Alexandra Waring (21 page)

“I don’t.”

“Oh, but you do, Alexandra. And I know you can’t help it, but someday I’d like to know that you think of me first as your dear friend—and only second as the loose cannon.” She paused. “Even you need friends who really know you, Oh fearless one.”

“You are my friend,” Alexandra said.

“Then don’t worry about one little mistake you made when you were young and foolish.” She laughed. “Besides, everybody knows you were crazy in those days—you were going to marry that horrible buffoon, weren’t you? What was his name, Turkey?”

Alexandra had to laugh. “Tyler.”

“Egad, how could I ever forget? He was enough to drive anyone into temporary insanity.”

Alexandra paused and then said, quietly, “I wasn’t crazy, Lisa.”

“No?”

“No”

“Well, thanks,” Lisa said.

Silence.

“Okay, so go on,” Lisa said, “get on with being the paragon of virtue or whatever it is that anchorladies are supposed to be, and don’t worry about a thing.”

Alexandra smiled. “Okay,” she said.

13
What Happened That Night
Part III: Gordon and Alexandra Try to Resolve
an Issue

Gordon was lying flat on his back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling when she came in. He heard her moving around at the side of the bed; there was the sound of a match being struck and then he saw the flicker of light. Alexandra was relighting the candle. He smiled.

Great. She wasn’t too tired then.

The good part about not seeing her for four or five nights running was that, when he did, Alexandra was usually as wound up as he was. And if there was a good side to working out of London for the next several months, it was the new sense of urgency in their relationship, for time together, a circumstance that might have worked against other couples, but for them had always increased their desire for one another. And tonight, when Alexandra was an hour and a half late getting home, instead of yelling at her—as he had intended to do when he stalked out to the living room to confront her—he had simply fallen in love with her all over again. That’s how strong it came on when it happened between them.

Whenever he got angry with Alexandra—like tonight, with each minute she was late making it build—he had to turn Alexandra into a
thing
in his mind so he could stay angry at her, and so then when he saw her—as he had tonight—the thing he was mad at suddenly changed back into her—and how could he be mad at her when all he felt was happy and relieved to see her? To see that it
was
Alexandra,
his
Alexandra that he had been waiting for—that she was indeed real and not a memory to grieve over or to be angry at, but that she was, yes, once again a flesh-and-blood part of his life.

Part of him, he knew, still half expected her to leave him.

Alexandra had stood there in the doorway to the foyer, smiling a little sheepishly because she was so late. “Hi,” she had said, putting her purse and bag down.

“Hi,” he said, watching her slip off her shoes.

“Listen,” she said then, walking over to him and sliding her arms around his neck, “do you think you could possibly make love to me right this second? Could you?” And then she smiled, her boy-what-a-fool-you’d-be-to-pass-this-one-up smile, and added, after kissing him once, “I’ll apologize for being late later. This is no apology, what I’m about to do with you now.”

They hadn’t even made it out of the living room.

Gordon felt the bed move and then there she was, smiling down at him. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he said. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” she said, lowering herself down on top of him. She took his face in both of her hands and kissed him. And then she really kissed him, sinking down into his mouth in the way that always made him a little crazy.

Yep. It was making him a little crazy and he felt himself starting to swell against her. She moved slightly, pressing her hips down tighter against him, and she continued working on his mouth, making a low sound of satisfaction in her own.

After a while she pulled back, kissing his lips twice and then raising her head to look at him. Her mouth was wet; her eyes were glistening too. “Oh, Gordon,” she sighed, quietly, stroking his hair with one hand, “what am I going to do with you?”

“Marry me,” he said.

She blinked.

“You will marry me,” he said softly. “You have to because I love you more than anything in the world.”

She lowered her head to his shoulder, pressing her face into the side of his neck.

He stroked her back for a while. “Alexandra?”

He heard her swallow.

“I need you, darling. And you need me. I know you do.”

He felt something trickle down his neck.

He hugged her tight, whispering, “Don’t cry. It’s nothing to be sad about. And I don’t mean to pressure you—I know how hard it is for you to make a commitment like this—”

“Oh, Gordie,” she said, starting to cry.

“Darling, no,” he whispered, kissing her shoulder, “there’s nothing to cry about.”

“I just don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m doing to you.”

“It’s time for us to get married, Alexandra. That’s all. And you’re scared, and you have every right to be. But, darling—”

“But I have so little to give you,” she whispered, sniffing.

“Alexandra—Alexandra darling, look at me,” he said, lifting her from his shoulder.

She sniffed again, wiping her eyes. “It’s true though, Gordon. I don’t have enough to give. You think I do—now—but later…”

“Do you want to marry me?”

“I—”

“I don’t mean yes or no, will you marry me,” he said, giving her a little shake. “I mean, if you didn’t think so much, if you weren’t so damned analytical about everything—if you were just you, Alexandra, an imperfect being in an imperfect world, would you
want
to marry me?”

She looked as though she might start crying again. “Gordie,” she said, her voice rising, “you’re the only man I ever really
wanted
to marry. I’ve always
wanted
to marry you, but that doesn’t mean that it would work.” And then she buried her face in his neck again and he held her.

He sighed, stroking her back again. “It couldn’t work before, you’re right. But things are different now, you and I are very different. We know what we want, we’ve learned what we don’t want. And I want you, Alexandra. I want you to be my wife.”

“I know,” she said.

“I want everyone to know there’s only one woman in my life, one woman I love, and that’s you.” He laughed a little. “And I want all of those jerks who’re always tripping all over you to know that there’s only one man in your life—and that it’s me.”

Her hand was in his hair, absently playing with it. “Is it the papers?” she said. “The stuff about Jackson? Is that bothering you?”

“No,” he said, lying. “What’s bothering me is the way we have to live. And since you’ve rejected that white elephant of mine on Gramercy Park, I decided I might as well sell it and move in here with you
…
only I can’t unless we get married.”

“Oh, you could,” she said quickly. “We can figure out a way.”

“Cassy says no.”

“Oh—Cassy,” Alexandra said, sounding sarcastic.

“What do you mean, ‘Oh, Cassy’? She’s right. It’s not good for your career. And Langley says Cordelia—”

Alexandra sat up like a shot.
“Langley?
You’ve been talking to
Langley
about me?”

Uh-oh. Gordon did not dare even breathe. Alexandra rarely lost her temper, but when she did it was like a flash fire burning on air.

“How dare the two of them say anything about what I should or should not do in my personal life! How dare they! And don’t you start in on me about what’s good for my career, Gordon. Not like that. I absolutely will not stand for it. Cassy—Langley—” she sputtered, grabbing a pillow. “Damn it,” she said, hurling it across the room. “This is supposed to be the United States of America, not some—not some—not some occupied country. Damn it!” she said again, slamming her hand on the bed. “What are they going to do to me? Drag me off the air and put me in TV concentration camp if I don’t get married?”

“Lex, Lex,” he whispered, sitting up too, careful not to touch her. She was under too much pressure as it was, and she was overtired. He shouldn’t have tried to back her into a corner.

She was leaning over, holding her face in her hands.

“I made a mistake,” he said, I’m sorry. It’s just that I want to marry you so much.” He sighed. “It’s just that I’ve been looking for some way to convince you to say yes.”

“It’s okay,” she said, still leaning over. And then she sighed, dropped her hands, and slowly sat up. “It’s not you I’m angry with,” she whispered, touching his cheek. She smiled, faintly. “I’m not really angry with Cassy or Langley either, at least not as angry as I feel with myself.” She paused, looking at him, eyes sad. “But I have to be careful, Gordon,” she whispered. “I can’t just go ahead and marry you because I want to, not when I think it might not be good for you.”

“Or good for you,” he said.

“Oh, Gordie,” she said, sounding close to tears again. “How could you not be good for me?” she asked him, swallowing. Her eyes started to fill. “You are the kindest, brightest, sexiest man I’ve ever met in my life. How could I not want to marry you—unless I was scared that I would fail you?”

“You won’t fail me, Alexandra,” he said.

She looked down, reached for his hand, and brought it back to hold in her lap between both of hers. “When you married Julie, you wanted a home life—”

“But that was—”

“No, let me finish,” she said, raising her face to look at him. “I can’t help feeling that what you really want is a wife-wife, Gordon. Someone to make a home for you and for her, and for your children. A home like the kind you always told me you wanted when you were little. And I’m just not there, Gordon. There are other things I can change, other things I can close the door on, but I can’t change my work life. And I can’t promise that I ever will.”

“I have a child already,” he said. “Poor Christopher, I don’t see enough of him as it is. As for a wife-wife, I’m not even home for twenty-five weeks of the year. Who would put up with
my
schedule?”

“Thousands,” Alexandra said with a sad smile, “thousands of women would put up with your schedule, to be with you.”

“But not the one I’ve been in love with for ten years?”

“Oh, Gordon,” she sighed, falling on her back and looking to the ceiling. “What are we going to do?”

Her robe had fallen open and he saw her left breast, the scar from the shooting not too far above it. It was a little distracting. “Um,” he said, “we’ll move ahead.”

“And it’s been a long time since we lived together,” she said. “I’m even worse than I used to be, you know. Some nights I come home and think I’ll just scream if I have to talk to one more person.”

“Think you’re telling me anything I don’t know?” he said, smiling, reaching to touch the underside of her breast with his forefinger.

She sucked in her breath. “Tickles,” she said.

“How about this? How does this feel?” he said, sliding his hand up to hold her breast. After a minute, “Well?”

She made a little sighing sound, of pleasure. “I think I would like to continue considering the question for a little while,” she said, closing her eyes.

He moved closer to her, pulling her robe apart over her chest. He touched both of her breasts gently, exploring, and then he took them both into his hands, massaging them, feeling the nipples tighten against his palms. He leaned over and kissed her scar. It was a nasty looking thing, still, but against the loveliness of her everything else, he had come to rather like it.

“Mmmmmm,” she said deep down in her throat. And then she whispered, “Gordon?” and opened her eyes to look at him.

“Yes?” He was not going to last long in this conversation. The combination of her breasts and the sense of pending surrender in the air was getting to him.

“Is this enough for you?” she whispered, closing her eyes again. “Inside, do I give you enough? Or is there something missing, something you think our getting married will fill?”

As much as he might otherwise wish to pursue the question (which, now that he had his mouth—open—on her left breast, he had frankly forgotten already), he was more concerned about how much time he needed to give her before
…
He didn’t know what it was tonight, but he was terribly excited already. He released her breast from his mouth, touching the nipple with his fingers, trying to remember what she had just asked him. No go—he couldn’t remember. He kissed her breast. “I’m moving in whether we get married or not,” he said. He kissed her breast again and then paused, bringing his whole mouth down on it again. God, this was the greatest. His hips were straining to find something to press up against, but he was in the wrong position.

“So we don’t get married,” he said, pulling his mouth away from her breast. “I want you, I only want you. I’ll take you any way I can get you.” And then he climbed up to kiss her, pulling the rest of her robe open with his hands as he did so. He stopped kissing her to get his own robe off, threw it behind him and then he came down to kiss her again, pressing himself hard up against her thigh. “Oh, Lex,” he murmured, kissing her neck and feeling her breast again, and starting to move against her.

She murmured something he didn’t hear.

He started sliding downward, his mouth dragging down her neck to her shoulder, to her scar, down to her breasts, pausing there for a while again—at first one and then the other—and then moving on, sliding downward, over her stomach, down to her hips.

He slid his body down, kicking the covers off the end of the bed, pulling her one leg down under him and then over. He maneuvered over a bit, centering himself, holding her thighs in his hands, and gently pushed them farther apart. Then he lowered his hands, coming down to rest on either side of her, and with his thumbs parted her and then eased her a little wider. He heard her let out a breath and sharply take in another, and hold it. He looked up. Her head was thrown back so he couldn’t see her.