The dark-haired woman thought she had never seen anything so sexy.
She dragged her eyes away from Jay’s mouth and up to her eyes, shutting the door behind her with her foot and bending her head in one smooth motion to capture Jay’s mouth in a heart-stopping kiss.
Several long, languorous moments later, Kate pulled back slowly and smiled. “I,” she began, but had to clear her throat before she could go on.
“I hate to kiss and run, but I really do have to get going.” The note of regret in her voice was unmistakable.
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“Mmm,” Jay hummed, her eyes still closed. It took a few more seconds before the words penetrated her happy fog. “Oh.” Her eyes flew open. “Yep. Right.”
As Kate turned to go, her hand on the doorknob, Jay reached out and grasped her forearm, forgetting for a moment about her injuries. “Um, could...could I maybe call you tonight? You know,” she went on in a rush, embarrassed, “just to make sure you got home all right?”
“Absolutely.” Kate grinned.
When Jay didn’t release her arm and began shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other, Kate looked at her questioningly.
“Um, I don’t know how to reach you,” she said bashfully.
Pulling out a business card and a pen, Kate wrote her home number and address on the back in bold strokes. “Now you do,” she said, handing over the card.
“Okay then, are you sure it’s all right? I mean, I don’t want to disturb you or anything.”
“Jay,” she laughed, “I’ve been disturbed for years.” With that, Kate opened the door and stepped into the hallway, turning around to wink at her friend before she disappeared.
Closing the door slowly, the sound of the tall woman’s sexy laughter resonating pleasantly in her ears, Jay sighed dreamily, “If the world stopped spinning right now, I’d die a very happy woman.”
Kate ducked inside the back of the limo as the driver held the door for her. Once inside and alone, she leaned back into the leather interior and closed her eyes, a goofy grin splitting her face. “Oh no, Fred isn’t getting to kiss you, Jay. You’re already taken and I will not suffer the competition lightly.”
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ay leaned her back against the apartment door and stared unseeing J into her living room. She touched her fingertips to her lips, unable to process the wonder of what had just happened, and not willing to trust that it really had. Her head was spinning; in less than forty-eight hours her entire existence had been turned upside down. She had gone to Albany grudgingly because the governor could not see her at his New York City office. That one tiny scheduling snafu had brought the writer face to face with a vital piece of her past and, she dared to hope, of her future, as well.
From the day she had seen the beautiful stranger on the tennis court, the mystery woman had commanded her attention. And then when she had rescued Jay on the ski trail and again on campus, she had captured her imagination. For her two and a half remaining years in school, the writer had used Kate as her muse, creating fiction around her dark, confident persona. It had been Jay’s jealously guarded and somewhat guilty secret. She smiled ironically. Nothing she had conjured or written came close to matching the reality she had been party to in just the past twelve hours she had spent in Kate’s presence.
Jay’s thoughts strayed to Sarah. She and Sarah had become lovers early in their sophomore year. They had been friends as freshmen and had decided to room together beginning the next fall. It had seemed logical; they were compatible in terms of study habits and the hours they kept and they were best friends. Sarah had made the move to deepen the relationship. She was sweet and bookish, non-threatening and comfortable, and Jay had gotten caught up in the wonder of something new.
It hadn’t been until Jay’s encounter with the tall beauty on the ski slope that she had realized that what she shared with Sarah hadn’t filled that empty space inside of her. It was as if she had been waiting for something or someone all her life, and the moment Kate had put her arms around her to comfort and warm her, Jay knew she had found it. But she 69
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was no fool; she understood that her rescuer had just been doing her job and hadn’t felt what she did.
So Jay had resigned herself to the fact that she was never going to have that once-in-a-lifetime fairytale ending where two souls unite and become as one. She had stayed with Sarah, who offered her companionship and friendship and a love deeper than she could give in return. She consoled herself with her fiction, where things could be as she dreamed.
Jay knew why Sarah had just popped into her head for the first time in a long time. The only fight they had ever had centered on the beautiful, mysterious stranger.
“What is this?” Sarah waved Jay’s journal in front of her face. When
Jay didn’t answer immediately, she went on, her voice dripping with
sarcasm and undisguised hurt. “Let me read it to you, in case you don’t
recognize it: ‘The sexy dark-haired woman took me in her arms, warmth
radiating from her very pores, as a searing heat spread from my aching
center, starting a brushfire in my veins. Her blue eyes burned through me
like glowing hot coals, leaving me wanting so much more.’
“Does that sound familiar, Jay? Does it?” Sarah was crying.
“What are you doing reading my journal?” Jay’s voice was cold,
indignant. “That is a total invasion of my privacy. Now I can’t even trust
you with my stuff? Do I have to start locking everything away?”
“You’re cheating on me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous; I have never cheated on you.”
“Well, if you don’t think that this,” Sarah waved the hefty leather-bound volume around in the air again, “constitutes cheating, at least in
your heart, than I don’t know what does.”
“Don’t you ever,
ever
read my journal again. Do you understand
me?” Jay stormed out, returning several hours later to a darkened room.
After a night during which neither one of them slept but both pretended
to, Sarah had apologized. The apology was accepted and they had moved
on from there.
That horrible night that Jay had almost been raped had nearly been her undoing in many ways. The attack had brought memories of her childhood back like a herd of thundering horses. It was as if she had been reliving that entire trauma again as she lay there helpless to stop her assailant, and then her dark-haired heroine had shown up and saved her, holding her and comforting her again. Although Jay had been nearly paralyzed with fear and despair, her body had registered Kate’s presence and her soul knew it had found its home.
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Awakening after the sedative had worn off in the hospital, she had opened her eyes willing the compelling woman to be there. Instead, it had been ever-dependable Sarah sitting by her bedside. Feeling guilty, Jay had tried hard to hide her disappointment. She had disappeared more and more into her journal and she and Sarah had drifted further and further apart. Sarah had clung desperately to the relationship but by the time they were ready to graduate, even she had known that it was over.
Jay could still hear the anguish in Sarah’s voice that last night they had spent together in their dorm room.
“You’re just going to be able to walk across that stage tomorrow and
out of my life and that will be the end of it? Jay? How can you do that?
What about us?” Sarah was distraught. “Jay, please, don’t do this.
You...you love me; I know you do, and I love you. Can’t we find a way to
work this out so we can still be together?”
Softly, Jay answered, “I’m so, so, sorry, Sare. It’s just not going to
work. You’ll be all right. You’ll get to law school and find someone
really great who will love you the way you should be loved, and you
won’t even remember I’m alive.”
“That’s not true,” Sarah denied hotly as tears streamed down her
cheeks. “It’s you I need. Please, Jay...please.”
“I’m sorry, Sarah, but I can’t. I wish I could, but I just can’t.” Jay
bowed her head, miserable at being the cause of so much suffering and
vowing never to put anyone through that pain again.
Since then, despite many offers, she had remained true to that vow, categorically refusing to get involved with anyone. Her life had been ordered, neat and tidy, and simple.
Now there she was, standing in her own apartment, having just shared a mind-blowing kiss with the only woman who had the ability to touch her soul and make her fiction come to life. Jay was afraid that she would awaken any second and find that it had all been a dream; she fingered the business card Kate had given her just to be sure it hadn’t been.
For years she had believed that the tall, dark stranger who owned her heart would never know it. Jay had resolved to pour her energies into her work, making allowances for friendships and nothing more. She couldn’t, and wouldn’t, pretend to have feelings for someone else that she knew belonged only to the statuesque, blue-eyed woman that she barely knew, and she wasn’t much for one-night stands. She had laughed at herself self-deprecatingly more than once, telling herself it was like living some sort of Greek tragedy. But she could no more change her heart than she could change the color of her eyes.
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Now...now. She sighed. If she ever doubted what she knew in her soul, the past day had crystallized her feelings with remarkable clarity.
Well, Jamison, you’ve always believed that things happen for a reason.
There’s a reason circumstances brought you to Albany and a reason why
you turned on the television when you did. This may be your one chance,
don’t let it pass you by.
Having made that decision, Jay felt more settled and alive than she had in quite some time. Nodding to herself, she moved to her bedroom to change clothes for her interview with the governor.
At exactly 2:30 p.m., she was escorted into the governor’s office high up in the World Trade Center. Stepping from behind his desk, he greeted her amiably. “Ms. Parker, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve read some of your work, it’s quite good.”
“Thank you, Governor Hyland. Coming from you, that’s high praise, indeed,” the writer smiled easily.
He was a good-looking man: 6’2”, with strawberry blonde hair and freckles underlining his Irish Catholic heritage. At 48 years of age, he was in excellent physical shape and enjoyed playing weekly basketball games with his state police protectors and reporters. In the summer, he pitched for an executive branch softball team. During her research prior to the interview, Jay had discovered that the governor was as competitive on a field of play as he was in the political arena; stories about his will to win were legendary.
He motioned her to a pair of wing chairs across the room. She noted that he did not seem to have suffered any injuries in the explosion. Had it only been the day before? Jay marveled at how time had seemed to lose its relevance in Kate’s presence. Then, just as quickly, she admonished herself for letting her mind wander to her friend when she needed to focus on what she was doing.
She fixed the governor with a concerned look. “Are you all right after what happened yesterday? You weren’t injured?”
The governor, who was well used to journalists feigning real concern or interest or sympathy in order to get information, could read nothing but sincerity in Jay’s open face. “No. Fortunately, I was able to escape without a scratch. I wasn’t in the building when the second explosion occurred.”
The writer leaned forward a bit in her chair. “Your wife must have been so worried.”
“Oh, yes. You can bet I got an earful. She heard the first explosion from the mansion several blocks away and immediately called the front gate to find out what it was. It was all the detail assigned to protect her 72
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could do to keep her from coming over to the capitol. I had to go home just to prove to her that I was fine, she wouldn’t believe anyone else.” He shook his head.
“It must be hard, knowing that danger always exists for you. Do you think about it often?”
“No, but my wife certainly does.”
“I can understand that,” Jay agreed. “Does her concern change anything that you do or any decisions you make?”
“I try to be considerate and sensitive to her fears, but the truth of the matter is that I have a job to do, and I must do it without reservation. The people are counting on me.”
“I bet your wife wasn’t too happy about you coming to the office today.”
“Oh, you’re right about that. She threw a fit. In the end, though, the governor of the great state of New York can’t appear to be cowed by an act of violence. To stay away today and do anything less than carry on the full duties of the office would have been to send the message that terror works. And it would have been disrespectful to those individuals who lost their lives so tragically yesterday. Their deaths will not have been in vain. The good works of this administration will continue, even in the face of acts of cowardice.”
“It is obvious, Governor Hyland, that you are a man of deep principles. In that sense this must be a very difficult time for you. I know that the legislature has been debating state funding for family planning services and abortions. I also imagine that yesterday’s attack will ratchet up the talk that has been rather loud lately about reinstating the death penalty in New York. I have heard you say on many occasions that, as a deeply religious man, you are morally opposed to both abortion and to capital punishment. And yet, you have gone on record as supporting public funding for abortion and you have said you would sign a capital punishment bill if one were put before you. It must be incredibly tough to reconcile your personal feelings and principles with your professional judgment; I can’t imagine having to make those types of choices. Does that ever bother you? Does it make you worry that you might have to abandon your faith to fulfill your role as governor? Has it ever made you sorry you chose politics as a career?”