“What the hell!”
Angela froze. There were footsteps and an instant later, a man’s hand swung the door all the way open. Bryce Richards stepped into the doorway.
“Oh. It’s you,” they chorused.
Angela let out her breath and pressed her hand against her chest, where her heart was pounding cra-zily.
“What the hell did you do?” Bryce asked, and his gaze fell to the rock on the floor between them. “Did you drop that?”
Angela nodded.
He looked at her as if she might be deranged. “What were you doing carrying a rock around?”
Angela stiffened. “I thought you might be a burglar. So I picked up my paperweight before I came to investigate. What do you think I should have done, come without anything to protect myself?”
“If you thought I was a burglar, the smart thing would have been to stay in your office and call the police.”
“Well, then we’d have looked pretty silly, wouldn’t we?” she retorted.
He shrugged. “Better silly than shot by a startled thief.”
He bent and picked up the chunk of dark rock flecked with red and handed it back to her with a mockly formal bow. Angela grimaced and cradled the rock in the crook of her arm.
“What are you doing here?” she asked ungraciously. “I thought you were in Charlotte the rest of the week.”
“I was. But I finished early this afternoon, so I thought I’d drive down and get started. This weekend’ll be a good time to work. Nobody around. It’ll take less time away from my business. And Kelly had given me her spare set of keys.”
It irritated Angela that Bryce seemed to view her business’s problem as something to do in his spare time, not his real “business.”
“I take it you don’t believe in taking time off?” she asked tartly.
Bryce cocked an eyebrow and asked pointedly, “And what are you doing here?”
Angela flushed, but said, “It’s easier to work now when it’s quiet.”
“I rest my case.”
“I’m not a workaholic,” Angela went on defensively. “I simply set different hours from some people. I come to work late.”
Bryce grinned unexpectedly and said, “It’s okay for you to work late. I’m not accusing you of anything.”
Angela glared back at him, annoyed. She was the one who had been acting unreasonably, sniping at him for working after hours as if it were some kind of crime, yet she couldn’t help feeling that for some reason she needed to defend herself. Bryce Richards had that effect on her. She always felt guilty and in the wrong around him. Grimacing, she turned on her heel and started back toward her office.
“Wait.”
Angela turned. Bryce was standing in the doorway of the office, frowning after her. “What?”
“Would you tell me something?”
She shrugged. “I suppose.”
“What is it exactly that you have against me? You asked me to work on this for you, if you’ll remember. I didn’t force you.”
“Of course not.” Angela squirmed mentally. “I didn’t mean to be…well, I’m just a little irritable this evening. I’ve probably been working too long today.”
“It isn’t just today. It’s been the same since I met you when you were twelve years old. You took an instant dislike to me, and you’ve never changed your opinion.”
Angela was at a loss for words. She simply stared at him, guilt washing over her. Bryce was right. She had been terrible to him when she was younger. Even if he had been stiff and rather priggish, he hadn’t deserved all her childish pranks. And her own unhappiness wasn’t a sufficient excuse for the way she had acted.
“I—I’m sorry,” she said finally, her gaze dropping.
“You needn’t apologize. I simply wondered.”
“Yes, I do need to apologize.” Angela raised her eyes to him. “I was a perfect rat to you back when I was a kid. I’m sure you must have hated me.”
A smile quirked up the corner of his mouth. “I was not overly fond of you, no.” He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. “But I suppose most adolescents are pests.”
“Not like I was. You probably won’t believe this, but nowadays I’m generally considered a nice person. Back then I was—I don’t know—unhappy, bitter. And I took it out on you. I shouldn’t have.” She smiled faintly. “That’s probably why I’ve been less than pleasant to you this time, too. The minute I saw you, all those old, bad feelings rose in me. As well as guilt for the way I’d treated you. I’m sorry, both for then and now.”
“Apology accepted.”
“Well…” Angela took a deep breath. “I feel better now. Got the monkey off my back. I tell you what. I’m starving. Why don’t I take you out for some food—an olive branch, so to speak.”
Surprise flitted across his face, but he said only, “Sure. That sounds good.”
“Great.” Angela grinned impishly. “Just let me take my rock back to my office and get my keys, and we’ll go.”
She returned a few moments later to find Bryce waiting, the suit jacket, which he had taken off earlier was once again in place, along with his tie.
Angela smothered a grin. Bryce obviously was not in tune with the casual life-style of their office. “We aren’t going anywhere fancy,” she said, reaching over and tugging the lapel of his jacket.
He shrugged. “I’ve worn a suit so many years I guess I feel uncomfortable without it.”
Angela bit back the instinctive biting remark that rose to her lips, reminding herself that she had decided to make peace with Bryce. She was no longer the lonely, bitter girl she had once been. She was mature and could make a new judgment about the man, forget the old prejudices and dislikes.
Bryce followed Angela down the stairs and out into the parking lot. He cast a doubtful glance at her sporty red Miata, but he climbed into it gamely. He even kept his lips firmly closed as she zipped in and out of traffic, driving with her usual speed, verve and skill. Still, he looked relieved when they reached the restaurant and stopped.
The restaurant was in an old house in the University area, and except for the bold peach color of its walls and the green accents of its trim, Bryce would have taken it for a home. There was no sign proclaiming its name in front.
As soon as they walked in the front door, a tall, thin man with a balding head greeted Angela gleefully. “Angela Hewitt! Carrie and I were just talking about you today. Said you hadn’t been in for a month. We thought maybe you’d crossed us off your list.”
“Don’t be a dope,” Angela responded, giving the thin man a hug. “It’s only been a couple of weeks, anyway.”
She turned toward Bryce, saying, “Max, here’s somebody I want you to meet—Bryce Richards. He’s here from Charlotte. A friend of my parents. Bryce, this is Maxwell Janco, the owner of this fine establishment.”
“Co-owner,” the man corrected. “Eileen’d rip your heart out if she heard you slighted her.” He reached out and shook Bryce’s hand firmly. “Nice to meet you.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Janco.”
“Hey, call me Max. Everybody does.”
Max beamed at Bryce. He reminded Bryce of a crane, with his tall, thin frame, and the jeans and old white T-shirt that he wore only accentuated his thinness. His bony, pale feet were laced into sandals that looked as if they’d come straight out of the Bible. Perhaps in compensation for his incipient baldness, he wore his dark hair long in back, catching it up in a pony tail in the back of his head. He had twinkling dark eyes, and the lower half of his face was dominated by a long, luxuriant, old-fashioned handlebar mustache, waxed into an amazing upward curl. He was, Bryce thought, one of the oddest-looking creatures he had ever met, certainly nothing like how he envisioned the owner or host of a restaurant.
“You want a table on the patio?” Max asked Angela, picking up a couple of menus and beginning to amble toward a door in the back wall.
“You know me,” Angela replied. �
�I love the patio.”
“You’ll have it all to yourself tonight,” Max said, agreeably.
Personally Bryce had little enthusiasm for eating outdoors; he saw no reason to have to wave away bugs and listen to traffic on the street while eating his food. However, he held his tongue. He wasn’t about to spoil the fragile peace between him and Angela tonight.
And when Max led them onto the small wooden deck, tucked away from the street behind the house and further protected from noise by a high wall on one side, Bryce had to admit that it was a cozy and charming place to eat. There was greenery all around the small, intimate tables. Flowering plants hung from the overhead latticework, and ivy cascaded down the protective wall. On the two open sides, small shrubs edged the patio, and low lights scattered through the side yard gave one a view of a dainty garden, complete with goldfish pool. Discreet lighting placed here and there around the poles and latticework ceiling lent the patio a soft, romantic air.
“Very attractive,” Bryce said politely as Max left them.
“I think so. It’s my favorite restaurant. And the food is simply wonderful.”
Bryce opened his menu and began to skim down the selections. He had been growing hungrier by the second as they drove over here. His eyes ran the list of salads, pastas and vegetable casseroles. He stopped and looked more carefully at each section. There were no steaks, no roast beefs, not even a hamburger, unless one counted the Soyburger Eileen. He looked back up at Angela warily.
“Is everything here vegetarian?”
Angela nodded. “Yes. They have dishes with eggs and cheeses in them, though.”
“But no meat.”
“No. But it’s great…it really is. The Greek salad is scrumptious.”
‘Actually, I had something a little more substantial in mind.”
“Well, they have heartier meals, too. This vegetable and brown rice casserole is really filling. Or the veggie fajitas.” She paused and asked tentatively, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think. Are you very opposed to meatless dishes?”
“No. I can live.” A wry smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “I should have known you were into health food.”
“Well, actually, I’m not a vegetarian. I even eat hamburgers, which drives Eileen crazy.”
At that moment the door onto the patio opened, and a large woman rushed out, followed more sedately by a waitress carrying a water pitcher and order tablet. The woman was tall; Bryce judged her to be close to six feet, and she was built like a Valkyrie. She wore a loose patterned dress that fell to her ankles and shoes similar to her husband’s. Her hair was black and shot through with a single dramatic streak of white, and she wore it fastened into a long, thick braid hanging almost down to her waist. A necklace of tiny bells jangled on her ample bosom.
“Angela!”
“Eileen.” Angela jumped to her feet and went forward to greet the other woman. Eileen hugged Angela enthusiastically.
“I haven’t seen you in ages.”
“Two weeks,” Angela protested faintly.
The other woman waved her words away. “You came to eat here. But you haven’t been to the house in at least two months. Judy and Bean miss you.”
She went on prattling about Judy and Bean and how much they had been pining away for Angela and how often they asked for her. Bryce took the pair to be her children, until Angela laughed and said, “You expect me to believe that? The last time I came over to visit, Judy took off like a streak at the sight of me and hung from inside the chimney swinging her tail.”
“Well, that’s because it had been so long since you’d visited her,” Eileen retorted smoothly.
Angela must have caught the astonished look on Bryce’s face because she smiled and said to him, “Judy and Bean are Eileen’s and Max’s cats.”
“Our babies.” Eileen corrected her, looking at Bryce for the first time. Her eyes widened and she shot Angela a look that Bryce couldn’t fathom. “The King of Pentacles!”
“Forget it,” Angela replied tersely and turned back toward their table.
“Now don’t be stubborn,” Eileen told her, following her over to the table and gazing with great interest at Bryce.
Bryce rose politely at her arrival, and Angela introduced them. Bryce noticed that Angela had a rather mulish set to her mouth. He wondered what on earth Eileen was talking about.
“Black hair,” Eileen said significantly to Angela.
“He has gray eyes,” Angela countered, leaving Bryce bewildered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind,” Angela told him. “It’s not important.”
“Don’t be silly. Of course it is.” Eileen reached out to shake Bryce’s hand. “I’m so glad Angie brought you to see us.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll fix you two something special,” she said, her dark eyes twinkling. “You all just ignore the menu. It’s so nice when Angela brings a—new person over here.”
“You sound as if you’re my mother,” Angela said irritably.
“Well, why not? Someone’s got to take care of you. Otherwise you’d spend your entire life with your head in the clouds, dreaming up stories and never taking a look at what’s going on around you.” She turned back to Bryce, saying brightly, “And what’s your line of business, Bryce?”
“Give it up, Eileen,” Angela said cryptically. “Bryce is a friend of my parents, and he’s here to help me with a tax problem.”
“Oh.” Eileen’s face fell. “You think that’s what the cards meant? That the King of Pentacles was going to be someone you were working with?”
“Probably. If they meant anything—I don’t think Gloria’s the greatest with the tarot.”
Eileen shrugged and said in a confidential tone to Bryce, “Angela’s much more into palm reading. She doesn’t think the cards are reliable.”
“I’m right,” Angela said. “It depends on who’s doing the reading.”
Bryce watched them, feeling rather like Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Angela glanced at him and, seeing the wary look on his face, began to smile.
“We better stop,” she told Eileen. “Bryce is beginning to think we’re insane.”
He started to make a polite demurral, but Eileen just chuckled, obviously unoffended.
“That’s okay, so does Max. He’s all into alternative health and natural foods, but somehow he can’t see that there are other forces in the world beyond the rational and the tangible.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s something about men. Left brain thinking.”
“Probably,” Angela agreed, casting a teasing grin in Bryce’s direction.
When Eileen left them, Bryce turned to Angela. “Palmistry, huh? I guess I should have figured.”
“Hush. You make it sound like some Gypsy fortune-teller thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I regard it as more of a science, really. There’s quite a bit you can tell about a person by the lines and marks on their hands. You trust fingerprinting, don’t you?”
“For identification, yes. I don’t believe that you can look at a person’s fingerprints, though, and tell whether he’s a thief.”
“I didn’t say you could, but the lines on your fingers and in your hands are unique to you, and they tell a lot about you, too.”
“Indeed.” Bryce held out his hand, palm up. “Tell me about my hand, then.”
Angela was a little startled by his willingness to engage in something as “off the beaten path” as palm reading, but she reached over and took his hand in her left hand and bent over the table to peer at it. Bryce noticed how warm and soft her hand was against his skin, smaller than his own hand and gentle in a way that made him feel strangely protective. Bryce liked the touch of her palm, but he ignored it resolutely.
“Well, in general you have the long hand that indicates an air or mental type—a thinker. But your palms are a little more rounded and your lines are deeper, more what people call an action hand or a fire type. So I’d say the t
wo are combined. A thinker, but one who’s also a doer. You see where your fingers are connected to your palm? That’s your finger cast-off. If you ran a line across there, yours would be straight. That’s a strong, even base, you see, so that indicates you have drive and self-confidence, assurance—even aggressiveness. And your thumb, well, your thumb indicates that you are an independent sort. See how low it’s set on the hand. Also, it’s long, which supports the cast-off of the fingers—it says you’re tenacious and work hard to achieve your goals.” She looked up at him. “How am I doing so far?”
He smiled. “I sound great. But, after all, you know me. You’re aware that I own my own business, which would indicate drive and hard work, etc. You could probably tell me those things without even looking at my hand.”
Angela quirked one eyebrow disapprovingly. “Skeptics always have another answer for anything you show them.”
“Maybe that’s because there is one.”
She looked back down at his hand. “Here is your life line. Quite long and steady, although there are some little lines shooting off here at the beginning, and an island, too, indicating, I would think, problems when you were younger.” She looked up quizzically. “In your childhood, perhaps?”
Bryce shrugged, his face unreadable. “Go on.”
“Well, your head line is also strong and firm, going straight across your palm.” She drew a finger along the middle line of his hand, and the movement sent a shock of pleasure running through Bryce, startling in its intensity.
He looked up at Angela’s face, searching for some indication that she had felt the same electric sensation. But Angela was going calmly on. “This indicates clear, logical thought, but also a lack of imagination.” She held up her own hand, pointing to the middle line of the three major ones. “See how mine curves downward…that indicates imagination.”
“That’s something even I knew about you,” he said pointedly.
“Well, here’s something that surprises me, at least,” she told him. “You have a well-developed mound of Venus.” She stroked her thumb across the fleshy pad at the base of his thumb. “That’s indicative of a passionate nature.”
She looked up at him, and their gazes clung for a moment. Unconsciously she rubbed her thumb across the mound, and fire shot through Bryce at her touch. His mind went to the other night in his hotel room and the way she had melted at his kiss, suddenly hot and pliable in his arms. His breath grew a trifle uneven at the memory. He could see in Angela’s eyes that she was remembering the moment, too. An impulse to kiss her seized him. He wondered what she would do. His hand turned, taking hers. He leaned forward across the table.
The Last Groom on Earth Page 5
