Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) (24 page)

Where folks had once shunned Alex, calling him names to his face and insulting his family, they lined up to shake his hand and meet him for the first time all over again.

Many of the younger kids had never heard of the Brannons, so they were fully and typically star-struck. But the oldtimers, the perpetrators, sheepishly welcomed Alex back into the fold.

“This really couldn’t have gone better,” Brent said, returning with a paper plate heaped with spaghetti and potatoes. “Calls are coming in from all over the United States. The Red Cross had already sent out pleas for disaster relief aid to this area, and supplies have been trickling in. But your arrival has started a flood—I couldn’t resist that—of donations of food, water, clothes, generators, toys, building supplies. Alex, dude, I’m your agent, and I had no idea that you were this big of a star.”

“Hm,” Alex said, his noncommittal grunt drawing Brent’s attention from his tasty heap of carbohydrates.

“What’s the matter?” Faith asked, turning to follow Alex’s line of sight.

It was the redheaded kid. He sat on the opposite side of the gymnasium on a bleacher bench just as high and alone as Alex had been when she and Brent had climbed the seats to join him.

“Guys, excuse me,” Alex said before beginning his descent.

Faith tracked him through the crowd, watched him receive pats on the back, kisses on the cheek and distrustful or envious stares. Alex paid little attention to them as he made his way to the redheaded kid and sat down beside him.

Alex had used the last catastrophic flood to end his life in Booger Hollow. Smiling sadly, Faith wondered what he could be saying to someone who had actually lost a loved one in this latest one.

Whatever Alex said made the redheaded kid sob, which led Alex to offer the manly comfort of a squeeze to the back of the kid’s neck. Alex’s words eventually dried the boy’s tears, and even earned a slight smile, a high five and a neat little fist bump that left Faith feeling much better herself. Alex might not have wanted to come home, but he was certainly doing a good job of making himself at home.

* * *

“I like that,” Travis Gates said, studying the front cover of the most recent issue of
Newsweek
. “Movie Hero Turns Hometown Hero.”

“They used the whole piece, right down to the headline.” Faith was so proud of her first national news story that she kept it under her pillow—in plastic, to protect the fragile cover from the scratchiness of the overstarched army-issue pillowcases.

Two weeks after the first rain, and most of Booger Hollow was still living in the Lincoln High gymnasium. All the homes and businesses at the base of Kayford Mountain had suffered irreparable damage, and Kayford Estates was a total loss. One of the most striking and memorable photos accompanying Faith’s article had come from Brent’s cellphone, and it featured her father’s roof, which had been smashed into a pile of kindling that had been carried two miles from the rest of Kayford Estates.

Alex had lived up to the title of Faith’s article. He had rolled up his sleeves and helped salvage the town with the same enthusiasm and determination as any other native, perhaps working harder than anyone else since he’d come into the fight late and totally fresh.

“Like Rhett Butler in the middle of
Gone With the Wind
, when he decided to leave Scarlett and Melly and enlist in the Confederate army,” Faith had cooed when Alex told her that he’d decided to stay in Booger Hollow and help any way he could. “He knew the cause was lost, but—”

Alex had pulled her into his arms and had given her a kiss that rivaled the one Rhett had given Scarlett prior to his departure for the war. Unlike Scarlett, Faith had wanted more after melting into that passionate good-bye.

Brent had arranged for more comfortable accommodations in Whitesville for Alex and Faith, but both had refused his offer to be airlifted round-trip daily by a National Guard helicopter. Alex had spent the past several nights on a cot in the gym, the most unpleasant part of which was the fact that nightly it was moved between those of Emiline and Justus Wheeler, to the great amusement of old acquaintances like Travis Gates, who had stopped by Faith’s cot to compliment her on the article that had put the ordinary human face on Booger Hollow and all its heroes.

“It was him, wasn’t it.”

Alex sat facing Faith on her mother’s cot. His remark had been phrased as a question, but it had clearly been a statement of assumed fact. And Faith knew exactly what he referred to.

“It only happened once. I was home for Christmas break, my freshman year at NYU,” she began, holding his gaze. “I—”

“Never had a chance.”

Travis had circled back to return Faith’s copy of
Newsweek
, and his comment left Faith and Alex both confused.

“I never had a chance,” Travis reiterated. “I’d been crazy about this girl, but her heart went with you, Alex. I was there when she needed someone, and I’ll be there if she ever needs me again. But she was always yours. Always.”

Alex watched Travis return to the cots grouped under the scoreboard, where his wife Bethany, three sons, parents and in-laws awaited him. Travis had always treated Alex with respect and kindness. To be fair, Alex had to admit that Travis had attempted to befriend him, only to have been ignored because of the company he’d kept, specifically that of Leland Birch.

Growing up, Travis Gates had been the guy Alex had wanted to be, and Travis now lived the life that Alex had once thought was perfect.

He knew better now. He knew that Faith, wherever he found her, was the one thing that would make his life perfect. That would make it worth living. He watched Travis’ family swallow him up and head off to the cafeteria for lunch, and he envied him nothing, not even that he’d been the man to whom Faith once had turned for solace.

He had Faith now. That was all that mattered.

“Are you okay…with everything?” she asked hesitantly.

“No, I’m not.” He stared her dead in the eyes, his expression unreadable, his body language revealing nothing.

“Alex, it was a long time ago, and it never would have happened if—”

“If I hadn’t been so stupid,” he finished for her.

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

He scooted off Emiline’s cot and onto his knees between Faith’s. “What were you going to say?”

“I…shoot…” It was so difficult to remember with Alex’s mouth so close to hers, his hands resting at her hips.

“Let’s get married,” he said simply. “Today. Right now.”

Her fingers splayed, her arms bent at her sides, Faith opened her mouth and her lungs and filled the gym with a sound that rang through the entire Lincoln High school campus. Almost as quickly as Faith’s scream, the news of Alex’s proposal traveled from cot to cot until it raced out the doors and through several classrooms, where students had grudgingly returned after almost two weeks of flood vacation.

By the time Faith had composed herself, it seemed that all of Booger Hollow was awaiting her answer.

Faith cleared her throat in the unnatural silence of the gym. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But what did you ask me?”

Alex cleared his throat, camouflaging his sudden nerves with a dry chuckle. “Faith Wheeler,” he started, “will you marry me?”

“It depends,” she replied, earning a chorus of groans from onlookers. “Who are you? Are you the man I love, or are you the Hollywood fiction?”

“My name…I’m…” He had to clear his throat again, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t dislodge the uncomfortable lump of emotion threatening to close his windpipe.

Faith took his hands and held them to her heart.

“I’m Alexander Orrin Brannon,” he said, speaking to her as though they were the only two people in the world. “I’m from Booger Hollow, West Virginia, and I’m in love with you, Faith Wheeler. I love you, and I want to spend today, tonight, tomorrow and the rest of forever with you. Will you marry me?”

Faith couldn’t work words out just yet, so she nodded until she could whisper her acceptance in his ear as he embraced her, lifting her off her cot.

Applause traveled through the gymnasium, and Red Irv’s eardrum-stinging stadium whistle increased the intensity of cheering and clapping.

“Hold on, now, wait a damn minute,” Justus Wheeler demanded, emerging from the crowd gathered around his family’s cots. “You can’t marry my Faith.”

“Oh yes, he can, Daddy,” Faith said decisively. Her eyes roamed the crowd hoping to spot her mother and enlist her support.

Wagging a finger at Alex, Justus directed his next words to him. “I told you ten years ago that you weren’t to get involved with my little girl!”

Faith’s eyes widened in surprise; the muscles in Alex’s jaw hardened. Emiline Wheeler’s right hand went nervously to her throat. Onlookers scattered, but they didn’t go far.

“Daddy…” Faith started softly, looking from her father to Alex and back again. “Alex…What…?”

Hundreds of people in the gym managed to keep totally silent as they watched a real-life drama played out before them.

“Do you want to tell her, or should I?” Alex said, his gaze fixed on Justus.

“Somebody better tell me what the hell you two are talking about!” Faith demanded.

“What’s done is done, baby girl,” Justus insisted. “We need to deal with the here and now, not the—”

“Tell her, Justus,” Emiline Wheeler said firmly. “Tell her, or I will.”

Justus, his arms folded across his chest, his shoulders hunched in consternation, looked every bit the willful child refusing to open his mouth for lima beans.

Desperate for answers, Faith appealed to her mother. “Mama, what’s going on?”

“Alexander,” she began quietly, “Alex,” she corrected, tipping her head toward him, “came to the house one day while you were at school.”

Faith’s head whipped back toward Alex, who stared resolutely at Justus, a tiny muscle flexing at the hinge of his jaw.

“He asked to speak with me and your father,” Emiline continued. “He wanted permission to take you to a matinee.”

“
Armageddon
,” Justus grunted. “I got your Armageddon, all right. Bruce Willis had it right. You don’t let just anybody come after your baby girl.”

“Your father…” Emiline cleared her throat, brought a hooked finger to her eye to wipe away a tear. “Your father told Alex that he wasn’t to ever set foot on our property again. And that he was to stay away from you, Faith.”

Faith knew her parents well enough to know that Emiline had presented the blandest, most watered-down version of what her fiery-tempered father had likely said to Alex. “When was this?” she asked.

Emiline’s face collapsed in pain. “Two weeks before the last big flood.”

Framing his neck in her hands, Faith forced Alex’s gaze from her father to her. Too many emotions—anger, frustration, pride, love, relief—moved through her, and she took him tightly in her arms. “You didn’t leave because you hated this town,” she whispered. “You left because you loved me.” She balled her hands and gave him a light punch. “If you’d only waited, you could have come with me! You could have—”

“Talk about the melodrama of youth,” he said, pulling her away just enough to see her face. “Your father told me that I had no chance with you, that I had nothing to offer you. He said that you deserved better than Alexander Brannon.”

“She did!” Justus grunted defiantly.

“I didn’t want to be the wedge that drove you further from your parents back then, Faith,” Alex said. “You were already fighting with them over college.”

“She didn’t listen to us about that, either!” Justus pointed out.

Faith would have turned on her father if Alex hadn’t intervened.

“All I had back then was Faith, and when you told me that I couldn’t see her…” Alex winced, reliving the pain of that moment. “I wanted to die. So I did. Faith brought me back to life. I thought I was being respectful back then by asking for your permission to date your daughter, but Faith no longer lives under your roof, and she doesn’t need your permission to get married. I won’t ask you for her hand because it’s no longer yours to give. I won’t ask for your blessing, either, because I don’t want it if you can’t give it with a free and willing heart. I love your daughter, Mr. Wheeler. Nothing means more to me than her happiness, and I’m gonna make damn sure that I spend the rest of my life making her happy. Do we have your blessing?”

Justus cycled through a series of defiant sputterings and gesticulations that left a few spectators chuckling.

“He came back from the dead for her,” Red Irv called out. “Give em your blessing, you old goat!”

“Shut your ass up, Red!” Justus responded angrily. “When you get a little girl, then you can come up on me, telling me what’s best—”

“Justus, stop it!” Weeping openly, Emiline shifted her gaze from her daughter’s hurt to her husband’s anger, and then to the love Alex bestowed upon her daughter. “Don’t make the same mistake twice, Jus. We might lose both of them this time.”

“Tell me one thing, Alex,” Justus said. “Do you have a house?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “I want to turn it into a home.”

“How many bedrooms?”

“I’ve got a four-bedroom, six-and-a-half bath A-frame on five acres in Fawnskin, California. Big Bear Lake is in my front yard, the San Bernardino mountains surround me and it rarely rains. It’s all paid for.”

“Hold on, you said it’s all paid for?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re thirty years old and you don’t have a mortgage,” Justus said.

“Alex makes a good living,” Faith added. “He invests wisely.”

“Got your own house at thirty,” Justus said, appreciation mingling with his anger and annoyance. “You want that blessing in writing, or will a handshake do?”

Epilogue

“Who’s this?”

“You know who this is,” Faith said, smiling. She ran her fingers through the overlong honey curls of the three-year-old at her hip. “That’s Daddy.”

“Who’s this?” the child asked, moving his finger from the man in the picture to the woman he held in his arms.

“I don’t know,” Faith said, tapping her chin. “But she looks familiar, doesn’t she?”

The little boy rolled his big hazel eyes in exaggerated circles. “That’s you, Mama. Only not so fat as you are now.”

“Thanks,” Faith laughed, giving him a playful shove. “This isn’t fat.” She used both hands to trace the massive swell of her belly, where her second child currently resided. “This is your baby brother or sister.”

Brent Justus Brannon, never particularly enthused about talk of his impending sibling, turned back to the framed photo propped on the fireplace mantel. “Where am I?”

Faith pointed to the photo in which her abdomen was pressed to Alex’s. “You’re still in there.”

“I’m a flood baby!” B.J. announced proudly.

B.J. had been conceived shortly after Alex’s proposal, most likely during one of his and Faith’s secret trysts in the Lincoln High audiovisual room. Or one of the music practice rooms. Or on the floor of the dance studio…Faith couldn’t be exactly sure which location had been the scene of the crime, as it were. After a quick ceremony performed in the school auditorium by Mayor Blair and a reception catered by Red Irv in the cafeteria, the whole town had danced the night away in the gym to tunes spun by Herman Voss’ grandson, a right little DJ in the making.

In between assisting with Booger Hollow’s recovery efforts, Faith and Alex had honeymooned all over the school. Magda Pierson had sent Daiyu Lin to Dorothy to photograph Zander Baron’s impromptu nuptials, and the photo Faith now looked at with her son was her favorite, even though it had nothing to do with the marriage ceremony.

Daiyu had been shadowing them as they had participated in a salvage effort to recover what could be rescued from Red Irv’s Diner. Faith’s hair was a bush, mud had dried on her face, hands and rain slicker. Alex’s hair, dark with floodwater, hung in his face. His jeans and boots were caked with mud and one of the sleeves of his shirt had been torn by a piece of digging equipment, but neither figure in the photo seemed to see anything other than the beauty of the other.

Belly to belly and hips to hips, they stood on high ground, Kayford mountain hazy in the background, the receding water line sharp and ugly in the foreground. Their hands told a more complete story than any words could. Alex held both of Faith’s in his, pressing his lips to one while pressing the other to his heart. Faith gazed at him, her eyes bright and lovely, her smile beatific.

Daiyu had captured their ooze, and the photo was displayed prominently in their home in Fawnskin.

“Can we call Daddy?” B.J. asked.

“Absolutely.”

Faith waddled into the kitchen, B.J. on her heels. He hopped onto a tall stool near the phone stand while Faith dialed the number Alex had given them.

Alex answered on the first ring. “Is it time?”

“No, honey,” Faith smiled, putting him on speaker. “B.J. just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Hi, Daddy!” he piped. “Where are you?”

“I’m in Oahu, Hawaii, baby. I filmed a scene where I got to fight with a dragon.”

“A real dragon?”

“A computer dragon,” Alex said. “I did all my sword fighting and the computer guys will put the dragon in later.”

“Okay, Dad, bye!” And with that, B.J. scurried off into the great room.

“How are you, honey?” Alex asked. “Any action on number two?”

“I saw the doctor this morning. I’m still only two centimeters dilated, but nothing else is going on. I’m not having this baby until you get back, so quit thinking you’re going to get out of the delivery.”

“I’m not trying to—”

“Alex, you vomited twice and passed out once when B.J. was being born,” Faith said. “I know you’re not looking forward to the big show. Why else would you take off so close to my due date to do location shots so far away?”

“Say the word, and I’m home,” he challenged.

“You’re in the middle of the ocean,” Faith laughed. “You’re just gonna pick up and pack up and come running back to me if I tell you to?”

“Not if you tell me,” Alex clarified. “But if you ask me.”

“Alex, darling,” she started, “will you please come home to your big ol’ wife and one and a half children?”

There was no answer.

“Alex?”

Still no response, only muffled voices from the other side of the world.

“Alex!”

As Faith listened, the voices became sharper. “Damn it, he’s doing it again!” wailed a male voice with a distinct accent.

“Where’s he gone?” asked an American voice.

“Hell if I know. Ask
him
, if you can catch him this time!”

“I think he’s going home,” offered a faint female voice.

“For cripes’ sake, not again!” screamed the native accent. “That’s the second time since we started filming!”

Laughing so hard she had to hold her belly, Faith leaned against a countertop. Her laughter became a gasp of pain when a contraction seized her. It wasn’t the pleasant, gentle tightening and release of a Braxton-Hicks, but the real deal. Once it passed, she disconnected the phone and glanced at the clock. The second one didn’t hit her until fifteen minutes later, with a third coming fifteen minutes after that.

Faith calmly called her obstetrician before calling Brent, who immediately went into panic mode.

“We’ve got to get Alex back here,” he said. “And we’ve got to get someone to keep B.J. Damn it, I wish I still had the Fleming Viper. It’ll take me two hours to get to you, Faith.”

“Brent, it’s under control,” Faith assured him. “Grover Dylan is on-call for B.J., and I’ll meet Alex at the hospital.”

“Meet—? What?”

“Alex is on his way,” she said. “He’ll probably get here before you do. He left the island about an hour ago.”

“He walked off the set?”

“Yep.”

“Again?” Brent growled.

“Yep.”

“Why this time?”

“For the same reason he does it every time.” Faith caressed her belly, and closed her eyes to better hear the faint music of her son singing to himself as he played with his toy dragons. “Because he loves me.”