Looking for a Hero

  He said something but his words were drowned out by the clatter of the approaching train. It pulled up and dozens of people crowded out. Neither Parker nor Bailey spoke as they waited to board.

  He followed her inside, but sat several spaces away. She looked at him, oddly shocked and disappointed that he’d refused to sit beside her.

  There were so many things she longed to tell him. Until now she hadn’t dared admit to herself how much she’d missed his company. How she hungered to talk to him. They’d known each other for such a short while and yet he seemed to fill every corner of her life.

  That, apparently, wasn’t the case with Parker. Not if he could so casually, so willingly, sit apart from her. She raised her chin and forced herself to stare at the advertising panels that ran the length of the car.

  Bailey felt Parker’s eyes on her. The sensation was so strong his hand might as well have touched her cheek, held her face the way he had when he’d last left her. When she could bear it no longer, she turned and glanced at him. Their eyes met and the hungry desire in his tore at her heart.

  With every ounce of strength she possessed, Bailey looked away. Eventually he would find someone else, someone he loved more than he would ever love her. Bailey was as certain of that as she was of her own name.

  She kept her gaze on anything or anyone except Parker. But she felt the pull between them so strongly that she had to turn her head and look at him. He was staring at her, and the disturbing darkness of his eyes seemed to disrupt the very beat of her heart. A rush of longing jolted her body.

  The train was slowing and Bailey was so grateful it was her station she jumped up and hurried to the exit.

  “I’m still waiting,” Parker whispered from directly behind her. She was conscious as she’d never been before of the long muscled legs so close to her own, of his strength and masculinity. “Have you decided yet?”

  Bailey shut her eyes and prayed for the courage to do what was right for both of them. She shook her head silently; she couldn’t talk to him now. She couldn’t make a rational decision while the yearning in her heart was so great, while her body was so weak with need for him.

  The crowd rushed forward and Bailey rushed with them, leaving him behind.

  * * *

  The writers’ group met the following evening, for which Bailey was thankful. At least she wouldn’t have to stare at a blank computer screen for several hours while she tried to convince herself she was a writer. Jo Ann had been making headway on her rewrite, whereas Bailey’s had come to a complete standstill.

  The speaker, an established historical-romance writer who lived in the San Francisco area, had agreed to address their group. Her talk was filled with good advice and Bailey tried to take notes. Instead, she drew meaningless doodles. Precise three-dimensional boxes and neat round circles in geometric patterns.

  It wasn’t until she was closing her spiral notebook at the end of the speech that Bailey realized all the circles on her page resembled interlocking wedding bands. About fifteen pairs of them. Was her subconscious sending her a message? Bailey had given up guessing.

  “Are you going over to the diner for coffee?” Jo Ann asked as the group dispersed. Her eyes didn’t meet Bailey’s.

  “Sure.” She studied her friend and knew instinctively that something was wrong. Jo Ann had been avoiding her most of the evening. At first she’d thought it was her imagination, but there was a definite strain between them.

  “All right,” Bailey said, once they were outside. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Jo Ann sighed deeply. “I saw Parker this afternoon. I know it’s probably nothing and I’m a fool for saying anything but, Bailey, he was with a woman and they were definitely more than friends.”

  “Oh?” Bailey’s legs were shaky as she moved down the steps to the street. Her heart felt like a stone in the center of her chest.

  “I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything. For all I know, the woman could be his sister. I... I hadn’t intended on saying a word, but then I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Of course I do,” Bailey said, swallowing past the tightness in her throat. Her voice was firm and steady, revealing none of the chaos in her thoughts.

  “I think Parker saw me. In fact, I’m sure he did. It was almost as if he wanted me to see him. He certainly didn’t go out of his way to disguise who he was with—which leads me to believe it was all very innocent.”

  “I’m sure it was,” Bailey lied. Her mouth twisted in a wry smile. She made a pretense of looking at her watch. “My goodness, I didn’t realize it was so late. I think I’ll skip coffee tonight and head on home.”

  Jo Ann grabbed her arm. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.” But she was careful not to look directly at her friend. “It really doesn’t matter, you know—about Parker.”

  “Doesn’t matter?” Jo Ann echoed.

  “I’m not the jealous type.”

  Her stomach was churning, her head spinning, her hands trembling. Fifteen minutes later, Bailey let herself into her apartment. She didn’t stop to remove her coat, but walked directly into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

  Parker answered on the third ring. His greeting sounded distracted. “Bailey,” he said, “it’s good to hear from you. I’ve been trying to call you most of the evening.”

  “I was at a writers’ meeting. You wanted to tell me something?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. You obviously aren’t going to change your mind about the two of us.”

  “I...”

  “Let’s forget the whole marriage thing. There’s no need to rush into this. What do you think?”

  Eleven

  “Oh, I agree one hundred percent,” Bailey answered. It didn’t surprise her that Parker had experienced a change of heart. She’d been expecting it to happen sooner or later. It was a blessing that he’d recognized his feelings so early on.

  “No hard feelings then?”

  “None,” she assured him, raising her voice to a bright confident level. “I’ve gotten used to it. Honestly, you don’t have a thing to worry about.”

  “You seem...cheerful.”

  “I am,” Bailey answered, doing her best to sound as though she’d just won the lottery and was only waiting until she’d finished with this phone call to celebrate.

  “How’s the writing going?”

  “Couldn’t be better.” Couldn’t be worse actually, but she wasn’t about to admit that. Not to Parker, at any rate.

  “I’ll be seeing you around then,” he said.

  “I’m sure you will.” Maintaining this false enthusiasm was killing her. “One question.”

  “Sure.”

  “Where’d you meet her?”

  “Her?” Parker hesitated. “You must mean Lisa. We’ve known each other for ages.”

  “I see.” Bailey had to get off the phone before her facade cracked. But her voice broke as she continued, “I wish you well, Parker.”

  He paused as though he were debating whether or not to say something else. “You, too, Bailey.”

  Bailey replaced the receiver, her legs shaking so badly she stumbled toward the chair and literally fell into it. She covered her face with her hands, dragging deep gulps of air into her lungs. The burning ache in her stomach seemed to ripple out in hot waves, spreading to the tips of her fingers, to the bottoms of her feet.

  By sheer force of will, Bailey lifted her head, squared her shoulders and stood up. She’d been through this before. Twice. Once more wouldn’t be any more difficult than the first two times. Or so she insisted to herself.

  After all, this time there was no ring to return, no wedding arrangements to cancel, no embossed announcements to burn.

  No one, with the exception of Jo Ann, even knew about Parker, so the embarrassment would be kept to a minimum.

&nbs
p; Getting over Parker should be quick and easy.

  It wasn’t.

  A hellishly slow week passed and Bailey felt as if she were living on another planet. Outwardly nothing had changed, and yet the world seemed to be spinning off its axis. She went to work every morning, discussed character and plot with Jo Ann, worked an eight-hour day, took the subway home and plunked herself down in front of her computer, working on her rewrite with demonic persistence.

  She appeared to have everything under control. Yet her life was unfolding in slow motion around her, as though she was a bystander and not a participant.

  It must have shown in her writing because Jo Ann phoned two days after Bailey had given her the complete rewrite.

  “You finished reading it?” Bailey couldn’t hide her excitement. If Jo Ann liked it, then Bailey could mail it right off to Paula Albright, the editor who’d asked to see the revised manuscript.

  “I’d like to come over and discuss a few points. Have you got time?”

  Time was the one thing Bailey had in abundance. She hadn’t realized how large a role Parker had come to play in her life or how quickly he’d chased away the emptiness. The gap he’d left behind seemed impossible to fill. Most nights she wrote until she was exhausted. But because she couldn’t sleep anyway, she usually just sat in the living room holding Max.

  Her cat didn’t really care for the extra attention she was lavishing on him. He grudgingly endured her stroking his fur and scratching his ears. An extra serving of canned cat food and a fluffed-up pillow were appreciated, but being picked up and carted across the room to sit in her lap wasn’t. To his credit, Max had submitted to two or three sessions in which she talked out her troubles, but his patience with such behavior had exhausted itself.

  “Put on a pot of coffee and I’ll be over in a few minutes,” Jo Ann said, disturbing Bailey’s musings.

  “Fine. I’ll see you when I see you,” Bailey responded, then frowned. My goodness, that was an original statement. If she was reduced to such a glaring lack of originality one week after saying farewell to Parker, she hated to consider how banal her conversation would be a month from now.

  Jo Ann arrived fifteen minutes later, Bailey’s manuscript tucked under her arm.

  “You didn’t like it,” Bailey said in a flat voice. Her friend’s expression couldn’t have made it any plainer.

  “It wasn’t that, exactly,” Jo Ann told her, setting the manuscript on the coffee table and curling up in the overstuffed chair.

  “What seems to be the problem this time?”

  “Janice.”

  “Janice?” Bailey cried, restraining the urge to argue. She’d worked so hard to make the rewrite of Forever Yours work. “I thought Michael was the source of all the trouble.”

  “He was in the original version. You’ve rewritten him just beautifully, but Janice seemed so—I hate to say this—weak.”

  “Weak?” Bailey shouted. “Janice isn’t weak! She’s strong and independent and—”

  “Foolish and weak-willed,” Jo Ann finished. “The reader loses sympathy for her halfway through the book. She acts like a robot with Michael.”

  Bailey was having a difficult time not protesting. She knew Jo Ann’s was only one opinion, but she’d always trusted her views. Jo Ann’s evaluation of the manuscript’s earlier versions had certainly been accurate.

  “Give me an example,” Bailey said, making an effort to keep her voice as even and unemotional as possible.

  “Everything changed after the scene at the Pops concert.”

  “Parker was a real jerk,” Bailey argued. “He deserved everything she said and did.”

  “Parker?” Jo Ann’s brows arched at her slip of the tongue.

  “Michael,” Bailey corrected. “You know who I meant!”

  “Indeed I did.”

  During the past week, Jo Ann had made several awkward attempts to drop Parker’s name into conversation, but Bailey refused to discuss him.

  “Michael did act a bit high-handed,” Jo Ann continued, “but the reader’s willing to forgive him, knowing he’s discovering his true feelings for Janice. The fact that he felt jealous when she danced with another man hit him like an expected blow. True, he did behave like a jerk, but I understood his motivation and was willing to forgive him.”

  “In other words, the reader will accept such actions from the hero but not the heroine?” Bailey asked aggressively.

  “That’s not it at all,” Jo Ann responded, sounding surprised. “In the original version Janice comes off as witty and warm and independent. The reader can’t help liking her and sympathize with her situation.”

  “Then what changed?” Bailey demanded, raising her voice. Her inclination was to defend Janice as she would her own child.

  Jo Ann shrugged. “I wish I knew what happened to Janice. All I can tell you is that it started after the scene at the Pops concert. From that point on I had problems identifying with her. I couldn’t understand why she was so willing to accept everything Michael said and did. It was as if she’d lost her spirit. By the end of the book, I actively disliked her. I wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her.”

  Bailey felt like weeping. “So I guess it’s back to the drawing board,” she said, putting on a cheerful front. “I suppose I should be getting used to that.”

  “My best advice is to put the manuscript aside for a few weeks,” Jo Ann said in a gentle tone. “Didn’t you tell me you had another plot idea you wanted to develop?”

  Bailey nodded. But that was before. Before almost all her energy was spent just surviving from day to day. Before she’d begun pretending her life was perfectly normal although the pain left her barely able to function. Before she’d lost hope...

  “What will putting it aside accomplish?” she asked.

  “It will give you perspective,” Jo Ann advised. “Look at Janice. Really look at her. Does she deserve a man as terrific as Michael? You’ve done such a superb job writing him.”

  It went without saying that Parker had been the source of her inspiration.

  “In other words Janice is unsympathetic?”

  Jo Ann’s nod was regretful. “I’m afraid so. But remember that this is strictly my opinion. Someone else may read Forever Yours and feel Janice is a fabulous heroine. You might want to have some of the other writers in the group read it. I don’t mean to be discouraging, Bailey, really I don’t.”

  “I know that.”

  “It’s only because you’re my friend that I can be so honest.”

  “That’s what I wanted,” Bailey admitted slowly. Who was she kidding? She was as likely to become a published writer as she was a wife. The odds were so bad it would be a sucker’s bet.

  “I don’t want to discourage you,” Jo Ann repeated in a worried voice.

  “If I’d been looking for someone to tell me how talented I am, I would’ve given the manuscript to my mother.”

  Jo Ann laughed, then glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to scoot. I’m supposed to pick up Dan at the muffler shop. The station wagon’s beginning to sound like an army tank. If you have any questions give me a call later.”

  “I will.” Bailey led the way to the door and held it open as Jo Ann gathered up her purse and coat. Her friend paused, looking concerned. “You’re not too depressed about this, are you?”

  “A little,” Bailey said. “All right, a lot. But it’s all part of the learning process, and if I have to rewrite this manuscript a hundred times, then I’ll do it. Writing isn’t for the faint of heart.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  Jo Ann had advised her to set the story aside but the instant she was gone, Bailey tore into the manuscript, leafing carefully through the pages.

  Jo Ann’s notes in the margins were valuable—and painful. Bailey paid particular attention to the comments following Michael a
nd Janice’s fateful evening at the concert. It didn’t take her long to connect this scene in her novel with its real-life equivalent, her evening with Parker.

  She acts like a robot with Michael, Jo Ann had said. As Bailey read through the subsequent chapters, she couldn’t help but agree. It was as though her feisty, spirited heroine had lost the will to exert her own personality. For all intents and purposes, she’d lain down and died.

  Isn’t that what you’ve done? her heart asked.

  But Bailey ignored it. She’d given up listening to the deep inner part of herself. She’d learned how painful that could be.

  By the end of the book I actively disliked her. Jo Ann’s words resounded like a clap of thunder in her mind. Janice’s and Bailey’s personalities were so intimately entwined that she no longer knew where one stopped and the other began.

  Janice seemed so...so weak.

  Bailey resisted the urge to cover her ears to block out Jo Ann’s words. It was all she could do not to shout, “You’d be spineless, too, if you had a slightly used wedding dress hanging in your closet!”

  When Bailey couldn’t tolerate the voices any longer, she reached for her jacket and purse and escaped. Anything was better than listening to the accusations echoing in her mind. The apartment felt unfriendly and confining. Even Max’s narrowed green eyes seemed to reflect her heart’s questions.

  The sky was overcast—a perfect accompaniment to Bailey’s mood. She walked without any real destination until she found herself at the BART station and her heart suddenly started to hammer. She chided herself for the small surge of hope she felt. What were the chances of running into Parker on a Saturday afternoon? Virtually none. She hadn’t seen him in over a week. More than likely he’d been driving to work to avoid her.

  Parker.

  The pain she’d managed to hold at bay for several days bobbed to the surface. Tears spilled from her eyes. She kept on walking, her pace brisk as though she was in a hurry to get somewhere. Bailey’s destination was peace and she had yet to find it. Sometimes she wondered if she ever would.