Do Not Disturb

by Christie Ridgway

  She wasn’t afraid of anything and it was time he figured that out. The bogeyman had stepped out of her nightmares and into her waking world twenty years ago. She’d dealt then. She’d deal now.

  Then, as if thinking of a monster had called one up, a shadow fell across Angel. It took a mere instant to recognize the long, muscled legs of Cooper Jones. As that instant ended, she shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

  When he shook her shoulder, she lifted her lashes, but when he began to mouth something, she hastily closed them again. Sure, it was an avoidance tactic, maybe even childish, but she was in the mortifying position—as a reporter and as a woman—of not knowing what to say to the man.

  None of the zillions of magazine articles she’d read over the years had ever explained why gratifying, satisfying sex could leave a woman feeling so weak. Like a sissy. Not a one had hinted what to do about it.

  Or, for that matter, what to do about a man who ignored her ignoring of him and plopped down on the blanket beside her. Before she had a chance to scuttle away, he grabbed her wrist. Before she had a chance to pull free, he tightened his grip on her fingers and wrote on the back of her hand.

  She let herself go limp, as if truly asleep. His lean fingers were steady, though, his clasp strong, and it reminded her of his implacable touches in that hot, candlelit darkness. The gentle trace of a pen against her skin felt like the tickle of a tongue.

  His tongue.

  A shiver rolled through even as the tickle, the clasp, the man disappeared.

  She wouldn’t look at what he wrote, that’s what she decided. She’d wash it off, wash away whatever he might have had to say.

  But back in her cottage no amount of soap and water could erase the words. Cooper had marked her—indelibly.

  The back of her hand read: Be at Lainey’s, 4:00 pm. If you’re sleeping, I’ll do what I must to wake you up.

  Though she’d considered refusing Cooper’s order/ invitation, it was her inherent curiosity and a need for distraction from the breathless heat that had Angel knocking on Lainey’s door at 4:02. The day had started off a scorcher, and now the Santa Lucia Mountains were radiating the afternoon sun like the face of a gigantic iron.

  When Lainey answered, her welcoming smile flipped almost instantly to a frown. “You’re dressed wrong.”

  Angel glanced at her sleeveless cotton top and the long gauzy skirt she wore with it. “I, uh…”

  “Brothers.” Lainey shook her head. “Cooper forgot to tell you to bring your swimsuit, I’ll bet.”

  Since she was empty-handed, Angel could only nod.

  “Cooper, Beth, and Judd were invited too, and I thought we all might like a swim before dinner,” Lainey went on. “Don’t worry, we have suits to spare.”

  Swim? Dinner? Even though some lovely, chilly air was beckoning her into the Whitney house, Angel hesitated. She’d quieted her journalist’s conscience about going to bed with Cooper by deciding her Stephen Whitney story would be as banal and blameless as his reputation. But she was still here for a job. A job that didn’t include more intimacy with Cooper or getting social with the rest of the family.

  It was tempting, though. They might let down their guard and she might finally find out something interesting.

  On the other hand, they might let down their guard and she might finally find out something interesting. What would she do then?

  Stalling for time, Angel shrugged. “Uh, Lainey, Cooper didn’t actually mention…”

  She rolled her eyes. “He didn’t tell you about dinner either?”

  “No.”

  Lainey reached out, snagged Angel’s arm, and pulled her over the threshold. “Well, you’re invited. Judd is barbecuing vegetable kabobs, but I also roasted a couple of chickens this morning. They’ve been cooling in the refrigerator.”

  Chicken. Meat. Sighing in surrender, Angel allowed herself to be led through the house toward the patio doors that opened onto the pool area. Oh, she was weak. Who would have guessed that after mere days of mainly vegetarian fare, her conscience could be compromised by something as simple as a cold drumstick?

  “Hey, everybody, look who’s here!” Lainey called out to the people on the patio.

  Katie, Judd, and Beth looked over. Beth’s eyes widened and she took a hasty step back, even though Angel was yards away. “I thought you said this was going to be a family meal,” she murmured, loud enough for Angel to hear.

  “Right. Family.” Lainey sent her sister a pointed look. “Think, Beth. Remember the cove.” Then she turned to Angel. “Cooper will be here any minute.”

  Impressions and questions rolled through Angel’s mind. As usual, Beth was strangely anxious around her. Why had she consistently refused to be interviewed? And then there was Lainey’s “Remember the cove.” What was the meaning of the cryptic comment?

  Before Angel could bring some order to her thoughts, she was ushered into the poolhouse and left alone with a selection of swimsuits. Her head was still processing all the new data when she stepped out again, wearing a modest one-piece, her skirt now acting as a cover-up. Though she wouldn’t take a swim per se, sitting on the edge and dangling her legs in the water sounded pleasant.

  As promised, Cooper had arrived, and he’d already been cooling off in the water. The pool was a strange, almost V shape, with two symmetrical arms that met at a bottom point, then widely jutted away from each other. Each arm had its own diving board, and now Cooper stood poised on the edge of one, Katie on the other.

  Though she knew it was safer to keep her distance, Angel approached the pool’s edge, unwillingly drawn toward Cooper. There was that too-long hair, those broad shoulders and lean torso, the muscled legs in cobalt-blue, knee-length swim trunks. The scar bisecting his chest stood out, shining pinkish in the golden darkness of his tanned skin. He said something to Katie, and then the two of them bounced high on the boards and executed identical flips into the water.

  Cool drops splashed against the gauze of Angel’s skirt. In the next second a wet hand knifed out of the water and grabbed her ankle.

  She yelped, but there was no place to go when trapped by the strong, wet vise of Cooper’s grip. His head rose out of the water and he shook it, raining more drops on her calves and thighs. It was cooler, here by the pool, but there was something hot in his eyes.

  “You made it,” he said. “Too bad for me.”

  He’d promised to wake her if he had to. He’d been teasing, of course, but as they continued to look at each other, his gaze heated and his hand flexed against her bare ankle. Goosebumps crawled up the insides of her legs.

  The look in his eyes was so very, very male. And it was so hot that she felt herself warming up. Oh please, she couldn’t be developing a soft spot—and if she was, it was minuscule, shallow!—for this kind of he-man, caveman stuff.

  Lifting an eyebrow, she refused to let him see he rattled her. Melted her. “How could I refuse such an…unforgettable invitation?” She held out her hand so he could see the words still branding her skin.

  He grinned.

  She nearly risked her life and leaped into his arms.

  Maybe he saw the impulse on her face. “Come in for a swim?” he asked.

  No. Oh no. She shook her head.

  After a moment, he released her with a shrug, then ducked back into the water to stroke toward his niece. For a few moments she watched him try to engage the young girl, flattening his hand against the water to splash her.

  Katie’s eyes lit for an instant and she almost surrendered to the simple fun, but then her expression closed down and she swam away, her movements efficient and graceful. Angel wondered who had taught the girl to swim. Had it been Stephen? Cooper?

  Whose strong arms had held her, whose deep voice had soothed her fears? A sudden image of Cooper, of his arms not around Katie, but around Angel, his voice warm in her ear, sent her spinning abruptly toward the kitchen and Lainey.

  Maybe she should make some excuse. Claim a headache, anything,
in order to leave.

  But Beth and Judd were in the kitchen too, assembling a fruit salad, and once more Angel caught that strange vibe from Lainey’s twin. Curiosity piqued once more, instead of excusing herself from the dinner, Angel offered to help.

  She saw Beth dart her a nervous glance, but then the other woman started to chatter about the details of the art show as if to give Angel no room for questions.

  From what Beth said, Angel gathered that two exhibition tents would be erected on the large lawn beside the retreat’s common building—one for the paintings and one for refreshments. Thanks to the hospitality of the Benedictine monks, the retreatants would spend the day at the monastery so their quiet wouldn’t be disturbed. Because there wasn’t enough parking, buses were scheduled to ferry the guests from a central location in Carmel.

  “How many people do you expect to attend?” Angel asked, fishing for a chunk of zucchini from a bowl of marinade. She’d been given the task of threading marinated vegetable pieces onto skewers.

  Beth darted a glance at her. “Since Lainey insisted we keep to the original date, only about one hundred fifty. We usually have twice that number, but on such short notice…”

  Lainey shrugged off the disapproval in her sister’s voice. “We always have the exhibit on September thirtieth,” she said. “One hundred fifty on that date is better than three hundred on some other.”

  “It’s a special day?” Angel asked.

  “It’s the day Stephen arrived in the Sur.”

  Angel’s hand slipped on the mushroom she’d just retrieved, nearly stabbing herself with the skewer. “From San Francisco?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Lainey loaded paper plates onto a tray and headed toward the pool again. “I think of it as the day that life, as I knew it, changed forever.”

  It was the day Angel’s had changed forever too. The day her father had left her mother.

  Turning away from Lainey, her eye caught a strange expression on Beth’s face. Again, Angel’s reporter’s antennae quivered.

  But the other woman’s must have been working overtime too, because she darted a glance at Angel, then rushed to her sister and pulled the tray out of her hands. “I’ll take that. You finish up in here.” Beth hurried onto the patio, Judd right behind her.

  Through the glass doors, Lainey looked after her sister for a long, silent moment. “I still can’t believe what’s happened to us,” she finally said. “How life has changed again, in just one instant.”

  There were tears in her voice and suddenly Angel wanted nothing more than to escape the kitchen too. She ducked her head, hurriedly skewering. “I’m sure it takes time to fully understand what’s happened.”

  “Oh, I understand.” Lainey stayed frozen by the patio doors. “I understand how short life is now. That’s why I rescheduled the art show right away. There’s no time to waste, Angel. Do you see?”

  She focused even harder on the skewer in her hand. “Sure.”

  “And love,” Lainey continued. “Love is a miracle, when you think about it. You find a man who you’re willing to throw open your heart to. You shouldn’t waste that either.”

  “Uh-hmm,” Angel murmured. As if she’d let any man into her heart. Sorry, but she was keeping that half of the human species where she could keep her eye on them.

  Lainey put her hand on the patio door handle, then hesitated. “Listen to me, Angel. Don’t let Cooper get away.”

  She had the door shut behind her before Angel could lift her jaw from the floor. Oh my God.

  Oh. My. God.

  The reason she’d been invited to this “family” dinner was suddenly clear. Lainey was matchmaking.

  As she finished constructing the final kabobs, Angel decided to draw Cooper aside at the very first opportunity and explain things to him. It was his sister, after all, his newly widowed sister, so it was up to him to make sure she didn’t suffer another disappointment. He’d have to tell her there was nothing between them, and no hope that there ever would be.

  But when Angel brought the tray of skewers outside, she couldn’t get to Cooper right away because Katie attached herself to her side. Angel swallowed, unsure what the girl wanted, but sure the kid made her strangely uneasy.

  “Uh, hi,” she said.

  Katie nodded. In the bright sunlight, she smelled faintly of chlorine. Her hair was slicked back in a wet French braid, and Angel saw a sprinkling of cinnamon freckles across the bridge of the teenager’s nose.

  Angel rubbed her own nose, where gold freckles lay in an identical pattern, and fumbled for words. “I…uh…uh…” Cursing every curious impulse that had led her to the Whitney house that evening, Angel said the first thing that popped into her head. “I’ve always wanted to wear my hair in a braid like yours.”

  It turned out to be a lucky remark, because hair once again proved it was the common denominator of femaledom. Some thought women could most easily bond over man trouble, but in Angel’s experience, it was coiffure concerns that brought every woman to the table. Literally, this time. Within minutes Katie had installed Angel at a small patio side table with a comb and a mirror. Then she proceeded to try to teach Angel how to French braid her own hair.

  Beth and Lainey drifted over to offer their tips. With her arms awkwardly raised overhead, Angel’s muscles were screaming in agony, but she gamely attempted to follow along until the other three were choking back laughter.

  “Thanks a lot,” Angel grumbled, peering at her reflection. “It’s not my fault I look like a mutant cross between Pippi Longstocking and Bozo the Clown.”

  She grimaced as some snickers escaped. “One of you will have to fix this mess.”

  As Katie obligingly moved forward, Angel’s eye caught on Judd’s and Cooper’s reflected images in the mirror. Standing beside the barbecue, they were staring at the group of females. It could be that her hair disaster had snagged their attention, but when Angel glanced around her, she knew it wasn’t the bad braid job.

  It was the laughter. The lightness of the moment and the brightness in the faces of Lainey, Beth, and Katie.

  Something warm waved through Angel, almost pride, almost…well, almost belonging. It was nice.

  The mood carried into dinner. At a glass-topped table beneath a market umbrella, Lainey and Beth relived bad-hair experiments of the past and razzed Cooper about the George Michael look he’d affected once upon a time.

  Angel drew back in mock horror from the man sitting beside her. “George Michael? As in ‘I-will-be-your-preacher-teacher’ George Michael?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling me you’re proud of your Madonna phase?”

  “How did you—” She caught herself and lifted her chin. Fibbed. “She was never my role model.”

  “Liar.” He leaned closer, his voice lowering for her ears only. “Which was it? The scruffy street girl, the blond bombshell? Were you Erotica or Like a Virgin?”

  When a sweet little shiver ran down her back, Angel suddenly remembered she’d forgotten about Lainey’s misapprehension. She’d also forgotten how dark his greeny-brown eyes turned when he was talking sexy, how his thick lashes made them even more like a deep, hot night in Big Sur. Hot night, hot skin, hot man.

  Dragging her mind back, she cleared her throat. “I told you, I never dressed like Madonna.”

  “But she dressed as a boy,” Katie piped up. “When she was in third grade she pretended to be a boy.”

  The words dropped like an unwelcome blanket over the table. All heads turned toward Angel. All eyes.

  The camaraderie of the evening dissolved and Angel felt like the outsider again. The one who didn’t belong in the family.

  “Maybe Angel doesn’t like to talk about that, Katydid,” Cooper put in gently.

  “Oh. I…” Katie’s face flushed.

  Angel jumped into the awkward moment, trying to save the girl from embarrassment. “No, no. It’s fine. As a matter of fact, I have the funniest story about my first
and only boy sleepover.” She briefly sketched out why she’d impersonated a boy for Lainey, Beth, and Judd, then launched into the account of a backyard sleepover with three other boys that had morphed into a pissing contest.

  A real pissing contest.

  Beth’s mouth dropped. “What did you do?”

  It had been panic time then, but Angel could laugh about it now. “I made them all turn around and then I grabbed an almost-full can of soda and slowly let it dribble to the ground.” She tilted her empty hand to demonstrate. “I knew I didn’t have a prayer for the distance record, but I won the titles for volume and flow control hands down.”

  Instead of laughing, or at the very least smiling, the group around the table sat silent for a moment. Then Lainey stood and directed Katie to start clearing the table. Judd and Beth followed suit. When Angel moved to help, Cooper snagged her hand and held her back.

  As the others trailed toward the kitchen, she made a face at Cooper and rose awkwardly to her feet. “Guess I shouldn’t leave my day job for a stint as a stand-up comedian.”

  Instead of answering, he rose too and pulled her into his arms. “You’re killing me, kid.” His voice was gruff. “You’re killing me.”

  “That’s not good,” she said into his shirt. Like Katie, he smelled a little of chlorine too. Angel thought of his strong, sure hands slicing through the water. She felt those hands on her now, strong and sure on her too. Looking into his face, she resisted wrapping her arms around his neck. “This probably isn’t good either.”

  Then movement caught her eye. It was Lainey, coming toward them. In a rush, Angel recalled that wrong-headed matchmaking notion again and pushed off from Cooper’s chest, stumbling backward toward the edge of the pool.

  “Watch out,” he cautioned sharply.

  Angel caught her balance and planted her heels into the flagstone deck. “I’m fine. Fine.”

  Lainey continued toward them, glancing over her shoulder as she reached Cooper. “I need to talk to you,” she said, lowering her voice. “Away from Katie.”

  Angel instantly started to edge away. “Um, maybe I should—”