Nobody's Angel

by Patricia Rice

She could replace the stuff in her purse. She couldn't replace the vase, and Adrian had saved that. He'd rescued most of her books and photos and the corporate papers. She'd survive. She'd been through far worse than this before. Far worse.

  She sighed at fifteen-year-old Elena's choice in clothing. Crop tops and miniskirts. Maybe she could wear something belonging to Dolores. The sixteen-year-old was bigger through the bosom than Faith, but considering the tightness of teenage shirts, she thought that could be a boon.

  Adrian appeared carrying a nearly see-through blouse and a camisole. “Wear these, and you could wear jeans and no one would notice.”

  Faith raised her eyebrows, but he was right. The gauzy shirt would look elegant and distracting at the same time. “They'll wonder what kind of corporation I run,” she murmured, taking the garments. She didn't want to know what he was thinking about when he chose the shirt. She had a suspicion she knew.

  “With me at your side, how could they doubt?” He leaned against the doorjamb as if he intended to watch her change.

  “You could ditch the earring and ponytail and look like a lawyer,” she reminded him, catching the door and easing it closed in his face.

  “I'd rather look like a pimp,” he called as she pushed him out. “That's at least more honest.”

  She grinned at that. She might want to lop his head off more often than not, but sometimes she couldn't help but like the man.

  “No, I'm sorry, Mrs. Nicholls, we have no safe deposit box registered in that name,” the bank clerk said without inflection.

  Adrian wanted to punch the man's eyes out. They'd spent hours creeping through traffic from one uptown bank to the other, without success. Until now, all the clerks helping them had been women. They'd looked at him speculatively, raised their eyebrows at Faith's story, but he'd give Faith credit, she'd stayed as cool as any sophisticated SouthPark matron, and every one of them had fallen for her tale. This jerk, though, was seeing only Faith's breasts. Maybe if he gripped him by his fancy silk tie—

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Weaver.” Faith offered the clerk her hand, shook it, then with the sexy little shimmy that had Adrian drooling every time he saw it, she turned and walked, shoulders straight, hips swinging in tandem with the crutch, out the door.

  “Now I remember why I've always worn tailored suits,” she said thoughtfully as he caught up with her at the tiny egg-shaped rental car. He'd rather have the VW back. At least it had character.

  He unlocked the door and helped her in, whether she needed it or not. She'd learned to manage the crutch with grace and expertise, but he liked pretending to be useful. Her choice of subject left him gasping to keep up. “You like looking like everyone else?” he suggested as he climbed in on the driver's side.

  She sent him a sideways glance as he pulled into traffic. “Never mind.”

  “If you look like everyone else, then men won't look at you like that one did,” he concluded, despite all his best intentions.

  He felt her surprise more than saw it as he maneuvered the car through traffic toward the next bank.

  “I think it's because I'm blond,” she answered obliquely. “Maybe I should dye my hair.”

  “Maybe you ought to examine why you don't want men looking at you.”

  She tilted her head, and all that glossy hair caught in the sunlight. “Maybe you ought to examine why you want everyone looking at you,” she said sweetly.

  He steered the car into a parking space and shot the shift into park. They were practically shoulder-to-shoulder, and Adrian couldn't stop himself from grabbing her chin and taking the taunt out of her eyes. “I damned well want people to know I'm here. They'll look right through me and pretend I don't exist otherwise. So tell me why you go up on a stage wearing red boots and miniskirts if you don't want to be noticed?”

  Her nostrils flared and her lips set in a grim line as she jerked her chin away. “I like to sing, and that's what I have to wear for the job. That's not me up there.”

  “Tony really screwed with your head, didn't he?” he demanded, suddenly furious. “That's you up there, all right. That's the you he didn't want you to be. That's the you who would have gone to bed with me the other night. That you is as sexy as any movie star who walked across the screen. And you like that feeling.”

  He slammed out of the car, leaving her to follow as she willed. He hadn't meant to get messed up inside her head. He didn't want to know Tony had screwed her around as badly as he'd screwed with him. He just wanted his damned life back.

  She didn't have a life to go back to.

  He could see it now. She'd built that little stage persona to act out all those things she wouldn't let herself feel, kept all that anger and sex in a little box that didn't touch her so-called real life, and then played the part of little Miss Politeness and Humanity the rest of the time.

  By the time he reached the bank, she was standing beside him, stiff and unyielding, waiting for him to hold the door for her. Good. Let her stay angry with him. That would take the pressure off.

  He waited in the background as she smiled politely at the clerk. He'd be her chauffeur and nothing more. She didn't need him. She could turn on her plastic Charlotte career woman efficiency and the clerk would buy right into it without a qualm. He was the holdback here.

  It took Adrian a minute before he realized Faith was walking away, not out the door, but toward the bank safe. Jerking back to the moment, he hurried after her.

  The clerk glanced at him with surprise, but Faith introduced him as an employee and no further questions were asked. Adrian felt his stomach rise into his throat. They'd actually found one of Tony's boxes. If one of the keys fit … He might just have a heart attack here and now.

  After using the bank's key to unlock the vault, the clerk left them to remove the box to an examining table. Adrian carried it for her, his palms turning sweaty and his heart rate increasing. The box was too small to contain much. No actual printouts, but maybe some computer disks, a few rolls of bank notes. What would he do with them?

  He'd given Faith the keys when they'd started out that morning. Now, she handed them back, her hand brushing his lightly, as if she sensed his fear. Adrian couldn't look at her, couldn't look at anything as he tried first one key, then another, in the lock.

  It turned on the third key.

  He realized Faith was praying as he pulled out the drawer. He offered up a prayer of his own. He'd been raised in the Catholic church. He'd not attended since adolescence, but he'd like to light a candle right now as he pulled the box completely open.

  He stared at the empty drawer in disbelief.

  “Shit,” she murmured beside him, with the lovely Southern inflection that made it more a two-syllabled “sheet” than excrement.

  Adrian's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He couldn't say anything. Slowly, he shut the drawer and locked it, handing the keys back to Faith.

  “Maybe if I cancel the box, I can get a refund on the rent,” she mused. “We have to pay for gas somehow.”

  He couldn't think of any good reason why. Tony had probably emptied all these boxes before he moved Sandra to Florida and took off for parts unknown. Why bother hunting down more disappointment? Four years he'd waited for this moment, counted on it. He'd kidnapped an innocent woman, wrecked her car, ignored his family, for what? Because he'd thought Tony stupid enough to leave evidence behind?

  He didn't bother listening as Faith removed the key from the ring and made the arrangements with the bank clerk. He needed to find a job. He had a college degree. Businesses were begging for help. Maybe he could find one that would ignore his criminal record. One that didn't care if he was an embezzler. A car wash ought to do it.

  He opened the glass door so Faith could swing out. Nearly the middle of September and heat still hit like a blow to the face as they emerged into the concrete and sunlight of the parking lot. If it weren't for his family, he'd move back to the mountains and help Juan turn out cutesy animals for Faith's colle
ctor trade. His ego balked at the thought.

  “I wonder why Tony paid the rent so far in advance if the box was empty?” Faith asked as he assisted her into the car.

  What did it matter? He steered the car into traffic and headed for home. Might as well let Faith return to her real life. She could probably drive fine with her other foot.

  “Where are you going? I thought we agreed on the Bank of America in SouthPark next.”

  He shot her an incredulous look. “You want to keep burning gas to collect rent deposits? You can write and ask for them with the same effect.”

  “Not if I don't know where they are.” She shrugged her slender shoulders beneath the gauzy shirt. Through the sheer material he could see the mole at the edge of her camisole strap. He wished he'd had the opportunity to see a lot more.

  “Just heave the keys out the window and forget it,” he said wearily. “Tony cleaned house before he left. He wasn't completely stupid.”

  “The last time Tony opened that box was in December, before I found out about Sandra. Want to make any wagers that he bought her something snazzy with whatever he'd stored in there? He just hadn't had time to steal enough to refill it before I packed everything up and moved out with the keys.”

  “Or he had another set of keys and cleaned house before he left.” He was tired of this argument. He needed to remove Faith from his life so he could think.

  “Nope,” she said confidently. “I asked. The bank has one set; I have the other. They don't make duplicates. Can't.”

  His brain was so dead he'd steered onto I-77 before what she said completely registered. “Those are the only set for all the boxes?”

  “The only. If Tony was using those boxes to store his ill-gotten cash so I wouldn't find out about it, then there's more out there somewhere. We just have to find it.”

  If the damned dangerous road had any shoulder, he'd pull off and kiss her.

  As it was, he swerved off at the next exit, whipped around a parking lot, narrowly missed a trailer hauling a race car, hit the shift into park, and reached for Faith. Before she could react, he gripped her shoulders and kissed her. Hard. Not even the high of reviving hope could match the ecstasy of Faith's lips opening beneath his. He breathed in the sheer joy of it.

  When she finally regained her senses and shoved him away, he hit the gears and careened out of the parking lot in the direction of SouthPark, shouting, “Faith Hope, I think I love you!” over the radio blaring some moldy oldie with the same verse.

  “How many damned banks are there in this town?” Adrian griped as they left another empty hope behind, the glass doors behind them slamming shut for the day. This time, Adrian pocketed the box keys. Apparently they were now too valuable for him to trust her with them.

  “Too many.” Faith dragged her aching leg across the parking lot. “And Tony used to travel to Raleigh and Durham and who-knows-where-else. Maybe we ought to consult the D.A.”

  Beside her, Adrian groaned. After their earlier jubilation, she understood his disappointment. She really would prefer ecstatic kisses to the grim reality facing his family.

  “I'll write a letter and circulate it to every bank in the country before I talk with that prick,” he said fiercely. “I want it all lined up nice and neat so he can't ignore me as he did at the trial. Word processors make official-looking stationery.”

  “Works for me.” He was the lawyer. Who was she to argue? She sank gratefully into the hard car seat. “I need food.”

  “A dozen hungry-man tacos coming up.”

  How a poky little cow town like Charlotte had turned into a traffic planner's worst nightmare would make a good Dummies’ Guide to Gridlock. As Adrian breezed across the worst intersections, Faith closed her eyes and tried to relax. She trusted his driving, but the accident had left her tense and fearful of other cars. She kept waiting for the bone-chilling sound of grinding metal. “Maybe we're going about this the wrong way. Maybe we should try thinking like Tony.”

  “If I could think like Tony, he'd be alive and in jail right now, and I'd be filthy rich and living in Florida.”

  She let the sarcasm slide by. He had a right to it. “Tony was always in a hurry. He had so many balls in the air, he couldn't always keep up with them. He practically lived in his car.”

  Adrian steered the car into the driveway of his mother's house but didn't climb out as he considered her earlier suggestion. “So maybe Tony chose banks along his favorite routes?”

  “Or near places he visited frequently.”

  “We searched uptown, Dilworth, and SouthPark,” he pointed out.

  “Maybe they were too obvious? Maybe he only kept that uptown box for fast emergency cash. He might prefer the others to be somewhere he wasn't recognized. Sandra lived out past Lake Norman. He could stop in that area on his way to Raleigh.”

  “Okay, tomorrow we head north instead of south. And I'll ask Cesar for his laptop with the word processing program. I can't ask you to scour the state if we don't turn up anything soon. Letters will have to do.”

  He offered his arm, and Faith accepted it wearily. Her head throbbed and her leg ached. Or maybe it was the other way around. Whichever, the instant she relaxed into the strength of Adrian's support, the aches and pains faded like magic. It felt good not to have to endure this alone.

  She was such a damned wimp. She had liked being married. She had liked having a husband to share things with. At first, anyway. She had to remember how it had deteriorated into a cage with ever-narrower boundaries. The price of sharing her life was much too high.

  “I can create the letterhead,” she offered. It would be a relief to go home. She was grateful he had seen reason. “We'll need some good quality paper. Invent a really officious firm name and use my mail-drop address.”

  “Who do you have picking up your mail?” he asked, holding open the kitchen door for her. “I had friends watching that damned box in hopes of catching you or at least tracing you.”

  “I figured Tony would kill me if he found me, so I didn't give them a forwarding address. I bribed one of the mail-drop clerks to open the box from the back once a month. One of the guys in the band has family down here, and they'd stop by and pick it up. I don't receive much mail through it anymore, but it's habit to keep doing things that way.”

  Faith took the kitchen stool Adrian offered. She didn't have the strength to stand.

  “Simple and devious at the same time. You have a wicked mind, woman.” He reached in the refrigerator for a pitcher of sweet tea. “Can't keep alcohol in a house with teenagers, so this will have to suffice. Let me check on Mama and the kids, and I'll be back in a minute.”

  “Give me an onion to chop or something so I'll feel useful.”

  “And trust you with a knife?” He grinned and produced a knife and an assortment of vegetables from various hiding places. “I can hear the TV, so the twins are here. We'll need lots of everything.”

  As he disappeared to check on family, Faith settled in to peel and chop. She'd always wondered what it would be like to be part of a large family. She had hoped by now to have at least a couple of kids of her own. Perhaps she'd been naive to think a close-knit family would be fun and more fulfilling than her empty life. The burden Adrian carried seemed almost crushing, too overwhelming for him to enjoy the company of his family or any of the benefits.

  A car door slammed in the drive, and tires squealed as the vehicle backed out again. Faith looked up from her paring as the back door opened and Dolores slouched in.

  The sixteen-year-old would be attractive if she hadn't gone overboard on every fashion trend out there. She'd butchered her lovely black hair into a weedy crop that revealed a shaved billboard space at her nape. Her left ear sported more earrings than Faith owned. And she'd encased her full figure in spandex topped by a man's shirt three sizes too large. The six-inch-high soles of her mules clunked noisily across the worn linoleum.

  “You fixing supper?” she asked warily as she watched Faith peel and c
hop. “I was gonna throw some noodles in a pot.”

  “Adrian said he'd fix tacos. I'm just the kitchen help.” She'd not worked much with teenagers, and she eyed Dolores equally warily. Awkwardness welled between them.

  “Yeah? Then I guess I'm off the hook. Let me know when it's ready.” She removed the cordless receiver from the wall, sauntered across the kitchen toward the door, and cursed as she hit the Talk button. “He's on the damned phone,” she griped, punching it off again. “Gets out of goddamned prison and acts like he owns the place.”

  “Doesn't he?” Faith asked innocently, concentrating on the onion and not the unhappy snarl on the girl's face. She'd pieced together enough knowledge of Adrian and his family to suspect he'd been the one to purchase this fairly spacious ranch house. Even in this blue collar part of town, real estate was exorbitantly expensive. Housing couldn't keep up with Charlotte's booming population.

  Dolores shrugged. “Mama's had to make the payments while he was locked up. The rest of us work to pay the bills and buy groceries. That ought to count for something.”

  Considering the cost of the jewelry in the girl's ear, Faith suspected her meager earnings were spent on clothes and gold more than bread and milk, but working as well as attending school was a big responsibility for a teenager. She wouldn't argue with her.

  “You know Adrian didn't steal that money, don't you?” Faith asked quietly, still concentrating on her chopping.

  “He's got you believing that?” Dolores snorted. “The two of you sleeping together or something?”

  Faith's stomach clenched but she pretended nonchalance. “No, we're not sleeping together. I know the man who framed Adrian.”

  Dolores punched the telephone again, and apparently still finding it occupied, punched it off. “Do tell,” she said snidely.

  Suspecting the girl would have slammed out of the room by now if she wasn't interested in hearing proof of her brother's innocence, Faith searched for a path of reason. “His partner in the law firm was living a double life and needed the money,” she said quietly. “Don't you think if Adrian had stolen the money, he would have used it to pay your bills?”