Suddenly the little hairs beside the scarf-knot at the base of her neck prickled. Angel slammed down the phone and whirled in one quick movement. Uh-oh. Caught by Katie Whitney.
Angel cleared her throat, not knowing what to say to the girl. “Well, uh, hi. How ya doing?” The last time they’d spoken Angel had made irreverent comments about old white men and choirboys who were really girls. She’d also found out they shared the same father.
Pushing the thought from her head, Angel stuck out her hand and hoped Katie wasn’t a stickler about the Tranquility rules. “I didn’t introduce myself yesterday. I’m Angel Buchanan.”
The girl’s grip was brief. “Nice to meet you.” She hesitated a moment. “Are you…are you ill?”
Angel blinked. “Me? No.” Then she belatedly remembered they were standing in the infirmary. “I was…I was just…” She sighed. “Look, I’m a journalist and I needed to check in with my assistant.”
Katie nodded. “My mom mentioned you’re here to do a story on my father.”
“That’s right,” Angel agreed, ignoring the “my father” and focusing on the fact that the comment was a natural, even lovely lead-in as lead-ins went. She could take the opportunity to ask the girl a few questions about the kind of father Stephen Whitney had been. Casual questions.
There was no sensible, rational reason to feel squirmy about it either, not when Lainey Whitney had almost guaranteed the family’s cooperation. And after all, WWWD? What Would Woodward Do?
That decided it.
“Listen, Katie,” Angel said. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to talk with you. About…about your dad.”
The teenager stiffened.
Guilt gave Angel a nasty pinch. “Not if it makes you uncomfortable, of course,” she added hastily. “But your perspective would add a lot to my understand—my story.”
Katie was shaking her head now, her eyes widening.
Oh, blast. She’d scared the kid off. “Katie, I—”
Before Angel could get out another syllable, the girl grabbed her by the arm and hustled her through the door on the other side of the room.
Angel suddenly found herself outside. “Hey—”
Katie put a finger over her lips and tugged Angel toward the woods. As she let herself be guided away, she looked back. Through the infirmary window she could see Judd and Cooper step into the room.
Oooh, close one. Especially since she was still mortified by what she’d said to Cooper that morning.
Katie didn’t stop moving until they were a good distance from any Tranquility buildings. Then she dropped Angel’s arm.
“Sorry,” the girl said. “I thought I heard someone coming and Judd takes his silence seriously.”
“Can there be a punishment worse than yarrow tea?” Angel murmured, grimacing. There’d been more of the stuff served with the food-fit-for-rabbits lunch.
Katie glanced around. “If you do want to talk, we should move farther off. We’re still too close to the path to the hot tubs.”
“Hot tubs?”
Katie put her finger over her lips and then started off again. Angel had to quicken her footsteps to keep up with the girl’s longer legs. A low hum became a low roar and the warm, green-scented air started to smell saltier. Then they broke free of a tangle of trees and Angel found herself on a promontory overlooking the ocean. Hundreds of feet below, water churned and swirled, creating latte froth at the base of the cliff.
“God,” Angel said, looking around her. The beauty of the spot was astounding.
“Uncle Cooper always says that if He’s anywhere, He’s here.” Katie sat down on a long flat rock, and the late afternoon breeze snatched her ponytail, flying it behind her like a flag.
Angel dropped beside her, dumbfounded by the unspoiled wildness of the view. She stared down at the jagged sea cliffs, then up at the blue sky, then back at the forested mountains gathered behind them like a column of brawny men standing shoulder to shoulder. Her gaze returned to the ocean below and the unforgiving boulders it pounded against.
From Cara’s research, Angel had learned that the Spanish explorers hadn’t dared landing their ships along this treacherous coastline. They’d continued north to Monterey, calling the inaccessible area they’d passed El Sur Grande—the Big South. Though the Spanish had eventually discovered the Indians who lived in El Sur Grande as well as its ferocious grizzly bears—and depleted the population of both—they’d maintained a superstitious dread of the area, whose name was later bastardized into the English-Spanish Big Sur.
“It makes me feel small,” Angel murmured.
Katie glanced over. “You said you had things to ask me?”
Ask Katie. Ask Katie about Stephen Whitney. “I…” As Angel tried formulating her first question, the wind slapped at her cheeks. “I…um…I…”
But words refused to take shape in her mind. Looking into the girl’s face, Angel knew she’d only feel smaller if she pumped the kid for information on the day after the memorial service. But Katie was still looking at her expectantly, so Angel finally forced something out.
“Hot tubs?” she asked. “Did you mention something about hot tubs?”
Hours later, lying awake in bed, as Angel was longing for resort surroundings and a Swedish masseuse named Inge, that conversation with Katie drifted into her mind. A little water therapy might work the kinks from her back, the knots from her calves, and the disturbing image of Cooper Jones and his gorgeous body out of her head. She could sit in the warm water and make believe it was Swedish Inge’s big, warm hands.
Katie had said the tubs were three separate pools fed by a natural spring overlooking the ocean. The bathing area was open twenty-four hours a day and the path leading to it was lit all night long.
Angel pushed back the covers, ignoring a quick jitter of city nerves, reminding herself again that Cara’s exhaustive research claimed that the ferocious bears were long gone from the Big Sur woods.
Cooper leaned the back of his head against the lip of the redwood tub. He’d dimmed the nearest lights and had chosen the darkest corner of the third bath. The hot spring provided the heat, but enough cold water was added to this particular tub to keep it at a temperature he could stand for a long soak.
It was a long soak kind of night.
As usual, he was having trouble sleeping. When he’d lived in the city, there never seemed to be enough hours between dark and dawn. Wired by caffeine and nicotine and whatever case he was working on, he’d pulled hundreds of all-nighters, preparing motions or preparing to face judge and jury the next day. And if there wasn’t work, then there was play to pursue just as vigorously.
It wasn’t until this past year at Tranquility that he’d come to understand just how long twenty-four hours could be: 1,440 minutes; 86,400 seconds.
Though you’d think a man in his position would revel in the slow hands of time, there were moments when he thought he’d die of boredom before anything else.
In search of sleepiness, he closed his eyes and tried letting his mind drift. When he heard the sound of someone singing, at first he thought it was part of a dream.
But a breathy rendition of Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” didn’t seem a song even his subconscious would throw at him. He opened his eyes just as the gate to the baths squeaked and Angel Buchanan danced in.
Damn.
She assumed she was alone, that was obvious. Without even glancing toward his dark corner, she continued warbling away, bare feet cha-cha-ing along the deck. Cooper silently sank lower in the water, deciding to hide in the steam and the shadows until she went away.
Like her, he’d come out here counting on being alone.
Then Angel threw off her robe and tossed it to a nearby bench and he released a silent, relieved breath. Thank God. Unlike him, she’d decided to wear a swimsuit for her solitary soak.
He watched her cross to the first hot tub, the meager starlight caught in her blond hair and the glow from the low fixtures washing up her bare c
alves. She was still singing Reddy-style as the toes of one foot dipped toward the surface of the water. “I am stro—Eek!”
She jerked her toes away. “Not that strong,” she muttered. “Too hot.”
The next tub was closer to Cooper, but she remained unaware of her audience as she headed for it, singing again. “I am invinc—Ack!”
Not so invincible either, Cooper thought. She leaped away from the tub and rubbed at what must be a major case of goosebumps. If he’d left more lights on, she would have seen that the middle pool was labeled “Polar Plunge.”
“Too cold,” she muttered.
Then, though he saw her backing toward his tub, he didn’t have the time to wish her away or even warn her of his presence. With a defiant, “I am woman!” Angel whirled, then hopped in.
Eight feet across the water from her, waves lapped against Cooper’s chin. Uncertain what to do now, he watched as she sank low into the warmth. Her butt gave one wiggle against the submerged redwood bench and her eyes drifted shut.
“Just right,” she murmured, then sighed.
After a moment, he sighed too. “Sorry to have to break it to you, Goldilocks. But Papa Bear’s already home.”
Angel apparently saved her eeks and acks for extremes of temperatures. For him, she merely appeared to stop breathing for a moment. Then, sighing again, she opened her eyes.
“It’s you,” she said, her voice resigned.
“In the flesh.” Though he was certain his shadowed corner protected his nudity.
Nothing protected her expression, however. She was clearly annoyed to find him here and probably a little bit embarrassed too. Then he saw the steel inside her sugar-cookie exterior harden and she sat up straighter in the water.
So what that she’d paid him a compliment? he could almost hear her thinking. So what that he’d reacted by riding off like death was on his heels? She tossed her head and the top layers of her hair floated behind her shoulders, leaving one long, wet squiggle plastered to her throat and chest.
Though certain it would only add to his insomnia, Cooper couldn’t stop his eyes from slowly following its curving path. Surely a man could take a harmless look, he excused himself, especially when he hadn’t been this close to anything so tempting in so very, very long.
And it wasn’t as if he could get up and leave, not when he was butt-naked beneath the water’s cover. So he indulged himself a moment by tracing with his gaze the corkscrewed lock of her hair. It meandered down the pale skin of her neck to make an interesting pattern over the modest amount of plump cleavage revealed by her swimsuit.
The perusal was all fairly clinical, he told himself. Just a man observing the pretty rise of a pretty woman’s breasts. It wasn’t even offensive, not really, not when the darkness hid the direction of his gaze.
Except maybe she could feel it, because as he watched, she backed farther away from him, nervously pressing her spine against the side of the tub. He swallowed, telling himself to look away. But he didn’t.
Instead, he saw her fidget again. She now sat taller, the movement drawing her breasts out of the water. Her nipples reacted to their sudden exposure to the cooler air by gathering, tightening, standing hard and small against her wet swimsuit.
Jesus, he thought, the sight thickening his blood. He felt his heart begin pumping heavily to push it through his body, its work made even more difficult because lust kept drawing it back toward his groin. Even then, though, he couldn’t look away from Angel. She squirmed some more, and the water lapped against her hardened nipples, then rippled in his direction.
Reaching him, the little wave curled up and licked the underside of his chin. He jerked, then tore his gaze from her.
“One of us should leave,” he choked out. And it wasn’t going to be him—not naked and now more than half-erect. He knew he sounded rude, but hell, she’d probably thought worse of him after the clumsy way he’d ridden off that morning.
There was a moment’s offended silence, then she spoke, enough chill in the words to cool the water several degrees. “Well, go right ahead, then.” He wasn’t dumb enough to look at her, but it was clear by her voice that she’d rooted herself to the hot tub’s bench.
Gritting his teeth, he wished like hell there was a way to get out of the tub without exposing himself—and his arousal. There was another tense moment of silence, then he finally spoke. “Listen, Angel—”
“No, no, wait. You need to listen to me,” she said, waving her hand to halt his spiel. The frost in her voice had thawed. “I’ve been thinking about this all day and I…I have to apologize.”
Apologize? “For what?”
“For this morning, of course.” Squaring her shoulders, she cleared her throat. “For what I said to you. Believe me, the last thing I wanted to do was make you uncomfortable.”
He groaned. “You didn’t—”
“Let me finish. Please.” She made another quick gesture that sent drops of water flying. “I don’t do coy well, so I’ll just lay it out on the line, okay?”
“All right.”
She cleared her throat. “It, uh, it must be clear to both of us that for some odd reason I’m attracted to you.”
He decided to let the “odd reason” go. “So?”
“So, um, that still doesn’t excuse my behavior this morning. I shouldn’t have embarrassed you like that. So I apologize and I assure you, assure you, that even if the attraction ran both ways, I wouldn’t act upon it.”
He stared at her. Even if the attraction ran both ways? She thought he’d run away that morning because he didn’t feel that sexual pull too? She thought she’d embarrassed him?
For God’s sake, Angel might not be coy, but she sure as hell wasn’t smart at deciphering sexual vibrations. “I—”
Almost too late, he swallowed the words that would set her straight. “I…” he restarted, rubbing his hand over his chin. He could play it this way. Sure. Her misunderstanding would serve to keep her at a distance from him.
“I accept your apology, and I’m feeling, uh, much better now that we’ve cleared the air.”
“Really?” Her shoulders relaxed and she slid closer to him. “We’re okay now?”
“Yeah,” he lied, “okay.” Because with her nearer he could smell her hair, the warm steam releasing its alluring, sophisticated perfume. It didn’t make him okay in the least. It unfortunately made him feel a year younger—when he’d still been so stupidly sure he was invulnerable.
“Well, great,” she said. “That’s just great.”
“Great,” he echoed, trying to relax by leaning his head against the edge of the tub and half-closing his eyes.
But the ensuing silence was just as awkward and tense as before. She’d have to be dense not to realize the air between them was charged with sex and getting heavier by the second.
He shot a glance at her. Her new position in the tub cast most of her face in shadow, but he could see her mouth, see it clearly, and he watched as her tongue slipped out to moisten her bottom lip.
When her tongue darted out again, stroked her puffy bottom lip again, it was his mouth that went dry.
“Just great,” she muttered.
The disgruntled tone might have made him laugh, but he was too distracted by another wet glide of her tongue against her lip and the slow chug of his blood sliding south once more.
Then, between the space of one breath and the next, the heavy tension in the air pushed the darkness down, closing it around them. Instead of the wide-open night, it was a private, intimate darkness. And in it, just Cooper and Angel. The sound of her breathing was loud in his ears and the air was thick with perfume-scented steam.
He sucked in more of it, felt his pulse throb, and wondered now if Angel could possibly miss that the sexual current was running from him to her and back again.
“Maybe you were right,” she said hoarsely. “Maybe one of us should leave.”
“Yeah.” But God, he’d forgotten how good it felt, that slow build
of pressure, of pleasure.
“But, um…” He heard her swallow. “I didn’t think…I didn’t know…”
“I didn’t want you to,” he murmured, wishing like hell he’d been able to pull it off. A year ago he would have been enjoying the buildup—this ascent from attraction to awareness to arousal. If this was a year ago, he would move toward her now, stroke her bottom lip with his own tongue, tug on those hard little nipples. He would kiss her and touch her and take her to bed, then wake up in the morning with a smile on his face.
Instead, tonight he’d go to bed alone.
Because he felt so damn sorry for himself, he reached toward her. Just one touch, he promised himself, just one. The swish of the water sounded loudly, an alarm that he ignored.
His hand inches from his target, his target’s hand clamped down on his wrist, held on. “Hey, hey, hey. What’s going on here?”
He laughed, though the need to have his skin on hers still clawed at him. “You’re not that naive, are you?”
Her fingers tightened. “I was a cynic by six.”
“Then you’ve figured out that I think you have a pretty awesome body yourself.” What the hell, he’d taken it this far, hadn’t he? “You’ve got to realize now that the attraction isn’t one-sided, Angel.”
He heard the quick catch of her breath. “Then I think we have a problem.”
“I don’t see why.” He was done with worrying, for the moment. All he wanted right now was a little contact: her wet, satiny skin against his palms, her wet, satiny lips on his. Just a kiss. “You have self-control, don’t you?”
“Of course I have self-control,” she snapped. “I can’t speak for you, though.”
“Oh baby, I have very good reasons not to let this go too far.”
“Mine are better.” She dropped his hand and in the same movement slid out of reach. “It’s against my journalistic ethics to get involved with the subject of a story.”
“You’re doing a story on Stephen Whitney.” He stood and stepped toward her, the surface of the water lapping at his chest. “Not me.”
Do Not Disturb Page 7
