"A golden stallion?" She rolled her eyes, "Please."
He tilted his head. A smile played at his lips. "Not your fantasy,
huh?" He looked at her from beneath his brows, daring her, somehow, to
deny it.
Her cheeks flamed. It was her fantasy, one of them, to be swept away
like a movie heroine on a galloping steed in the arms of a strong and
silent sort. Keller would have known that but Kiel had no business
messing with her fantasies. She couldn't seem to break off eye contact
with him. "I don't do..." She swallowed. His fingers caressed the
piece of ivory. Heat flared at her throat. "I don't have...
fantasies. I'm all grown up now."
"Do you believe only children have fantasies?" "No." She opened her
compact again to make sure of what she already knew. She lowered the
mirror. "But if I wanted to fantasize myself an Avenging Angel, I
would have chosen the angel that Keller became."
His jaw tightened, and his hand closed in a fist around his whittling.
She hadn't meant to insult him, but she had definitely struck a nerve.
An angel with an ego.
Great.
"Look," she said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you mot suggest
you're not a perfectly wonderful Avenging Angel..." She jumped up in
frustration. "Good Lord, what am I saying?" She wrapped her arms
around herself. "I need some coffee. I need out of here."
She clumped in her winter hiking boots across the wooden floor to a
kitchen nook, refusing to question the fact that there even was
coffee--and on an earthenware dish, a slice of a raspberry crumb cake
she would cheerfully die for.
She snatched up a sleek gray percolator from the gas burner of a
gourmet iron cook stove crafted to resemble a century-old antique. She
poured herself a mugful, then took a bite of crumb cake, which was
real, and a sip of percolated coffee, which was black and strong and
brimming with caffeine, the way she'd been drinking it since Keller
died. She had to remind herself that this place supposedly did not
exist.
The refrigerator was Shiny and black and ultramodern, the sink a
dove-gray ceramic, the countertop beveled marble. She opened the
blinds over the square oak table, which was set against the wall
beneath a picture window.
Snow had drifted high, covering the ground and the branches of blue
spruce and spindly lodgepole pines. She saw no road or any access to
the cabin, but maybe the snow concealed a trail.
She wrapped her fingers around the steaming mug. She would bet if she
stuck her nose out the door, the snowflakes would light on her face and
melt like the real thing, too.
Why didn't she feel real fear, trapped God-only-knew where with a man
who claimed to be one of His angels? Because it's true?
He still sat on the hearth, whittling, watching her. She leaned
against the marble counter, polished off the piece of crumb cake and
resorted to her questioning technique to anchor herself again.
"Why this place, Kiel?"
Putting aSide the ivory and pocketknife, he got up and came over to
pour himself a mug of coffee. He stood near her, taller by inches,
solidly masculine and warm. He leaned against the counter opposite her
and crossed one bare foot over the other. Her pleasure in his
proximity alarmed her.
"You might have died, Robyn. You were dangerously close. I had to do
something, and this--" he gestured around the cabin "--Was one of my
options."
"What does that mean? That, being an angel, you could have blinked me
home if you wanted to?"
He gave a half smile. "In a manner of speaking." "Or back into my
car?"
"Or to a hospital?"
His eyes darkened. "Haven't you spent more than your share of time in
hospitals, Robyn?"
"Yes, but--" She broke off, swamped by the memory of his sensual
ministrations, of his lips tracing her surgical scars, his touch making
her feel things again. Desire. Hope.
She stared at Kiel, desperate to make the sensual memories stop
unfurling. "Making love to me... was that one of your options, too?"
"Not--"
"Is that what Avenging Angels do?" she demanded.
"Rescue damsels in distress to bed them?" He never flinched. "Not
exactly." "Then what, exactly?"
"We right wrongs, Robyn. We fight injustice, we do what must be done
to defeat tyranny--"
"Then I can think of half a dozen hot spots on earth where you're
desperately needed." She glared at him. "This isn't one of them."
"Every injustice demands an answer, Robyn, whether that answer is ever
obvious in the span of one human life or not. There is always justice,
finally."
"Well, thank you very much, but I'm perfectly capable of fighting my
own battles."
"Keller was, too, Robyn, but he's dead." He reached out to her and
cupped her cheek as if he understood completely her fear of a man who
knew more than he should. "Robyn, you can trust me. I know what I
know because I am an angel. You suspect now that your husband was
murdered, and you were on your way to Spyder Nielsen's house when you
skidded off the road."
She straightened and turned away to rinse her mug in the sink. "If you
can do all this, why didn't you intercept me before I got that far?"
He shook his beautiful, fiery golden head. "The point of avenging
isn't to interfere with your free will, Robyn. You're human. You get
to make your own choices. Your Guardian Angel created that traffic jam
back in Denver, but the best he could hope was that while you waited it
out, you would have time to reconsider your plan."
Her chin went up... again. "I still intend to confront those two. All
I've lost is a little time." She wasn't backing down on that. "Do you
know if Trudi Candelaria and Stuart Willetts conspired to murder my
husband?"
"No." Kiel's golden brows pulled together. "I know how Keller died. I
know the case against Candelaria ended in a mistrial because of
Keller's death--and I know the reasoning that has made you suspect
Candelaria and Willetts," He drained the coffee from his mug and set it
in the sink beside Robyn's mug, then turned to look into her eyes.
"What I don't know is what you hope to gain by confronting them."
She couldn't break off her eye contact with him. "I want to see their
faces, Kiel. I want to suggest that they had to get rid of Keller
before he sent Trudi to prison for life, and I want to see their faces
when I do."
"Do you think they'll admit--"
"No. Of course I don't think they'll confess on the spot. Of course
not! But if I go there and upset their plush little applecart, they'll
react, and then I'll know what I'm dealing with." She took a deep
breath and crossed her arms over her breasts. "Anyway, I thought you
said you had come to prevent my death."
He nodded. "In part."
"You've done that." She had to move away, out of the aura that seemed
to surround Kiel. She scooted past him and kept going. "I guess I
should thank you
," she said over her shoulder, "but--"
"Robyn, you're still in danger."
"Of what? I promise not to defy any more muggers." His eyes fixed
her. "Of you know what, Robyn," he said. "Suppose everything you
believe may have happened, did happen. Suppose Willerrs and Candelaria
conspired to murder Keller. You have a dangerous reputation, you know.
People tend to believe what an author of your caliber says. So if they
killed Keller, and you tell them you're onto them, what's to stop them
from killing again? They'll have to in order to keep you quiet."
Discounting the threat of being killed herself, she jerked the covers
up on the feather bed, then tossed her belongings haphazardly into her
suitcase.
The only thing she had ever willingly kept organized was her writing
notes. Keller would have shot her a "fix that or die" look over the
rumpled bedclothes, then she would have dared him to make her, and then
they'd have made a worse mess of the covers than when she started. But
Keller wasn't here anymore to make her do any-thing--or fall into bed
as a consequence--and that was the point, wasn't it?
"I'm not going to let that stop me from exposing them," she announced,
zipping shut her soft-cover tapestry suitcase. "Or let you stop me,
either."
"Think again, Robyn." He straightened. The look he gave her from
clear across the cabin said the threat of being murdered herself ought
to be enough to give her pause. That after so many foolish decisions,
she should reconsider her actions, And most clearly, that he was in
charge of her.
She threw on a coat that wasn't hers and hauled the strap of her
suitcase to her shoulder. "I'm out of here." "In a while," he
agreed.
"No, not in a while." She gathered her hair off her shoulder and
adjusted the suitcase strap. "Now. There are things I have to do."
"Name it," he offered, "and I'll help you. But you're not going
alone."
"You can't stop me, Kiel," she responded in the same even tone.
"I can, Robyn."
For a moment she believed he could stop her. And for another moment,
however unforgivably disloyal it was to Keller, she didn't want to
leave Kiel, or leave behind the feelings he had brought to life again
in her. She didn't need to feel things anymore. It just made her life
too complicated.
She shrugged. "Give it your best shot. Oh, and thanks for the
rescue," she called out as she tugged at the door. The door swung
open, but as she began to step out into drifts piled hip-high and the
gently falling snow, she encountered a soft wall of nothingness.
Confused, and a tiny bit frightened, she tried again with the same
result.
"Robyn--"
"No!" She glanced back over her shoulder at Kiel, clenched her teeth
and threw herself against a force she couldn't see or feel or
penetrate. She hadn't stubbed her toe, or banged her nose into
anything, hadn't injured herself in any way, but she could not move
into the outdoors.
She stood there a moment, snow falling inches from her face, drew a
deep breath and let the shoulder strap fall. Her suitcase landed with
a thud.
She felt caged. Worse than caged. Cold dread filled her, like the
panic that seized her when she was inadvertently caught somewhere dark.
This couldn't be happening. These feelings, this cold-sweat sensation,
in the bright light of day... Her throat shut down. She raised her
fists and battered the solid, invisible barrier, which didn't even hurt
her flailing hands, but it was useless. She lowered her clenched fists
to her sides. Her shoulders drooped. She turned slowly around. Kiel
stood watching her, his expression hard.
"You said I could trust you," she accused.
"Amend that" he said, his tone leaving her in no doubt that she was
going nowhere except by his leave. "You have to trust me."
"How can I?" She slung her arm out behind her. Her hand neither hit
nor bounced off anything, it only... stopped. "What happened to my
free will, Kiel? What is this?"
He had no trouble meeting her eyes. No twinge of guilt or remorse for
boxing her in. "It's only a force field, Robyn."
"Only a force field," she repeated inanely. She pushed her hair away
from her face and back over her shoulder. "A force field. That
explains it."
He frowned. "It doesn't explain anything, Robyn. It just is."
"I'm a prisoner here, isn't that fight? In a cage crafted specially
for me?" A cage. The irony was so thick it made a bubble of laughter
rise in her throat.
A cage. As if her terror of the darkness wasn't enough, now she was
caged. The perfect cosmic, metaphysical, New Age,
create-your-own-reality mind-rot metaphor for the state her heart was
in. Imprisoned. Locked up.
Well and truly sealed away, because her heart belonged to Keller
Trueblood and he had departed life with the key. And Robyn Delaney's
only excuse for taking the tumble into a feather bed with a perfect
stranger was that she saw Keller in Kiel... where Keller couldn't be.
She stared at him. "Keller... Kiel, Keller, Kiel. How incredibly
insensitive!" she jibed, on a roll now. His eyes seemed to fill with
anguish. His chin strained. His hand clenched. "Wouldn't you think
heaven could send me back Keller to be my angel?" she demanded. "Or
at least someone whose name wasn't... But then maybe you're..."
Her tirade faded to nothing. Maybe heaven had sent her Keller. Maybe
this man was the angel Keller had become.
And maybe she had just taken that final descent into undisputed
madness.
Chapter Four
She backed up until her shoulder blades and back and bottom and thighs
came up tight against the proof of her gilded cage and began to laugh.
Her knees bent and her backside slid down the smooth, solid, invisible
barrier until her fanny hit the floor. Her laughter was tinged with
hysteria. Tears brightened her eyes.
He went to her then. He couldn't stand it any longer. In her tears he
had all the proof he would ever need. His soul was the soul of Keller
Trueblood, but he could never reveal the truth of her suspicions. Not
without causing her a deeper despair than he was causing her now.
But he could ease her mind and mute the logic of her heart. He could
distract her for the time it took to resolve the injustice of Keller's
death. Maybe when his death was avenged, her heart would be at peace
in her earthly life.
"Robyn." He reached down and took her hands. He used the physical
contact to help ease her confusion. She allowed him to draw her to her
feet. Her eyes were luminous, wide, frightened. He cupped her face
and thumbed away her tears.
His cuff button tangled with her beautiful, shiny black hair and got
caught. He felt suddenly trapped by her feminine and human nature,
ambushed by desire no angel should ever feel. His body reacted
swiftly, tightening violently.
At some higher level of awareness he recognized that his cuff button
being c
aught was a warning, a cosmic clue, an alarm signaling the grim
repercussions of tangling in this way with a human woman.
But he could not take the simplest recourse. He couldn't even manage
that first step away from her.
Her eyes focused on his lips. He heard her swallow, saw her catch her
lower lip between her teeth. Her breath, warm and coffee-scented,
stirred the hairs at his throat. The exquisite tension flickering
between them flared.
Her tongue dampened her parted lips. His gaze fixed on their
glistening. She tilted her head up. He tilted his down. His need to
kiss her was unlike anything Kiel had ever experienced... a tugging at
senses and emotions he couldn't remember. An echo of familiarity only
Keller's memory could have supplied.
Last night he had made love to her. Served her physical longing.
Filled her emotional abyss to bring her back from the brink of death.
A groan escaped his throat.
This was not lust, for his soul and hers were mated into eternity. But
he had not experienced for himself this yearning, this sweet
anticipation pitched against the bitter insight that it would be better
for her if they never so much as kissed again.
The regret nearly crippled his judgment.
He freed the button of his shirt cuff from her hair and drew back,
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