“I love you,” she said, meaning it with every fiber of her being. Sure, they still had issues to work through, but for the most part they were back on track.
Jonah didn’t return her words, but he didn’t have to. His love for her blazed from the depths of his dreamy brown eyes. “Let me take Lizzy. Tuck her back into bed.” His hold on the baby could’ve hardly been called fluid. It was awkward and clunky, as if he wasn’t handling his child but a priceless piece of china.
Angel had never in all her days seen a more beautiful sight. Beaming up at him, she said, “She won’t break, you know.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he lowered the infant into her crib. “Before you came along, I almost did break her.” He pressed his fingers to Lizzy’s bow shaped lips. Her button nose. “She just stopped eating. Hardly ever slept. It was like she was willing herself to die. I didn’t know what to do.”
“She’s fine now.”
He looked up. “Because of you.”
“Okay, then,” she pushed herself up from the chair. “We’re even, because the only reason I’m alive is because of you.”
Jonah groaned before taking her into his arms, pressing a hard kiss to the top of her head.
“What does that mean?”
“That I’m tired and going to bed.”
She looked to the floor. “Want company?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. Yes. Lord, yes.
What he said was, “Thanks for the offer, but not tonight.”
Monday morning, coated in sweat, Angel wiped her brow, sitting back on her haunches to tip her face toward a sky of dizzying blue. For planting her garden she’d worn faded jeans and borrowed one of Jonah’s T-shirts, in a forest green that soaked in the day’s heat. When Esther wasn’t looking, she closed her eyes and breathed in his scent that still lingered in the fabric’s soft folds, pretending the heat warming her back and arms was from him instead of the sun.
“We’ve gotten a good piece of work done.” Hands on her hips, Esther surveyed the neatly plowed ten-by-eight plot. Who’d have guessed Esther wielded a mean Rototiller? “Rate we’re goin’, should be ready to set plants this afternoon.”
“Thanks again for helping. I wouldn’t have had a clue where to start.”
She waved off the gratitude. “Does my heart good seeing this old garden back in use. When Jonah’s momma was still here, she used to work nearly half an acre. Should’ve seen her out here on her tractor. That woman was a dynamo. Marcus—her husband, Jonah’s daddy—used a good bit of what she grew down at the diner. Made the best eggplant parmigiana you ever did taste.”
Angel glanced Lizzy’s way. She’d flopped onto her belly in her playpen, and now gummed her favorite wooden block. Esther had helped rig a tarp between the tool shed and clothes line so the baby would have a patch of shade.
“What about me?” she asked.
“What do you mean? Can’t recall ever tastin’ your parmigiana.”
“No,” Angel said with a half-grin. “I mean, did I ever help Jonah’s mom with the garden?”
Esther started to answer, then clamped her lips, wagging one of her leather-gloved fingers at Angel. “Shame on you, tryin’ to sneak information out of me. And it almost worked.”
“Then why not just go ahead and tell me?” Angel asked.
“Because a promise is a promise.”
What about the promise Jonah made me? The one to be my husband our whole lives long? Angel swallowed hard.
Esther snorted. “Quit that poutin’ and get your gloves back on. We’ve got plenty more work to do.”
For Jonah, the next week passed in a blur. A blur of nagging doubts but, most of all, hope.
More and more, he and Angel and Katie were starting to feel like a real family. Angel, smoothing his hair back on Friday before he left for work, tactfully urged him to get it cut. He returned home to a rave barbershop review. Tuesday, he’d hinted how much he’d enjoy it if she and Katie dropped by for lunch. That afternoon they’d spent nearly an hour in a back booth sipping iced tea and musing about what Katie’s future boyfriends might be like.
Even better, the more time Jonah and Angel spent together, the more Sam stayed away, spending his time dealing with the variety of problems cropping up from the freak heat wave—the least of which were two more Main Street fires, this time blamed on spontaneous combustion.
These parts were famous for hot summers, but March was generally mild—sometimes downright cold. Not this one, though. With still a week until April, every day had been a scorcher—well above ninety. Stranger still, within a ten-mile radius, the weather seemed normal. Talk around town was that if the heat didn’t break soon, the Boy Mayor would call in a weather expert.
Jonah assumed that, where Angel was concerned, no news was good news. But after that last bombshell his supposed friend had thrown, Jonah thought he could be biding his time, waiting for just the right piece of evidence to blow Jonah’s newfound happiness to smithereens.
“What’re you thinking about?” Angel asked on a Thursday night over after-dinner coffee and her decaf tea. She’d prepared baked chicken, creamed spinach and a sweet potato casserole so tasty he could’ve wept.
“How good that meal tasted.” He reached for her hand, lacing his fingers with hers. Katie had been snoozing for over an hour and the kitchen’s only sound was the slow drip from the sink faucet he’d been meaning to fix.
The room was hot.
Too hot for coffee, really, but as with most things having to do with Angel, when she offered, he couldn’t refuse. In a perfect world he would’ve switched on the central air, but that was just the first in a long line of luxuries they’d have to do without.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Her hand felt good in his. Like they’d always been together. Like they always would be together.
“What’d you do today?” he asked after a few minutes of companionable silence.
“Esther’s been looking for an X-rated mug to match her stripper-guy puzzle, so she conned me into taking her to a couple of flea markets.”
“Fabulous. What did I buy?”
“If you drop the sarcasm,” she said with a sassy wink, “I’ll give you a hint.”
“Sorry. It’s just that with savings at an all-time low, we don’t have much left over for frills.”
“Which is why I didn’t spend much.” She planted a not-nearly-as-long-as-he-would’ve-liked kiss on his lips, then dashed off to the living room.
He’d barely had time to sip his coffee when she was back, holding something small and wrapped in brown paper behind her back. “I wanted to wrap it properly but, in the spirit of saving every dime we can, I even made gift wrap. Ta da!” Beaming, she placed the package on the table in front of him.
“What you bought is for me?”
“Yes, it’s for you.”
“Wow. Thanks.” Never once, in all the years of their marriage, had Geneva bought him a gift. Oh, sure, he’d been given loads of naughty nighties to take off of her, perfume he’d been allowed to smell on her—even chocolate syrup and whipped cream he’d been supposed to drizzle on and then lick off her, but never once had she bought something just for him.
Angel had decorated the brown-paper-bag wrapping with red hearts and stars. “Hope you like it. I was excited, but don’t want it to make you sad.”
“Sad?” he slipped his finger beneath the tape.
“Not really sad—more nostalgic in a traumatic way.”
He frowned. Gave the package a mock hard scowl. “Maybe I don’t want it?”
“Go ahead…” Her smile lit the room’s every dark corner.
And so he did. And the crushing pleasure and pain of what he found inside was almost more than he could bear.
Standing behind him, Angel circled his shoulders in a hug. “Mr. Neimowitz—he owns the flea market—gave it to me for free. Said he’d come across it at an estate sale in Mountain Home and thought you might want it. He’s bee
n meaning to give it to you, but hasn’t had a chance. What’s wrong?” she asked when he couldn’t stop staring. “Last time I was at the diner, I noticed your memorabilia collection. Do you already have this one? Or don’t you like it?”
“Like it? I—I love it.” In the box rested a ladies’ paper fan. On it was the quintessential proper Forties woman seated at the diner’s counter with tidy blond hair, a form-fitting baby blue suit, big red lips pursed into an O, perfectly plucked eyebrows raised, blue eyes gazing in wonder at the forkful of mystery meat in her left hand and the flag in her right. The caption beneath her read: I eat at Blue Moon Diner where the food is always tasty and leaves me with enough dough to buy War Bonds! Happy Fourth of July 1943!
Jonah had seen one of these fans once, when he was a little kid, but that one hadn’t been in this awesome condition. His great-grandfather had handed them out that Independence Day as promotional souvenirs. Over the years he’d gone on to do calendars and matchbooks, but nothing in the glass case beneath the register topped this.
“You really like it?”
“Do you even have to ask?” After gingerly returning the fan to its box, he pulled her onto his lap. “This is the best present—ever.”
To show his appreciation, he kissed her square on her lips. And this was no trial kiss, but a full-on frontal blitz he hoped demonstrated the depth of his gratitude.
Angling to get a better hold, he slipped his right hand under the fall of her silken hair, pressing her mouth closer. With his tongue, he parted her lips, drinking her in, stroking her. He drew back for air, sweeping the pad of his thumb over her arched brow, drowning in her amazing aquamarine gaze.
“You’re beautiful,” he said on a ragged breath.
“So are you,” she whispered back.
He laughed. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never beautiful.”
“Then every other woman you’ve been with was blind.”
He refused to think of her being with another man.
Sliding his hand up and under her shirt, he cupped one of her breasts. Though the front of her bra was damp with milk, at that moment—or maybe it’d been days before and he’d been too entranced to acknowledge it—he stopped thinking of her as wet nurse to his daughter and started thinking of her wholly as a woman.
His woman.
He kissed her lips and cheeks and the tip of her nose. He nibbled her ear lobe, drawing it into his mouth for the lightest of nips, loving it when this elicited a scrunched-neck squeal. He moved on to her neck, winding his way to that sexy-as-hell indentation at the base of her throat. She wore a no-frills pink Oxford that, while it granted him easy enough access to his heart’s desire, didn’t begin to do her lush figure justice.
She should’ve been draped in a gossamer gown. He wanted that throat of hers encircled in priceless pearls.
For the first time in his life, he regretted his chosen profession—not because he was ashamed of it, but because it wouldn’t buy the luxuries she deserved. He wanted to make love to her on a bed, not of roses, but of tropical birds of paradise that matched the Bahamian blue of her eyes. Change that—those plants could be spiky. How about making love on silk sheets surrounded by vases brimming with birds of paradise? And after that he’d buy her diamonds and furs and a new Mixmaster and blender.
Nothing was too good for her. Nothing too extravagant or unique.
One by one, he slipped open her shirt’s buttons, finding her skin dewy with sweat. Earlier, he’d wished for money to turn on central air, but now he had doubts. He kind of liked her tasting faintly of salt and the baked-in goodness of the roasting hen she’d prepared especially for him.
With her shirt all the way off, he pressed open-mouthed kisses to the top of her cleavage.
She’d eased her fingers into his hair, urging him still closer. “Make love to me.”
“Yes. I mean, no.”
“Why?”
Because you’re not mine. But soon.
Screw Sam. If it took every last dime he had in savings, Jonah would hire his own private detective to find out who Angel really was. He’d find out, and then, once he was sure she wasn’t married, he’d marry her himself.
“Jonah?” She drew back, her eyes pooling.
He shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I—”
She hurled her hand back and slapped him, but immediately drew that hand to her mouth, then to his reddening cheek. “My God, I’m sorry. So sorry.” She kissed him. Raining a dozen—no, a hundred—tiny kisses up and down his cheek.
“No, I should be apologizing to you. I have no right to toy with you like this.” Fumbling for her shirt, which he’d tossed to the table, he drew it over her shoulders.
“Jonah, I’m your wife. You have a right to not only kiss me, but so much more. I want you to kiss me. I want you to take me straight to bed and not let me up for a week.”
“I want that, too, but—”
She stormed to her feet. “You know what? Maybe I’m glad I slapped you. Maybe I should do it again.”
“Maybe you should.” He hardened his still aching jaw. Maybe that’d knock some sense into him.
“What do I have to do, Jonah, for you to forgive me? What will it take?”
“Nothing. This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me, okay?”
“No.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “That’s not a reasonable answer. Jonah, I love you. I’ve apologized for whatever I did in the past, but I’m done. I don’t know what more I can do. Time after time, I pour my heart out to you, but it’s never enough.”
He covered his face with his hands. “One of these days you’ll understand.”
“Understand what? Is there another woman?”
“No. Hell, no.”
“Are you gay?”
He laughed. “You felt the havoc you caused beneath my belt. You tell me.”
“This isn’t funny.” She swiped at more tears.
“No, it isn’t. And believe me, this forced celibacy is every bit as hard on me as it is you.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because I—we—have to.”
“That’s stupid.”
“I agree, but the doctor—the one in Little Rock—he said until your memory returns, we should abstain from marital relations.”
“That’s crazy.”
“That’s what I told him, but he insisted. Said it could really mess you up emotionally.”
“More than this constant rejection?”
He stood, pulled her into his arms. “Baby, no.” Now he was wiping away her tears. “God, no, don’t think of this as me rejecting you. Think of this as me protecting you. I’m so proud to claim you as my wife in so many ways. Where do I even start? You’re beautiful, great with Lizzy. You’re a fabulous cook. You work wonders inside the house and outside—your garden’s already growing. And all that, as amazing as it is, doesn’t scratch the surface of how much I admire inside of you.”
Jonah stood there hugging the woman he’d rather be making love to. His lies sounded good in theory—even to him. But that fact gave little solace when he faced yet another night alone.
What if she’s already married? Where is her own baby? If he honestly loved Angel, he owed her the gift of discovering who she really was.
Frowning, Jonah figured he’d think about those issues in the morning. He was only capable of handling one crisis at a time, and at the moment a cold shower superseded all other needs.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“That’s so sweet…” Geneva literally blubbered up a storm. She’d gotten to know Mother Nature’s son, Thor, quite well during her off hours, and all the heat she’d been conducting reacted with the humidity of her tears.
Lightning struck the hill behind Jonah’s house.
Geneva jumped from the resulting clap of thunder.
“You find it sweet that your ex is dying little deaths every time he merely thinks Angel’s name?”
Almost used to Te
ach’s nasty habit of popping in uninvited, Geneva didn’t bother replying to his question. After all, he read minds. If he wanted the info bad enough, he could retrieve it himself!
What she thought sweet—disgustingly so—was the way Jonah genuinely cared for this woman.
At the rate Jonah and Angel’s relationship was so nicely progressing, Geneva figured she’d be sporting those wings in record time. Even Katie seemed deliriously happy. Who cared that Geneva couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Elvis. In her heart of hearts she knew she was on the right track with her assigned lovebirds, and that was good enough for her.
Teach released a decidedly unangelic snort. “Yes, well, if all of you mortals got to decide your own fates, the world would be in an even sorrier state than it already is. Sorry to burst your bubble there, sugar, but you’re doing an abominable job on your assigned tasks.”
Hands on her hips, Geneva said, “Are you crazy? I’m keeping Sam hopping with all sorts of lame missions. He doesn’t have a clue who Angel is and, at the moment, is so busy clearing the road of overheated cars, escaped cows, and burned-out musty old buildings, he doesn’t even have time to look. And look!” She pointed to her view screen, splitting it in two to show the wide-eyed, tossing-and-turning horn dogs Jonah and Angel had become. “Those two are so hot for each other they can’t even close their eyes. Wait—I spoke too soon.” Angel was closing her eyes, all right, closing her eyes and cupping her great big boobs! “I rest my case. She wants him bad, and look at him. Think there’s supposed to be a tent stake beneath those sheets?”
With a flamboyant wave, Teach erased the screens.
“Hey, what’d you do that for? This was just getting good.”
He sighed. “We are not peeping Toms, my dear Geneva. We are angels-in-training.”
“I thought I was the only angel-in-training and you were already the real deal.”
“I spoke metaphorically. Now, if you will kindly cease interrupting me, I’ll get to the point of my visit. In case you’ve forgotten, Mr. Big imposed a time limit on your mission. As of right now you have only twenty-three days remaining to see Jonah, Angel, and Katie live happily ever after.”
Angel Baby (Heaven Can Wait) Page 16
