Danielle Steel - Passion's Promise

“Or get saved. There’s always the chance that they’d find a lifeboat, or wash up on an island paradise. How about that for a surprise?”

But Kezia was thinking of something else. It was minutes before she spoke again, her eyes closed, her head resting on the back of the chair. She sounded very tired, and almost old. She wasn’t entirely sure Luke understood. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe no outsider could. “When I was twenty-one, I wanted to have a life of my own. So I tried to get a job at the Times. I swore to Edward that I could pull it off, that no one would bother me, that I wouldn’t disgrace my name, all that bullshit. I lasted for seventeen workdays, and I almost had a nervous breakdown. I heard every joke, was the butt of every kind of hostility, curiosity, envy and obscenity. They even had paparazzi in the ladies’ room when I had to pee. It amused them to hire me and watch the fun. And I tried, Luke, I really tried, but there was no way I could stick with it. They didn’t want me. They wanted my fancy name and then to try and bring me down, just for kicks, to see if I was human too. I never came out in the open again. That was the last job anyone knew about, the last glimpse of the real me that the world out there had. From then on it was all underground, with pseudonyms, hiding behind agents, and … well, it’s all been just the way it was when I met you. And this is the first time I’ve taken a chance on being found out.”

“Why did you?”

“Maybe I had to. But as far as anyone knows, I go to all the right parties, am on all the right committees, vacation in all the right places, know all the right people, and everyone thinks I’m lazy as hell. I have a reputation for partying all night and sleeping till three in the afternoon.”

“And don’t you?” He couldn’t suppress a grin.

“No, I do not!” She wasn’t amused, she was angry. “I work my bloody ass off, as a matter of fact. I take every decent article I can get, and I have a good name in my field. You don’t get that by sleeping till three.”

“And that doesn’t fit with all the ‘right’ people? Writing isn’t ‘right’ either?”

“Of course not. It’s not respectable. Not for me. I’m supposed to be looking for a husband and having my hair done, not snooping around prisons in Mississippi.”

“Or ex-cons in Chicago.” There was a hint of sadness in his eyes. She had made it all so clear now.

“Their objection would not be to whom I write about, it would be the fact that I’m betraying my heritage.”

“That again. Jesus, Kezia, isn’t that notion a little out-of-date? A lot of your kind of people work.”

“Yes, but not like this. Not for real. And … there’s more.”

“I figured that much.” He lit another cigarette and waited, and was surprised when she smiled.

“Aside from everything else, I’m a traitor. Have you ever read the Martin Hallam column? It’s syndicated so you might have seen it.”

He nodded.

“Well, I write that. I started it as a kind of a fun thing, but it worked, and …” She shrugged and threw up her hands as he started to laugh.

“You mean you write that crazy goddamn column?”

She nodded, grinning sheepishly.

“And you rat on all your fancy friends like that?”

She nodded again. “They lap it up. They just don’t know that I’m the one who writes it. And to tell you the truth, in the last couple of years it’s gotten to be a drag.”

“Talk about being a traitor! And no one suspects it’s you?”

“Nope. No one ever has. They don’t even know it’s written by a woman. They just accept it. Even my editor doesn’t know who writes it. Everything goes through my agent, and of course I’m listed as K. S. Miller on the agency roster.”

“Lady, you amaze me.” Now he looked stunned.

“Sometimes I even amaze myself.” It was a moment of light-hearted laughter after the painful start of the conversation.

“I’ll say one thing, you certainly keep yourself busy. The K. S. Miller articles, the Hallam column, and your ‘fancy life.’ And no one even suspects?” He seemed dubious.

“No. And that part hasn’t been easy. That’s why I panicked at the idea of interviewing you. I thought you might have seen my photograph somewhere, and would recognize me, as me, not as ‘Kate Miller’ obviously. All it would take to blow my whole trip would be one person seeing me at the wrong place at the wrong time, and zap, the whole house of cards would go down. And the truth of it is that the writing part of my life, the serious work, is the only part I respect. I won’t jeopardize that for anyone, or anything.”

“But you did. You interviewed me. Why?”

“I told you. I had to. And I was curious, too. I liked your book. And my agent pressured me. He was right, of course. I can’t go on hiding forever if I want a serious literary career. There are times when I’ll have to take chances.”

“You took a big one.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Are you sorry?” He wanted an honest answer.

“No. I’m glad.” They smiled at each other again, and she sighed.

“Kezia, what if you told the world, that world, to go screw, and just openly did what you want for a change? Couldn’t you at least be K. S. Miller out front?”

“How? Look at the stink it would make, what they’d say in the papers. Besides, it would muddy the waters. People would be requesting articles not because of K. S. Miller, but because of Kezia Saint Martin. I’d be back where I was eight years ago, as a gofer on the Times. And my aunt would have fits, and my trustee would be heartbroken, and I’d feel as though I had betrayed everyone who came before me.”

“For chrissake, Kezia. All those people are dead, or as good as.”

“The traditions aren’t. They live on.”

“And all on your shoulders, is that it? You have the sole responsibility of holding up the world? Don’t you realize how insane that is? This isn’t Victorian England, and Jesus, that’s your life you’re hiding in the closet. Yours, one shot at it and it’s s gone. If you respect what you’re doing, why not take your chances, drag it out of the closet and live it with pride? Or is it that you’re too fucking scared?” His eyes burned holes in hers.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never felt I had the choice.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. You always have a choice. About anything you do. Maybe you don’t want a choice. Maybe you’d rather hide like a neurotic and live ten different screwed-up lives. It doesn’t look worth a damn to me though, lady, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Maybe it isn’t It doesn’t look like much to me either right now. But what you don’t understand is the matter of duty, obligation, tradition.”

“Duty to whom? What about yourself, dammit? Didn’t you ever think of that? Do you want to sit around alone here for the rest of your life, writing in secret, and then going out to those asinine parties with that faggoty asshole?” He stopped suddenly and she frowned.

“What faggoty asshole?”

“The one I saw you with in the paper.”

“You mean you knew?”

He eyed her squarely and nodded. “I knew.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her eyes blazed for a moment. She had let him so far into the inner sanctum of her life, a traitor already?

“How could I tell you? ‘Hey, lady, before you do the next interview I’d like to tell you that I know your real name because I read about you in the paper’? So what? And I figured that you’d tell me when you were ready to, or maybe never. But if I slapped you in the face with it, you’d have run like the devil and I didn’t want that.”

“Why? Afraid I might not write the article? Don’t worry, they’d have sent someone else out to do it. You wouldn’t have lost your story.” She almost sneered at him, and he grabbed her arm so suddenly it stunned her.