ROYAL'S CHILD

by Sharon Sala

The woman smiled. "Angel. My name is Angel."

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  « ^ »

  Maddie threw her arms around Royal's neck in wild excitement.

  "See, Daddy? I told you! I told you!"

  Royal was stunned into silence. How the hell had she known? He glanced at the woman who called herself Angel and gritted his teeth. There had to be a way out of this mess without insulting the woman or sending Maddie into a tailspin. Besides, he refused to believe that Maddie's search for an angel and this woman's name were anything more than a coincidence. A major one, he'd grant her that, but a coincidence nonetheless.

  A little nervous about what was happening, Angel kept her hand on the door handle for reassurance.

  "Why do I feel like I'm missing the punch line?" she asked. Royal began unwinding Maddie from around his neck. He knew the truth, and it sounded crazy even to him. He could only imagine how anyone else would take it.

  Maddie was so elated, he should have known she would make matters worse, but he wasn't expecting her to transfer her affections so quickly. Before he could stop her, Maddie had gone from his lap to the woman called Angel in record time.

  Surprised by the unexpected affection, Angel caught the little girl in her arms to keep her from falling to the floor.

  "Easy, honey," Angel said gently. "I'll get you all wet."

  Maddie wasn't so easily deterred. "You'll dry. That's what Daddy always says." Then she touched Angel's shoulders one last time, as if assuring herself they were truly bare.

  "Damn it, Maddie, back off," Royal growled, and scooped his daughter out of the woman's lap. Maddie would have argued, but a sharp look from her father changed her mind. She slumped into her car seat and had to be satisfied with staring at her angel instead.

  "I didn't mean to get her in trouble," Angel said softly, and then waved at her dripping clothes. "I'm just so wet."

  A muscle jerked in Royal's jaw as he tried without success to ignore how wet she really was.

  "It's not that," he said. "It's just … oh hell," he muttered beneath his breath.

  "Daddy! I told you! You can't say bad words in front of angels."

  Angel looked startled.

  Royal grimaced. "Yes, you heard her right. She thinks you're an angel."

  Maddie crawled to her knees and leaned forward. There was no mistaking the intensity of her expression.

  "She is my angel, Daddy. The lady told me she was coming, and see? She was right. Now you have to believe me."

  Angel felt as if she was treading water and losing ground. She ran her fingers along the cool metal of the door handle to reassure herself that she was still awake. If she had believed in its existence, she could have convinced herself that she had crawled into a twilight zone between fact and fiction rather than a pickup.

  "I'm sorry," Angel said. "If there's a problem, then I'm out of here and no hard feelings. I can't get any wetter than I already am."

  "No!" Maddie shrieked, and threw herself into Angel's arms. "You can't go. You can't. The lady said you would stay. The lady said you would take care of me."

  "God Almighty!" Royal muttered, and started to forcibly remove Maddie from the woman's lap.

  Their gazes met. The woman seemed to be begging him for something. He hesitated. It was all the time Angel needed.

  She set the child in her lap so they were facing each other.

  "Maddie … your name is Maddie, right?"

  Maddie nodded.

  "So tell me, Maddie. Tell me about the lady and why you think I'm an angel."

  Maddie sighed with relief. At last. Someone who was willing to listen.

  "A spider bit me." She pulled up the edge of her shorts. "See, I have a scar."

  Angel frowned. Scarring from an insect bite was rare. She glanced at the father.

  "It was a fiddleback. We almost lost her."

  "No, Daddy," Maddie said. "I wasn't lost. Just sick."

  Royal ran a finger along the curve of her cheek. "I know, baby. You were very sick." He glanced at the woman. "She had a very high fever. It was during the fever that she began having hallucinations. She kept taking about a lady sitting on her bed and telling her that an angel was coming." He sighed. "I thought when we brought her home she'd forget about it, but instead, it's gotten worse."

  Angel felt the little girl's fingers curling around her thumb. Touched by the trust, she looked at the small, grubby fist and a smear of drying ketchup and felt a tightening in the back of her throat. She blinked rapidly, then looked up.

  "So a spider bit you. I'm glad you got well."

  Maddie nodded. "The lady said I would. But she said you would come to take care of me."

  Royal was surprised. This was something Maddie hadn't mentioned. He frowned, wondering about her sudden need to be cared for by someone other than him.

  "What about your mother?" Angel asked.

  "She's dead," Maddie said lightly, no more concerned than if someone had asked her the color of her hair.

  Angel's heart went out to the child. She remembered what it felt like to be a motherless child.

  "I'm sorry," Angel said. "My mother died, too."

  That information brought a temporary silence into the confines of the truck cab. For a while, there was nothing but the sound of rain blowing against the windows and the underlying scent of cold food.

  Royal wanted to dump the woman out and drive away. He wanted this to never have happened. But from the look on his daughter's face it was too late. Fate had interfered, and they were stuck with each other, at least for a time. The way he looked at it, the sooner he took the hitchhiker where she was going, the sooner his life would get back to normal.

  He started the engine. "We're going about twenty miles west. You're welcome to ride that far."

  Angel started to nod when Maddie came to life once more. Her lower lip was trembling, and her blue eyes were welling with tears.

  "But Daddy, she has to come home with us."

  Embarrassed, Royal started to argue when Angel took pity and said it for him.

  "No, Maddie, you're wrong. I was on my way to—"

  "No," Maddie said, as tears began to pour down her cheeks. "She said. She said you would stay with me."

  "Who said?" Angel asked.

  "The lady," Maddie sobbed. "The lady who sits on my bed."

  "Sweet Lord," Royal said, and lifted Maddie into his arms. "Come here, baby. Don't cry. I'm sorry you're so confused, but I promise one of these days you'll understand."

  "But, Daddy, I heard Uncle Roman tell you to hire another keeper. Why can't Angel be my keeper?"

  A tender smile broke the somberness of Royal's face. "That's housekeeper, baby. Not keeper, although there are those who think I need one."

  Angel grinned. There was something endearing about this big, tough man, although his piercing gaze made her slightly uncomfortable.

  "Then you can hire Angel." Maddie turned tearful eyes toward Angel. "You can work for my daddy. He will pay you a lot of money."

  Royal felt as if he was being backed into a corner. How do you explain to a child that you don't hire people off the street without insulting them? To his surprise, once again the woman relieved him of the burden.

  "I'm sorry, Maddie, but that's not the way it works," Angel said. "Your father loves you very much, and he wouldn't let a stranger take care of his house … or you. Understand?"

  Maddie's chin jutted. "I know that," she said loftily. "But you're not a stranger. You're my angel. I have pictures of you and everything."

  Angel's eyes widened.

  Royal sighed in disgust. "She's been drawing pictures."

  "Oh, my," Angel said, eyeing the child with a new respect.

  "We're having hamburgers for supper," Maddie said. "I like mine with ketchup and dill pickles."

  Angel glanced at the drying smear of ketchup on Maddie's hand. "Ketchup is good. I like it on my french fries."

  Maddie clapped her hands. "We gots fries. Daddy
bought a big bag of them. You can have seconds."

  "We have fries, Maddie," Royal said.

  Maddie gave her father a disgusted look. "That's what I said. Now let's go home, Daddy. When my angel dries out, maybe then I can see her wings."

  Royal groaned, and Angel was speechless. She was beginning to understand what this father had been going through.

  "I don't know what to say," Angel said.

  Royal knew he was going to regret it later, but he blurted the invitation before he could change his mind.

  "According to the weather report, it's going to rain like this all night. I have never done anything this impulsive and foolish in my life, but I have an extra bedroom and a clothes dryer. You're welcome to both for the night."

  "Yeah!" Maddie squeaked.

  Angel felt as if she'd been pushed into a corner with no way out. In spite of the downpour and an overwhelming desire for hot food and dry clothes, her instincts were telling her not to get involved. Just as she was about to decline, a vehicle came flying past them, sending a spray of water onto the shoulder of the road and dousing Royal's truck.

  "Crazy fool," Royal muttered, watching in disgust as the taillights quickly disappeared in the curtain of rain.

  Everything Angel had been thinking came to an abrupt halt. She, too, watched as the shiny black pickup disappeared from sight. All she could think was that if she got out now, she would be at the mercy of the weather—and the driver of that pickup truck. This was past coincidence. That man was stalking her. She took a deep breath to calm her shaking nerves, and when Maddie's father looked back at her, she nodded.

  "I accept your offer, but only for the night," she said, making sure that Maddie understood.

  Maddie heard, but she let the warning go over her head. She wasn't concerned how it would happen. Her angel had come, like the lady had promised. Somehow, her angel would stay. She just knew it.

  Royal nodded and started the engine. "Buckle up," he said. "It's time to go home."

  Angel's heart tugged a little. Home. What a beautiful word. One of these days she would have a place of her own to call home, too. She glanced at the man as he pulled onto the highway and then focused her attention on the monotonous sweep of windshield wipers. A short while later, they began slowing and turned off the highway onto a blacktop road. Five minutes later, the rooftops of several buildings became visible through the rain.

  Angel frowned. For some reason, this place seemed familiar, although she knew she'd never been here before. She glanced at the driver again, watching the expressions on his face as he drove on, checking fences, looking at cattle, pointing to an armadillo waddling through the runoff in a nearby ditch.

  Angel flinched as if she'd been hit. There was so much power in his gaze and such a sense of pride in ownership. A vagrant thought drifted through her mind. Would he look at the woman he loved in such a manner? She let go of the thought as easily as it had come. Even if she was going to be angel for a day, she had no place in their world. She was only passing through.

  She sighed. "So, Maddie's father… Since we're going to be sharing french fries tonight, I think it might be good if I knew your name."

  Royal pulled the brim of his Stetson lower on his forehead, as if he was bracing himself for an unwelcome familiarity.

  "My name is Royal Justice, and welcome to my home."

  * * *

  The steady rumble of the clothes dryer could still be heard toward the front of the house. But in the back, where the bedrooms were, it was silent. The rooms were dark, but Angel felt a measure of safety within their unfamiliarity that she hadn't known in years. She thought back to suppertime and the meal she'd shared with father and daughter, and smiled. Royal Justice was something else. At first glance, he gave the appearance of a big, tough cowboy. But she'd seen firsthand how easy his child could turn him to mush. Before the meal had started, the girl had let her cat in the house and smuggled it under the dining room table. It had been all Angel could do not to laugh. But when the cat, whose name she learned was Flea Bit, made the mistake of climbing up Royal's leg, Maddie's secret was out.

  Royal let slip a mouthful of curses that even Angel hadn't heard as he calmly tossed the cat out the door. He'd given Maddie a hard, waiting stare, which she met with innocent silence. Angel lost it. Laughter bubbled up and out of her like a welling spring, surprising herself as well as Royal and Maddie. After that, the tension passed.

  Angel sighed and rolled over on her back to stare at the ceiling. A faint glow of yellow from the night-light in the hall shone under the door to her room. She thought of the little girl sound asleep in her room down the hall, securely bundled within the confines of her favorite blanket. She couldn't imagine what it was like to feel that safe or that loved. Royal Justice was the king of his world, and Maddie was princess of it all.

  Just for a moment, Angel let herself pretend she belonged in this place—with this man and his child—and then she snorted softly and discarded the thought. That sort of thinking was dangerous for a woman with no roots.

  She focused on the sound of the rain pelting against the roof and gave a quick prayer of thanksgiving that she was sheltered, if only for the night. Soon she was sound asleep.

  Hours later, she awoke to what sounded like an explosion followed by a roll of thunder so loud it rattled the panes of glass in the windows. She sat up in bed, her heart pounding wildly, and noticed that the light in the hall was out. But what panicked her more was the distinct scent of smoke in the air.

  Instinctively, she reached for her clothes, too late remembering they were still in the dryer. The only thing she had on was a threadbare nightshirt that barely reached her knees. Before she could think what to do, she heard a child's terrified shriek. Her lack of clothes was forgotten as she bolted from bed and dashed into the hall.

  She found herself up against Royal's broad, bare chest as he, too, came out of his room on the run. There was no time for embarrassment or apologies as they collided.

  "Sorry," Royal said quickly, and grabbed her to keep from falling.

  "What happened?" she gasped.

  "That was lightning. Wait here."

  She did as she was told, watching as he ran down the hall toward the sound of his daughter's cries. Seconds later, he emerged from Maddie's room, cradling his sobbing daughter against his chest.

  Even though the house was in darkness, Angel could see enough to know that Royal was torn between fatherhood and responsibility to his property. The scent of something burning was still in the air. Obviously he needed to check on the house, but he didn't want to leave Maddie alone. Impulsively, Angel held out her hands.

  "Give her to me."

  Royal hesitated only briefly, then thrust Maddie into her arms.

  "Here, baby, you stay with Angel while I check on some things. I'll be right back."

  Maddie went without argument, clinging to Angel in trembling desperation and burying her face against Angel's neck.

  "I'm scared," she sobbed.

  "Me, too, sweetheart," Angel said, holding the small child tight. "But your daddy is big and strong, and he'll take care of you, just like he always does, right?" She felt the child nodding. "That's good, now let's see if we can find a flashlight or a candle. Do you know where the candles are?"

  Another shaft of lightning shattered the darkness of the night. Angel flinched, but Maddie seemed calmer now that she had something on which to focus.

  "There's a flashlight and some candles in the kitchen drawer under the phone."

  "You show me," Angel said, and still holding the little girl in her arms, she made her way through the house to the kitchen.

  "There," Maddie said, pointing to a cabinet drawer in the right-hand corner of the room.

  Within a couple of minutes, the room was bathed in candlelight and the psychedelic pattern of a waving flashlight as Maddie aimed it about the room. The kitchen chair was cold against Angel's legs as she cuddled Maddie in her lap. Another roll of thunder rippled
overhead, and she flinched, thinking of the man who'd run out in the storm. She pulled the child closer to her breasts.

  "Are you cold, honey?"

  Secure beneath her blanket, Maddie shook her head and snuggled closer.

  The small child's trust was daunting. As she held her, the fragility of her body and the life that was just unfolding made her remember things she'd spent years trying to forget. She closed her eyes and rested her chin on the top of Maddie's head, thinking back to the time when she'd been four years old. If only she'd had a father like Royal, her life would have been different.

  Her jaw clenched as she shook off the thought. Retrospection was not part of her makeup. She was practical, independent and more than a little antagonistic when it came to strange men. And she had not given motherhood much thought. Yet here she was, in a strange man's house, sheltering his child and wondering if the house was in danger of burning down around them. At that moment she knew that, given a chance, she would be good at the job.

  She shivered as another gust of wind splattered rain against the windows. Even if lightning had hit the house, surely it would not burn in this weather.

  The back door flew open and Royal ran inside, then slammed the door shut behind him.

  Startled, Angel instinctively wrapped Maddie in a protective hold, and that was the way Royal saw his daughter—bathed in candlelight, swaddled in her blanket and a strange woman's arms. Breath caught in the back of his throat as he froze, stunned by the tranquility of the scene. He focused on the soft yellow halo of light behind them, and the thought crossed his mind that right now, Angel could very easily pass as a heavenly being. Then she spoke, and the moment was gone.

  "Is everything okay? The house, is it…?"

  Royal shook his head. "Everything's okay out there. I'm going into the attic to check on the wiring just to make sure."

  Maddie frowned. "Make sure of what, Daddy?"

  Royal hesitated. Lying to his daughter was not something he did, but at her age, she was still on a need-to-know basis.

  "Oh, just to make sure that the storm didn't break any windows. We wouldn't want our Christmas decorations getting rained on, would we?"