Alex and the Angel (Silhouette Desire)

by Dixie Browning

  Aware even then that he was shuddering, crying out and clinging, too.

  * * *

  She awoke in his arms in the dim green light that filtered through the window, not even wondering at the strangeness of finding herself not alone. She had dreamed of this so many times, it was more real in a way than reality.

  Which was crazy, and probably a little bit dangerous, but she thought she would just indulge herself for a little while longer.

  At least, she did until the phone began to ring.

  “It’s probably for you,” she murmured drowsily. “I never get calls in the middle of the night.”

  “Me, either. Maybe it’s a wrong number.”

  “Prob’ly.” She moved her head on his chest so that her lips nuzzled his flat brown nipple. It peaked immediately, which caused all sorts of interesting chain reactions to take place.

  The phone finally stopped ringing. In the long silence that followed, she began to trace the fault line that ran down from the small hollow where his neck joined his shoulder, across his nipple, circling his navel, leading directly to the danger zone. The area of greatest weakness. The volcanic region.

  “You’re asking for trouble,” he whispered hoarsely. But he continued to lie there, arms over his head, allowing her full freedom to explore to her heart’s content.

  “Are you going to give me any?” she taunted, enjoying the flush that had crept over the sharp contours of his cheekbones.

  “Trouble?”

  “Whatever.”

  Lazily he rolled over, capturing her hand and nibbling his way up to her shoulder. “I might consider offering you a bit more whatever. You say you’re an experienced rider?”

  “Not very,” she admitted, remembering the small lie she’d told. “But I’m a quick study.”

  His eyes strangely darkened under half-closed lids, he lifted her and swung her over him just as the phone started to ring again. “Damn.” His eyes snapped open again. “Maybe you’d better get it, sweetheart. And leave it off the hook. This is one ride I don’t want interrupted.”

  Reluctantly Angel climbed out of bed, swooping up her bathrobe along the way. He had seen everything there was to see. He knew she was hippy and flat chested. He knew her thighs were too plump, and her hair looked like a haystack after a windstorm, but there was no point in flaunting it.

  She reached the phone just as the dial tone came on. “Damn, damn, damn,” she swore softly, but not quite softly enough.

  Alex joined her, stark, distractingly naked. “Who was it? Crank call?”

  “Probably. Evidently there’s a nut out there who thinks it’s funny to get someone out of bed and then hang up just as they pick up the phone, and my answering machine is on the blink.”

  “Leave it off the hook.”

  “But what if it’s not a crank call? Gus might be trying to reach me on his car phone. If he’s headed down the mountains, he might go in and out of range, which would explain—”

  “Take it off the hook. Five minutes won’t matter.”

  “Why five minutes? You think that will discourage him?”

  Standing just behind her, Alex slid his arms around her and buried his face in her neck, inhaling the intoxicating scent of sex and soap and the spicy-grassy smell that he’d come to recognize as hers alone.

  “Because I need you again,” he said in a voice that was suddenly hoarse with urgency. “Because I doubt if I can last more than five minutes. Something to do with all that pressure you were talking about earlier.”

  Turning her in his arms, he lowered his face just as she lifted hers. He was hard and ready, and she groaned softly. “I’m melting from the inside out,” she whispered.

  He slid her robe from her shoulders as she reached behind her to lift the phone off the hook. “If it’s important—” She broke off with another soft groan as she felt him thrusting against her belly.

  “They’ll call back,” he finished, his hands cupping her breasts, glorying in their delicacy, their sensitivity as she peaked hard under his fingertips.

  “Put your arms around my neck, Angel.” He slid his hands down under her thighs. “Hold on tight.”

  “Like this?” She stared into his eyes as he lifted her, sliding her up his body, spreading her thighs so that they embraced his ribs. And then he lowered her slowly.

  This time it was Alex who groaned.

  Angel gasped.

  Two minutes, forty-seven seconds, not that anyone was keeping time.

  Ka-boom!

  Ten

  Sandy was waiting for Alex when he returned home. He felt rumpled. He was certain it was obvious what he’d been doing, and only hoped she was still too innocent to guess.

  “Well? Where is she?” she demanded. She had been sitting halfway down the stairs with a clear view of the front door, a stack of comic books, a chocolate milk carton and an empty cereal bowl beside her.

  “What are you talking about? And what are you doing still up? Have you done your—”

  “How could I concentrate on homework, when you go running off like that? Daddy, I worry about you! You don’t seem to realize it, but you’re at a dangerous age. My gym teacher says a lot of men go bonkers once they realize they’re getting old, and—”

  “Dammit, I am not getting old!” he roared. “And what the devil does that have to do with your homework, anyway?”

  “So where’s Angel? That’s where you went, right? To talk to her about me? Did you do sex with her? Are you two going to get married? Because if you are, and you want some privacy, I can move to Grandma’s sewing room downstairs. Nobody ever uses it anymore, and—”

  But Alex had stopped listening. He didn’t believe in spanking, although he would confess to having been tempted a time or two. A harsh word added to her own guilty conscience had usually been enough to do the trick.

  At least it had been before his child had turned into a smart-mouthed pseudoadult before his very eyes.

  He went for the glare. Thanks mostly to an accident of birth—pale hair, cool gray eyes and thick, level, near-black brows—his glare should have been enough to quell a riot.

  Only lately, the glare hadn’t worked, either.

  She smirked at him. He felt a pulse begin to pound near his temple. “What makes you think I’ve been with Angel?”

  “Because that’s why I—well, like, I mean, you were, weren’t you? I mean, it’s no big deal. Like, I know you guys talk about me, because of some of the stuff Angel said when she was here, so I thought—” A look of horror suddenly crossed her face. “Daddy! You didn’t go running off to see Carol, did you?”

  With a tired sigh, Alex rubbed the back of his neck and flopped down onto the bottom step. He didn’t want to have this conversation, but if she was determined to talk, he might as well let her get it off her chest. That was what fathers were for, right? For daughters to confide in.

  Ha!

  “I spoke to Angel. I told her you were worried about me, and she reminded me that a decent diet and a regular program of exercise—”

  “Sure, but like, what about sex?”

  “Dammit, Sandy, quit talking like that! All right, so maybe you do have a legitimate interest in my health. But my private life is none of your business, okay?”

  “Okay. But if your sex life isn’t any of my business, then mine isn’t any of yours.”

  Alex shot to his feet, so scared that, for once, he even forgot to glare. “You’re not—Sandy, tell me you’re not—no, I don’t want to hear this.” He swore softly and paced a tight circle on the faded old rug. Pausing at the foot of the stairway, he gazed up at his young daughter, wondering when the child he’d taught to swim, taught to ride, taught to say “please” when she begged him for just one more story before bedtime, had turned into a stranger.

  “Well, like, I mean, even if I had—”

  “Please don’t preface your statements with well-like-I mean,” he said automatically, and could have kicked himself.

  “Whatever.
I mean, I—I mean, even if I had, you don’t have to worry about me, Daddy, because I already know everything. I mean, my sex ed teacher is real cool. Like, she told us about all this really grotty stuff you have to do to keep from getting sick or pregnant?”

  I don’t want to hear this, God. Please let me wake up and find out it’s all a dream.

  “So, did you do it with Angel?”

  “Alexandra!”

  “Well, are you two going to get married, or what? Why didn’t you bring her home with you? It wouldn’t take her all that long to drive to work from here, and anyway, once you two are married, she’ll probably stop working. I mean, Mama did, didn’t she?”

  “Your mother never worked a day in her life.”

  “She didn’t? Well, like, whatever she did before you guys got married, she probably quit doing it once she was your wife, right?”

  Wrong. That was part of why they had broken up. Dina hadn’t allowed a small thing like a family—a husband and a daughter—to affect her preferred life-style. If Sandy hadn’t turned out to look so much like the Hightowers, he might even have wondered...

  But she had. Not that wondering would have changed the way he felt about her. He’d fallen head over heels in love with a bald-headed mite the first time she’d thrown up all over his shoulder and then stared up at him with those big, blurry blue eyes that had turned gray within weeks.

  She’d been nearly three when Dina had left them both to fly up to New York to do her Christmas shopping. The next time he’d heard from her, it had been through her lawyer.

  Sandy had been tearful for weeks afterward, but Dina had never been a hands-on parent, preferring to leave the nitty-gritty to a series of nannies and baby-sitters, and to Alex.

  Feeling as if he’d been handed a live hand grenade, he had finally come up with a story the night of her third birthday party, when she’d kept watching the door, obviously waiting for someone, and then pitched a tantrum when the party ended with no sign of her mother.

  She had cried herself sick. Alex had soothed her and bathed her and put her to bed. He had told her a tale about a beautiful mother who had gone away to become a princess, like the one in her favorite storybook, but because this princess’s kingdom was so very, very far away, there was no way she could take her baby princess with her, even though she loved her very much and would always love her.

  Yeah. Right.

  “Why don’t we both turn in, honey,” he said now. “I’m really beat. We can talk some more tomorrow if you want to.”

  “We won’t. You have to go to work tomorrow, just like you always do.”

  “And you have to go to school, but we’ll make time, sweetheart, I promise.”

  Only they didn’t talk. Just like he hadn’t talked to Angel. Things were getting out of hand. He desperately needed help, only whenever he got near the one woman who seemed to have a grasp of what the problem was all about, he lost the whole damn ball of wax!

  * * *

  He was at work when Mrs. Gilly called him the next day. Right in the middle of a high-level conference, his secretary came in and waggled two fingers, their sign that something extremely urgent had come up, requiring his personal attention.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Hightower,” she said after he turned matters over to his second in command, “It’s your housekeeper, and she sounds really upset. She says you’d better go home right now.”

  * * *

  Flowers. Someone—it could only have been Sandy—had cut out every blossom on her bedspread and arranged them in groups on the carpet in front of every piece of furniture in the room.

  “What the hell—has she lost her mind?” Alex demanded.

  “This is the way I found it,” said Mrs. Gilly. She had insisted on hobbling up the stairs again, in spite of her knees. “She got this phone call from that Moncrief boy, only when I called her to pick up, she didn’t answer, and I knew she was up here—that is, the last time I saw her she was. She came up directly after school, only then I remembered when I stepped out back to call Phil to come take his blood pressure medicine, I thought I heard the front door. I didn’t think nothing of it at the time, because you know how—well, at any rate, when I called up the stairs for her to get the phone and she didn’t answer, something didn’t quite set right, so I come up here and this is what I found. I started to call Miss Angel, but then I decided I’d better call you first. I declare, Mr. Alex, I never seen anything like it in all my born days. Do you think—?”

  He didn’t think. He couldn’t think. He was hurting, he was mad, and he was scared to death. “Why the devil would you call Angel?” he demanded.

  The old woman twisted her gnarled fingers, making him regret his harsh tone. The Gillys had been a part of the Hightower household since long before his parents had died. They were family. “I’m sorry, Louella, I didn’t mean that. I know you’re as worried as I am, but I expect she’s just playing a prank. Trying to get my attention. I promised her we’d talk, only I got tied up at the office, and...”

  She patted his hand. “A prank, that’s what it is. I only thought Miss Angel might know if something was bothering her, them being such good friends and all. A baby needs a mother, not that Miss Angel is really her—”

  “Don’t start on me, Mrs. Gilly. I don’t need another wife, and Sandy’s managed to get along all this time without a mother.”

  “Still and all, a friend, a woman she could talk to...”

  “She has you if she needs to talk to a woman.”

  “Now, you know as good as I do, Mr. Alex, that there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for that young’un, but when it comes to talking the way folks does these days, why I wouldn’t even know where to start. In my day—”

  She was right, of course. Alex had heard enough about Louella Gilly’s day to realize that there was a vast language gap, not to mention a couple of generations. He draped an arm over the old woman’s shoulder and turned her toward the stairs. “You go on down and tell Phil that everything’s under control,” he said gently. “Then brew us up a pot of tea and maybe another one of coffee, if you don’t mind.”

  As soon as the housekeeper had made her painful way down the curving stairway, he turned to the phone and quickly punched out a number.

  * * *

  “Landscaping. She’s done the beds exactly the way—” Angel walked around the arrangement of lavender, blue and yellow blotches that spread out in front of the dresser, gnawing her lower lip. She had come the moment she’d gotten the call, not bothering to change out of her coveralls and the ratty old yellow turtleneck she wore under them. Her hair was wild, as usual, and she’d forgotten the pencil she’d shoved through her topknot earlier that day.

  Thoughtfully she studied the patterns on the floor. “Of course, she didn’t have anything to use for shrubbery.”

  “What the devil are you talking about? She’s whacked up her damned bedspread! In my book, that’s the mark of a disturbed mind.”

  “Not necessarily.” Angel propped one elbow in her palm and rested her chin on the other fist. Flower beds. Sandy had tried her hand at planning flower beds using potted seedlings, Angel remembered now. She’d called Gus in to admire her efforts.

  “I’m going to call the police. I was going to call them earlier, but I thought she might have gone off to your place.”

  “Wait. Just be quiet and let me think, will you?”

  “Ah, hell, it’s my fault,” he said then, his voice rough with pain and worry. “If I hadn’t overreacted—if I hadn’t gone racing off after you last night and then—”

  “And then wasted so much time in my bed.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. But Alex, this is not your fault. Whatever you did or didn’t do, Sandy’s a smart girl. She knows better than to go chasing off in the middle of the night without telling anyone, unless there’s a very good reason.”

  “It’s three forty-seven in the afternoon.”

  “You know what I mean.
Alex, she’s just trying to tell you something, that’s all. She’ll probably call up in a little while and ask if you got the message.”

  “Message! If this is a message, it’s a sick one! You can hang around up here and look at this—this desecration—as long as you want to. I’m going after the Moncrief brat and if she’s not there, I’m going to pull a few teeth until I find out what the hell is going on!”

  She didn’t bother to argue. Sandy wouldn’t be with Arvid, because Angel knew for a fact that whatever attraction the boy had held for her had already lost its potency. Which meant that after he’d thrown his weight around, Alex would call the police, and they would say the usual things to him that policemen said when a teenage girl left home without telling anyone in broad daylight, and was missing for a few hours.

  What else could they say? She was probably at the mall shopping, or hanging out with a friend. Or simply staying out of sight to worry her father—to get across whatever point she was trying to get across.

  Although, any possible point a whacked-up bedspread could make escaped her, it surely did.

  The child was up to something...but what?

  She heard Alex’s car screech down the driveway. Thank goodness the Moncriefs lived in the neighborhood, because in his condition, he would be a definite traffic hazard. Turning her attention to Sandy’s closet, Angel tried to recall every item they had pulled out and discussed one night when they’d come up to pick out a party outfit. She went over it once, and then went over it again, trying to remember, but there was so much, it would be impossible to say if anything was missing.

  Ten minutes after he’d gone roaring off, she heard Alex come racing back. The car door slammed. The front door slammed, and then there was silence.

  Obviously things hadn’t gone too well at the Moncriefs’ place.