Nobody's Angel

by Patricia Rice

  “And the clair-de-lune piece?” he asked nonchalantly, waiting for her to explode with wrath at his trap.

  She folded her hands neatly in her lap. “That was my grandmother's. Tony never knew its value.”

  Oh hell. She'd beaten him again.

  Either she was a liar par none, or she had waters deeper than the deepest ocean.

  And he was seriously beginning to believe the latter. He was kidnapping a damned saint—one who could make a blind man drool.

  Mist covered the windshield as they drove out of the mountains into the foothills. If they took I-26 out of Asheville, the traffic would ease, but Faith knew she couldn't summon the energy to take a flying leap out of a car going sixty-five miles an hour. She couldn't summon the energy to do more than watch the aging wipers slap back and forth. She'd never told her story to anyone. Why had she told this man?

  And how did a lawyer and an ex-con know the value of a clair-de-lune bowl, or even what one was?

  She wasn't as good at asking questions as he was. She'd grown up traveling from state to state with parents who taught her that asking too many questions was impolite. Besides, he was a lawyer, like Tony, and could probably interrogate while never giving a straight answer.

  She shouldn't show any interest in him at all, but if she wasn't going to jump out of the car, she was stuck sitting here beside him in the dark for another two hours or more, worrying about what lay ahead, fearing her attraction to another man she should despise. She watched through the darkened windshield as they turned from I-40 to I-26, leaving the lights of Asheville behind. There was little more than empty road from here to outside Charlotte. What would they do when they arrived in the city?

  Considering Adrian's grip on the steering wheel, and his silence after his earlier laughter, she debated the wisdom of trusting him. How far around the bend had four years in prison sent this man?

  A good question, but somehow his laughter had reassured her. If Adrian was really innocent, he had a right to prove it.

  “You must have worked with Juan quite a bit to know so much about pottery,” she said abruptly, introducing a safe topic.

  His grip didn't loosen, and he continued to focus on the taillights ahead of him. “My mother's family brought the skill with them. They thought to make a living with it in the land of the free.”

  She'd spent enough time in Mexico to know about Mexican tiles and pottery. It sold for pennies south of the border. It didn't sell for much more here. “We're a technical society. Appreciation for creativity and artistic ability is limited.”

  He snorted impolitely. “Tell me something I don't know. My grandfather became a tile setter. My mother worked in the mills. They survived. That's what we do best—survive.”

  “Survival is the first step,” she agreed. “But once we have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies, then we can look for what makes us happy.”

  “Try it with nine kids.”

  Nine. She tried to imagine it, but her longing for a child of her own mixed with her knowledge of the struggle to afford decent housing, and she couldn't reconcile either one. Maybe she'd been a little hasty in giving everything away. If she really could conceive—how would she afford a child? “Maybe having children made your mother happy?”

  “She wept bitter tears when Ines was born after my stepfather died. She can't be overjoyed to see her firstborn jailed for his stupidity. We won't go into all the trials and tribulations between the first and last. Children are a burden and a responsibility. They do not guarantee joy any more than money does.”

  He'd steered her off the conversational track, just as she'd figured. Not willing to deny her newly awakened dream already, she switched back to the original topic. “Mexican pottery does not lead one to recognize an antique piece like the clair de lune.”

  He shrugged, wriggled his lanky frame uncomfortably in the small seat, and reached for the radio. “I have an inquiring mind. I took art courses. The clair-de-lune glaze fascinated me. How did your grandmother acquire it?” The radio crackled but produced no music.

  Art courses! She couldn't name a single lawyer of her acquaintance who could do more than mention the names of a few famous painters or discuss the investment appreciation on artwork their wives had acquired. Still, she supposed it made sense given the family trade.

  He was leading her down the garden path again.

  “I never asked her.” She defiantly switched the topic back to him. “You have eight brothers and sisters? How old are they?”

  “I'm the eldest. Belinda is next at twenty-five. Ines is the youngest at six. My mother named us alphabetically, so you can always know where one of us stands in the family.”

  Adrian, the eldest, letter A. Faith smiled at the whimsy. “Did she intend to have the whole alphabet?”

  He shrugged and seemed to relax a little. “Who knows? She was only eighteen when she had me. She could have thought anything. Teenagers have their heads in the clouds.”

  “And their hearts on their sleeves,” she agreed quietly.

  “They grow out of it.”

  “What about you? What did you dream of at eighteen? Did you have a sweetheart?”

  “Rick was still alive and supporting the family then. I guess I just dreamed of getting rich and moving us all into a big house with a swimming pool. I worked every minute of every day to put myself through school and didn't have time for girlfriends.”

  “But you had them.” She knew he would have. A man with his striking looks would attract women like bees to honey. “Did you have someone special waiting for you to get out of jail?”

  He hit the gas pedal and skirted around a semi, pushing the little car as hard as it would go. “She liked that attorney's shingle on my door better than she liked me. She was no major loss.”

  But the bitterness was there. If Adrian were to be believed, Tony had cost him his livelihood, his family, everything he possessed, as well as any hope for the future. Tony had died with a lot of woe on his shoulders. She hoped he went straight to hell.

  “Maybe I should have stayed more involved with the business,” she said thoughtfully, mentioning a topic that had preyed on her mind for years. “I used to keep the books when he first started out. I would have noticed if something was wrong.”

  “You kept the books and never noticed Sandra on the side,” he pointed out.

  Score one for the lawyer. “You actually signed the transfers,” she countered.

  “Heaping blame won't help us now.” He slowed down and shoved his thick ponytail behind him. “I knew he was up to something, but I ignored it. Tony offered me a job when no one else would, and he paid me well to buckle my mouth. I had an ethical responsibility to know what the firm was doing, and I failed miserably, but I've paid my debt. I want to at least try to have my license reinstated, but I can't if Tony spent all the money on Sandra.”

  “The legal fund paid the people who were cheated. If there's any proof that you weren't involved, why wouldn't they give you your license back?”

  His laugh was cold. “Because that fund is paid for by lawyers, and their insurance bill skyrockets every time the payoff is large. If it hurts their pockets, they'll make me pay.”

  “Then this is an exercise in futility, isn't it?”

  “Probably,” he admitted. “When I thought you had the money, I had some purpose. If you really don't have it …”

  “I really don't have it.” She said it quietly, but forcefully. She wanted him to turn the car around and go back. She didn't want to rake through cold ashes in a town she'd left behind. She didn't believe in looking back.

  “Some of the money or the books could still be in the safe deposit boxes,” he insisted.

  Did that mean he believed her, or was this some sort of test? What did it matter? He didn't turn around. He'd made up his mind to keep going because he didn't know what else to do. She understood that sort of desperation. She just didn't understand forcing other people to go along.

  �
��Don't you think Tony would have emptied the boxes first chance he had?” she asked. “He left town after the trial. I'd cleaned him out. He had nothing but his law practice, and no one wanted to buy it after the scandal. He would have cleaned out every dime he'd hoarded.”

  “The D.A. impounded everything in the office. If Tony had safe deposit keys there, the D.A. would have found them. I don't think Tony would have left something so dangerous in Sandra's hands. She's a loose cannon. You're the one he trusted. He would have left those keys in the house, and you sold everything before he could get to them.”

  She was the one Tony trusted. A few years ago that would have been sweet music to her ears. Now, it hit her as bitter and cold. Tony trusted her to be a safe dimwit who would ask him polite questions he could avert with ease. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the seat. “Then they're gone. I emptied his safe and his desk and there weren't any keys there. I hauled all my personal stuff to storage and haven't seen it since I left, but there's nothing in there that Tony would have touched.”

  “Then we'll start by questioning the banks. I'll be your lawyer, you'll be the widow who's just learned your husband left his valuables in a box you didn't know existed. We'll need a death certificate.”

  “I don't have a death certificate,” she said wearily, eyes still closed. She didn't want to remember any of this. She just wanted her secure, quiet life back.

  “You don't have a death certificate? Why not? You were still married when he died, weren't you? How did you collect his life insurance?”

  The sound that emerged from her throat was too brittle for laughter. “He died in South America. They don't just automatically ship out death certificates. When I thought I could use his life insurance for the trust fund, I knew I'd have to find out how to obtain one. But after I located the policy, it had Sandra's name on it, so I mailed it to her and let her handle the death certificate business.”

  “Sandra never mentioned that to me,” he muttered suspiciously.

  “Sandra's the loose cannon, remember? Why don't you kidnap her?”

  He snorted, then chuckled. “The first time I called Sandra, I could hear the kids screaming their heads off, and she tried to put a move on me over the phone. Suggested conjugal visits. She thought I had Tony's money.”

  In the darkness, Faith grinned. “They were made for each other. You should have taken her up on the offer.”

  “And paid child support for the rest of my life. No, thank you, ma’am. Having kids is definitely not on my agenda. I have to figure out how to feed the family I have without making more. By the time Ines is out of college, I'll be forty-seven. I don't see me starting a family at that age.”

  That thought inexplicably saddened her. She hadn't known a twinge of hormones since leaving Tony, but this man with the sexy eyes had her reevaluating her sexless life. An ex-con and lawyer, for heaven's sake! Could she stoop any lower?

  That didn't mean he wouldn't make a good lover, the Eve in her argued.

  And he'd make handsome babies.

  “A lot of men start late these days.” She did the calculations and concluded he was only a couple of years older than she. While she'd grown up in the relative cocoon of family love and security, he'd been toughing his way through a harsh world she hadn't experienced until late in life. He'd known it from birth. That made him decades older in terms of living. She didn't know where she was going with these crazed thoughts. She needed sleep.

  “Maybe I'll marry a rich lawyer,” he answered with sarcasm.

  She chuckled. “There you go. Serve both of you right.”

  “We can start tracking down the death certificate in the morning.” He returned to his objectives. “No reason we can't call banks while we're at it. And maybe you should open your storage and poke around. If Sandra was desperate enough to proposition me, he must not have left her much. That proves the money is still out there somewhere.”

  “You keep dreaming.” Yawning, Faith curled up in the seat and tried to sleep.

  “What else have I got to do?”

  She couldn't argue with that, and he didn't say anything more. She dozed until the car halting woke her. She considered not opening her eyes, until Adrian reached over her arm for her purse. She caught his wrist and twisted hard, the way she'd been taught in her self-defense courses.

  With his other hand he twisted back, disarming her without hurting her.

  “It's after midnight. This place is cheap. I'll pay you back later. We have to get some sleep before we tackle the banks.”

  Blinking, she looked up into a flashing neon sign advertising vacancy.

  “You think I'm paying to shack up with you in a cheap motel?” she asked incredulously.

  “You'd prefer an expensive one?” Grabbing her purse, he removed the billfold she kept her credit card in and helped himself.

  He took the keys with him when he went in to register.

  Faith tried to gauge their location but they were still in the middle of nowhere. It figured he wouldn't take her to one of the big intersections laced with hotels and restaurants.

  She could get out and walk and see if anyone would answer their door at midnight, but he'd find her before she walked half a mile. What's more, she risked being run over by a car in the dark, raped by the first person who saw her, or robbed, at best.

  She wasn't a brave person. Better the devil she knew than the one she didn't.

  Slumping in the seat, she practiced cursing.

  Four and a half years earlier

  “Where the hell is my Jag?”

  Tony's frown wrinkled every inch of his brow as he glanced again to where the carefully shrouded sports car should be. The historical society hadn't allowed a garage addition to shelter it. “You didn't drive it, did you?” he asked in horror as he walked up the oak-lined drive from the chauffeur-driven car at the curb, accompanied by two men considerably larger than he.

  Looking up from the notes she was scribbling for the couple beside her, Faith glanced toward the approaching men and fought back a frisson of alarm. She recognized Al McCowan, Jr. as an old friend from the university and one of Tony's favorite golfing buddies. The other bulky blond man was one of Tony's childhood friends she hadn't seen around in a long time. Tony didn't like admitting to his rural origins.

  Had Tony already discovered what she'd done? Fear iced her blood, but anger boiled too strongly for her to act on any sense of self-preservation, “I sold it,” she called sweetly, handing her scribbled recommendations for gardeners and repairmen to the extremely well-muscled football player tensing up beside her. She patted his arm. “Would you be so kind as to escort me to my car?” she asked politely. She had thought to be gone before Tony arrived, but she'd counted on the house's new owner being sufficient protection against surprises.

  She had been right. Tony turned purple and hurled obscenities, but even with his bulky bodyguards in tow, he didn't dare attack one of the Panthers’ newest linemen. Without a word of explanation to anyone—too terrified to speak if the truth be known—Faith marched to her aging Volvo, climbed in, and drove away.

  Once safely out of reach, she let exultation balloon inside her, crushing all fear. She wished she could have seen Tony's face when he discovered his house was no longer his home.

  The Present

  Staring wearily at a bathroom mirror with irregular dark splotches where the silver backing was missing, Faith grimaced at her reflection. She would turn thirty on her next birthday. Already she could see the crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes. What did she have to show for them besides the music of Tony's curses as she walked away? She had a life without a single deep relationship, without love, without any of the things she'd thought to have by now.

  And the damned man in the other room was forcing her to examine everything she'd done these last few years, everything she'd so proudly based her new life on. The result wasn't pretty.

  He'd kidnapped her, damn it. She didn't need to take life lessons from a
criminal.

  Pulling her hair back in a barrette from her purse, she stalked back into the shabby motel bedroom. It was clean. That was all she could give it. At the sight of Adrian propping the room's one chair against the doorknob, she scowled.

  “Keeping thieves out or me in?”

  He dropped into the chair, crossed his arms over his chest and stretched his long legs out in front of him, practically filling the narrow aisle between the end of the bed and the dresser. Her tired gaze focused on the scuffed soles of his worn wingtips—courtroom shoes, she used to call them.

  “Both,” he responded warily. “The way your mind works, you'll have figured out how to have me locked up and be halfway back to Knoxville before I wake up. I need my sleep.”

  Faith glanced at the double bed. She wasn't about to suggest that they share it. Let him suffer.

  He hadn't asked to share the bed.

  She dropped wearily on the sprung mattress, wrinkled up her nose at the thought of checking the sheets and, removing her comfortable Easy Spirits and suit jacket, lay down as she was. He'd brought in a duffel bag probably containing all his worldly possessions. She didn't even have a toothbrush.

  A forty-watt bulb in the reading lamp still burned between them. Adrian's eyelids were already drooping. The shadows from the lamp highlighted the hollows of his sculpted cheekbones, and she wished she had enough talent to draw him. The glimmer of his silver earring captivated her. If all she wanted was sex, she might as well have taken up with Artie from the band. He'd be a lot less trouble.

  She flung the spare pillow at her kidnapper.

  Adrian jerked up, caught it, and glancing at her warily, shoved it behind his back.

  “Kidnapping is a federal offense.” She couldn't go to sleep like this. He might as well suffer with her.

  “So sue me.” He shut his eyes again.

  She wanted to turn the lamp off so she wouldn't see the breadth of his shoulders straining against that damned flannel shirt. She was afraid to be left alone in the dark with him. Panic began to build in her throat. She didn't know where it came from. Could she pry her phone out of his pocket? Touch him? Not a chance.