Alex and the Angel (Silhouette Desire)

by Dixie Browning

  Angel resumed her search for evidence. Or rather, for missing evidence. Her new earrings?

  She was probably wearing those.

  Hairbrush? Toothbrush? Makeup?

  It was right there in all the clutter on her dressing table, between a bottle of frosted pink nail polish and a stack of photos, propped up on a ratty-looking pom-pom in the school’s green and gold colors. She stared at the envelope for fully thirty seconds before she reached for it. If it’d been a snake...

  It was addressed to Daddy. It was sealed. Angel was afraid to read it, afraid not to. Feeling suddenly cold, she picked it up and started to rip it open, then changed her mind.

  By the time she found him in the study, Angel’s hands were clammy and her mind had turned over roughly a zillion possibilities, none of them good.

  A sealed note meant she probably hadn’t just gone shopping. She’d have told Mrs. Gilly if that was all she had in mind. Or left a note on the refrigerator under a magnet.

  A note addressed to Daddy, sealed in an envelope, meant she really had run off. But why on earth would she chop up a perfectly good Laura Ashley bedspread first?

  “Alex,” she said from the doorway, trying to sound calm and levelheaded, which was the very last thing she was feeling. “I found a note.”

  Sprawled in the big leather chair in his study, the telephone on the floor beside him, Alex was staring at the untouched drink in his hands, his eyes shadowed with worry. Evidently he hadn’t found her at Arvid’s house and was steeling himself to call the police.

  He looked up when she spoke, and seeing the sudden flare of hope in his eyes, Angel felt like cradling him in her arms and promising that nothing would ever hurt him again.

  But no one could promise that. Life was full of sharp edges.

  “A note?” he asked warily. “What does it say?”

  “I didn’t open it. It’s addressed to you.” She wondered if Dina had done it this way. Run off with no notice, leaving a note on her dresser.

  She handed him the envelope decorated with a childish design of flowers and unicorns, and he held it, staring down at it as if it might conceal an asp. “Open it,” she said.

  He handed it back. “Would you—?”

  She would have bled for him if she could, but she was afraid no one could spare him the pain he was feeling now. Or the even greater pain he might be feeling in a moment.

  Swallowing the thick lump in her throat, she ripped open the envelope and unfolded the single sheet of unicorn-decorated paper, scanning the few lines written in a childish hand. Then, dropping into the nearest chair, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Oh, God, that meddling little wretch!” she whispered.

  The last vestige of color instantly drained from Alex’s face. He lunged for the note. Angel wanted to tear it into small pieces, to burn it, to swallow it—anything to keep him from seeing it, but of course, he had to know.

  “‘Dear Daddy,’” he mumbled, reading aloud. “‘By the time you read this I’ll be staying with A Friend, so don’t worry about me, I’m fine. You and Angel can have some privacy to work things out. You know what I mean.’”

  “What does she mean?” Angel asked. “What do we have to work out?” And then her eyes grew round. “Alex, you didn’t tell her—”

  “That we—? Oh, hell, no! What kind of a man do you think I am?”

  “Then why did she say that about privacy? Why does she think we need privacy? And what do we have to work out? And why was she so sure you’d know what she meant? Do you?”

  Alex felt his face begin to burn in spite of the cold sweat that covered his body. “Yes, well...but what I can’t figure out is why she thought she had to chop up a perfectly good bedspread.”

  “To get your attention, maybe? With a mule, it takes a two-by-four, but with fathers...”

  Mrs. Gilly brought in a tray with coffee things and one of Flora’s dry, grainy cakes, sliced and arranged on a Wedgwood plate. Alex nodded to Angel, and she poured from the heavy silver pot, remembering the only time she had served Alex coffee at her house. Actually, he had served himself, directly from the coffee maker.

  Alex told Mrs. Gilly about the note, and the woman promptly burst into tears and rushed out to tell her husband, who had just broached a new bottle of Thunderbird to help him cope with the emergency.

  “What did you find at the Moncriefs'?”

  “Arvid has strep throat.”

  “He what?”

  “He called to warn her. I don’t even want to know why.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  He nodded. “So? What did they say?”

  His smile held nothing of amusement. “Just what you thought they’d say. Check with her friends, wait at least twenty-four hours, chances are we’ll hear from her before then.”

  Angel reached for the note and read it again, aware of his steady regard. After several endless minutes had ticked past, she decided that action—any action at all—was better than simply waiting. Especially when they didn’t know what they were waiting for.

  At least, Alex might, but she certainly didn’t. All she knew—and actually, it was only a suspicion—was that it had something to do with her. “So, shall we start calling around to her friends?”

  It was as if he had to pull himself back from some distant place. He hadn’t touched his coffee. Neither of them had touched Flora’s awful cake. The woman could ruin cake from a mix.

  “Do you know if she had an address book?” Angel persisted.

  “No—yes. That is, did you look in her desk drawer?”

  She hadn’t. She’d checked the closet and then the dresser, and once she’d found the note, she’d rushed downstairs. “I’ll go check now.”

  Angel found the address book and they went through it systematically, saying the same lines each time, trying to sound as if they weren’t half out of their minds. “May I please speak to Sandy Hightower? Oh, she’s not there? I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood her. She said she was going over to study with a friend, and I thought—yes—no—thanks, sorry for bothering you.”

  Alex made the first half-dozen calls. Angel took over when she noticed the way his hands were shaking. “She’s all right, Alex. She’s with a friend, even if we don’t know yet which one.”

  “Yeah,” he growled. “How many friends does she have like that Moncrief creep? Once I get her back home, she’s grounded for the next ten years. That’s a promise.”

  Inside the house, time crept past, measured by the slow ticking of the mantel clock. Outside, the sun had set, the sky had clouded over and a slow, steady rain had begun to fall.

  Mrs. Gilly, looking as if she’d aged ten years in the past few hours, opened the study door and informed them that Flora had left a casserole before she’d gone home.

  The clock, an ornate affair with silver griffins mounted on each side, wheezed and bonged out the hour. It was late. They had called everyone they could think of and were no closer to the truth than ever. Alex had wanted to get in the car and drive, on the grounds that doing anything was better than doing nothing.

  Angel reasoned him out of it. He looked sick. He needed to eat, but Angel knew he wouldn’t be able to force down a bite. He needed sleep, but she had an idea neither of them would be getting much sleep for the foreseeable future. He was used to being in charge—used to calling the shots, and now, suddenly, he had come up against something he couldn’t control, and it was killing him.

  “Why?” he exclaimed suddenly. Socking a fist into his palm, he repeated, “Why? Could you just tell me why she thought things were so bad here she had to run away? I told her we’d talk, dammit!”

  “And did you?”

  He looked as if he were about to cry, and her heart went out to him. But then, her heart had gone out to him so long ago, she figured they were joint owners by now. Not that he knew that. Not that it made any difference. “Alex, do you want me to stay?”

  He glanced up, staring at her almost as if he didn
’t recognize her. That hurt. That hurt almost more than Sandy’s being missing. “Yeah, sure—that is, stay if you want to. You know where everything is.”

  Thank you for your hospitality, she said silently, bitterly. And for the temporary use of your body. And for the brief illusion that you might even love me a little bit.

  No one slept. Well—perhaps Mrs. Gilly, and surely Mr. Gilly, who had dealt with the emergency in his usual manner, but Alex didn’t even come upstairs to bed. Angel would have heard him. She lay awake in the bed she had used before, staring up at the ceiling, trying to focus on a niggling scrap of memory that kept eluding her. The more she tried to concentrate, the more it shifted out of reach. She’d had a floater in her right eye once, and every time she’d tried to focus on it, it had moved away, just far enough to be distracting—never far enough to be ignored.

  The flower beds. She’d been doing the MacDermot job when Sandy had come out to help her that day. Sandy and the boys had hung around the office, drinking Cokes while she was platting it out, and then Sandy had asked if she could try to lay out a flower bed, and she and the boys had gone outside, and later on, Gus had joined them and the boys had gone off to unload the last of the fruit trees, and she’d heard Gus and Sandy laughing outside, and—

  Oh, blast, why couldn’t she think?

  Possibly because the night before, she’d been lying in her own bed, in her own bedroom, with the one man who had fueled her fantasies for as long as she’d been old enough to know what a fantasy was.

  At least a fantasy that didn’t involve leprechauns or chocolate or pirate treasure.

  The eastern sky was just beginning to gray when she slipped out of bed and tiptoed downstairs to the study.

  Alex had fallen asleep in his chair. He looked like hell. The bottle of Chivas was still nearly full, and there was an untouched glass on the desk.

  “Oh, my sweet baby,” Angel murmured. Kurt was supposed to be the responsible one of the old trio—High, Wyde and Handsome. Alex, Gus, and the beautiful, overly serious, overly responsible Kurt.

  But Kurt wasn’t the only one. Angel had always sensed in Alex a strength of character, a sense of responsibility that had made him seem older than his age, even when he was raising hell after a game, showing off for the cheerleaders, dousing the coach with Gatorade—or drinking too much beer and singing dirty ditties in the back of Kurt’s old pickup.

  “Wake up, Alex,” she whispered, touching him gently on the shoulder. “You’re going to get a crick in your neck.”

  “Oh, um...”

  Suddenly, his eyes blinked open and he stared up at her hopefully. “Did she call? Have you heard anything yet?”

  “Not yet, but I didn’t expect her to call in the middle of the night. We’ll hear something in the morning. Come to bed now, Alex. When she calls—” When, please God—not if. “You’ll need to be fresh and ready to go get her, wherever she is.”

  “Can’t sleep. Need another drink.”

  He hadn’t had more than a few sips, so far as she could tell. “Then finish this one and come upstairs to bed. I’ll set the alarm for seven, and you can shower and have breakfast and be ready when we hear.”

  Angel had an idea where the child was. She intended to call as soon as Alex was asleep again, and if she was right, she was going to kill the pair of them.

  But she could kill them later. Right now, Alex needed her.

  Eleven

  While a pale, lemony dawn struggled through the dismal rain, they stared at each other. Angel had hoped to catch a few minutes’ sleep and prayed Alex could do the same. They would need it for what lay ahead.

  But when she led him upstairs and left him outside his door, he called after her, “Don’t go. Please. I doubt if either one of us can sleep. Maybe if we talk, we can think of something we’ve missed.”

  They had already talked until there was nothing else to say, but Angel could no more have denied him than she could have walked to the moon. “Let me borrow something of Sandy’s to change into, then.” She’d worn her underwear to bed the first time, and then pulled on her clothes before she’d gone downstairs to find him.

  Like the rest of the house, his room was elegant but gloomy, with paneled walls and faded Oriental rugs and too much heavy mahogany furniture that looked as if it had been handed down through generations of Hightowers. Dark green chintz draperies were half-closed when she tiptoed through the door, and she opened them to let in the dreary gray light. Was there a law that said the homes of the landed gentry had to resemble mausoleums?

  Her own house was an ugly white bungalow built in the forties, rented since then by countless tenants, and currently furnished in late Yard Sale and early Sears Roebuck. But at least it was cheerful.

  However, Alex’s house was not her problem. Normally at this time of morning, she’d have been sleepwalking through the motions of showering, making breakfast and getting ready to start the day. Instead, a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old girl had deliberately disappeared and now the whole world had tilted on its axis.

  Alex was already in bed, shoulders bare, arms crossed under his head. There was something wickedly sensuous about armpits, she thought irrelevantly, with those dark thickets of incredibly soft hair.

  Down, girl. This is no time for hanky-panky!

  As he continued to watch her, his silvery eyes now pewter dark, she was suddenly overcome by a feeling of unexpected shyness.

  She was going to sleep with him again. Or at least, lie with him, which might or might not be a euphemism for something more.

  Under the circumstances, she ought to be ashamed of herself for the salacious thoughts that were rapidly filling up her head, never mind her body. Alex’s daughter had run away from home. He had come to her for help, and all she could think of was crawling into that monstrous ancestral bed and making mad, passionate love to his body until neither one of them could think of anything else.

  She was a terrible person.

  Schooling her voice to hide her own gnawing concern, she said, “Alex, Sandy’s all right. I feel it in my bones. She has a lot more sense than you give her credit for, and besides, she told you she was with a friend.”

  She hesitated beside the dark green leather covered chair, a match for the one in his study, then braced herself to climb into bed with him as if it were no big deal. The sheets were cool and silky. His body was a furnace. Angel lay stiffly on her back, crossed her arms over her chest and tried not to look self-conscious.

  “I know, I know. It’s not as if she’d disappeared off the face of the earth without leaving a trace. She obviously left under her own power, but God, Angel, she’s just a baby! There are dangers out there she can’t even begin to understand!”

  They both fell quiet then as imagination overtook common sense. Alex swore. Angel vowed silently that the minute she got her hands on Miss Alexandra Hightower, she was going to give that child a no-holds barred lecture about responsibility and taking care not to hurt the people who loved her.

  Alex swore again. When he reached out to her, Angel could no more have resisted him than steel could resist a magnet. Physically they fit together like hand and glove. Emotionally, she’d always known it, even when every shred of intellect she possessed said otherwise.

  She patted his shoulder and murmured incoherent words of comfort. He stroked her back through a layer of soft cotton knit and echoed her soothing sounds. Angel wasn’t sure just who was comforting whom, but she did know that his jaw had that same granitelike look she had seen only once before, when his father had been killed by a drunk driver after a Duke-State game.

  “She’s got to be all right,” he growled. “I want to tear down the whole damned world stick by stick until I find her, only I don’t know where to start!”

  She could sense the rage and the hurt inside him. He was a warrior without a battle, a knight without a dragon to slay.

  “I just wish to God she’d chosen some other way to make her point,” he muttered.

 
“Mmm. I was going to ask you about that,” Angel said in an effort to distract him. “Do you happen to know what she meant when she said—that is, in her note she mentioned—”

  “Us? You and me?” The timbre of his voice, deepened and roughened by stress, rumbled along her spine, setting off all sorts of interesting harmonics in odd parts of her body.

  Oh, for pity’s sake, here she was all hot and bothered at a time when the last thing on any man’s mind would be sex! Think about work, Angeline. Think compost, think mulch, think—think anything but what you’re thinking!

  Trying her darnedest to sound brisk and businesslike, she said, “In her note, she mentioned giving us some privacy to work things out. She said you’d know what she meant. Do you?”

  While she waited for his reply, her toes curled nervously against his shin. The hair on his legs was surprisingly dark. All his body hair was dark. For a man who was always the epitome of understated elegance in his tweeds, his dark gray pinstripes and even his well-bred casuals, he was shockingly sexy in nothing at all. A fact which, at a time like this, she should be shot for even noticing.

  “She knows I went to see you tonight—last night. Whenever the hell it was.”

  Angel knew precisely to the minute when it was. It was burned on her soul indelibly.

  “When I got home, she asked me if—”

  “If?” she prompted when he fell silent.

  “Nothing,” he said, but she had a feeling it was a lot more than merely nothing. She was beginning to suspect it might have more than a little to do with Sandy’s running away.

  “I thought she liked me,” she whispered. Her eyes burned, a result, she told herself, of too little sleep. Alex’s arms tightened around her, making her acutely aware of the fact that the only thing between them was a bit of cotton knit in the form of an oversize Wolfpack T-shirt and whatever he wore to sleep in. Which evidently wasn’t pajamas, and might not even be briefs. She hadn’t dared allow her hands to stray anywhere near the equator.

  And she wasn’t crying, honestly she wasn’t, because Angel never cried, only she must have made some sound because Alex leaned away and stared down at the top of her head, then shoved his fist gently under her chin, lifting her face. “Angel? What is it? Is it something I said?”