Nobody's Angel

by Patricia Rice

  She struggled and capped the pen. That was enough introspection for one day. The counselor ought to know she was a mucked-up mess. She shouldn't have to lay it out in terms a first grader could understand. Another thought occurred to her, and she grabbed the pen again.

  Baring my soul is not my style.

  There. That ought to be letting it out enough for one day.

  Her head shot up as the car engine drew closer, evidently bypassing the scowling witch. Stupid bastard. What was she supposed to do, dump a load of pig turds on him to get the message across? That might work if they were driving a convertible.

  They usually were.

  She despised the arrogant, self-confident yuppie asses who thought the whole world was their oyster. Didn't PRIVATE PROPERTY mean anything to them?

  Apparently not. The car engine zoomed right past the pop-up sign she'd rigged in the middle of the lane. Forgetting to turn off the system before she'd left for work, she'd driven around the sign one too many times herself, and the dirt bypass was clearly visible. She'd plant a palmetto there tomorrow.

  Slamming the notebook into her desk drawer, she picked up her purse and donned her glasses. She hadn't quite perfected the mechanism to shut the swinging post barrier to the beach. She hated the idea of erecting a fence across there. The moron would simply have to drown if he insisted on using her beach. A bad undertow past the rocks made this a dangerous strip for swimming, but she supposed the NO SWIMMING signs wouldn't stop this nematode either.

  Maybe she could rig a siren to a motion detector. There wasn't any law out here for it to summon, but tourists wouldn't know that.

  Pulling out her truck keys, she almost didn't hear the purr of the engine turning into her drive, but the shriek of a hidden peacock warned of the intrusion.

  Damn. Did the jerk think the house deserted? Admittedly, she hadn't bothered painting the weathered gray boards and the sagging shutters, but she kind of thought them picturesque. And it wasn't as if she hadn't littered the place with warning signs. If the town council insisted on encouraging film crews to work here, she'd be prepared to keep them out. She hadn't traveled an entire continent to have that California lifestyle follow her.

  She waited as the barking guard dog yapped through its entire routine. A real dog would scare the peacocks, but the tape recording was usually effective. Amazing how many people were frightened of barking dogs. The mailman had quit delivering to the door after he'd heard it.

  She sighed as the driver shut off the car engine instead of turning around. Determined suckers. Only Maya and Axell ever got this far past her guardians. She could slip out the back way, but curiosity riveted her to the window. She knew she was far enough back not to be seen, but she still had a partial view of the walk and porch. She couldn't wait to see how her intrepid guest reacted to her burglar alarm system.

  She chewed on a hangnail as a pair of long-legged, crisply ironed khakis appeared beneath the porch overhang. A man. She should have known. Men had to prove themselves by showing no fear. It didn't seem to matter if they showed no intelligence while they were at it.

  She admired the lean torso decked in a tight black polo appearing next. She was sick of looking at fat slugs with pooching white bellies and hairy, sunken chests cluttering the view from the beach. At least this ape strode tall and straight and …

  My, my. She stopped chewing her finger to relish the loose-limbed swing of wide shoulders and a corded throat topped by a long, angular face with more character than prettiness. He was all length—arms, legs, nose, neck—but they all fit together in a casual sort of package. He had his hands in his pockets as he gazed up at her mildly eccentric porch, so she couldn't see his fingers, but she'd bet they were a piano teacher's dream.

  Tousled sable hair fell across a tanned brow, and she was almost sorry she'd left the security system on. If he was selling insurance, she wouldn't mind listening to his pitch just to hear what came out of a package like that.

  The aviator sunglasses were a downright sexy trim for this parcel.

  “You are under alert!” The loudspeaker blared as soon as the intruder hit the first porch step. She'd used an army drill sergeant for that recording. It would scare the pants off any normal person. This one halted and removed his sunglasses now that he was in shade, but his gaze looked for the source of the bellowing voice with curiosity, not fear.

  “Turn back now. This is your only warning!”

  Cleo bit back a sigh of exasperation as the jerk bent over to examine the step for wires. Did he think her an idiot to put wires where someone could cut them?

  “Your location has been verified, and you are now under surveillance. Put up your hands, or we'll shoot!”

  The man straightened and seemed to be whistling as he craned his neck and surveyed the underside of the covered porch from the step.

  Shaking her head, Cleo reached for the “off ” switch, but she waited for his reaction to the final performance. Sure enough, her visitor disregarded the warning and fearlessly breached the porch gate. Sirens screamed, strobe lights flared, and a fedora-clad skeleton dropped down between him and the front door.

  Jared Montgomery came eyeball-to-eye-socket with a six-foot bag of bones baring a smirk through a cigar clamped between its teeth. He'd been given enough warning to expect it, but he couldn't help grinning in appreciation of the coup de grace. At night, with the shrieking siren and strobes, it would have any would-be thief shitting his pants.

  “Pleased to meecha, Burt,” he murmured, inspecting the wires which must have held the freak to the porch roof. He didn't know anything about mechanics, but he knew an overactive imagination when he saw one. “Guess this means the old witch isn't at home.”

  “Guess it means the old witch is on her way out.”

  Jared blinked at the apparition in the doorway. He hadn't heard the door open. Shouldn't the hinges of a place like this creak eerily?

  He smiled in satisfaction at the full impact of the skeleton's creator as she emerged from shadows. Far from being an old witch, she was his newest dream of perfection. Not too tall or too short, she packed a lot of punch into a sturdy, compact, sexy bundle. Her knee-length man's brown flannel shirt effectively disguised the best of her curves, but he loved exploration and discovery even more than having it all laid out for him.

  Generally, women didn't appreciate being ogled, so he respectfully raised his gaze to absorb the rest of the glorious sight. Rumpled short hair revealed roots of auburn beneath a mousy brown dye job. Tinted half-glasses attempted to hide eyes of a spectacular green— not contacts, either. He could see specks of brown in them.

  He thought he was in love.

  Of course, he'd been in love last week and the week before and mostly, it was a major distraction he didn't need right now. If he didn't finish the piece of idiocy they called a screenplay by December first, he'd be in breach of contract. Another failure and his name would be crap, even if the last failure was more the fault of death-by-committee than anything he'd done.

  His agent was already antsy over the cancellation of the comic strip by some backwoods string of newsrags claiming his teenage nerds had become “tiresome.” It had been quite a few years since he'd been a teenager, but from his current outlook, that's what teenagers were—tiresome.

  None of that seemed relevant to the moment. “Name's Jared Mongomery.” He smiled with as much charm as he could summon. Maybe this was a young relative of the old witch the kids had warned him about. “I'm looking for Cleo Alyssum.”

  “She's not here.”

  She said that so promptly Jared figured this had to be her. Well, well. Curiouser and curiouser.

  He produced a business card from his pocket with his hotel phone number scratched on the back. “I've been told Miss Alyssum is owner of the beach property back of here, and I'm interested in leasing it. I'm prepared to make a generous offer.” From the look of this run-down sprawling plantation-era farmhouse, she could use the cash.

  She took the
card and dropped it in her shirt pocket. “She doesn't like neighbors.” Turning around, she shut and locked the peeling white door, and did something that reeled the skeleton upward like a collapsing party favor.

  “Your car's blocking my drive,” she said curtly as he moved aside to let her pass. “And you're trespassing, in case you didn't notice.”

  Not a smile, not a dimple, not a look of interest crossed her stoic features. Jared shrugged and ambled back toward his Jag. Women usually liked him, and he couldn't see that he'd done anything to tick this one off. NO TRESPASSING signs applied to salesmen, not legitimate visitors, as far as he could see. Surely she hadn't really thought to scare him off?

  “Do you have some idea when Miss Alyssum might return?” He played along with her gag and cast her a sideways look to see if anything registered in her expression. She had a short, finely-honed aquiline nose with a sprinkle of freckles across it, and a mouth drawn too tight to reveal any trace of humor. He wouldn't call it a friendly face by any means. He could cut timbers with the sharp edge of her voice.

  “She won't be interested. As I said, you're trespassing. I'd advise you to turn around before the police arrive.” She headed for a beat-up black Chevy pickup truck, opened the door, then waited for him to move his car.

  She didn't even show an interest in his antique Jag. Damn. That car drew more comments than honeysuckle drew bees. Was she blind?

  There had to be some way around her. He'd never accepted “no” as an answer in his life. Not that many people told him no in the first place. He wasn't an unreasonable man. She had a run-down beach shack going to waste. He wanted to put it to good use. He couldn't see the problem.

  “I can afford whatever price Miss Alyssum thinks the property is worth. I'll buy it if she'd rather not lease it. Just pass the message along, will you?” He leaned against his car door and watched her climb into her truck without replying. Well, damn.

  Maybe she was a witch, but she had all his incorrigible hormones humming. He sighed as she cranked the truck to life without looking back. He'd better move the Jag or she'd drive over it.

  Spinning his tires in the soft sand, he edged out of her way and let her fly off down the lane. He wondered if signs would pop out of the road and witches fly from the trees as she left, or if they were rigged to greet only incoming visitors.

  He sure did like the way her mind worked. Wonder if she could rig up some of those spooks for him once he figured out how to obtain the beach house?

  Bumping the Jag over a timber barrier, he drove down toward the beach to inspect the house he'd only seen from a distance. The real estate agents had said there was nothing available out here in the middle of nowhere, but a friend of a friend in LA had told him about this island. The film business was a small world.

  This place should be ideal. He could feel it in his bones. None of his friends or family would go out of their way to reach this remote spot. Surely, once he cleared his head, he would be able to think again. Surrounded by all this peace and quiet, he'd cruise right past the roadblock in his mind that had prevented his coming up with any fresh ideas lately.

  A witchy landlady would be a distraction, but one distraction against the many his places in New York and Miami offered seemed a fair trade. His fingers itched for the computer keys already, just thinking about the sand and the waves and the peace.

  Driving with one hand, he idly swatted at something tickling his ankle. He'd have to remember insect repellant. Beaches were notorious for bugs.

  The house ought to be just beyond the curve in the road ahead, if he'd calculated correctly. He didn't know the name of the scrub brush blocking his view, but it grew in heavy thickets neither man nor beast would dare enter. He'd have plenty of privacy.

  Especially with the witch's mechanical guardians blocking the way.

  Before he could grin at the thought, an eerie high-pitched shriek shattered his eardrums, and an object the size of his mother's frozen Thanksgiving turkeys smashed into his windshield, scattering brilliant blue-green plumage across the glass, obstructing his view with an iridescent psychedelic hallucination.

  Frantically swiping at the irritating tickle crawling up his leg, cursing the Technicolor windshield, he slammed the brakes. The car's rear end resisted stopping and the tires swerved wildly in the soft sand.

  Crawling. Up his leg.

  Clinging desperately to the wheel for control, Jared glanced downward.

  A shiny black snake's tail whipped his leather moccasins. The head had disappeared up his pants leg.

  Clutching the spinning steering wheel while cursing frantically, Jared lost control as the car veered sideways on the soft shoulder.

  The low-slung chassis hit the ditch at the side of the road, sailed upward, and landed, roof down, in the wax myrtle thicket.

  An Ivy Book

  Published by the Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 2000 by Rice Enterprises, Inc.

  Excerpt from forthcoming book copyright © 2001 by Rice Enterprises, Inc.

  Ivy books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.randomhouse.com/BB/

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-191737

  eISBN: 978-0-307-56605-8

  v3.0