busy as she was spreading a slice of Jerome’s famous sourdough bread with half a pound of butter. These days, if she wasn’t nauseous, she was hungry, but Jack said not to mind the calories, she was too skinny as it was, and she cheerfully took him at his word. She was buttering her second slice when the door swung wide, as wide as her radiant smile when she spotted a familiar man enter the diner, his black wool hat covered with new-fallen snow.
“Hey, Faraday,” she called with a sigh of relief. “Over here.”
Hood pulled low, his parka snow speckled, he looked like a veritable snowman. But standing at the diner door to shake free of the snow, he made no move to greet her. Something about the way his hands toyed with his hat…
Why, it wasn’t Jack at all! It was Ned Pickens, his eyes bloodshot and bleary. Carefully, quietly, Valetta placed her spoon on the table, cast her heavily lashed, gray eyes down and folded her hands. Ned’s footsteps were heavy as he approached the booth, his long shadow enveloping her like a shroud. He was so close she could smell the wet wool of his parka, but steadfastly, she refused to meet his eyes. If she didn’t, she would not have to listen to the terrible news she knew he had come to deliver. Something about an accident… black ice…Jack’s car…
No, she thought, floating somewhere above the maelstrom, somewhere she would not have to listen to Ned’s dreadful sobs, not have to measure a grief that would never know a yardstick, not hear the absolute silence of the diner, not hear the sound of time standing still.
Oh, Jack. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to end. We had a story to tell, a child to raise, an old age to share.
Oh, Jack, she thought, the air suddenly stifling, her head whirling as the weight of her bleak future bore down on her, and bore her down.
Oh, Jack, I loved you so much!
Chapter One
Nine Years Later
He felt, as he turned the handle, that all things strange and wonderful lay behind the door. That by crossing the threshold, he would be leaving the familiar and true, begin marching down a road from which he would not return. So whimsical, and so unlike him, but he knew what he felt and it was uncomfortable, a faint prickling at the back of his neck that would not be ignored. Maybe it was the peremptory way he’d been summoned, but when he turned the brass handle, a thing he’d done a thousand times before, its carved impress seemed suddenly cold and oily beneath his palm.
The heavy, ornate mahogany door opened onto a blaze of sunlight that rendered him temporarily blind. He was used to that, too, and took a moment to adjust his eyes. He knew she did it on purpose, set her massive antique desk just that way against a bank of windows, to impress people, to send the not-so-subtle message that her visitor was entering holy ground. Hence her refusal to hang venetians, shades, or even a curtain, not even on the sunniest day, and it could be very sunny in Los Angeles. Even the air-conditioned penthouse floor of the Keane Tower, where the publisher of the world’s largest newspaper, the L.A. Connection, presided, was not immune to the solar glare. But Alexis Keane was a stubborn woman.
When his eyes adjusted, he crossed the few yards to the desk where she was huddled, his footsteps muffled by the thick Aubusson carpet that spanned the room. Dwarfed by the huge stack of newspapers that were delivered every day, from every part of the country that counted, Alexis Keane appeared to be so involved in her reading that she didn’t hear him enter. She liked to say that although she might not read every line, no one could fault her for not being on top of the news. But that was her job, the only thing she lived for, and she did it well, as everyone knew.
The sun blazing in through her huge picture window created the effect of a halo to enhance her even more. At least, he assumed, that’s what she hoped. If only Alexis knew, he thought, as he coughed lightly, it made her look small and gnomelike. But damned if he was going to tell her. There were many things he would not tell her—had not told her—over the two decades they had worked together. And there were things she did not want him to tell her. There were moments when a person in her position needed to be able to say I didn’t know, and he accommodated her.
Right now, though, the small, beady brown eyes he had tracked for twenty years suddenly seemed unfamiliar. They were wary when they had no reason to be. The world was quiet this morning—no battles, no 19, no mysterious outbreak of disease—and everyone in the news business knew that sometimes no news really was good news, that sometimes it was all right for the newsroom to sit back and relax for a few hours. It wouldn’t last. So he was surprised to detect the flash of worry on her face, fleeting and gone in an instant. But he was not mistaken. She paid him well not to make those sorts of mistakes.
“Lincoln.”
Her greeting was curt, aimed at the chair he stood beside, rather than his face.
Lincoln Cameron sat, his legs hooked at the knees, his long body unsuited to even the largest leather conference chair.
“Alexis.”
His salute was brief. He waited quietly while she shifted the newspapers into various sundry piles.
“You need a shave,” she said, taking note of his heavy beard.
Lincoln rubbed his cheeks with his big, bony hand. “Then I guess it’s five o’clock,” he said with a faint smile.
She was buying time. Fine. He’d seen her do it before, when the news was bad. But her voice, gravelly and low, seemed to factor newly to his ears. He’d heard rumors…and had treated them as such. The office grapevine was a phenomenon to be scrupulously ignored, but suddenly he wondered if there wasn’t some truth to the rumors. Now he was sitting there observing the sickly green hue of her skin, the sallow yellow tinge of her watery eyes as they avoided his, the simple fact that she did not rise to greet him when she was known for her impeccable manners…. He watched as she shook her head, amused as she looked him over.
“Another custom-made Armani?”
Lincoln glanced down at his dark blue suit, then back at his boss. “Did you really call me in to discuss my sartorial splendor?”
“Well, thank goodness you didn’t tell me I was looking well,” she snorted.
“Is something wrong, then?”
Alexis seemed to find his question amusing. “I’m one of the richest women in the world, and one of the most powerful. What could possibly be wrong?”
Hearing the telltale thread of anger beneath her words, he opted not to answer, but a chill foreboding traveled up his spine.
“And you,” she stabbed the air for emphasis with an exquisitely polished nail, “as my executive editor and one of the most powerful men in the newspaper industry, you would be the first to know, wouldn’t you? I would hope so, in any case, since I’m the one who tutored you. Everything you are is because of me, isn’t it, Lincoln? The White House reads every damned editorial you write, even the lousy ones, before we even go to press. And I damned well know you have the president’s ear, since I myself gave him your private number.”
Lincoln smiled—the deep lines carved along his gaunt cheeks told he was smiling—but his black eyes were cold. It was unusual for her to wave her flag. “I often wish you hadn’t. That man calls me at the most ungodly hours.”
Alexis smiled, knowing he was angry, and perversely pleased. “Puts pause to your private life, does he?” she chuckled, although Lincoln heard it transform into a cough.
“That I would not allow. But my sleep, now that is another matter. He is careless of such details,” he replied with heavy irony.
“Perhaps, but enough of that. I called you in to talk about the rumors that are spreading.” Alexis rose to her feet, or wished to, but unable to muster