Do Not Disturb

by Christie Ridgway

  “Fine.” He turned his head, pinned her with his gaze that was darker and deeper thanks to the now-dusk. “You’re right. I haven’t had sex since the heart attacks and surgery. I haven’t had sex in twenty months, sixteen days, and, oh, approximately three hours and forty-one minutes.”

  Chapter 11

  It was nearly night, but Cooper could see Angel’s eyes round. “Three hours and forty-one minutes?” she echoed. “You know it down to the minute?”

  He put on a show of looking at his watch. “And fifty seconds.”

  She shook her head. “You made that part up.”

  “I made that part up,” he agreed.

  “Why?”

  “To shut you up.”

  He heard her huffy sigh, and under other circumstances he’d have laughed. But hell, how humiliating was this? God, he just wanted to sit here all alone and feel like an ass in peace.

  “So, um…” she ventured after half a breath of quiet. “How long ago was your surgery?”

  He jerked a shoulder. “Twelve months, nearly thirteen.”

  She went silent. Only temporarily. “But you said twenty—”

  “Damn it, can’t you let anything go?” he snapped. “I had a big case before that. I didn’t have a free moment for wining and dining.” And screwing. At the time, the dry spell hadn’t bothered him. When he’d made it to bed, if he’d made it to bed, he’d been desperate for sleep.

  “Okay, okay,” Angel said. “I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you.”

  “Yeah, well I’m sorry that I put you through that…that…” Words failed him, so he jerked his shoulder again. “Now that we’ve exchanged apologies, go away.”

  “You’re angry.”

  At God, at the world, at the way his body had betrayed him a year ago, at himself for being so stupid as to abuse it in the first place. At how foolish he must have looked to Angel a few minutes ago, stretched out on the sand.

  “Not at you. Now please, go away.”

  She only shook her head again, damn her, sending a waft of perfume his way. Hell, why was she here to plague him now? If fate wanted to throw them together, then why not years ago? Why not at Stinko’s or Doc’s? He could picture it, he could picture coming up behind Angel in line at some San Francisco fast-food joint. That perfume of hers would have instantly snagged his attention, and then he would have noted all that floaty hair and her slender, curvy body.

  Maybe he would have struck up a conversation, if he wasn’t in a hurry or preoccupied by a case, that is. Maybe he would have parlayed talk into a date for drinks. Then later that week he would have been standing at some bar or other and Angel would have walked in, wearing a pair of those high heels she favored and a smile just for him. What might have happened then?

  Of course, it could have gone a different way. He might have hurried up to that line in his usual rush, his brain racing through the details of his next court appearance. Her perfume would have diverted him long enough to give her the once-over, to silently whistle at another of nature’s miraculous spins on femininity, but then her turn would have come at the counter, and then his. His focus would have jumped back to work. And in the few minutes it took to order lunch, she would have been gone from his life.

  Leaving him never to know the enticing combination that she was—the tough cookie with a marshmallow filling, an angel with devilish sex appeal. But the way he’d lived before—fast, furious, like his life would never end—he might not have taken the time to appreciate her.

  Relaxing a little, he turned toward Angel and reached out. “I’m glad I met you,” he said, wrapping his forefinger with a lock of her hair.

  For a long moment, he thought he’d managed to shut her up at last. “Knock me over with a feather,” she said faintly.

  He gave a playful tug to her curl, then set her free. The stars were beginning to punch through the dimming sky and he lifted his face to them, opening his mind to the calming beauty of the night, thinking of those books on holistic healing Judd kept shoving at him. Cooper wasn’t too great at meditation, but he kept working at it. Focusing on slowing his breathing, he tried to iron out the last of his mental knots: his lust for Angel, his anxiety about his heart, the humiliation of his pseudo-attack.

  Maybe it was working. He synced his breathing to the steady shush of the waves and tried detaching from himself, from himself as a man, to see his existence as part of the natural world, the natural order. Birth, life, death.

  “So, how long were you planning on going without sex?”

  Angel’s question yanked him right out of his brief state of serenity. “What?” God, she was the most irritating woman.

  “Sorry, but I guess it’s the reporter in me,” she said, sounding not the least bit contrite. “I was sitting here wondering how long you planned to be celibate. Surely not the rest of your life.”

  Terrific. While he’d been making himself one with the universe, nearly achieving all that kung fu, Little Grasshopper shit, she’d been speculating on his sexual future. The knots retwisted with a vengeance.

  “Couldn’t we just drop the subject?” he asked through his teeth. The fact was, the “rest of his life” wasn’t going to be very long. Like Cooper, his father had had an early heart attack. Like Cooper, he’d come home from the hospital, done the whole healthy lifestyle bit, then died from his second attack within a year.

  Myocardial infarction #2 had already hit Cooper. He figured that even now he was breathing on borrowed time.

  “I’m just curious,” Angel went on, “about how your mind works. A man’s mind. I read this article in U.S. News & World Report on the near-supreme priority men put on sex. It astonished me. So I’m asking, how long do you suppose before your interest in sex overcomes your concerns about your heart? And if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, would sex be on your ‘To Do’ list tonight?”

  If she talked about sex for two more seconds he was going to drown himself, that’s how his mind worked. For God’s sake, since the instant she’d slid her thigh against his in the church, sex had made itself a pain-in-the-ass priority for him. But hell yes, he’d reined in his libido, as irrational as that might sound to people who’d never felt the crushing press of an African elephant on their chest while the Grim Reaper’s scythe was slicing into their arm.

  He’d reined in his libido, because just thinking about sex with Angel set his heart thumping so damn hard that he was afraid it would provoke—

  But it didn’t.

  It hadn’t.

  Just moments ago, Angel had placed his hand over the smooth warm skin of her heart and proven that the lusty, pounding rhythm of his was the normal, natural reaction of a man to a woman. Of a woman to a man.

  Oh, another heart attack was going to kill him soon enough, he was convinced of that. But having sex wasn’t the certain trigger he’d feared.

  “Good God.” He grinned, stunned, then exhilarated by the turn of his thoughts. Grabbing Angel’s shoulders, he planted a hard, smacking kiss on her mouth.

  Then he held her away, laughing out loud. “I’ve been an idiot!” He could admit it now, so he shouted the fact to the ocean, the stars, to the darkness that seemed to be lifting from his soul.

  Jumping to his feet, he laughed again. “And I’ve wasted so much time. So much goddamn time.”

  Angel didn’t resist when he swooped her off the sand and swung her around. “You are the smartest and sexiest woman in the world, did you know that?”

  Her feet touched down and he bent to kiss her, but she held him off with her hand. “Wait, wait, wait. What the heck has gotten into you?”

  He touched his forehead to hers and lowered his voice. “Lust, baby, and I’m not fighting it anymore.”

  “What?”

  Not wanting to fritter away another second, he started pulling her toward the tunnel. “I’m taking you to bed.”

  Her feet dug into the sand. “I’m not sleepy.”

  “And I’m not Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, or Sneezy. We’r
e going to bed.”

  “Then the jury’s still out on Dopey,” she muttered, still resisting his forward movement. “We are not going to bed.”

  God, what a woman she was, he thought, letting her protest go in one ear and out the other. He caught her free hand and tried to get her going in the right direction. “Angel, it’ll be fun. Great. I promise to blow your mind.”

  “First off, we’re going to have to work on bolstering that ego of yours.” She yanked her hands from his. “And second, have you forgotten I’m going back to the city day after tomorrow?”

  He grinned, because nothing could get him down at this moment, not with carnal anticipation fizzing through his blood like carbonation. “So? Surely a strong woman like you can take what she wants without worrying about the future.”

  “I believe I should point out it’s what you want, right?”

  He moved so fast she didn’t have time to dodge him. In a breath, he’d snaked his hands beneath her baggy white sweatshirt to cup her bare breasts. “I can prove you want it too.” His voice went hoarse at the feel of her warm, smooth skin against his palms, at the undeniable, heavy thrum of her heartbeat.

  “Cooper.” Her breath caught as he brushed her nipples with his thumbs. “Cooper, we’re not going to see each other again.”

  That’s why no one could get hurt. They’d leave each other, a pleasant memory. A man waiting to die couldn’t ask for more. Wouldn’t risk it.

  “Angel…” He couldn’t keep touching her and keep his sanity too. Sliding his hands to her waist, he pulled her against him. “Wasn’t it you who complained about sex changing things? That you could never pick up right where you’d left off? This will solve that problem. From the outset we know it’s just two nights.”

  “Two nights?”

  “Caught that, did you?” Why couldn’t he have the hots for some bimbo-type blonde who couldn’t count? He cleared his throat. “I was staying over in Carmel tomorrow night to…to keep clear of temptation.”

  “Cooper…” Her voice filled with doubt.

  He was as close as he’d ever been to begging. “Angel, Angel, Angel. You’re killing me, baby.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s becoming an interesting habit of mine.”

  Oh, he had to capture her chin and kiss the sassy remark from her pretty mouth. She resisted at first, but then she leaned against him. “Say yes,” he murmured into her ear.

  She closed her eyes. “Cooper…” Her doubt wiggled on the end of his name like a fish about to free itself from the line.

  “Say yes.” Certain her resistance was waning, he bent his head to kiss the top of hers.

  It suddenly jerked up, cracking him hard on the chin. “One night,” she said, ignoring his yelp.

  He gingerly touched his jaw. “Huh?”

  She broke away from him to stand a few feet off. It was full dark now, and the starlight gleamed against her hair. Starlight on moonbeams. He stared at her, his smarting chin forgotten, as he was struck once again by her otherworldly, fairy prettiness. Standing there in her white sweatshirt and her faded jeans, she might have slid down to earth on the tail of a comet.

  “One night. Tomorrow night. The last night.”

  He was so caught up in the magic of her looks that he didn’t immediately absorb her words. And once he had, she was gone. Poof.

  Maybe she was magic.

  Magic enough, anyway, that by the time he followed her back to the retreat he wanted her badly enough to beg. Problem was, there was little a man could do when silence was the rule. He knocked on her cottage door, but she didn’t answer. He wrote her a note that made so many sexual promises he could hardly walk when he was finished. But damn, the heavy weather stripping he’d so ably installed in a recent fit of boredom didn’t allow a sheet of paper, even one that had to be melting from its heated words, to slip under the door.

  He thought about going out, going somewhere and picking up a woman who was willing instead of maddening. But he couldn’t.

  Not this first time, anyway, he assured himself hastily.

  One night. Tomorrow night. The last night.

  It would have to be enough.

  The next morning, Angel drove toward San Luis Obispo, agonizing over the promise she’d made on the beach the night before. Stephen Whitney had been born in the coastal city south of Big Sur, but her real reason for getting in her car was to put distance between Cooper and herself.

  She needed space in order to reconsider her agreement to go to bed with him. It wasn’t an easy answer to settle on, and unfortunately, this time her usual aid in decision making—What Would Woodward Do?—didn’t apply too well.

  If only she’d kept her head about her last night! But he’d been so relieved when he’d realized his heart was fine. His hands had been so seductive, sliding over her skin. His patent delight at the idea of going to bed with her had been somewhat appealing.

  Who was she kidding?

  His delight had made her hot.

  And it had made her happy.

  That’s when she should have said no.

  Instead, she’d said yes, to tonight, to one night, because even a mushy woman couldn’t make something out of a one night stand. Yet she couldn’t help worrying….

  Oh, deal, Angel! she thought, disgusted with herself. It was just sex! While it had never lived up to its exuberant press, in her previous experience nothing but bodies had ever been tangled up by the event either. This went here, the man went there, she was either mildly aroused or mildly amused, then she waited it out and hoped he’d go home soon.

  It wasn’t likely to be all that different—better—with Cooper. Why not skip the whole thing and…and then disappoint him?

  Right back on the pokey horns of the dilemma, Angel spotted an open-air mall up ahead. Deciding an extra-tall latte and a few swipes of the ol’ credit card were just the things to give her mind a rest, she switched on her turn signal and crossed the freeway lanes in the direction of the Seascape Shopping Center.

  But once there, between a Sam Goody’s and a See’s Candies, Angel discovered something else to muddle her thinking. A Stephen Whitney Gallery. Clutching her latte, she stared at the storefront, a banner across its window proclaiming it an official home of the work of the “Artist of the Heart.”

  There were galleries like it all over America, they’d caught her eye dozens of times. And dozens of times she’d managed to walk past, gaze averted, never feeling the slightest twinge of…anything. Not in her heart. Not in her head.

  But now…

  “There it is, Ray.” An older woman bustled up, her attention focused on the same storefront. She wore a plain blue skirt and a gray sweater that matched her softly curling gray hair. Over her elbow was a bulky navy-blue leather purse that matched the color of the bulky orthopedic shoes on her feet.

  “I see it, sweets.” Ray was panting a bit, as if Sweets had been rushing him. He adjusted his glasses with one hand and slid the other around the woman. “They promised to put it in the back, no need to run.”

  Angel smiled to herself. Ray looked quite a few years and quite a few pounds past running.

  “I know, I know.” The woman sighed. “And we’re early. They’re not open yet.” She looked about, her eye catching Angel’s. “Are you waiting for the gallery to open too?”

  “Me?”

  “Is there a special painting you have in mind?” Sweets’s sweet-looking expression turned a bit anxious. “Not Summer Sidewalk? When we found out it was up for sale, we asked the gallery to hold it for us.”

  “No, no.” Angel shook her head. “It’s all yours.”

  The only thing she wanted of Stephen Whitney was answers.

  That’s when it hit her—the reason for her waffling, the source of all this second-guessing about having sex with Cooper.

  It was her conscience.

  She’d gone to Big Sur for the story—for the truth. How could she be intimate with Cooper, for a single night or a dozen of them, and then blithely r
eturn to San Francisco to write a story that might hurt him and his?

  A young man was unlocking the gallery doors. As Angel watched, he pushed them open, then smiled and beckoned to the older couple beside her. Ray moved, but then Sweets caught his arm.

  “Wait, Ray, this young lady was here first.” She smiled at Angel and shooed her forward with her hand.

  Angel blinked. “Oh, but I…I…” I don’t want to!

  “Go on, now. Go on.” Sweets smiled at her again. Shooed again. “There’s no reason to hesitate.”

  No reason at all. Except that at the idea of going inside, Angel’s skin went clammy, her breath didn’t reach her lungs, and her heart banged on the inside of her chest like it wanted out. Was this sick dread what Cooper felt on the beach last night?

  But the couple was still looking at her expectantly and Angel couldn’t think up an excuse that would satisfy them. She couldn’t tell them she was afraid—she wasn’t!

  Her gait stiff, she forced herself toward the door. The young man standing there nodded at her, and she nodded back, steeling herself to cross the threshold. It was cold inside the gallery, or maybe it was just cold inside of her. When she made it to the middle of the small space, she halted.

  Bringing her latte to her lips to ease her suddenly dry throat, she quickly ran her gaze over the dozen or so pieces of artwork mounted about the room, finally settling on a prominent display of three large paintings. They were his, all right, the kitsch, candy-bright colors certifying them as Stephen Whitney’s.

  Sweets and Ray drew up to her and the older woman followed Angel’s gaze. “Lovely, aren’t they? Ray and I collect the missing children.”

  At Angel’s blank look, Sweets laughed and shook her head. “I’m sorry, that’s what we Whitneyphiles call the paintings like those three. The missing children.”

  The missing children? “Ah.” Angel got it now. Each of the scenes depicted something child-oriented: a metal swing set, a wooden sandbox, a picnic table with a crumpled brown lunch bag on top. In his usual style, the artist had sentimentalized the background with blue skies and puffy clouds, while the foreground was littered with wildflowers and knee-high weeds.