Tempting Faith (Indigo Love Spectrum) by Crystal Hubbard

hands for a moment. “I didn’t—” He sighed sharply and tried to explain. “I saw a chance to start over that night, and I took it.”
    “What about all the days and nights after that, when you could have called or written me just to let me know you were still alive?” She couldn’t stop her tears this time, and she angrily swiped them away. “Did you even know when your mom died? You hadn’t been gone two years when she was rushed to the medical center with her head split open—”
    “I was living on a lettuce farm, sleeping in a bunk with twenty other guys,” he said through gritted teeth. “I was in no position to help anyone else, especially a woman whose idea of quality childcare was to strap me to my bed so she could hang out at Buzzy’s Tavern. Don’t criticize my choices until you have all the facts. It was easy to leave Dorothy, but it killed me to leave you.” He reached forward to brush away her tears. “I never wanted to leave you .”
    She pushed his hand away from her face, but he took hers and held onto it. “But you did! You left me behind. I wanted out of Booger Hollow just as much as you did back then, but I wasn’t willing to kill to do it!”
    “I was willing to die,” Zander insisted. “Not kill.”
    “You got rid of Alex Brannon just the same, though, didn’t you? You must have thought you’d hit the lottery when you met Olivia Baxter. You had your very own fairy godmother to turn you into a whole new person.”
    “I never begrudged you your rich parents,” he said. “Don’t begrudge me Olivia Baxter.”
    “My ‘rich’ parents cut me off when I decided to go to New York University instead of the University of West Virginia,” Faith said. “They wanted me to go to school in state and marry Jefferson Winslow and be his dutiful wife, raising our kids in Dorothy and living in the biggest house while Jefferson took over the running of the coal company.”
    “I put myself through school,” she told him. “I did what you did, Alex. I worked . There were times I was so tired, I couldn’t work up the strength to complain about how tired I was. When I graduated, I worked my ass off at regional newspapers until I had enough clips to impress an L.A. Times recruiter I met at a job fair. I worked there for six months, and two years ago, I got a job at Personality! I’ve worked hard and paid quite a few dues, but the only way I’ll truly be able to write my own ticket is to break a story with serious weight. Loving Alexander Brannon is in my past. Exposing Zander Baron could be the key to my future.”
    Pulling her hand from his, Faith grabbed her recorder and handbag and slipped out of the booth, leaving Zander helplessly watching her walk away.
    Faith pushed open the door and stumbled into the sunlit morning, hoping that Alex would come after her. Putting on her RayBans to hide her puffy eyes, she slowed her stride to her car. So many times she had prayed to see him once more, and she had fantasized that she would. But in her fantasies, the meeting had taken place in Heaven or some other otherworldly realm, not in a back booth in one of L.A.’s famed dining establishments.
    The location hadn’t mattered, not nearly as much as her reaction to the meeting. Her body had responded to him as if starved for the sensations it had known with him in their youth. Fanning herself with one hand, she leaned back and faced reality—that her exposé might not be as easy as she had hoped it would be.

Chapter 4
    Faith climbed Kayford Mountain to the secluded wooded area high above her parents’ backyard. She had brought one candle with her. Faith wanted to make her birthday wish far from the curious stares of her family and friends, so now she was sitting on a thick, fragrant bed of pine needles and damp earth at the highest point in town, looking up at a sky full of twinkling stars waiting to hear her wish. Surely the heavens would grant her the one thing she wanted if her request had