Nobody's Angel

by Patricia Rice

  “I certainly wouldn't want to be accused of two wrong turns,” she replied crisply, heart sinking at this confirmation of what she already knew. “I just wanted to be certain we understood each other. I still think you're an insufferable prick for thinking you know what I want better than I do, but it's best to realize that now and make the break clean.”

  “Like porcelain,” he agreed sadly.

  It was beautiful while it lasted, she agreed without saying it aloud, instead taking her leave hurriedly rather than let him see the tears pouring down her face. Or before she threw herself into his arms and sobbed like a baby.

  December

  Adrian held his breath as he slowly opened the kiln to reveal the cooled pieces inside. He prayed the slight modifications in size that occurred with porcelain glazing wouldn't affect the finished work too much.

  Juan's fluorescent work lights weren't as good as sunshine, but it was almost midnight and he had no alternative. With the deftness of practice, Adrian unloaded the kiln, sorting the glazed pieces on the waiting rack.

  With the eye of a skilled craftsman, he examined each piece for crazing or other flaws that would impede their value, but his heart beat faster as he neared the special one in the oven's center.

  At last he'd unloaded the pots blocking the luminescent silver of the center piece. Reverently, he lifted it out, carrying the delicate, heart-shaped vase to the light to examine it thoroughly.

  It worked. His fingers trembled as he smoothed them inside and out, searching for any imperfection. The color was exquisite, the pure moon-silver of clair de lune. Light flowed through the transparent thinness of the lip, and a shattered rainbow of color twinkled from the crystal burst on the base. The crystal would probably label the piece as commercial art instead of pure art, but he had no patience with labels. The crystal symbolized something far more important than the opinions of anyone but the person for whom the vase was designed.

  He didn't know what she'd think when he sent it to her in Juan's next shipment. He knew she'd recognize the work, though. Faith had an excellent eye for detail, and she possessed the mate to this already.

  Through the window he'd opened to let out the kiln's heat, he could hear the tinkle of Isabel's laughter, coupled with Juan's deeper chuckle and the babbling of an infant. They'd christened their firstborn after Faith, but they'd used her maiden name. Little Hope Martinez was the delight of her parents’ lives.

  Adrian felt a familiar arrow of pain as he heard the love and laughter spilling from the farmhouse. Poverty had tested Juan and Isabel's love much as the heat of the kiln tested the worth of a potter's art. Their love had emerged from the inferno sturdier and more unbreakable than before.

  He didn't have their strength, he knew. Like unbaked clay, he was drying out and crumbling. Pouring his love into this vase had held him together a little while longer.

  And now it was done. Once he sent it to Faith, perhaps she'd understand. He'd never wanted to hurt her. The pain in her eyes that day at the courthouse had nearly crippled him.

  The well of emotion dammed inside him threatened to burst as he set the vase down. He was grateful for the interruption of a sudden cloudburst of rain splattering against the tin roof. Rain this late in December didn't bode well.

  Cleaning off his hands on a rag, wiping surreptitiously at the moisture in his eyes, Adrian stalked outside and glared into the starless sky. If the rain turned to ice or snow, Juan wouldn't deliver the shipment before Christmas. The vase wasn't on the shipment's invoice. It was a gift, and he needed Faith to have it.

  Raindrops splashed his face as he stared upward, willing the clouds away. He had ten thousand nights like this ahead, ten thousand nights when he could stare into the empty sky and wonder where he'd gone wrong, wonder why it was his burden to love a woman enough to let her go so she might find happiness.

  Droplets coursed down Adrian's cheeks, ultimately soaking into his shirt as his heart cried for its missing piece. Faith had turned his fury and misery and hatred into sanity and love. She'd poured honey on troubled waters, soothed his pain with just her presence. He didn't know how she'd done it, and he wanted to hate her for showing him what he couldn't have.

  He'd thought it would kill him not to have his career back, not to have fine cars and nice houses, not to provide his family with the small luxuries they deserved. Instead it was killing him not to have what could have been his—had he broken his convictions and grabbed what she'd offered.

  His career and freedom, or the responsibility of Faith's love. How dumb could one man be?

  He'd made the choice for her. He'd never given her a chance to voice her opinion.

  A snowflake struck his nose. A spot of white froze to the ice forming on his soaked shirt. By morning the road out of here would be impassable.

  Heart kick-starting into full throttle, Adrian raced to the kiln room. The vase sat there, radiating beauty in the harsh glare of the worklight. He had the power to give Faith the Christmas she deserved. She might not want him any longer, but he knew her heart better than his own. The vase would bring her happiness.

  If he could do just one right thing at a time, he might dig his way out of this hole he lived in.

  The trip to Knoxville usually took four hours in Juan's rusty pickup. By the time Adrian threw on dry clothes, wrapped the vase, added chains to the tires, and chugged behind crawling traffic over the mountain, it was well past dawn when he reached the city.

  The snow had done no more than lay a frosting of white on trees and bushes, but salt trucks had churned the roads to gray slush, and traffic slid and spun as if it had been a blizzard. Adrian pulled into a Waffle House for a cup of coffee and to debate his next move. His sentimental midnight journey had become a complex logistical problem by dawn.

  It was the day before Christmas. Would Faith open the store or did she have other plans? Should he call her? He didn't even know if she'd left that flophouse apartment yet. Juan had mentioned that she was moving.

  If he just thought of it as a logistical problem, he might survive. He could deliver the gift and holiday greetings and see how she was doing. If she didn't seem interested in more, he'd move on. And keep moving on. The other side of the planet wouldn't be far enough. Maybe he could volunteer for outer space.

  If he saw any sign of another lover, he'd probably slit his throat.

  It was almost eight. He eased the truck back into the slush and steered for the fancy shopping center. He was still the ex-con who'd walked in on her months ago, but at least now he had some hope of having his record cleared. But he was still broke, and likely to stay that way. She deserved better, and he wanted her to have whatever she desired.

  He just didn't want to know about it if it wasn't him.

  Grunting at his own perversity, Adrian eased the truck into the nearly empty lot and rolled to the front of the shop, looking for a sign. She'd decorated the gallery windows with graceful ropes of live evergreen intertwined with cheap glittering gold roping, and he grinned at the combination. It looked festive and not in the least tacky. White fairy lights in the arrangement twinkled against the early morning gloom.

  With disappointment, he read the sign announcing          26. She was losing high-volume, last minute Christmas sales, but giving herself and her employees a break.

  That didn't seem right. Faith would work alone unless she had plans more important than the shop. The shelter?

  The streets of the inner city were drier, and the traffic was fairly light. He pulled up in front of the shelter before nine.

  The place had undergone a face-lift since his last visit. Windows sparkled in newly painted frames, and blinking lights offered a cheerful welcome around the door. He recognized the evergreen and gold motif of the roping and grinned again. The mixture of classy and common made sense to someone of Faith's open-minded view of the world.

  He wished he'd thought to bring gifts as he entered to the music of
children laughing. A tree gaily decorated in paper chains and cutout angels filled a corner of the hall, which also had been painted recently. Annie was doing wonders with this place—with Faith's help, he surmised, noticing a ceramic Santa Claus carrying a bag filled with real peppermint sticks.

  Annie looked up in surprise at Adrian's entrance. She'd had her hair tinted and styled, and wore a thick oatmeal-colored sweater against the chill of the high-ceilinged room. She no longer looked worn or frantic, but he recognized the hostility she shot him. He'd never quite wormed his way into Annie's good graces after the kidnapping incident.

  “What do you want?” she snapped ungraciously.

  Adrian still grinned like a fool. Faith hadn't just left her mark on the shelter. She was rubbing off on shy Annie as well.

  “I have a special delivery for Faith, but her shop is closed. I had some idea she might be here. Is that her causing the racket upstairs?” A burst of laughter and shouts of delight echoed through the floorboards.

  “She'll be here later. That's Grizzly. Faith talked him into playing Santa Claus for the kids. He was too excited by the role to wait another day.” Annie sat back in her chair and out-waited him.

  He'd have to ask, but he couldn't hide his fascination with what Faith had wrought in the lives around her. He wished he'd been here to share her triumph in talking the old drunk into a useful role, or her joy in bringing light to a place known for its lack of it. Faith Hope. Her parents had named her well.

  “I take it Tony didn't file an injunction against her trust fund, then.” She must have put the fear of hell into him. “The shelter looks good.”

  Annie shrugged. “Our fund-raising is improving. We used her last donation for the down payment on another building, but all the rest is hard work. She doesn't have the fund anymore.”

  Adrian frowned. “Why didn't she tell me? Tony doesn't deserve a penny of that money. I would have fought—”

  Annie waved away his protest. “She dissolved it voluntarily, with the help of her divorce lawyer. She had it in her cracked brain that Tony's kids deserved the bulk of it. She's tied it up so the Shaws can't empty it, but otherwise it's more or less gone.”

  Adrian absorbed this information without comment. He didn't have any argument with Faith's choice. It was her money, and she could use it as she wished. The remark about the divorce lawyer had him stirring uneasily, though. “Her divorce final?” he asked gruffly, not knowing any better way to come at it.

  “Not that it's any of your business, but yeah. Tony didn't have a leg to stand on.” Annie smiled gloatingly. “I went with her when she signed the papers. I wanted to celebrate with champagne, but she brushed it off as if she'd just written a check for a new dress. I admire her fiercely.” The threat behind that was unmistakable.

  Adrian acknowledged her protectiveness with a nod. Faith brought that out in people, but she didn't need or want it. He understood that now.

  “The world needs more people like Faith,” he agreed, heart racing erratically as his determination grew with every roadblock thrown in his way. “I brought her something for Christmas. Is she still in her old apartment?”

  “She's moving,” Annie stated flatly. “She didn't think this was a good place to—” She cut herself off. “Anyway, I don't know if she's at the old place or the new. She'll be here later, if you want to leave it.”

  Drawing in a deep breath, Adrian remembered the loneliness of snowflakes and the warmth of laughter and the flash of naked admiration he'd once seen in Faith's eyes, and he gathered the courage to crawl.

  “Please, if you would, give me her new address, and I'll check both places.” Faith had called him an arrogant ass and an insufferable prick, and she was dead-on on both counts, but he was prepared to eat humble pie and beg on his knees right now. She could throw him out on his face, but he had to see her one more time.

  Annie narrowed her eyes and thought about it.

  “I only want what's best for her,” he promised. “It's Christmas, Annie. Please.”

  “I'm probably making the worst mistake of my life,” she grumbled, reaching into her desk.

  “If this is the only mistake you make, you're a saint,” he said fervently as she handed over a piece of notepaper with the address scribbled on it. He scanned it quickly, committing it to memory so nothing could part him from it.

  “If Faith lets you through the door, she's the saint,” Annie corrected dryly. “Or a bloody fool.”

  “If she lets me through the door, she's both.”

  As Adrian turned to walk out, a pigtailed toddler ran squealing down the hall, and terror and excitement exploded in his chest. Faith would want children. He ought to turn around right now and head for the hills.

  With the prize of Faith's happiness firmly in mind, he climbed into the derelict old truck and steered it onto the highway in the direction Annie had given him.

  Sitting on the kitchen floor, wrapping the final package for the men at the shelter, Faith looked up in surprise at the sound of her doorbell. She glanced at the oven clock—it wasn't even ten in the morning on the day before Christmas. She wasn't officially moved in yet. Who in the world could it be?

  Rising, she brushed snippets of ribbon and paper from her red cashmere sweater and tucked a straying hank of hair behind her ear.

  This wasn't the inner city, and she didn't need a peephole, she decided as she reached for the knob. She refused to live in fear and paranoia. She had a sturdy storm door between her and the visitor, should she need it.

  At the sight of Adrian on the other side of the glass, she grabbed the door frame for support.

  She drank in every inch of him, the windblown raven hair, the tense, harsh line of his jaw, the glitter of silver at his ear, the way his eyes glowed with dark fires as his gaze swept over her. Suddenly nervous, she focused on the muscles straining against his flannel shirt—he wasn't wearing a coat.

  She opened the door and wordlessly gestured for him to enter. His gaze never left her as he crossed the threshold carrying a cardboard box.

  “You're more beautiful than I remembered,” he whispered hoarsely. “You look radiant enough to light entire rows of Christmas trees.”

  His words could have melted stone, and she wasn't made of stone. She wanted to weep with joy, but she'd learned her lessons well. Pretty words couldn't mend the bridges he had burned.

  He smelled of damp flannel and spicy aftershave and of the man she remembered much too clearly, naked and sweating beside her in bed. She closed her eyes as her head spun at the image. Desire clawed at her insides.

  “Are you all right?”

  His hand instinctively cupped her elbow, and she opened her eyes to read the concern etching his brow, the concern she knew was genuine and made her want to weep for all the months of missing it.

  “I'm fine. I just never thought to see you …” She gestured helplessly and looked around for someplace to put him. The carpet was littered with boxes and odds and ends the guys had moved on their days off, but the only significant piece of furniture was the newly delivered mattress set in the bedroom. She didn't think she should offer him a seat there. “I can fix you some coffee,” she said tentatively, “but we'll have to sit on the floor.”

  “It's a nice neighborhood,” he said approvingly, not releasing her arm. She felt as if he were gobbling her up.

  Nervously, she rubbed her hands up and down her arms and turned toward the kitchen. She wanted to be free and dependent on no man, but she loved him so much she thought she'd die of wanting him.

  “The government has a fund for first time home buyers. Since Tony bought our house through the corporation, I apparently qualified.” She chattered as she searched for mugs and measured coffee into the machine. “The loan required perfect credit. The truck loan hurt me, but some head honcho agreed the truck was worth more than the loan, so it was okay.” He probably didn't want to hear any of this, but she was terrified of why he'd come here. Her hopes couldn't bear any more dashing. />
  He skirted around the stacks of cheerfully wrapped packages on the gleaming vinyl floor and gazed out the wide windows to the backyard. “Nice yard, room enough for a garden.

  The fence ought to keep the dogs and kids out. Or in. You should like it here.”

  Adrian wasn't very good at hiding his feelings. He didn't sound happy for her. The mention of kids startled her, but she figured he was being pragmatic.

  He'd set his box on the counter, and she eyed it speculatively. Juan had promised her a shipment, but this was the wrong size.

  “Dolores sent me a Christmas card,” she said politely. “She said you'd taken the pictures of her in the red cheerleading outfit, but you made her look as fat as Mrs. Claus.”

  He laughed shortly. “I wouldn't wish Dolores on any man, not even Santa. She thinks she wants to be a social worker. Can you believe it? It will cost fortunes to send her to school so she can be poor for the rest of her life. The girl has no sense, just like Belinda.”

  “She'll be all right, just like Belinda,” she corrected, pouring the coffee and coming up behind him to hand it over. She didn't want to sound sharp. She wanted to touch him, wished she had the right to ease his anxiety, but she didn't. “Happiness comes from the heart, not from the pocket.”

  “Fat lot you know,” he grumbled, absently taking the mug and sipping without looking at her. “Go ahead, open the package. I've already made a fool of myself by coming here. I might as well complete the job.”

  Tears stung her eyes at his gruffness because she knew it came from some inner conflict and not from anger at her. She ought to take a bite out of his shoulder and wake him up. Instead she obediently reached for the box.

  “You've always been a fool, Quinn,” she chided. “But when it can be found, your heart is in the right place, too. Your mother raised all her children well, and you're no exception.” She used scissors to slice the packing tape.