The Soulmate

by Carly Bishop

  She went along for the hell of it, wisecracking to pretend she had a choice. “Wouldn’t that more properly be the province of Guardian Angels?”

  Kiel’s lips curved. “Usually.” His smile made her skin prickle. “The truth is, Robyn Delaney, your Guardian threw up his hands in despair.”

  She blinked. “I hope you’re kidding.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You’re saying there are such things as Guardian Angels?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. She knew he was looking again at her black eye and swollen cheek where the mugger had backhanded her. “Yours gave you up for a hopeless cause. He didn’t know what to do for you anymore.”

  For an intelligent woman, she had made some fairly reckless decisions. She knew that. Her fingers went to her cheek. It didn’t hurt at all, or feel the slightest bit swollen to her fingers. She snatched up a compact from her tapestry bag of makeup and flipped it open. Her black eye was completely clear, and her cheek unbruised.

  “Oh, my God.” Her hands began to shake. She snapped the compact closed and let it fall into her lap. Her hand waved aimlessly in the direction of her cheek. “Did you do this? Fix this?”

  “Not exactly. I made your own healing go a little… faster, is all.”

  She took a deep breath and blew it out. She could no longer cling to the notion that this was all a dream. Kiel didn’t seem to fit the manic mold, which might have explained his delusions of being an Avenging Angel.

  She had a preoccupation with reasons, a passion to know why people behaved as they did, what drove them, a need to understand how things happened. Right now she couldn’t explain anything, not her clothing, not her cheek being healed, not this place.

  Or even why she had allowed Kiel to entice her back from the promising brink of the Hereafter where she could have had Keller back again. Why had she been so willing to see something of Keller in this stranger? Queen of the Lonely Hearts, Robyn Delaney Trueblood….

  If her eyes weren’t deceiving her and she hadn’t gone over the edge, then what he claimed must somehow be true. She needed answers.

  She needed them now. “Where are we?”

  He paused in his whittling and looked around the cabin. “This place doesn’t really exist.”

  “Humor me. If it did exist, where would it be?”

  “A ways from your car, tucked away in a remote valley beyond Aspen.”

  Then, Robyn thought, she was still within striking distance of Spyder Nielsen’s place. “And you just materialized out of thin air? On—“

  “You were half frozen to death.”

  “A golden stallion?” She rolled her eyes. “Please.”

  He tilted his head. A smile played at his lips. “Not your fantasy, huh?” He looked at her from beneath his brows, daring her, somehow, to deny it.

  Her cheeks flamed. It was her fantasy, one of them, to be swept away like a movie heroine on a galloping steed in the arms of a strong and silent sort. Keller would have known that, but Kiel had no business messing with her fantasies. She couldn’t seem to break off eye contact with him. “I don’t do…” She swallowed. His fingers caressed the piece of ivory. Heat flared at her throat. “I don’t have…fantasies. I’m all grown up now.”

  “Do you believe only children have fantasies?”

  “No.” She opened her compact again to make sure of what she already knew. She lowered the mirror. “But if I wanted to fantasize myself an Avenging Angel, I would have chosen the angel that Keller became.”

  His jaw tightened, and his hand closed in a fist around his whittling. She hadn’t meant to insult him, but she had definitely struck a nerve. An angel with an ego.

  Great.

  “Look,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you—or suggest you’re not a perfectly wonderful Avenging Angel…” She jumped up in frustration. “Good Lord, what am I saying?” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I need some coffee. I need out of here.”

  She clumped in her winter hiking boots across the wooden floor to a kitchen nook, refusing to question the fact that there even was coffee—and on an earthenware dish, a slice of a raspberry crumb cake she would cheerfully die for.

  She snatched up a sleek gray percolator from the gas burner of a gourmet iron cookstove crafted to resemble a century-old antique. She poured herself a mugful, then took a bite of crumb cake, which was real, and a sip of percolated coffee, which was black and strong and brimming with caffeine, the way she’d been drinking it since Keller died. She had to remind herself that this place supposedly did not exist.

  The refrigerator was shiny and black and ultramodern, the sink a dove-gray ceramic, the countertop beveled marble. She opened the blinds over the square oak table, which was set against the wall beneath a picture window.

  Snow had drifted high, covering the ground and the branches of blue spruce and spindly lodgepole pines. She saw no road or any access to the cabin, but maybe the snow concealed a trail.

  She wrapped her fingers around the steaming mug. She would bet if she stuck her nose out the door, the snowflakes would light on her face and melt like the real thing, too.

  Why didn’t she feel real fear, trapped God-only-knew where with a man who claimed to be one of His angels? Because it’s true?

  He still sat on the hearth, whittling, watching her. She leaned against the marble counter, polished off the piece of crumb cake and resorted to her questioning technique to anchor herself again.

  “Why this place, Kiel?”

  Putting aside the ivory and pocketknife, he got up and came over to pour himself a mug of coffee. He stood near her, taller by inches, solidly masculine and warm. He leaned against the counter opposite her and crossed one bare foot over the other. Her pleasure in his proximity alarmed her.

  “You might have died, Robyn. You were dangerously close. I had to do something, and this—” he gestured around the cabin “—was one of my options.”

  “What does that mean? That, being an angel, you could have blinked me home if you wanted to?”

  He gave a half smile. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Or back into my car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or to a hospital?”

  His eyes darkened. “Haven’t you spent more than your share of time in hospitals, Robyn?”

  “Yes, but—” She broke off, swamped by the memory of his sensual ministrations, of his lips tracing her surgical scars, his touch making her feel things again. Desire. Hope.

  She stared at Kiel, desperate to make the sensual memories stop unfurling. “Making love to me…was that one of your options, too?”

  “Not—“

  “Is that what Avenging Angels do?” she demanded. “Rescue damsels in distress to bed them?”

  He never flinched. “Not exactly.”

  “Then what, exactly?”

  “We right wrongs, Robyn. We fight injustice, we do what must be done to defeat tyranny—“

  “Then I can think of half a dozen hot spots on earth where you’re desperately needed.” She glared at him. “This isn’t one of them.”

  “Every injustice demands an answer, Robyn, whether that answer is ever obvious in the span of one human life or not. There is always justice, finally.”

  “Well, thank you very much, but I’m perfectly capable of fighting my own battles.”

  “Keller was, too, Robyn, but he’s dead.” He reached out to her and cupped her cheek as if he understood completely her fear of a man who knew more than he should. “Robyn, you can trust me. I know what I know because I am an angel. You suspect now that your husband was murdered, and you were on your way to Spyder Nielsen’s house when you skidded off the road.”

  She straightened and turned away to rinse her mug in the sink. “If you can do all this, why didn’t you intercept me before I got that far?”

  He shook his beautiful, fiery golden head. “The point of avenging isn’t to interfere with your free will, Robyn. You’re human. You get to make your own c
hoices. Your Guardian Angel created that traffic jam back in Denver, but the best he could hope was that while you waited it out, you would have time to reconsider your plan.”

  Her chin went up…again. “I still intend to confront those two. All I’ve lost is a little time.” She wasn’t backing down on that. “Do you know if Trudi Candelaria and Stuart Willetts conspired to murder my husband?”

  “No.” Kiel’s golden brows pulled together. “I know how Keller died. I know the case against Candelaria ended in a mistrial because of Keller’s death—and I know the reasoning that has made you suspect Candelaria and Willetts.” He drained the coffee from his mug and set it in the sink beside Robyn’s mug, then turned to look into her eyes. “What I don’t know is what you hope to gain by confronting them.”

  She couldn’t break off her eye contact with him. “I want to see their faces, Kiel. I want to suggest that they had to get rid of Keller before he sent Trudi to prison for life, and I want to see their faces when I do.”

  “Do you think they’ll admit—“

  “No. Of course I don’t think they’ll confess on the spot. Of course not! But if I go there and upset their plush little applecart, they’ll react, and then I’ll know what I’m dealing with.” She took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her breasts. “Anyway, I thought you said you had come to prevent my death.”

  He nodded. “In part.”

  “You’ve done that.” She had to move away, out of the aura that seemed to surround Kiel. She scooted past him and kept going. “I guess I should thank you,” she said over her shoulder, “but—“

  “Robyn, you’re still in danger.”

  “Of what? I promise not to defy any more muggers.”

  His eyes fixed her. “Of you know what, Robyn,” he said. “Suppose everything you believe may have happened, did happen. Suppose Willetts and Candelaria conspired to murder Keller. You have a dangerous reputation, you know. People tend to believe what an author of your caliber says. So if they killed Keller, and you tell them you’re onto them, what’s to stop them from killing again? They’ll have to in order to keep you quiet.”

  Discounting the threat of being killed herself, she jerked the covers up on the feather bed, then tossed her belongings haphazardly into her suitcase.

  The only thing she had ever willingly kept organized was her writing notes. Keller would have shot her a “fix that or die” look over the rumpled bedclothes, then she would have dared him to make her, and then they’d have made a worse mess of the covers than when she started. But Keller wasn’t here anymore to make her do anything—or fall into bed as a consequence—and that was the point, wasn’t it?

  “I’m not going to let that stop me from exposing them,” she announced, zipping shut her soft-cover tapestry suitcase. “Or let you stop me, either.”

  “Think again, Robyn.” He straightened. The look he gave her from clear across the cabin said the threat of being murdered herself ought to be enough to give her pause. That after so many foolish decisions, she should reconsider her actions. And most clearly, that he was in charge of her.

  She threw on a coat that wasn’t hers and hauled the strap of her suitcase to her shoulder. “I’m out of here.”

  “In a while,” he agreed.

  “No, not in a while.” She gathered her hair off her shoulder and adjusted the suitcase strap. “Now. There are things I have to do.”

  “Name it,” he offered, “and I’ll help you. But you’re not going alone.”

  “You can’t stop me, Kiel,” she responded in the same even tone.

  “I can, Robyn.”

  For a moment she believed he could stop her. And for another moment, however unforgivably disloyal it was to Keller, she didn’t want to leave Kiel, or leave behind the feelings he had brought to life again in her. She didn’t need to feel things anymore. It just made her life too complicated.

  She shrugged. “Give it your best shot. Oh, and thanks for the rescue,” she called out as she tugged at the door. The door swung open, but as she began to step out into drifts piled hip-high and the gently falling snow, she encountered a soft wall of nothingness.

  Confused, and a tiny bit frightened, she tried again with the same result.

  “Robyn—“

  “No!” She glanced back over her shoulder at Kiel, clenched her teeth and threw herself against a force she couldn’t see or feel or penetrate. She hadn’t stubbed her toe, or banged her nose into anything, hadn’t injured herself in any way, but she could not move into the outdoors.

  She stood there a moment, snow falling inches from her face, drew a deep breath and let the shoulder strap fall. Her suitcase landed with a thud.

  She felt caged. Worse than caged. Cold dread filled her, like the panic that seized her when she was inadvertently caught somewhere dark. This couldn’t be happening. These feelings, this cold-sweat sensation, in the bright light of day…

  Her throat shut down. She raised her fists and battered the solid, invisible barrier, which didn’t even hurt her flailing hands, but it was useless. She lowered her clenched fists to her sides. Her shoulders drooped. She turned slowly around. Kiel stood watching her, his expression hard.

  “You said I could trust you,” she accused.

  “Amend that,” he said, his tone leaving her in no doubt that she was going nowhere except by his leave. “You have to trust me.”

  “How can I?” She slung her arm out behind her. Her hand neither hit nor bounced off anything, it only…stopped. “What happened to my free will, Kiel? What is this?”

  He had no trouble meeting her eyes. No twinge of guilt or remorse for boxing her in. “It’s only a force field, Robyn.”

  “Only a force field,” she repeated inanely. She pushed her hair away from her face and back over her shoulder. “A force field. That explains it.”

  He frowned. “It doesn’t explain anything, Robyn. It just is.”

  “I’m a prisoner here, isn’t that right? In a cage crafted specially for me?” A cage. The irony was so thick it made a bubble of laughter rise in her throat.

  A cage. As if her terror of the darkness wasn’t enough, now she was caged. The perfect cosmic, metaphysical, New Age, create-your-own-reality mind-rot metaphor for the state her heart was in.

  Imprisoned.

  Locked up.

  Well and truly sealed away, because her heart belonged to Keller Trueblood and he had departed life with the key. And Robyn Delaney’s only excuse for taking the tumble into a feather bed with a perfect stranger was that she saw Keller in Kiel… where Keller couldn’t be.

  She stared at him. “Keller…Kiel, Keller, Kiel. How incredibly insensitive!” she jibed, on a roll now. His eyes seemed to fill with anguish. His chin strained. His hand clenched. “Wouldn’t you think heaven could send me back Keller to be my angel?” she demanded. “Or at least someone whose name wasn’t…But then maybe you’re…“

  Her tirade faded to nothing. Maybe heaven had sent her Keller. Maybe this man was the angel Keller had become.

  And maybe she had just taken that final descent into undisputed madness.

  Chapter Four

  She backed up until her shoulder blades and back and bottom and thighs came up tight against the proof of her gilded cage and began to laugh. Her knees bent and her backside slid down the smooth, solid, invisible barrier until her fanny hit the floor. Her laughter was tinged with hysteria. Tears brightened her eyes.

  He went to her then. He couldn’t stand it any longer. In her tears he had all the proof he would ever need. His soul was the soul of Keller Trueblood, but he could never reveal the truth of her suspicions. Not without causing her a deeper despair than he was causing her now.

  But he could ease her mind and mute the logic of her heart. He could distract her for the time it took to resolve the injustice of Keller’s death. Maybe when his death was avenged, her heart would be at peace in her earthly life.

  “Robyn.” He reached down and took her hands. He used the physical con
tact to help ease her confusion. She allowed him to draw her to her feet. Her eyes were luminous, wide, frightened. He cupped her face and thumbed away her tears.

  His cuff button tangled with her beautiful, shiny black hair and got caught. He felt suddenly trapped by her feminine and human nature, ambushed by desire no angel should ever feel. His body reacted swiftly, tightening violently.

  At some higher level of awareness he recognized that his cuff button being caught was a warning, a cosmic clue, an alarm signaling the grim repercussions of tangling in this way with a human woman.

  But he could not take the simplest recourse. He couldn’t even manage that first step away from her.

  Her eyes focused on his lips. He heard her swallow, saw her catch her lower lip between her teeth. Her breath, warm and coffee-scented, stirred the hairs at his throat. The exquisite tension flickering between them flared.

  Her tongue dampened her parted lips. His gaze fixed on their glistening. She tilted her head up. He tilted his down. His need to kiss her was unlike anything Kiel had ever experienced…a tugging at senses and emotions he couldn’t remember. An echo of familiarity only Keller’s memory could have supplied.

  Last night he had made love to her. Served her physical longing. Filled her emotional abyss to bring her back from the brink of death.

  A groan escaped his throat.

  This was not lust, for his soul and hers were mated into eternity. But he had not experienced for himself this yearning, this sweet anticipation pitched against the bitter insight that it would be better for her if they never so much as kissed again.

  The regret nearly crippled his judgment.

  He freed the button of his shirt cuff from her hair and drew back, planting in her mind the notion that it was she who chose to end the possibility of that kiss.

  She swallowed and straightened. Disappointment sparked in her heart, then guilt. A year had passed. She missed Keller so much, craved his touch and his warmth and his love so badly, that she had tumbled to a total stranger and pretended it was Keller.