Alex and the Angel (Silhouette Desire)

by Dixie Browning

  Four

  Who would ever have thought that the smell of bacon and shaving soap, coffee and toothpaste, could elicit a full-blown fantasy? There was something dangerously intimate about sharing eggs and toast in the small, sunny breakfast room. Alex’s silvery gray eyes still had that slightly unfocused look, despite the fact that he was freshly shaved, his hair still damp from the shower.

  Half amused, half irritated at her own weakness, Angel wondered when he had last had his eyes examined. Who reminded him of things like that? His secretary? Even Gus, as capable as he was in most ways, had to be reminded to schedule physicals and dental checkups and the occasional eye exam.

  Dinner wasn’t quite so bad. At least she’d had the day to build up her defenses. And four was a much safer number than two.

  At the moment, they were all seated around the oval table in the formal dining room, Alex at the head, Sandy at the foot, with Gus and Angel in the middle. Remembering her grandmother’s old enameled kitchen table where once she had entertained a younger Alex over a boiled dinner, Angel could have wept.

  Was the table still there? Gus refused to allow her inside the house until he declared it structurally safe. She’d had to content herself with peeping through the windows, most of which were still blackened with smoke, a few of which were broken.

  They’d squabbled over it ever since the fire. Finally, just before Gus arrived for dinner tonight, Alex had spoken out. “You’ve made it perfectly clear that you hate having to accept my hospitality,” he’d said. Which was true, only not for the reasons he thought. “You’re making things pretty uncomfortable for Gus. He’s only thinking of your safety, you know. Poor guy, he feels guilty enough without your constant nagging.”

  “I’ve never nagged in my life! And why on earth should Gus feel guilty? He certainly didn’t set the fire.”

  “Possibly because he knew the wiring was old and he didn’t do anything about it.”

  “But he was planning to. Besides, it’s my house—it’s my responsibility to see that it’s safe. Gus is my brother, not my keeper.”

  Alex hadn’t said another word. He didn’t have to. Some people were born with the ability to quell a riot with no more than the lift of an eyebrow.

  While others, she fumed as she attacked her tiny serving of French vanilla ice cream, still smarting from the set-down he’d administered, could spend a lifetime beating their heads on the same old stone wall without ever learning a blessed thing!

  Only it wasn’t her head that was aching, Angel thought as she rose and followed the others into the study. At least this time she didn’t make the mistake of stacking her dishes and taking them out to the kitchen.

  It had been Sandy who had clued her in. “Mrs. G. does that,” she’d whispered.

  “But I don’t mind at all. It’s the least I can do, and Mrs. Gilly looks, um...tired.” She didn’t want to come right out and say it, but the poor woman looked as if she were long overdue a comfortable retirement. It wasn’t as though the Hightowers couldn’t afford to put her out to pasture.

  “Oh, she’s not tired. I mean, she doesn’t do all that much anymore, but Daddy says she’s got too much pride or something, so we let her do the easy stuff and have a cook and a daily in for everything else. Mrs. G. bosses them around a lot, but Daddy pays real good, and besides, Mrs. G. really does know a bunch of stuff about keeping house, so it works out okay.”

  Grudgingly Angel gave Alex credit for a quarter of an ounce of sensitivity. At least toward his housekeeper. Pity he couldn’t spare a bit for his daughter. But then, as a single father dealing with a headstrong teenage daughter, he was probably doing the best he could.

  They had already had words on the subject of Sandy’s clothes. Not that it was any of her business. Unfortunately, Angel was constitutionally incapable of minding her own business where her friends were concerned. She called it being helpful. Gus called it being bossy.

  And anyway, Sandy’s skirts were not really all that short, they only looked that way because at five foot ten, she was mostly legs. And granted, she was a bit heavy-handed with the eyeshadow, but she’d been easy enough to convince when Angel had shown her how much more flattering a light dusting of pale gray was compared to metallic blue.

  As for the way she hung on to Gus’s every word, and the way her eyes had bugged out when she’d seen him coming from the pool with Alex late last night, that would pass. He was a novelty, that was all. And face it—her brother might not be precisely handsome, but he’d never had any trouble attracting women.

  Angel and Sandy had been having a last glass of milk before heading upstairs to bed when the two men had climbed out of the pool and come directly into the house through the side door instead of showering and changing in the bathhouse. Angel had heard Sandy’s soft “Oh, wow” as Gus stepped into the kitchen.

  Personally, Angel hadn’t spared her brother a second glance. She’d been too busy taking in the splendid sight of Alex’s tall, rangy body clad only in racing trunks and a towel, the surprisingly dark body hair that formed a tee across his chest and down his abdomen still gleaming with moisture.

  There ought to be a law against spandex.

  All the same, for Sandy’s sake, the sooner Gus left town, the better. Out of sight, out of mind.

  Oh, sure, Wydowski! Just like you forgot all about Alex the minute he married Dina and quit hanging out with Kurt and Gus!

  Dammit, she didn’t need this. She was stressed out enough from dealing with insurance adjusters, answering carpenters’ questions and putting off clients, without the added burden of sharing a house with Hightower.

  Talk about your inadequate wiring—when a woman was wired for one-ten, she had no business fooling around with two-twenty. What was it about the man? His nose was too big, his jaw was too square—his cheekbones had obviously been chiseled out of raw granite. He was taller than any man needed to be, and to top it off, he was a blasted business executive!

  None of the heroes in her favorite romances were desk people. They were cowboys—or test pilots—or maybe secret agents. Men on the run from a devastating hidden past.

  Alex Carruthers Hightower the third was a blooming plutocrat. A furniture tycoon. Whoever heard of a hero who made furniture?

  Right. He was dull. So how come she had spent the past twenty years of her life following his life the way a heliotrope follows the sun?

  * * *

  On Saturday, Sandy insisted on skipping tennis practice and going to work with her. “Tennis is boring. I always do tennis on Saturdays.” She sighed. She had sighed so much since Gus had left town the night before, promising to return by the middle of the week, that Angel was tempted to warn her against hyperventilation.

  Perhaps a bit of distraction was in order. “Sure, but tell your father first,” she said.

  They were in the upstairs hallway. “Daddy, I’m going to the shop with Angel,” Sandy screeched over the banisters.

  Alex appeared with a newspaper in hand in the hallway below. His hair was ruffled, the sleeves of his band-necked denim shirt turned back, and a pair of khakis skimmed his lean, masculine hips as if they were tailor-made. Angel mentally put the cost of his weekend grungies at roughly the cost of her entire fall wardrobe.

  “What about your tennis?” Alex asked mildly from the door of his study as Sandy galloped down the stairs, ramming her arms into a cardigan.

  “Oh, I can do that anytime. I mean, Angel needs me, don’t you, Angel?”

  “I can always use more help.”

  He frowned, his gaze moving up the staircase to where Angel followed at a slightly more sedate pace. “If you needed help, why didn’t you say so? I can have as many temps as you need sent out if you’ll just—”

  “I don’t need any temps, I already have a man who does my big planting and two part-timers who come in on weekends and after school. But thanks just the same,” she tacked on grudgingly.

  Just like a bloody Hightower. Got a problem? Throw money at it. An
d because she was being unfair and knew it, Angel made up her mind to do something about his shrubbery before she moved back home. Which would be any day now, even if she had to sleep in a hard hat until Gus declared her premises safe again.

  And the shrubs really did need attention. Evidently old Mr. Gilly was no more up to the demands of Hightower’s four acres than his wife was of dealing with fourteen rooms. One glance around the grounds and it had been all she could do not to grab her pruning shears and fly into action.

  Sandy raced on ahead out the front door, leaving Angel to deal with Alex, who looked mildly ferocious with a scowl and an overnight growth of beard shadowing his jaw. “Are you sure she won’t be a nuisance?” he asked.

  “I happen to like teenagers.” She thought she saw a wintry smile flicker past those cool gray eyes, and wondered if he was thinking of a certain fourteen-year-old pest who had made his life hell a couple of decades ago.

  “Well, if you’re sure...I’m meeting Carol to go riding later on this morning. Sandy knows the number. Anytime you want me to pick her up, just call.”

  “Fine. Have a lovely ride.” She tried for an airy disdain and came off sounding breathless. Dammit, why did everything have to remind her of a certain pesky lovesick adolescent and the arrogant, elegant, gangling young hunk she had badgered unmercifully for three or four years?

  This time it was a genuine smile that kindled in his eyes as he leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb, the paper dangling from his long, square-tipped fingers. “Do you ride, Angel? Why not take a break and go with us? I could probably scare you up some riding gear.”

  “Thanks, but I really can’t spare the time. I do ride, however,” she informed him with a glint in her eyes that dared him to question her further.

  Actually, she’d only ridden a cow. Once. Aunt Zee had had a friend in the country who kept a milker. Neither Angel nor the cow had cared very much for the experience.

  “Perhaps another time, then.”

  “Perhaps.” And perhaps not. “Don’t worry if we’re late. We might stop for barbecue on the way home.”

  “Look, are you sure you want to do this, Angel? Sandy’s a good kid, but I’ll be the first to admit she can be a handful when she wants to be. Maybe it would be better if—”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, lighten up, Hightower! I’m not kidnapping your daughter, I’m just taking her across town for a few hours!” Digging her keys out of her shoulder bag, Angel turned and clumped toward the door, the size-five combat boots muffled on the faded splendor of the old Tabriz.

  Rattling down University Parkway in the van a few minutes later, with Sandy chattering cheerfully beside her, Angel thought about men and their tendency to go overboard trying to protect what they considered the weaker sex.

  Not all men, of course. Some were predators. Some were leaches. Most were chauvinists, but things were changing rapidly in that respect. Not that all the changes were necessarily good.

  One of the things that had drawn her to Cal was that he’d encouraged her to be independent. Coming from a family in which women were supposed to stay home and raise kids, cook and keep house—period—Angel had considered him wonderfully enlightened. He had told her right up front that if he married her, he expected her to pull her weight.

  More than her weight, as it had turned out. He’d wanted her to pull his, too. But then, Cal had been a user, something she hadn’t learned until it was too late.

  On the other hand, there was Gus, who hired women as readily as he did men as long as they were qualified. That didn’t mean he’d gotten over his habit of rescuing damsels in distress—whether they wanted to be rescued or not, which could be a royal pain.

  And then there were men like Alex.

  On second thought, there probably weren’t any men like Alex. Which was both a shame and a blessing.

  “Who else will be there today?” asked Sandy, interrupting Angel’s nonproductive train of thought.

  “Probably Mac and Bucky, depending on whether or not Bucky has to help his father bale hay. They’re both nice. You’ll like them.”

  “Hmm. Maybe. They’ll probably think I’m some kind of freak. I guess they’re both shorter than I am, huh?”

  “Bucky’s taller. Mac is only fifteen. He’ll probably shoot up in a year or so.”

  Angel well remembered how terribly insecure she’d been at Sandy’s age when it came to meeting new boys. All it took was a few years to get over it, but at fourteen, a year seemed an eternity.

  Meanwhile, an understanding parent could help. Hightower needed someone to set him straight on the subject of what was worth hassling over and what wasn’t. Men were so dense about some things.

  Men were so dense about a lot of things.

  But then, so were women. About men, in particular. Love could hurt like hell under the best of circumstances. At Sandy’s age, with no perspective and no control over burgeoning hormones, it could be worse than PMS and the five-day flu all rolled into one.

  “I do like a man with a beard, don’t you?” Sandy mused. “Like, I mean, it makes them look so—so manly.” She sighed and wriggled her feet in a pair of size ten red Reeboks.

  “I’m not sure the ability to grow hair on one’s face has all that much to do with being a man, but I know what you mean.” Angel thought of the way Alex looked late at night, with a day’s growth of stubble. She wondered what it would feel like against the tender skin of her neck, of her breast. “As long as you don’t forget that it’s character, not hair, that makes a man,” she tacked on dutifully.

  Sandy snapped her bubble gum. “You sound just like Daddy. Does Gus have a special girlfriend?”

  “Not that I know of,” Angel admitted, half wishing she could say he did.

  “Does he like younger women?”

  Fortunately Angel was too busy negotiating the turnoff to answer. She only hoped that Sandy’s fascination with beards and scars and older men wouldn’t last as long as her own early infatuation had lasted.

  Although once Sandy turned her attention back to the Corvette Kid, Alex would really have something to worry about!

  * * *

  Mounted on Shadow, his favorite gelding, Alex cantered along the bridle path behind Carol and her small roan mare, fighting the urge to break out in a gallop and cut through the oak grove to the wide pasture beyond.

  This urge to break out—to break away—was getting to be a damned nuisance. “Shall we take the shortcut back to the stable?”

  “Might as well. I’d forgotten how narrow this trail is. We can’t even talk without raising our voices.”

  Carol never raised her voice. Alex didn’t, either—at least, he hadn’t until just lately. Nowadays, it didn’t take all that much to set him off.

  Absently he studied the woman riding before him, one advantage of having chosen the narrower of several bridle trails. She had an excellent seat—hands relaxed, back straight. But then, Carol never did anything that she couldn’t accomplish to perfection. It was an art, he supposed. Being good at everything. At ease in every situation.

  Unbidden, his thoughts veered to the scene at the breakfast table the first morning Angel had stayed there. She’d come down early, evidently not expecting anyone else to be about. Alex had risen to seat her, his eyes riveted on the pale pink spot on her left cheekbone.

  “What happened?” He had pictured her getting up at night in a strange house and blundering into a door or a piece of furniture.

  “Zit.” She’d scowled at him and reached for the coffeepot.

  “I beg your—”

  “Calamine, and if you don’t mind, I’d just as soon not talk about it.”

  A zit? At her age? He’d nearly strangled on his orange juice. And then he’d seen the smile twitching at the corners of her mouth, and he’d really lost it. When Sandy wandered into the room a few minutes later, they’d both been laughing uncontrollably, neither one of them capable of explaining—or even understanding—just what was so funny about a tiny spot d
abbed with pale pink lotion.

  All he knew was that for a few minutes, he’d felt young again. He’d felt good. It had occurred to him then that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed aloud.

  * * *

  After dropping Carol off at her apartment and declining an invitation to stay for lunch, Alex drove by his office, where he buried himself in plans for the upcoming market, and in the paperwork involved with buying out a small, foundering chair company. For once, he’d gone against the advice of his overly conservative directors. He’d had his own reasons, and as those reasons had little to do with Hightower’s bottom line, he was having the devil’s own time in defending the buy-out.

  There were times when he’d like to turn his back on the whole damned furniture business and start over, somewhere new, doing something totally off the wall. Unfortunately, there were some four hundred odd jobs directly depending on his continued good business judgment. Even more once he took over K’ville Chair.

  * * *

  It was later than usual when he got home, his mind on a drink, a swim—although it was getting cool for that—and possibly a nap before dinner. Recently he’d had trouble falling asleep, and even when he did, he’d often wake up about four in the morning, his mind too alert to go back to sleep. Which usually meant he’d be operating at half speed the next day.

  He felt restless. Vaguely unsettled. For the life of him, he couldn’t put his finger on the reason. The buy-out was right on track. His lawyers were winding up the final agreement now. Granted, he and Sandy were going through a rough patch, but he had no doubt that as long as he could hang on to his patience, they’d come out the other end unscathed.

  He was thirty-eight. So maybe it was a mid-life crisis. Or had that only been an eighties thing?

  The front door opened onto a square foyer, directly opposite the curving stairway that led to the second floor. The room hadn’t changed much since his father’s day. Dina hadn’t been particularly interested in decorating, and God knows, it was far down on his own list of priorities. He was used to the faded grays and bronzes of the antique rugs, the slightly brighter colors of the stair runner, the Venetian mural done in shades of gray on the side walls, and the hunt table with the vase of whatever flowers happened to be blooming in the back garden—usually shedding leaves and petals on the gleaming cherry surface.