Before The Fall

by Patricia Rosemoor

  While he sounded as if he was joking, Angela had the distinct impression that he really was being evasive.

  Too aware of the light touch against her leg, she had trouble concentrating. The gown’s skirts shifted and caressed him. There was something so intimate in the picture. With difficulty, Angela forced herself back to her interrogation.

  “What circles?”

  At first she didn’t think he was going to answer. Some fleeting emotion crossed his features, only to disappear as quickly as she’d spotted it.

  Then he said, “Admirers…and victims…of Harold Kaminsky.”

  Victims?

  “And Harold would be…?”

  “My father. Pop’s quite good at what he does,” Micah said in a conversational tone, his expression passive. “He’s only been caught twice.”

  Angela sucked in her breath. “Caught…as in doing something illegal?”

  Micah nodded. “Somewhere he got the idea that living off other people’s money was more attractive than making a living of his own.”

  “He’s a thief?” she ventured.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  His midnight blue eyes searched her face as though he feared she would pass judgment on him for his father’s deeds. But she would never do to someone else what others had done to her. And for all his outward bravado, she knew he feared that she might. Something more than simple empathy stirred inside her. A bonding of sorts, Angela thought, recognizing him as a kindred spirit.

  She reached out and gently touched his face, fingers prickling against the beard growth. His hand quickly covered hers. The connection complete, for a moment Angela lost her breath. When he lowered his hand to the tarp, he brought hers with it, their fingers lightly tangled together.

  “How long have you lived with this?” she asked.

  “All my life. What choice did I have? Pop cut his path before I was born.”

  He said this matter-of-factly as though it didn’t bother him. But she sensed he was lying—not to her, but to himself. He’d buried his true feelings. He’d compromised himself so that he could believe it was okay.

  That he wasn’t angry.

  Disappointed.

  Left feeling cheated—not of anything tangible, but of the things most people took for granted.

  He must really, really love his father.

  Just as I do, a small voice inside her responded. All those feelings applied to her.

  Because Micah had told her his father preferred sweet women with forgiving natures, she said, “I assume your mother knew.”

  “Practically from the first. And she married him anyway. She didn’t like what he did, but she loved him.”

  “And probably thought she could reform him.”

  Her own mother had once admitted this as being her fantasy throughout the early years of her marriage to Tomas Dragonetti. With time had come acceptance…something Angela still couldn’t achieve.

  “A man is what he is,” Micah said. “Some things can be changed. But a man’s basic nature?” He shook his head. “We have two choices. Acceptance or rejection. Simple.”

  He’d chosen one path with his father, while she’d chosen the other with hers. But it wasn’t simple at all.

  Odd pieces of past conversations clicked into place. No wonder Micah always sounded as though he was defending her father. His experience wasn’t so different from her own…except he had found a way to come to terms with his family problems, while she had never resolved her own inner conflicts.

  Did that make Micah a happier person than she was?

  Angela wondered.

  And she felt for him.

  Stretching alongside Micah, propping her head on her hand, she said, “I’ve never met a man like you before…someone who can truly relate to me. You understand what I’ve been through…because you’ve been there yourself.”

  “And I’ve never met a woman like you before….”

  He reached out and smoothed the hair from her face. A thrill rocketed through her. This time, she caught his hand…and held it…and imagined never letting go.

  Through the thickening dusk she stared deep into Micah’s eyes, recognizing a longing equal to her own. A longing that included the physical, certainly, but that went beyond something so basic.

  The way he was gazing at her…with wonder…with wanting…with love.

  Love?

  Could it be?

  Before she had the chance to speculate further, Micah was kissing her, pushing all other thoughts from her mind. She responded, loving the roughness of his beard growth against her face. Loving his hands running under her skirts and over her thighs. Loving the weight of his body as he shifted and pressed her into the ground.

  Loving him.

  It could be.

  She had no experience—not with this kind of emotion. Nothing to compare. She’d never felt this way about another man. Had never before allowed her heart to be in jeopardy.

  It had to be.

  Wanting Micah seemed so natural, so right. They’d been building up to this for days. The only question was how they had avoided consummating their desire for so long.

  Angela slipped a hand between them, fingers cleverly disarming his belt. She slid open his zipper even as he burrowed his hand beneath her panties and urged her to lift her hips so he could remove them. Then he lifted his body slightly, allowing her to expose him.

  They touched and kissed and joined. They whispered each other’s names followed by words that only lovers uttered. They rocked apart and came together in a joyous blast of sensation and emotion.

  Angela had hardly drifted down to earth when Micah flipped to his back, using some effort to bring her with him, because her skirts were trapped by their weight. Still, she shot over him, the quick movement punctuated by a tearing sound as the tangled cloth ripped.

  Not caring a whit, she murmured, “I always did like being on top in any endeavor.”

  A ripple of pleasure shot along her spine as he unzipped the gown, his fingers seducing her back. Freeing her, he covered her breasts with his hands. The sensitive flesh pebbled and she gasped with renewed need too urgent to ignore.

  “Now let’s do it right,” he said softly.

  “We did it wrong?” She widened her eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Let me show you.”

  Thus began a seduction as slow and painstaking as their first coming together had been rushed and impassioned.

  Micah pleasured her with his hands and mouth, driving her to new heights of creativity. Angela milked every ounce of feverish pleasure from the experience, for who knew what tomorrow might bring?

  Life had taught her to expect happiness to be snatched away from her.

  What she didn’t know was how.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Tell me about your fiancé,” Micah urged as he zipped up the back of her dress the next morning.

  They’d greeted the sunrise with another round of lovemaking.

  “Jealous?” Angela teased, though when she turned around she realized this wasn’t something to joke about. His expression was serious. Closed. “Douglas isn’t really my fiancé,” she assured him, her heart skipping a beat. If he was jealous, that meant he really cared. “He’s a man I’ve been dating.”

  His eyes softened. “For how long?”

  “A couple of months.”

  “Sounds serious to me.”

  “It’s serious to him. I think. We never even…um—” she searched for a way to put it delicately “—got really close.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Not in months?”

  “I kept avoiding. Maybe I was waiting for someone special to come along…and sweep me off my feet.”

  Chuckling, Micah slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her to him. Her heart hammered and she wondered if they’d dressed a bit too soon.

  “So how special am I?” he asked.

  “Fishing for compliments? I thought your ego was as big as—” she glanced over his shoulder an
d down the reservoir “—as this canyon.”

  He laughed and kissed her. Then, with an exaggerated groan, he wrenched his mouth from hers. “We’d better have breakfast and get on the road.”

  Reluctantly she left the shelter of his arms, wishing they could be like any other couple, able to relax and enjoy themselves and their newfound love. But they weren’t like normal couples—not with their backgrounds. Thinking that made Angela realize anew how little she knew about Micah’s past. Wanting in the worst way to know more about his father, she still hesitated to ask.

  While Micah set up the table, she surveyed the mess of her gown. The skirt hung in tatters and one shoulder had ripped out. She made a few attempts to fix things, but only worsened the damage until Micah magically produced a pair of scissors. By the time she was finished hacking, however, the garment was substantially reduced in bulk.

  “Free at last,” she murmured, sitting down to eat.

  “But the results were well worth the wait.”

  The sparkle in Micah’s eyes gave her ego a much needed boost.

  “If we’d flown straight back to Nevada, you would never have seen me like this.” They never would have made love…fallen in love. At least, she had. “Why didn’t we?”

  He gave her a sheepish grin. “So I’m afraid of flying. Why do you think I have such an attachment to the Thunderbird?”

  Angela had a good, long laugh at his expense.

  Breakfast was a quick affair. Then, after making cer-

  tain they put their garbage in containers and left the site as they’d found it, Micah automatically got behind the wheel.

  Figuring she’d play navigator, Angela reached into the back seat for the road atlas that sat on top of the tabloid. She grabbed both.

  As they started off, her gaze flicked across the front page of the newspaper and she pulled a face. “Terrible photo of me, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe you should have one that you like better printed up to distribute to reporters,” he said with a grin. “You do own a photography studio now.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  Her buying the business that had gotten her into this mess was nothing she cared to joke about.

  As they headed out of the park, she scanned the article, then paged through the rest of the newspaper, stopping at the Desert Deals ad. She stared at the blackand-white photo of Frank Gonnella, wondering how a man she’d never even met could put her through such hell. As she was about to close the tabloid on his slimy face, she noticed the dealership’s logo directly above its Internet address.

  “The Joshua tree and coyote.”

  “What about it?”

  “This drawing is just like the other one—you know, on the piece of notepaper that had your license plate number scribbled on it.”

  “That graphic is probably pretty common.”

  Angela’s excitement rose. “Not likely that it would be identical, though.”

  Micah stopped the car and searched through his jeans pockets until he produced the scrap of paper and smoothed it open. Taking the paper from him, she compared the graphic to the one in the newspaper. Identical.

  “This makes the connection,” she insisted. Finally…finally they were getting somewhere. “That means Frank Gonnella is our man.”

  “Or anyone who has access to his supplies.”

  “Are you trying to discourage me?”

  “I hate to see you pinning all your hopes on something that could be a coincidence.”

  What a strange thing for him to say…almost as if he knew better. She narrowed her gaze on him but, once more, the truth hid behind the mirrored sunglasses.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s consider an option. An employee. Wily.”

  He traded the brake for the accelerator and started off. “Except the receptionist didn’t know any Wily.”

  Pulling the phone book from where she’d stuck it between the console and her seat, she paged to W and stared at the entry.

  “Wily. No last initial. And there’s no other entry like this one. All the others have two initials, with the exception of a few duplicates. Those are distinguished by one of them having a first name,” she explained. “So I assumed Wily’s last initial would be W. But what if Mariscano doesn’t know Wily’s last name? What if Wily is just an identifier for a hired gun and Mariscano doesn’t have anything else on the guy?”

  “An identifier or nickname.”

  “Right. Wily meaning clever…” She knew she was reaching. “As in wily coyote.” She ran a fingertip over the coyote part of the logo.

  “You may have something there.”

  “When we get back to Las Vegas we can go straight to the car dealership. If we ask around, maybe one of the employees can identify this Wily.”

  “Why wait that long? When we make a pit stop, we can find a telephone.”

  “I already tried the receptionist,” she reminded him.

  Micah’s eyebrows lifted over his mirrored sunglasses. “But I haven’t.”

  THE CALL TO DESERT DEALS would be the second he would make, Micah decided when they stopped in Cheyenne less than two hours later. Angela would be awhile. Having found a real shopping center, he’d given her one of his credit cards and an hour to do some serious damage buying new clothes. Not that he didn’t appreciate her outfit, which currently more closely resembled a sarong than a wedding gown.

  He punched in the first number and made his report as he’d promised he would.

  All the while thoughts of Angela lingered in his mind.

  How she’d gotten under his skin. How he wanted to keep her there. How she would react when she found out.

  Signing off, he hung up.

  And knew he would tell her the truth himself. Maybe she wouldn’t turn against him when she finally knew everything. He had to take the chance—he would do anything to keep her in his life.

  He made the second call.

  “Desert Deals…where the savings are so hot they sizzle!” the nasal-voiced receptionist answered by rote. “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so, darlin’,” he said in his most charming manner. “I’m trying to track down a man. An employee.”

  “The name?”

  “That’s my problem. I don’t know. I’m not even sure he still works for you.”

  Sounding as if she were trying to stifle her impatience, the receptionist asked, “What’s the nature of your business?”

  “Personal. Real personal. It’s my sister. This guy left her in a family way, and—”

  She cut him off. “Uh, maybe I’d better let you speak to Mr. Gonnella, the owner.”

  “Wait a minute! Before you do that…is he the kind of man who’d sympathize with Rona’s plight?”

  Micah silently prayed his sister never heard about this little maneuver—she’d make him pay for using her name in vain.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “You sound like a kind person…what did you say your name was?”

  “Gladys.”

  “Well, Gladys, I trust you’d be sympathetic to another young woman’s plight. Rona wants to keep this baby more than anything, but she’ll be a single mother…one who doesn’t make much money. If I can find the father, I’ll make sure that’s not a problem. Don’t you think a man’s obligation is to his child?”

  Gladys thought about it for only a second. “Yes, of course I do.” She sighed. “My girlfriend was in the same situation last year. Well, she still is because the cad skipped town. All right. I’ll help if I can, but without your knowing the guy’s name, I don’t see how.”

  “Rona called him by a nickname…Wily.”

  “Wily? Some woman called recently asking for a Wily.”

  “My sister,” he said convincingly.

  “Oh, dear. Well, how would you suggest we start?”

  “With your employee directory.”

  “It’s a couple of months old. It’s a large dealership. We always have some turnover. He could be long gone by now.�
�

  A couple of months ago Joey Mariscano had paid Angela his visit. “But that’s when Rona was seeing this man who she said worked for you. That directory should be the one.”

  “Yes, of course. Can you hold on a second?”

  After answering another outside call, the receptionist returned and began reading names to him. Though none sounded familiar, Micah made note of them all in hopes that Angela might recognize one.

  “That’s it for the sales associates and the mechanics.”

  She made it sound like the tip of the iceberg. “You have other male employees?”

  “Oh, sure. They work in the offices, too. Shall I go through them?”

  “Definitely. Rona didn’t say what he worked at.”

  This list was shorter…and one of the names had a familiar ring. He asked about the man. Gladys told him what she knew.

  “But’s it’s as I feared,” she went on. “He quit a while ago and I don’t have a clue where he headed from here.”

  “It’s a start, Gladys. Thank you.”

  Hanging up, Micah realized how good Angela’s instincts were. And how bad.

  “YOU CAN TRY THOSE ON right in here,” the saleswoman told Angela, leading her into a short hallway off Women’s Sportswear.

  The dressing rooms lay in one direction, an office in the other.

  A deserted office with telephones, she noted.

  “Miss! Oh, miss, I need help now!” a cranky customer demanded from the floor.

  “Wouldn’t you know it?” The saleswoman sounded as frazzled as she looked. Her skin was damp and blotchy, and three pencils poked out of her hair in various directions. “Shorthanded…the other girl goes to lunch early…and more customers than normal.”

  Her distraction was undoubtedly the reason she hadn’t seemed to notice Angela’s unusual appearance.

  Angela took the half-dozen hangers from the saleswoman and glanced at her name tag. “Don’t you worry about me, then, Thelma. I like taking my time, and I can fend for myself. I’ll come find you when I’m ready to buy.”

  “Bless you.”

  “Miss, now!”

  “Coming!” Thelma called, scurrying off.

  In the first open dressing room Angela quickly hung the light wool-blend trousers and silk shirts she’d chosen. That she would soon be wearing clean and comfortable clothing thrilled her.