Alex and the Angel (Silhouette Desire)

by Dixie Browning

  “All right, already! Lay off, will you?”

  “Dina’s history, Gus. I doubt if Sandy even remembers much about her. Sandy’s their daughter, did I tell you? She’s about the same age now that I was when—”

  “Yeah, I know. The same age you were when you embarrassed the hell out of me by coming on to Alex.”

  Angel slammed her cheesy knife down onto the yellow enameled table. “I did not! I never in my life came on to any man—at least, not to Alex!”

  Gus grinned, and even his sister was forced to admit that the years had not diminished his old appeal. He and Alex were as different as day and night—yet no woman alive could fail to appreciate either one of them. Singly or together, they were enough to drive a woman up a wall.

  Gus piled on marmalade with the skill and precision of a master craftsman. “So...you’ve still got a thing for old Lex, huh?”

  “Sure, like I still have a thing for poison ivy.”

  “Why not just scratch and be done with it?”

  “What, the poison ivy?”

  “No, witchlette—Alex. He’s free. You’re free. Why not give it a go? The worst that could happen would be that he’d turn you down and you could finally mark him off your wish list.”

  “You mean the best that could happen! The worst would be if he took one look and started laughing like a hyena.” Angel flung herself up from the table and stalked over to the kitchen sink just as the lights blinked again. “Fine brother you turned out to be,” she grumbled. “For your information, Alex’s seeing this woman named Carol Something-or-other. You probably knew her—she’s part of that country club set. Anyway, poor Sandy’s scared out of her gourd he’s going to marry her. She says this Carol person keeps sending her information about boarding schools and dropping heavy hints about how much fun it is to live in a dorm with girls her own age and date boys from all the best prep schools.”

  “For a kid you just met, you two sure got down to cases in a hurry.”

  Angel shrugged. “So we happened to hit it off. Maybe because Sandy knows I’m no threat to her in that respect. She did say, though, that the day Alex marries this Carol person is the day she’s out of there.” She ran a sink full of sudsy water and plopped in her breakfast dishes, her lunch dishes, and the accumulation from last night’s snacks. “I don’t think she’s planning on moving into the palace with Dina, either. There’s this boy she knows who drives a Vette? From her description, my guess is he’s a perfect candidate for your old 3-H Club.”

  Gus grinned, his teeth startlingly white in his dark, bearded face. “Oh-oh. Maybe I’d better give Hightower a call and offer him a little moral support.”

  “I think you should. Gus...what’s worrying you?” So much for the subtle approach.

  He slanted her a wary look. “Nothing’s worrying me, kid. I’ve got more business than I can handle, but I can handle that.”

  Angel knew a stone wall when she ran into one. He’d tell her in his own sweet time. If he told her at all. Gus was a very private man. “You’re not fooling me, you know. You’ve got that squinty look around your eyes you used to get when you were worried about a game or a test or Daddy’s finding out you’d been drinking.”

  His eyes were the same color as her own, only hers were several shades darker. “Just remember, I’m always here if you want to talk.”

  Passing by on his way to the telephone, Gus grabbed her in a bear hug, lifting her off the floor. “Know something, witchlette? You turned out pretty good for a smart-mouthed kid who took to trouble like a duck takes to water.”

  * * *

  Alex had just finished filling Sandy in on Gus Wydowski when the door chimes sounded. He’d been advised by his CEO, who had two kids in college and another one in high school, that treating them as adults sometimes produced surprising results. He figured it was worth a try.

  Expecting Gus, he swung open the door and found Carol. She was holding out a bouquet of pink roses in one hand and a bottle of his favorite wine in the other.

  “Surprise,” she crowed softly, leaning forward to kiss the air beside his cheek. “Well, aren’t you going to invite me in, darling?”

  “Sure, come on in. Uh—did I slip up and forget something?” Alex closed the front door, mentally flipping through his engagement calendar. It was going on eight, and he could have sworn they hadn’t made a date for tonight, but he’d had a lot on his mind lately.

  “I’ve been in Raleigh all day—did I tell you I’m sitting for my portrait? That’s where the roses came from—I’m holding them in my pose, wearing white silk brocade with Mother’s sable cape over one shoulder. Anyway, I thought as long as I was passing so close, I’d stop in and see if you wanted to go to the club dance next weekend. Oh, hi, Sandy. Are we all finished with our homework?”

  “I’m all done with mine, but I guess you’re still working on yours, huh?” Her voice held that note of sugary innocence Alex had come to know all too well in the past few months. He shot her a warning glare, but before he could suggest an early evening, the chimes sounded again.

  This time, it was Sandy who flung open the door. “Oh, hi, you must be Mr. Wydowski, Daddy said you were on your way over. Angel, are you sure he’s your brother? I mean, like, you guys don’t look the least bit alike. Come on in, we were expecting you.”

  Alex had been expecting Gus. In his new adult-to-adult mode, he’d suggested that Sandy might care to play hostess for a few minutes before going upstairs to watch TV until bedtime.

  Gus hadn’t said anything about bringing his sister along. Not that she wasn’t welcome, but dammit, there it was again—the same crazy reaction he’d felt when he’d first spotted her crawling, butt-and-boot-soles first, out from under the magnolia tree. He never reacted to women this way!

  At least, not in the past twenty-odd years. “Gus...Angel,” he murmured, trying not to stare at her purple-figured slacks and turtleneck sweater. God, she lit up a room!

  Carol, a study in shades of beige, lifted a flawlessly penciled brow. “Friends of yours?” she said under cover of Sandy’s effusive chattering.

  “Angel and Gus Wydowski—Angel Perkins now. We go way back.”

  With a smile that could have been cast in porcelain, Carol said, “How lovely. I’d forgotten that you attended public school for a few years.” She summed up and dismissed Angel and, without missing a beat, turned to Gus, her eyes widening ever so slightly. “I’m Carol, of course. Carol English. I’m sure Alex must have mentioned me.”

  Doing his best to ignore Sandy and Angel, who were headed for the study, arm in arm, Alex allowed himself a moment to appreciate Gus’s reaction to Carol and vice versa. Whatever his appeal was to women, Gus hadn’t lost it. Baggy khakis and a flannel shirt that had seen better days did little to disguise his muscular build. The girls used to fall all over him—those that weren’t swarming around Kurt. Or himself, Alex thought modestly.

  If Gus had had a thing for Dina—and he had, although Alex wasn’t supposed to know about it—he ought to go for Carol in a big way. Same blond hair in a well-groomed pageboy style. Same impeccable, understated sense of fashion.

  He had a sudden vision of Carol wearing something like Angel’s purple print pants, or her pool-table green coveralls with Perkins Landscaping scrolled across the back in acid yellow. She’d be totally eclipsed.

  Grinning, he led the way into the study.

  The talk was general for the first few minutes until Carol began conducting a well-bred inquisition with Gus as her victim, casting the occasional oblique look at Alex.

  He knew his role. He’d played it too many times with Dina during their brief marriage, but tonight he was just too damned tired to play the jealous husband.

  So he leaned back in his chair—or rather, the smaller of the two leather chairs that had been a prototype for one of Hightower, Inc.'s older lines. Angel had homed in on the one he habitually used, slipping off her shoes and tucking her feet up beside her.

  She was wearing pink wool
socks. For some reason, that got to him.

  As the currents of conversation eddied around the small group, Sandy dragged a footstool over to Angel’s chair, leaving Carol enthroned in a tapestry-covered Queen Anne wing chair.

  Feeling oddly restless, Alex rose. “What’ll it be, Gus, the same old bourbon and branch?”

  “Nothing for me, thanks. I’m driving. I don’t want to give the witchlette an excuse to take over my new wheels.” He turned away from Carol, grinning at the other three. “She ever tell you about the time I had to bail her out of the tank for trying to outrun a platoon of smokies over on 15-501?”

  “Don’t listen to him, Sandy, it wasn’t at all the way he makes it sound,” Angel muttered. “My accelerator got stuck and I just happened to cream a few road signs while I was trying to work it loose with my foot.”

  Grinning—she’d always had the damnedest effect on him—Alex poured wine for the women, grenadine and ginger ale for Sandy, and turned to Gus again. “Why not stay here while you’re in town so we can do some serious catching up? We’ve got plenty of rattling-around room, haven’t we, princess?” He called on Sandy to second the invitation, and she beamed at him, making him feel that for once he had done something right.

  “Thanks, but I’m all set out at Angel’s place. The roof hardly leaks at all in clear weather, and now that she’s got the squirrels in her attic under control—” Gus chuckled as his sister tossed a pillow at him. She reminded him that he’d promised to look at her wiring. “Noblesse oblige, Wydowski style. I do her house repairs—she does my mending and feeds me Polish-style pizza whenever I pass through town.”

  Carol examined her manicure. Sandy immediately wanted to know how to make Polish-style pizza, and the men discussed antiquated wiring and new building codes. The talk moved on to the construction business in general, which happened to be in the middle of an upswing, and the furniture-making business, including Hightower Fine Furniture, Inc., of which Alex was chairman of the board. Gradually the women fell silent as the men talked NAFTA and GATT and the upcoming international fall furniture market in nearby High Point.

  Ignored, Carol began to beat a silent tattoo on the arms of her chair with her pale pink fingernails. Sandy gazed openly and admiringly at her father’s best friend. Angel’s head slid sideways and her eyes finally closed and stayed that way. She’d been up since five, and had put in her usual twelve-hour day before Gus had shown up.

  Rising silently, Sandy disappeared, and some twenty minutes later, reappeared, precariously balancing a loaded tray. “Coffee,” she called out softly, grinning at the small woman in purple paisley pants who was sound asleep in Alex’s leather chair, one bronze-colored curl stirring gently to the rhythm of her breathing.

  It was Gus who hurried to relieve her. Giving her the benefit of his lady-killing grin, he took the tray just as it began to tilt. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re even prettier than your mama?”

  “No sir, but if you’d like to, feel free.” She grinned right back, fresh as a chipping sparrow.

  “Lex, this kid of yours is trouble on the half shell, I hope you realize it, old man.”

  “Where do you think all this gray hair came from? Thanks, princess. Now, don’t you think—” He’d been about to suggest it was time she turned in, but one scowl from Angel, who had woken up at the scent of fresh coffee, steered him from the brink of disaster. “Uh...you’d better sit over here to pour?”

  It was past midnight when Gus and Angel left. By that time, Sandy had a new hero and Alex had a new headache. Instead of worrying about a kid in a Vette, he was worrying about a middle-aged guy in a pickup truck.

  On the plus side, she hadn’t burst into tears and slammed into her room in more than a day and a half now. Things were definitely looking up.

  * * *

  Half-asleep in the plush comfort of Gus’s new stretch-cab pickup, Angel thought about Alex’s predatory blonde and smiled. It was not a particularly nice smile. By the time the impromptu gathering had broken up, Ms. English had been mad enough to chew nails. “Did you like her?” she murmured against the melancholy strains of “Moonlight In Montgomery” on the CD player.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.” She wondered absently if Alex still liked boiled dinners.

  Gus started swearing when the second fire truck raced past them only a couple of miles from the turnoff to the farm. With a feeling of growing unease, Angel unsnapped her seat belt and leaned forward, watching to see where it went. Not my road, not my road—please, God, not my road!

  And then she swore, too. Gus downshifted and turned off the pavement onto the graveled road. The instant the pickup skidded to a halt just inside the gate, Angel flung open the door and hit the ground running.

  By then it was all over but the smoke. All over but the mess. Wisps of steamy smoke rose from the house, and there was an assortment of fire trucks scattered over what had once been her freshly graveled, beautifully landscaped parking area.

  “Lotta smoke damage. Some water, too, I guess. Sorry, lady, but it looks like you’re gonna need a new roof. Coulda been a lot worse, though. Kid passing by happened to see the glow through the upstairs windows an’ called it in.”

  Distracted, Angel thanked the volunteer firemen who had responded so quickly to the call and the second crew that had just arrived as backup. She hurried across the rutted ground toward the front door, completely unaware that she was whispering a steady chorus of denial under her breath. “Oh, no—oh, no, no, no.”

  “Whoa, lady, you don’t wanna go inside yet.”

  She jerked her arm from his grasp. “It’s my home, dammit! I’m going inside!”

  “Sorry. I can’t let you in, ma’am. Smoke’s still thick enough to choke a hog. Bound to be some structural damage. A couple of us are going to stick around, make sure it don’t flare up again. You got anywheres else you can sleep tonight?”

  “I have no intention of sleeping anywhere else. Everything in the world I own is in that house.” Again she shook off the restraining hand. “Gus,” she wailed, “make him let me go, he won’t listen to me!”

  “I’ll check out the house while you see to the rest of the place.”

  “Oh, God, my greenhouse,” she gasped. Staring dazedly around, she tried to take it all in, but with the flashing lights and a hoard of space aliens in face masks swarming over her territory, nothing seemed real.

  “Take a deep breath,” Gus said quietly. “The greenhouse looks okay to me. Your shed’s still there. The trucks are fine, too.”

  Fortunately, her van and the old stake-back delivery truck were parked on the far side of the greenhouse, away from the house. A pale sliver of moon gleamed down on the dusty top of her greenhouse and glinted dully off the wet metal roof of her storage shed. “My plants—” she whispered, but the rows of Bradford pears, weeping cherry and ornamental plums stood silently reassuring.

  Still, she trudged across the wet gravel, intent on seeing for herself. By the time she had checked the greenhouse, the shed and her two vehicles, some of the throat-clutching panic that had gripped her at first had begun to ease.

  “Hey, it’s okay, honey,” Gus rumbled, coming up silently behind her to gather her in his arms. “It’s nothing we can’t fix. I’ll call in a couple of my guys first thing in the morning and we’ll have you back in business in a week’s time, I promise.”

  “Just tell those fire people that I have to get inside,” she demanded from the safe haven of her brother’s comforting arms. “I have to! My checkbook—my toothbrush—oh, Gus, all my albums!”

  Angel had been a voracious photographer in her youth, with albums devoted to family, others to friends, and one whole album that nobody knew about devoted entirely to Alex Hightower. She would die if anyone found out!

  “Easy now, witchlette, it could’ve been a hell of a lot worse.”

  She pulled free of his arms, her wide navy blue eyes gleaming up at him through a soot-streaked face. “I know, I know—I’m b
eing silly. Thank God you were here. Look, we can dash inside and grab some blankets and pillows and settle down in the greenhouse for tonight. There’s a bathroom of sorts off the office, and—”

  “Shh, I’ve already made arrangements, hon. I’ll stick around here until morning—can’t do anything until then, anyway, but as soon as it’s light enough, I’ll check everything out, call in a couple of the guys and start working up a supplies list. By noon I should have a pretty good idea of when you can come home again.”

  “Come home again!” She wrenched free of his arms and glared up at him. “If you think I’m going to a motel, you’re cockeyed crazy! I told you, I’m sleeping in the greenhouse!”

  “Yeah, sure you are,” he jeered softly. “Along with the mice that come in to eat the seeds, and the snakes that come in to eat the mice, and the—”

  “Stop it! Just stop it! I’ll sleep in your truck, then.”

  “What, and leave me to sleep with the mice and snakes? Anyhow, here comes Alex now. Sandy can lend you something to sleep in, and I would be surprised if she couldn’t come up with a spare toothbrush.” At her fresh wail of anguish, he knuckled her cheek the same way he used to do when, as a child, she’d stumbled into trouble over her head.

  “Shh, it’ll be okay, small stuff. Trust me. What are big brothers for?”

  Stepping away from the shelter of his arms again, Angel sniffed, blinked and smeared her filthy face on her sleeve. “Alex’s not my big brother, dammit, you are!”

  “I know,” Gus said softly, turning to greet the man who came loping across the ruined grounds. “Thanks, Lex. I owe you one.”

  “God,” Alex whispered softly, staring at the smoke-blackened ruins of the once neat little frame house.

  “And I owe you one, Augustus Timothy Wydowski! Don’t think I’ll forget it!” Switching her glare to Alex, immaculate in his light gray tweeds and well-bred cotton sweater, she snapped, “I want it on record that I’m going only under duress.”

  Alex smiled, but it faded almost immediately. Tucking her arm under his, he steered her over the ruts made by the fleet of heavy fire trucks. “Duly recorded, ma’am.”