13

Jarod held Miss Parker’s evil stare for a while, then pointedly looked her towel-wrapped body up and down.

“I bet the neighbors would like it. At least the male ones, I suppose. The female ones would probably only get jealous.”

Miss Parker waved her hand in front of his eyes. “Don’t try to flatter me.”

He shrugged and watched as she pulled her underwear from her bag while he was unable to ignore the fact that it was made from black lace. A moment later he got the bathroom-door slammed into his face when he dared to make an attempt at following her.

When she returned, she had tied her robe around her and the angry expression on her face had softened to the point of mild annoyance.

Jarod stood beside the chest of drawers next to the door, his hand around the handle of his wineglass. He felt ridiculous as well as somewhat cool- like a character from a forties movie.

Miss Parker sat down on her bed and sighed, then looked up at him, taking in his appearance.

“Do you plan on standing there all evening?” she asked as casually as she was able to after her earlier outburst.

“I haven’t made any plans, yet,” he answered calmly.

“Well, nice to hear someone is living for the moment.”

She folded her arms in front of her chest and stared at the opposite wall for a bit, then ran her hand through her hair and looked up at him with an exasperated sigh.

“We’ve got to stop doing this.”

“Do what?”

She gave him a long irritated look. “Making complete fools of ourselves.”

“How exactly?” he replied, willing himself to stop the banter in order to not cross the line again that she had so splendidly leapt over mere minutes ago. His lips still hurt where hers had been pressed upon them and he really had to admit that Miss Parker was an awfully good kisser.

She gave a dismissive wave with her hand as if to make him understand that he was once again missing the whole point. And maybe he was.

“What is it about us?” she asked boldly. She didn’t usually talk about her feelings except for when she yelled at Broots just how freaking angry she was, so it wasn’t easy for her to find the right words. Heck, she didn’t even come up with the wrong ones.

“I mean...” She felt herself begin to feel annoyed at the fact that boy-genius didn’t seem to be inclined to do anything else than silently stare at her. “... what are we trying to do?”

“Work together I suppose,” he replied in a distant voice that once again made her blood boil inside her veins.

“We both know that it’s crap. You might try to appear like Mister Know it All and pretend to not be attracted to me but I know damn right you are!”

The moment she’d said it, she regretted it and wished she could take it back. Saying things like that was very likely to lead to nothing but humiliation. Miss Parker knew all too well that she had been submitting herself to her father’s humiliation for too damn long and although she couldn’t stop herself from it, she was able to escape other people’s contempt.

Before Jarod had a chance to recover from the impact of her sudden openness, she had swept up her clothes and made a dash for the bathroom where she hurriedly got dressed.

It came in handy for her that she hadn’t transferred many of her clothes from her bag yet. She wasn’t one to trust in the fact that she would stay anywhere for long, knowing her erratic nature far too well.

Jarod had been gradually awakening from his stupor and snapped fully back into rational thinking when she grabbed her coat and headed past him.

“Where are you going?” he asked and she turned her cold face at him.

“None of your business. You’ve been messing with my head for a bit too long.”

He tried to grab her arm but she gave him a warning stare accompanied by a very pointedly raised eyebrow.

“No matter what you were going to say, I am not hearing it. I’ve had enough.”

He looked almost sullen for a moment, which made her break another rule of their game: “And don’t worry. I won’t call the Sweepers on you. If I ever ground your sorry ass I’ll do it in a fair game of you run I chase.”

She turned away from him, bag in hand and didn’t spare him another glance when she headed for the front-door. Jarod winced when he heard the sound of the door being shut with some force.

Jarod had been contemplating the bottle of wine for a while before he had taken a sip of it, quickly followed by another. Truth was he hadn’t called Miss Parker and her sidekicks to the winemaker he had been working for because he had been enjoying himself too damn much. Jarod, as childlike as he sometimes was, had discovered that he was fond of wine. At first he had tasted the sweeter ones, but had long since discovered that he preferred the dry, interesting ones. He had spent a lot of time sitting with the winemaker and his wife, trying new wines and sometimes had got a little tipsy in the process. So it came to be that he was now enriched by experience concerning alcohol and its effect upon him which he had lacked before.

He wasn’t much of a drinker, hadn’t had much alcohol since his stay at the winery, but today it seemed, he deserved a good drink, he thought. Jarod had never before been drinking out of misery. He usually - if ever- had alcohol at festivities, but usually abandoned his glass after having a couple of sips or to celebrate if he had something to celebrate which didn’t happen often since he viewed his victories over villains as more of a duty fulfilled.

Today he was to abandon all of his principle concerning that very subject. He had failed so badly that he wasn’t sure whether he wasn’t actually feeling like getting himself a bottle of Scotch and down it, quite like Miss Parker often did. Was maybe doing right now.

He thought back to the look in her eyes, to the words she had said to him. She was right. What were they doing, trying to escape their mutual attraction? Why was he that evasive, trying to avoid too much closeness when he really just wanted to bend her backwards like in old-fashioned movies and kiss her until she was out of breath and laughed like one of the actresses in those movies. Only she wouldn’t laugh. She would stand up straight again and pull him onto the bed. And he knew once they’d slept together he would never be able to leave her again. Or let her go for that matter.

He had been stupid enough to cross the lines he had drawn himself frequently, like sleeping in her bed, hugging her and visiting her while she was in the bathtub.

She wasn’t like the kind of girl who had her hopes up once a man showed signs of attraction to her, but it obviously affected her. Once again he had totally screwed up with her. Why on earth was he so smart and so considerate when it came to anything else than Miss Parker? He was just plain unable to think straight when she was around him.

In this respect it was good for her to be gone so he could continue working with Amanda or just leave her to Angela’s good care. She would one day be okay again, maybe even without Miss Parker’s help. Miss Parker had confronted some of her demons though not all of them. She had relaxed a bit in his presence - although she would hate him more than ever after this - and she had gotten in touch with some buried feelings, but still it felt as if it could have been better. They could have accomplished so much more together.

While he had been contemplating his failure and her departure, he had been sipping his wine and had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t really realized that he had been topping his glass ever so often, that he only noticed when he found the bottle empty.

He shrugged, then in a moment of dramatic antics, opened the second bottle he’d had hidden away so Miss Parker wouldn’t drink her sorrows away. Funny, though. Now it was him who succumbed to alcohol. Jarod actually detested numbing his senses. It made him prone to being caught and melancholic about the turn of events in his life.

Although he met so many people during what he did he felt lonely. There were no steady relationships in his life save for the very ambivalent one he shared with his mentor who had doubled as his captor and the very strange and always on some level erotic one with Miss Parker.

He took another sip that actually was much more of a gulp. The wine was fine and expensive and he was sure Miss Parker had noticed that. He missed her already. Her scent and even her mean jokes. She was quite funny really. In a sarcastic way but entertaining nonetheless. Might have been really cool a girl if she hadn’t been that damn bitchy around him. He imagined himself looking quite sullen right now, sitting at the table and drinking. Drinking himself into oblivion?

“Hello? Jarod! Get a grip!” Oh Man he was talking to himself. Could it get any worse? He had never been in the habit of talking to himself. Maybe she had called the Sweepers already and they were standing in the doorway, laughing about him.

He emptied another glass of wine and coughed when he drank too quickly. He was a sorry excuse for a genius really. Damn, he was slipping. Maybe he should stop drinking now. But why? The feeling that spread through his arms and legs was nice. He felt relaxed although Miss Parker was running around somewhere in the rainy darkness, probably cursing his very existence. Although he loved her.

Wow. Where had that come from? "Betrunkene und kleine Kinder sagen die Wahrheit." He had been meaning to teach Miss Parker some German sayings in order to perfect her act as a German woman but had never got around to it. She would have probably ripped his head off anyway. Well that particular saying meant something along the lines of “Drunk people and small children tell the truth.”

Okay, so he was in love with her. So what? Probably Stockholm’s syndrome. He was falling in love with his huntress, she was much like a mean-spirited kidnapper, really. Mean woman. Long red nails, dark gaze. Sexy. No.

“Mean. That’s what I mean. Mean. Very mean,” he murmured to himself.

He took another swallow of the wine and then was mesmerized for a moment by the heavy liquid swirling around in the glass. Cool, he thought.

Oh heavens, he was drunk. He tried to get up to go upstairs but gave up the idea quite quickly because it didn’t seem to be wise. He’d probably sway towards the stairs later. Maybe he would just try to get to the couch for now.

He got up and took one staggering step towards his destination, giggling along the way. Had he ever been that drunk? Maybe he just couldn’t hold his liquor anymore after he had not been drinking for -what?- six months?

He sat down on the couch and felt for the remote control. There must be something on TV that would get him off his alcohol high. He switched through the channels, passing a lot of boring stuff from a Mexican soap opera to "Who wants to be a millionaire?” and ended up with MTV where they were playing all kinds of love songs at length.

He got stuck with some guys called the Backstreet Boys whom, like many other bands, he had never heard of. The song they performed seemed fitting to him, though. The little experience he had with just listening to music was that sometimes a tune or the lyrics of a song just fit your mood and you feel like the song was written for nobody but you.

That was exactly what happened. From the lyrics to the slightly trashy sound the song reflected just what he was feeling right now.

It was called “Helpless when she smiles” judging from what with his clouded gaze he could still decipher from the writing on the screen. He vaguely wondered whether he would like the song as much when he was sober because it was just a pop song which wasn’t what with his knowledge of classical music he usually liked.

But now in his clouded state of mind he just leaned back and listened. Phrases from the lyrics began to fill his mind while he absently sipped more wine which he had actually decided to refrain from doing before.

She keeps her secrets in her eyes, she wraps the truth inside her lies... he thought. Damn right. She was a freaking train wreck, but a very alluring one, he decided, grinning.

When the chorus began again, he started to sing along, slurring very slightly:

“I'm a house of cards in a hurricane

A reckless ride in the pouring rain

She cuts me and the pain

Is all I wanna feel

She'll dance away just like a child

She drives me crazy

Drives me wild

But I'm helpless when she smiles...” he had begun to sing quite loudly towards the end and finished the song loudly on the last two phrases that made him feel very sorry for himself. Closing his eyes dramatically - and he noticed that he must look terribly pathetic even in his drunk state- he belted out: “When she looks at me I get so weak!”

“I’m touched,” a resonating voice sounded from the direction of the door and Jarod was so surprised that he fell off the couch.

Miss Parker felt extremely reminded of Broots when a singing Jarod swallowed the last word in shock as he tumbled off the sofa he had been lounging on, glass of red wine in hand. The glass, just as the two bottles of red wine that lay on the coffee table in weird angles was empty, so it didn’t do any damage to the carpet.

Jarod, however, did look a little damaged himself. His gaze was a bit clouded and his movements clumsy which she was sure he owed to the former contents of the empty wine bottles.

“You are back!” he slurred, no clue as to whether he was pleased about it or not transpiring through the layers of drunkenness that covered his voice.

He took a step towards her but stumbled because of the glass that lay at his feet and she felt obliged to step forwards and steady him. He leaned on her which told her that he must be quite smashed because Jarod was normally the quintessential gentleman who would have never allowed a woman to support him unless it was totally necessary.

“You heard me sing?” he asked in a little boy’s voice that surprisingly touched something inside her. She liked her men manly and grown-up and detested any childish behavior but Jarod’s drunk momentary relapse into boyhood awakened a sense of responsibility and even care inside her that was very unwelcome, yet strong.

She put a hand around his waist and patted his back awkwardly.

“Come on. You need to go to bed.”

“You won’t go away again?”

“Not if you get drunk like that again. Wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”

She almost laughed, but bit back. He didn’t deserve being made fun of.

“I’ve never been that drunk,” he announced while she helped him climb the stairs which he still did reasonably well.

“I figured that out myself,” she answered graciously, thinking back to her first time being drunk back at the boarding-school she’d gone to where she had begun to bend to rules trying to find out when they would finally resign and kick her out. They never did though, because her father had paid for their new gym. She had stumbled up the stairs already feeling a bit sick, accompanied by a young teacher who had found her wandering the school yards in a drunk stupor. The young woman had put Miss Parker to bed and forced two aspirins down her throat, then had put a large bottle of water next to her bed. Now Miss Parker knew that this woman had helped to take the edge of her impending hangover away and now -years later- she was very grateful for that.

Now she did the same thing to the drunk Pretender, pulling his shoes off first, then tucking him in. She went to the bathroom to get some painkillers from the cabinet and fetched some bottled water from downstairs. For good measure she put the hideous yellow bucket she had found in the kitchen next to his bed.

Jarod looked at her from half-closed eyes as she went across the room to shut the blinds and smiled dreamily at her. Once again she felt touched and needed to remind herself of the fact that he was even beyond drunk.

“I’m a house of cards in a hurricane,” he told her and she started to grin with amusement when he added: “You drive me crazy, drive me wild.”

“Honey, you are going to be so embarrassed in the morning- if you can remember any of this at all.”

He just patted her hand and then kissed it very softly. She hadn’t thought him capable of this kind of endearment in his intoxicated state, but he was. He ran his fingertips across the back of her hand and smiled at her.

“I love you.”

When Jarod awoke the next morning, his head literally felt twice its size. At least he couldn’t imagine his head to hurt as much if it was its normal size. The splitting headache became worse when he sat up and his mouth felt dry and sticky. He reached for the bottle of water on his night stand and found the cap already unscrewed. Gulping half of it down at once, he immediately felt better if not by much.

He found more painkillers next to where the bottle had been standing and popped them into his mouth.

“Awake, sleeping beauty?”

He looked up and found Miss Parker looking even more cat-like than usual in a black long- sleeved dress sitting on the armchair across the room. When she stood up he found that the dress reached down to her knees and was made from cashmere which he knew was very soft. He was longing to touch it, then admonished himself silently.

“Slept well?” She came over and picked up a tray he hadn’t noticed before.

“You need to eat.” She put down the toast and butter next to him on the bed and sat down on it.

He looked at the food and his stomach churned. Although he was hungry, he felt sick at the thought of swallowing anything that wasn't liquid.

Miss Parker still looked amused but also a little concerned, which made his heart leap beside himself.

“Thank you,” he murmured in a raspy and throaty voice.

“Do you remember last night?” she asked and there was a weird twinkle in her eyes.

He thought back to his opening the second bottle after her hurried departure, to the song on MTV, his singing -how embarrassing!- and to her unexpected return. Then he remembered her dragging him towards the stairs after which there was only blackness.

“I don’t... did you get me here?”

She smiled somewhat disappointed. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For getting into that state and have you put up with it.”

He only noticed how old-fashioned he sounded after he had already said it, but she smiled.

“It’s okay. We’ve all been drunk before.”

She certainly had.

“You came back!” he now said, eating a piece of toast slowly. The first bite almost made him cough but he began to feel better soon.

“I did,” she said.

“Where were you?”

She sighed and shrugged. “I hailed a taxi and was about to tell the driver to get me to the airport, but then I changed my mind and went to see Amanda.”

Miss Parker had walked into the little girls room after having a brief exchange with an understanding Angela. She had once again apologized for keeping her in the dark about the true nature of her visit and had asked to be allowed to see the girl. Angela seemed to trust her senses which apparently told her that Miss Parker meant no harm, no matter who she really was. So Miss Parker had gone upstairs and sat down by the little girl’s bed. She had stroked her dark hair and kissed her forehead. Amanda had opened her eyes and looked at her, then a smile had come over her sleepy face and she had grabbed Parker’s hand and opened her mouth to speak for the very first time since the night her mother had died.

It had probably been due to the gloomy light and Parker’s resemblance to Stella, but Amanda had said only one word that was carried by relief and a sort of love that Parker had never heard in a word used to address her: “Mommy.”

Then Amanda had fallen back asleep. She probably wouldn’t remember it in the morning, but she had seen in Parker her dead mother.

Parker had been sitting by the bed, holding on to the small hand inside hers and had wondered what it would be like if Amanda was really her daughter, if she had a daughter at all. Somebody who would feel the unconditional love for her that she had just heard in Amanda’s voice.

She had for the first time in years allowed the ice around her heart to melt down enough to acknowledge that she, too, needed somebody, that she had isolated herself in order to be independent, to avoid being hurt. And while doing that, she had now realized, she had also avoided being loved.

And she wanted so badly to be loved.

So she had come back and had thought she had been rewarded with that love when Jarod had spoken these three words to her. And although she knew that he had been drunk when he had told her, she had slept soundly through the night and had woken rested and not as mean-tempered as usual, which hadn’t happened for a long time. She had also not had nightmares, which hadn’t happened for an even longer time.

She didn’t tell Jarod any of this, but simply said: “I came back because of Amanda. I don’t need any of your speeches and I suggest you have a shower now.”

"Aye, Ma'am," Jarod answered in a military voice, then in a softer tone: "I'm glad you're back."