Danielle Steel: Passion's Promise

“No. Because I want to. You may not have noticed it yet but I happen to care what happens to you. You might even say that I love you.”

“I love you too … but I want you to leave me alone.”

“If I do, will you call me?”

“Yes, in a while. When I get it together a little. I guess in my heart I knew it was over the day he walked out of the law library at the hearing. That’s when it should have been over. But neither of us had the guts to let go. I didn’t anyway. And the bitch of it is that I still love him.”

“He loves you too or he wouldn’t have done what he did yesterday. I think he did it because be loves you.”

She stood in silence and turned away from him then, so he couldn’t see her face. “Yeah, and all I have to do now is learn to live with it.”

“Well, if you need someone to talk to … yell. I’ll come running.”

“You always do.” She turned, and a small smile appeared on her lips and then vanished.

He walked to the door with bent shoulders, carrying his valise from their trip, his jacket and coat slung over his back. He turned at the door and knew for only the briefest of seconds how Luke must have felt the day before when he sent her away.

“Take it easy.”

“Yeah. You too.”

He nodded and the door shut gently behind him.

She was drunk day and night for five weeks. Even the cleaning woman stopped coming, and she had sent her secretary away the first week. She was alone with her empty bottles, and plates caked with half-eaten food, wearing the same filthy robe. Only the delivery boy from the liquor store was a regular “visitor” anymore. He would ring twice and deposit the bag outside her door.

Alejandro didn’t call her till the news hit the papers. He had to call then. He had to know how she was. She was drunk when he called, and he told her he’d be right down. He took a cab, terrified she would see the papers before his arrival. But when he got to her door, he saw five weeks of newspapers unread and stacked in the foyer. He was stunned by the condition of what had once been her home. Now it looked like a barnyard … bottles … filth … plates … overflowing ashtrays … chaos and disorder. And Kezia. She didn’t even look like the same girl. She was tear-stained, reeling, and drunk. But she still didn’t know.

He sobered her up long enough to tell her. As best he could. But after her fourth cup of coffee, and opening the windows for air, the headlines did it for him, as her eyes scanned the type. She looked up into his face, and he knew that she understood. It couldn’t get much worse for her now. It already had.

Luke was dead. Stabbed on the yard, so they said. “A racial disturbance … well-known prison agitator, Lucas Johns….” His sister had claimed the body, and the funeral was being held in Bakersfield the day Kezia was reading the news. It didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything. Funerals weren’t Luke’s style. Neither were sisters. He had never even mentioned her to Kezia. The only thing that mattered was that he was gone.

“Do you know when he died, Alejandro?” She still sounded drunk, but he knew she was coherent.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“No, I don’t know exactly. I guess I could find out.”

“I already know. He died in court at the hearing. They killed him. But that day, the day he really died, he died beautiful and proud and strong. He walked into that hearing like a man. What they did to him after that is on their hands.”

“I suppose you’re right” Tears had begun to stream down his face. For what had happened to Luke. For what had happened to her. She was already as dead as Lucas, in her own way. Drunk, dirty, sick, tired, ravaged by memories, and now his death. He remembered that day in the law library, before Lucas walked into the hearing. She was right, he had walked tall and proud, and she had been so sure, so powerful beside him. They had had something he’d never seen before. And now, one was dead, and the other was dying. It made him feel sick. It was all like living a nightmare; his best friend was dead and he was in love with Luke’s woman. And there was no way he could tell her now. Not now that Lucas was dead.

“Don’t cry, Alejandro.” She smoothed a hand across his cheeks to wipe off the tears, and then ran a hand over his hair. “Please don’t cry.” But he was crying for himself as much as for them, and she couldn’t know that. She tilted his face up to hers then, and held him so gently he hardly felt her hands on his shoulders. She looked into his eyes, and then slowly, quietly, she bent over and kissed him, carefully, on the mouth. “The funny thing is that I love you too. It’s really very confusing. In fact I’ve loved you for a very long time. Isn’t that strange?”

She was still more than a little bit drunk and he didn’t know what to say. Maybe she had finally gone crazy from the constant shocks and the grief. Maybe she was mad now. Or perhaps he was. Maybe she hadn’t even kissed him … maybe he was only dreaming.

“Alejandro, I love you.”

“Kezia?” Her name felt strange on his lips. She was Luke’s. And Luke was dead now. But how could Luke be dead? And how could she love them both? It was all so totally crazy. “Kezia?”

“You heard me. I love you. As in, I’m in love with you.”

He looked at her for what seemed like a very long time, the tears still wet on his cheeks.

“I love you too. I loved you the first day he brought you up to meet me. But I never thought … I just …”

“I never thought either. It’s like all the stuff you read in bad novels. And it’s very, very confusing.” She led him to the couch and sat down beside him, leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

“It’s just as confusing for me.” He watched her as she sat there.

“Then why don’t we leave each other alone for a While?”

“So you can drink yourself to death a little faster?”

His voice was suddenly loud and bitter in the quiet room. She had shown him everything he wanted, but she wanted to destroy it before she would give it to him. What a horrible joke.

“No. So I can think.”

“No drinking?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Then get fucked, lady. Just get fucked!” He was on his feet and shouting. “I don’t need to fall in love with you to watch you fucking die! To watch you commit suicide like some pathetic skid-row alcoholic. If that’s what you plan to do with your life, then leave me alone! Oh God, Kezia … God damn you!” He pulled her to her feet and shook her until she felt the world shake under her, and she had to protest.

“Stop it! Leave me alone!”

“I love you! Don’t you understand that?”

“No. I don’t understand that. I don’t understand anything anymore. I love you too. So fucking what? We get attached to each other and love each other and need each other and then the sky falls in all over again? Who needs it, goddamn you … who fucking needs it?”

“I do. I need you.”

“Okay, Alejandro, okay … and now will you do me a favor and just leave me alone? Please?” Her voice was trembling and there were tears in her eyes again.

“Okay, baby. It’s up to you now.”

The door closed quietly behind him, and five minutes later there was the sound of shattering glass. She had taken the newspaper with the ugly article on the front page and thrown it at the window with such force that it had gone through the glass.

“Fuck you, world! Go to hell!”

Chapter 33

At the end of that week, Alejandro saw the same picture as Edward. Edward saw it with pain, Alejandro with shock. Edward had known. Women’s Wear carried it too. Kezia Saint Martin boarding a plane for Geneva. “For a rest from the rigors of the social season.” The papers already seemed to have forgotten her association with Lucas. How quickly people forget.