Do Not Disturb

by Christie Ridgway

  It was the reporter in her, Angel decided, that was insisting she trail Beth along the path leading to the cove’s secret entrance. Her intuition was ringing alarm bells, just as it did whenever Cooper’s sister was nearby.

  It wasn’t as if she were coming to care about Beth.

  She didn’t take a personal interest in the members of Cooper’s family, just as she didn’t take—much—of a personal interest in Cooper himself. Why, when she’d woken at dawn and found herself plastered against his body, she’d instantly detached without waking him, her brain clamoring for separation.

  For distance. For objectivity. For all those good, girl-reporter qualities that she’d aspired to since she was twelve years old.

  Of course, she shouldn’t have gone to bed with him again, but there was no use crying over great sex. Anyway, she and Cooper had both been unnerved the night before. Cooper because he’d had to rescue her, and Angel because of Lainey’s discovery of a possible Whitney daughter. But in the light of day, Angel realized that Lainey’s find posed little actual risk to her secret. Tracking down this unidentified daughter would be impossible unless someone knew the facts that Angel did.

  After all, her parents had never married. And though Stephen Whitney’s name was on her original birth certificate, both her mother’s and her own name had been legally changed years and years ago.

  Angel hurried through the tunnel and emerged on the other side, blinking against the sun’s bright reflection off the sand. There wasn’t a distraught woman in sight. Not even a calm one. It was as if Beth had vanished.

  Frowning, Angel spun a 360. The cove was formed by granite into a solid U-shape, its ends protruding into the Pacific. The battering ocean had broken them down, leaving chunks of crumbling rock that the waves usually dashed against in dramatic, foamy-white geysers.

  But today the tide was lower than she’d seen before, and the sea quieter. If Beth timed it right, could she have scrambled over one of the projections and into an adjacent cove?

  To see, Angel wandered close to the wave line and mounted the rocks on her left. Usually covered by water, they were slippery with green stuff, and she put a hand down to steady herself. Something spongy and shell-encrusted sucked at her fingers and she shrieked, jerking back.

  “Damn it!” an exasperated voice yelled from behind her. “Do you need a keeper?”

  Angel froze. Cooper’s exasperated voice. She tried for a casual glance over her shoulder, but looking at him made her suddenly, stomach-clenching serious. He was striding in her direction, with rumpled hair and in rumpled jeans, his chest and feet bare.

  He’s the keeper. The one I want to keep.

  The notion tried to settle into her chest, but she hauled in a huge breath so there wasn’t any room for it.

  He came to a halt below her. “Get down,” he ordered, holding up his hand.

  She shook her head. “I’m looking for Beth. I followed her to the beach and then she disappeared.”

  “You can’t make it over the rocks,” he said, glowering at her. “You have to wade around.”

  “Oh.”

  He snapped his outstretched fingers. “Come on. Get down.”

  Ignoring his hand, Angel leaped for the sand. She stumbled on landing, but managed to find her balance before Cooper reached her. Without a word, she started toward the incoming waves.

  “Where the hell are you going now?” he ground out.

  “To wade around. I want to find Beth.”

  “No!”

  At the vehement command, Angel stopped and looked back at his angry, dark eyes. “What’s the matter with you?”

  He speared a hand through his hair. “Have you forgotten you can’t swim?”

  “Wade, you said. I can wade.” She didn’t want to think about swimming, about drowning, about the relief she’d felt the night before when his arms had come around her in the pool. She couldn’t let him get his arms around her again, that’s for sure, because she didn’t want to start depending on their warmth. On his strength.

  “No, Angel.” His body was tensed, as if he were ready to charge her if he had to.

  “But Beth—”

  “Knows what she’s doing. Don’t go near the water.” He raked his hair with his hand again, and softened his voice. “Damn it, Angel, don’t. Please.”

  “Okay, fine.” She retreated from the incoming waves, though she stayed well clear of him. “But I assure you, I’m usually perfectly safe around the water.”

  “Usually being the operative word.”

  She hated the way he pointed that out. “I don’t need a man to—”

  “I don’t like feeling scared.”

  She grimaced. “You made that pretty clear last night.”

  “I’m referring to this morning.”

  She lifted her arms from her sides. “I’m off the rocks and away from the water already!”

  “No, I mean when I woke up and you weren’t in my bed.”

  Angel swallowed. Did he mean he’d missed her?

  At the idea, a traitorous warmth tried to steal through her, tried to make her soft. So she tossed her head and pooh-poohed the comment with an offhand gesture. “Oh, sure. It’s terrifying to have a whole big bed all to yourself.”

  He let that go, only to narrow his gaze at her. “Why do you keep running out on me, Angel? Just exactly what’s scaring you?”

  “What kind of question is that?” She stifled a little flurry of panic and waved her arms around to indicate their surroundings. “Look at it out here! It’s too beautiful a day for questions like that.”

  But he refused to be sidetracked. “Come on, Angel, I want an answer,” he insisted softly, stalking closer. “What’s scaring you? Say the first thing that comes into your head.”

  She turned away from him, but the answers tumbled into her mind anyway.

  Weakness. You.

  You breaking my heart.

  With a shake of her head, she pushed those thoughts aside to make room for annoyance. Cooper was playing question games with her, lawyer games, power games. Clearly, as a man, he hadn’t appreciated waking up alone. He hadn’t liked being the one left behind. She’d “scared” him? Hah. More likely she’d bruised his ego.

  In preparation for telling him just that, she took a deep breath and spun to face him again. But the words dried in her mouth as she was smacked right between the eyes by the amazing spectacle of the scenery behind him.

  On a day-to-day basis, the natural beauty of Big Sur was nearly unfathomable in its majesty, so her mind had taken to relegating it to travel-poster or movie-backdrop status. But now it had her attention, and she saw it, really saw it.

  Over Cooper’s shoulders, the green-covered mountains appeared close enough to touch, their sheer faces dropping to meet cascading beige hills. From there, the hills rolled gently to the staggered, jagged granite cliffsides that plunged toward the roiling ocean. It was yet another hot day, and the sun was already fading the sky to a pale blue, while striking gold in the sand at her feet and finding pockets of silver in the grayish ocean.

  It was incredible. Awe-inspiring.

  She blinked, sucked in a breath, blinked again. It was still all there, still so incredible and awe-inspiring. She remembered the day she’d sat with Katie on one of those staggered promontories, and how insignificant she’d felt in the vastness of the natural beauty.

  “Maybe I’m afraid of this,” she murmured.

  Startled to hear the words spoken aloud and alarmed by what she might have revealed, she tried covering up the gaffe. Shoving her hands in the pockets of her white jeans, she made herself saunter toward Cooper. “If I was afraid of anything, that is.”

  He shook his head. “Which you’re not.”

  She grinned; she had to. “Which I’m not.”

  Sighing, he shook his head again. “You are one tough nut to crack.”

  “No. Just tough.”

  “Angel…” He reached out for her.

  She jerked back. Then
, embarrassed by her jumpiness, she leaned closer to jab him playfully in the stomach. “But how about you, big guy? How about you tell me your scariest moment ever? Taking the bar? Defending your first client?” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Your first kiss?”

  There was a little bubble of silence, then he caught her gaze, held it.

  She felt a tremor in her chest.

  “Really, Angel?” There was another little silence in which he watched her closely, too closely. “You really want to know the scariest moment in my life?”

  Her heart trembled again, but her head said, Bluff, bluff, bluff! “Sure.”

  “It was when my father died.” His eyes never left her face.

  Angel’s feet scraped backward in the sand. No fair, no fair. She’d been trying to ease them past this second-morning awkwardness! She was working on reestablishing a nice, impersonal distance. Cooper should be thanking her for that.

  “We were alone in the Lucias. Our first father-son camping trip after his heart attack. The doctor had declared him hale and hearty, but he collapsed the very first night.”

  Oh God. She shook her head, holding out her hands to halt him. “It’s too private…too personal…”

  Cooper spoke right over her, his voice rough and implacable. “I couldn’t leave him alone to get help, he didn’t want me to. Instead, he gave me the Evelyn Woods speed course on becoming the man of the family. He told me where all the financial records were. He told me to take care of my mom and my sisters. He told me to always do the right thing.”

  “No, no.” Angel shook her head again. “I don’t want to hear—”

  “I was holding his hand when he died. I didn’t leave him until his skin turned cold.”

  “—any more.” Though it was too late, she repeated herself. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “Well, why the hell not?” Cooper demanded, his expresson tightening. “Why don’t you want to know?”

  “I—”

  “Is it because you’re not interested unless I’m the source for some article? If it won’t grab your readers, then you don’t want the story? Is that why you’ve left me, twice now, to wake up alone?”

  He advanced on her, his eyes dark, hard. “This morning when you weren’t there, I flashed on a vision of you at the bottom of Lainey’s pool. And yeah, it scared the hell out of me, Angel. But now, now I’m just pissed.”

  She scuttled farther back, desperate to get away, yet just as desperate not to appear that she was.

  He moved in for the attack, grabbing her at the elbows to hold her still. “That is it, isn’t it? You’re comfortable when the relationship is reporter-to-subject, aren’t you? But not any other way. Not person-to-person.” His fingers tightened on her arms. “Not woman-to-man.”

  It took every ounce of will she had to keep her face expressionless. She stared at him, willing nothing, nothing to show in her eyes. Not hurt. For sure, not hurt.

  But, oh God, he had hurt her.

  He was breathing hard, the scar on his chest rising and falling, rising and falling. “What the hell am I doing?” he muttered, dropping his hands.

  Angel took an instant step back.

  He winced. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I have no right…no right at all.”

  To be on the safe side, she retreated another foot.

  He winced again. “Don’t worry, I’m going.”

  And he did. She watched him disappear through the tunnel with eyes so dry they burned. Her throat was dry too, as if in the last few minutes the life had been leached out of her. As if she were a stalk of September weed that had been desiccated by the merciless sun.

  She dropped to the sand and buried her head against her knees. Now would be a good time for a stiff wind to rise and blow her away. Let it pick her up and toss her somewhere in the eddies over the vast Lucias or send her along the jet stream that pulled across the Pacific.

  It wouldn’t matter if she disappeared. No one would care, because she didn’t allow them to get that close. While Cooper might not think he had a right, he was right about her. Person-to-person, woman-to-man, she failed. She was fine as a professional, but when a relationship was personal—then she shut down, shut off.

  It was a mechanism to keep her safe…and that kept her alone.

  “Angel.”

  Her head jerked up. Cooper was on the sand behind her, pulling her onto his lap and into his arms. The bare skin of his shoulder was warm against her face and smelled like his bed had when she’d walked away that morning—like clean sheets and sunshine, with a tangy note of sex.

  “You’re back,” she said, too surprised to wiggle away.

  “I didn’t really want to leave you.” He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head and her hair caught in his morning stubble. It was the only part of herself that she allowed to cling to him. “I couldn’t leave you.”

  She stilled, but inside her, inside her chest, something moved. It twisted, or maybe it untwisted, no telling exactly which. “W-what did you say?”

  He shifted to cup her face in his hands. “God help me,” he whispered, looking into her eyes, “I couldn’t leave you.”

  Angel stared at him, feeling dizzy and breathless and totally unlike her usual cautious, tough self. Eons passed as she tried to figure out what was happening to her.

  “Cooper, let’s go back,” she finally said, because there wasn’t enough time in the world to separate and identify the emotions building inside and there was something more urgent. “Let’s go back to your place. I…want your arms around me.”

  I need your arms around me.

  His fingers tightened on her face for an instant, then they slid to her hands to tug her to her feet. In the next moment he’d pulled her against him in a warm, strong embrace. She leaned into him, reveling in the feel of his heart beating against her cheek.

  “What are we doing?” he murmured. “What the hell are we doing?”

  It was clear he didn’t expect an answer, which was good. Very good. Because Angel had no idea what Cooper was doing—and she could only hope that she wasn’t falling in love.

  Chapter 17

  The walk back to the retreat didn’t smooth out Angel’s mood or clear up her confusion. She only knew that her pulse was racing and she couldn’t rid herself of that dizzy, breathless feeling. As they came within sight of the Tranquility common building, she spotted a strange group of men at the same instant one of the men spotted them.

  “Hey, Coop!” the guy yelled.

  Angel nearly jumped from her skin. The surprise of the loud voice in the usual silence shot a burst of adrenaline into her already overloaded system.

  “Coop, over here!” The man waved his arms.

  Grimacing, Cooper slanted her a glance. “The workers are here to erect the tents for the art show. They’ll expect my help.”

  She nodded jerkily, relief and disappointment adding to the emotional cocktail inside of her.

  He released her hand and cupped his palms around her face again. “Are you going to be all right?”

  She nodded again.

  “You said you wanted me.”

  Her head shook in immediate denial. “I’ll be fine. Just fine.” On second thought, she clearly needed something other than Cooper right now. What she needed was to quash the odd idea that she was in danger of falling in love with him.

  “I’ll see you later, then.” He bent his head and touched his mouth to hers. Soft and tender, the kiss on top of the weird jitters made her woozy. When he ended it and let go of her, she wobbled.

  He laid a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Okay?”

  No. Her heart continued to wobble inside her chest. But she managed a carefree smile, slipping straight into her habit of bravado-under-stress. “Of course.”

  He strode off, then suddenly spun back.

  She wished he hadn’t caught her looking after him.

  “Was that you whistling?” he asked.

  Her eyes widened and she shoved her hands in her pockets.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She only whistled when she was uncertain or frightened. That wasn’t the problem here. Flashing him her best no-worries smile, she made it a point to be the one to turn away first, and hoped she looked dignified and cool as she scurried toward her cottage and her expected return to sanity.

  She was halfway there when the silence was interrupted again. “Girl!” an elderly female voice said. “Girl, over here!”

  Angel’s head turned toward the sound. In the door of the cottage she’d just passed she recognized one of the retreatants.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” Angel called out, retracing her steps. The white-haired woman beckoned her nearer with one hand, while the other gripped a heavy staff in arthritic-looking fingers.

  The lady beckoned Angel closer still.

  With an inward shrug, she followed the elderly woman inside her cottage. Maybe the old gal needed help moving or reaching something.

  When the door was shut behind them, the lady turned to Angel. “Sit down, girl. Sit down.”

  Staying where she was, Angel frowned. “Is there something I can do for you, ma’am?” She wasn’t up to a social call.

  “I’m Mrs. Withers.” Gesturing to one easy chair, she lowered herself into another. “I heard you’re a reporter.”

  Not knowing quite what else to do, she nodded and perched on the edge of the indicated seat. “My name is Angel Buchanan. I write for West Coast magazine.”

  “Well, if you’re writing about Tranquility House,” the old woman asserted. “The person you should be talking to is me.”

  Angel opened her mouth to correct the impression, then hesitated. Was there really some all-fired hurry to leave? The alternative to killing some time with Mrs. Withers was staring at her own four walls and worrying about whether or not she was edging toward being in love with Cooper.

  Which she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. Why would he be the one after all these years?

  And since that was exactly what she didn’t want to dwell upon, she focused on the older lady. “You know the retreat well?” she asked.

  “Know it well! I’ve been visiting here every September for the past forty years.”