the work thing. I can get another job.”

“What is it, then?”

“You’ve got your wife to deal with. . . .”

He buried his face in her hair, inhaled, fought the presence in the room. “I know. You deserve better.”

She shook her head to clear her hair away and brought her face up to him. Her eyes met his. “I told you, you’re all I’ve wanted since I first saw you. No one else measured up.”

The silence in the room weighed on Jason. He stroked the skin of her arm, put his hand to her face. She kissed it. He said, “I’m going to end it with her. She ended it. I’ll make it legal.” Applying the word to Serena gave him a strange satisfaction.

“You’ll do that?” She squeezed even closer to him.

“Honey, I’ll do a lot more than that for you. Just wait and see.”