Having Faith by Barbara Delinsky Page B

breasts and swallowed once, hard. That was all it took for the events of the night before to slowly begin to filter through the fog that still clouded her brain.
    "Sawyer?" she called in a very low, very shaky voice. The second time around, she managed to make it a little louder, but no less shaky.
    "Sawyer?"
    He didn't move. For a split second she wondered whether it wasn't Sawyer after all but a big dummy he'd left as a joke. She'd like that.
    She'd like the things--pictures, images, flashes of memory--from the night before to have been make-believe.
    But no. That was real live flesh, real live Sawyer Bell, real live naked Sawyer Bell beside her.
    "Sawyer?" she called, this time in a panic.
    "Sawyer!"
    He jerked, then groaned and put a hand on the side of his head.
    "Sawyer, get up!" Tugging the top sheet free of the quilt, she scrambled to the side of the bed and wrapped it around her as she stood. When she looked back at Sawyer, he was rolling onto his back.
    "Get up, Sawyer. Oh please, get up."
    He opened his eyes a crack, much as she'd done not so long before. As she'd done, he squeezed them tight again. But Faith wasn't allowing him the leisure she'd had to let memory come calling.
    "Sawyer." He grunted.
    "Sawyer!"
    He pried his eyes open and focused on her, and for a minute he simply stared, trying without success to make sense out of what he was seeing. Finally he frowned.
    "Faith?" He knew it had to be her. There wasn't anyone who had quite her face, quite her hair, quite her voice.
    But he had no idea what she could possibly be doing standing by the side of his bed draped in a sheet.
    Then he realized that the setting was wrong. Moving his head by short, pained inches, he saw that he wasn't in his own bedroom at all. His bedroom was done in navies and browns. This one was heavy on whites and hurt his eyes something awful. And the bed was too small. His heel was caught on the bottom edge of the mattress. That never happened with his extra-long king. And he would never, never sleep on flowered sheets under a flowered quilt, but unless his eyesight was truly going, that was what he saw above and below his hip. His naked hip.
    Bolting upright, he winced and caught himself for a minute, then grabbed the quilt from the bed and, though he was plenty warm on his own, wrapped it around him as he hurried to stand on the opposite side of the mattress from Faith. Memory was fast returning, coming in flashes like a strobe tormenting his brain.
    "What happened?" he rasped. He hoped she'd tell him that he'd simply had too much to drink, so she'd put him to bed. Somehow, between the look on her face and the images that were flashing in his mind, he doubted that was the case.
    "We did it," she whispered in dismay. Then she paused and allowed herself a last-ditch doubt.
    "Did we?"
    Sawyer looked down at the bed. They'd just awoken in it. Clearly they'd spent at least part of the night here. But the pictures flickering into his mind were of someplace darker, like the living room, and someplace harder, like the floor.
    "Do you see any clothes?"
    he asked cautiously. He didn't. There was nothing draped over the white wicker chair in the corner, nothing thrown on the white wicker dresser, nothing dropped on the pale green carpet.
    "No. I think they may be, uh, in the other room."
    Sawyer's headache gave an extra-strong pulse as though in punishment for what the evidence was strongly suggesting. He raked a hand through his hair.
    "Were we drunk?"
    "I don't know. I've never been drunk before. Do you remember much?"
    "Bits and pieces."
    "Did we...?"
    Sawyer tuned into several of those bits and pieces. He remembered talking about Joanna but seeing Faith. He remembered touching her. He remembered that she felt very good to hold. He remembered that she was very tight inside.
    "I think so."
    "Oh Lord." She twisted down onto the bed, putting her back to him, which gave her a token protection from the embarrassment she felt. She rested her