Angel Mine

by Sherryl Woods

  “How about one more scoop of vanilla, Sissy? These other people don’t know what they’re missing.”

  She glanced nervously at Heather. “Is it okay?”

  “Absolutely,” Heather told her, well aware that the girl was asking about more than ice cream.

  A half smile flitted briefly across Sissy’s face. “Okay,” she said to Todd as she slipped from her chair. “I’ll get it.”

  “I’ll help,” her brother said, scrambling after her.

  “Me, too,” Angel chimed in, dumping her own dripping cone onto the table.

  Todd gave Sissy the money, then watched with concern as the three children darted over to the counter. Then his gaze returned to Heather. “I wasn’t thinking,” he apologized.

  “I know. Neither was I. Obviously she picked up on the tension. I think Will did, too.”

  “Every time I think about what those kids endured, it makes me furious. That father of theirs deserved to die, but Barbara Sue didn’t, and Sissy and Will surely didn’t deserve to lose both parents.”

  “At least they have Henrietta,” Heather said.

  “Yeah, thank God for that. The woman’s as rock-solid as they come.”

  “I wonder how she and the judge are getting along,” Heather said.

  “Probably well enough, assuming she let him in the door.”

  “Shall we go over there now or give them some more time?”

  “Worried about your scheming?” Todd asked. “Are you afraid Henrietta might have scratched his eyes out?”

  “No, I’m concerned about their privacy,” she replied. “I vote for a stop in the park. Let the kids run off some of this energy before we take Sissy and Will home. You can help push them on the swings.”

  In the end, though, the kids didn’t want to swing. They played some game of their own invention that required a lot of screaming and giggling. Heather sat on a swing, instead, idly pushing herself back and forth until she felt Todd come up behind her and put his hands on her waist. That simple touch sent a shiver through her.

  “How high do you want to go?” he asked quietly.

  Suddenly she was taken back to another night, when he’d asked the same question, though under very different circumstances. His clever fingers had been at play on the most sensitive parts of her body. It had been like standing on the edge of a cliff, wild with anticipation, a little desperate.

  She answered him now, as she had then. “I want to touch the stars.”

  Then she felt the briefest brush of his lips against her neck, before he sent her soaring.

  11

  “Is it true you used to be an actress?” Sissy asked Heather as they sat on a park bench some minutes later savoring the pleasant evening temperature and the star-filled sky before going to Henrietta’s. Judging from the girl’s awestruck expression and hesitant tone, it was a question she’d been waiting days to work up the courage to ask, Todd concluded, drawing in a deep breath of the sweet air as he awaited Heather’s reply.

  Though it was nearly mid-June, it felt as if spring had just arrived in Whispering Wind. Todd tried to recall the last time he’d spent a relaxing evening outdoors like this in New York. He couldn’t. Most nights he was either working late or dining out or simply too frazzled at the end of a long day.

  “I’m still an actress,” Heather said, obviously unwilling to suggest that she’d given up on the profession even temporarily.

  Sissy looked confused. “But you’re working at Henrietta’s.”

  “That’s just for the time being,” Heather said. “I’ll go back to New York one of these days, as soon as I take care of some business I have here.”

  Todd didn’t like the way his stomach plummeted when she said the words. Maybe it was just because of that kiss days ago and that fleeting moment earlier when they’d reconnected in a way that had nothing to do with Angel and everything to do with the way things had once been between them—carefree and practically crackling with sparks. He knew she’d felt it, too. The awareness had been in her eyes when she’d stepped off the swing and turned to face him. Fire and passion had burned in her gaze, just as they must have in his.

  “You’re not going to stay in Whispering Wind?” Sissy asked accusingly, as if Heather was betraying her.

  “Not forever, no. I have to go back to New York.”

  “Why?” Sissy demanded, her eyes suddenly bright with unshed tears.

  There was no mistaking the attachment she had formed to Heather in a few short weeks. To a girl like Sissy, Heather must seem like some sort of exotic creature, just the way she had once seemed to him.

  “Why do you have to go?” she asked in a voice that wobbled precariously.

  “Because the acting jobs are in New York.”

  Apparently she, too, was aware of Sissy’s distress, because she tried to distract her by announcing that Todd was an actor, too. For now, the ploy worked. Sissy’s gaze widened with such astonishment it would have been insulting if Todd hadn’t long since stopped thinking of himself as an actor.

  “You are?” Sissy asked. “Like, a real one?”

  “I was,” he corrected her. “A long time ago.”

  “Not that long ago,” Heather countered with a pointed glance, then confided, “He was good, too. Really good.”

  “Did you sing?” Sissy wanted to know, clearly fascinated. “Were you ever in one of those big Broadway musicals, like Lion King or something?”

  “Just one musical, but it wasn’t a big hit.”

  “Did you dance, too?”

  “Not very well,” he said ruefully. “I’ve got two left feet.”

  The comment snagged Will’s attention. He stared solemnly at Todd’s feet in the Italian loafers he favored over the local preference for cowboy boots. “It don’t look like two left feet to me,” the boy declared, looking puzzled. He stuck out his own feet, then gazed back and forth between his feet and Todd’s. “Yours look just like mine, ’cept bigger.”

  Todd laughed and scooped him up. “It’s an expression, slugger. It just means I wasn’t a very good dancer.”

  “Show me,” Sissy pleaded. “Do something you did in a play.”

  “I don’t think so,” Todd said.

  “Oh, come on,” Heather said, not helping him out at all. She was obviously enjoying this forced trek down memory lane. Or maybe she was just taking satisfaction in provoking him. “You used to thrive on performing before a live audience. It gave you the same adrenaline rush it gives me.”

  “But not in the middle of a park,” he protested.

  “Must not be able to remember his lines,” Heather confided to Sissy in a stage whisper.

  “You are not going to make me do this,” he told her.

  Angel chose that moment to give him a sleepy smile. “Please,” she said. “Wanna hear.”

  Todd wanted to resist her, not just this second, but in general, but she was sneaking past his defenses. Between her and Heather, it was becoming clear that he needed to maintain a much tighter rein on his emotions. How was he supposed to protect them if he didn’t?

  “One song,” Sissy pleaded.

  His gaze met Heather’s. “Only if you’ll sing with me.”

  They had met when they both had second leads in one memorable show during its pre-Broadway engagement in Boston. They had done a duet in the second act, but it had been cut before the show reached Broadway. Todd heard it was because the leading actor had protested, through his agent, that the two of them were stealing the show. The producers had caved in, because they needed the star to keep the show’s financial backers on board.

  The musical had ultimately flopped, ironically because it lacked a real showstopper in the second act, according to one well-respected critic. It had hardly mattered to the two of them, because by then, just like their characters, they had fallen in love. No doubt that was what had made their performances so compelling, why audiences had loved them.

  Though Sissy and Angel sat between them, Todd reached across th
e back of the bench to rest his hand on Heather’s shoulder. Caught up in a sudden wave of nostalgia, he locked his gaze on hers and held it as he hummed the opening notes of the song. She regarded him with surprise.

  “Okay, whatever,” she finally relented, then launched into the opening bar of the love song.

  He’d always thought she had a sweet, if not powerful, voice, and it rang out in the night air. His lower tones blended with hers, teasing and taunting as the once-familiar words came back to him. In a gesture that had once come naturally, he stroked her cheek in a tender caress, then withdrew because it made him want more. Too much more.

  When the final notes drifted away, he felt a sense of loss he couldn’t explain. Was it the character’s loss of a lover? Or the ending of a dream he had once shared with this woman? Was it because Heather had changed in ways he hadn’t wanted to see? She was more responsible now, devoted to her daughter, the kind of woman he’d always thought he’d end up with, but with flashes of the impetuous, daredevil woman he’d loved.

  He had no idea and there was no time to think about it, because Sissy, Will and Angel were applauding and laughing, keeping him very much in the present.

  “Shouldn’t you kiss her now?” Sissy asked hopefully. “I’ll bet there was a kiss when you did it in the play.”

  There had been, but there was no way in hell Todd was going to willingly walk down that particular path again tonight. Too much nostalgia was a dangerous game.

  “There was,” Heather said with a teasing, dare-you glint in her eyes.

  “Do it,” Sissy begged, echoed by Will and Angel.

  Todd was torn between his own suddenly rampaging hormones and reason. He told himself he could have ignored the challenge in Heather’s eyes, listened instead to his head, but Sissy so obviously craved a happy ending he had no choice but to do as she asked.

  It wasn’t as if it could turn wildly passionate the way their earlier kisses had. The kids were right here, snuggled between them. It would be no more than a peck to satisfy a girl’s yearning for evidence that sweet romance did exist, contrary to all the violence and heartache she had witnessed in her young life.

  Todd leaned forward, brushed his lips across Heather’s and retreated.

  “Oh, yuck,” Will declared, even though he’d been one of those clamoring for just such a kiss.

  “You are such a boy,” Sissy countered, as if that were the worst insult she could think of. “It was beautiful.”

  Safe was the word Todd would have used to describe it. He gathered from the amusement lurking in Heather’s eyes that she thought the same thing.

  “Okay, show’s over,” she declared, letting him off the hook, anyway. “Let’s get everybody home and in bed.”

  Todd suddenly experienced a flash of inexplicable longing so intense it rocked him. Surely he didn’t want to have more nights like this, nights reminiscent of his own childhood before his world had turned upside down, nights when he and his parents had been close and the air had rung with shared laughter.

  Despite the mental denial, his mind experimented with the vision. He imagined going home with Heather, taking Angel and the other children they would have up to their beds and tucking them in. It was so real he could almost feel their arms around his neck, their sticky kisses on his cheek.

  Then he crashed into reality. It wasn’t going to happen. Not ever. If he had to remind himself of the risks a thousand times a day, he would. If he didn’t, his father certainly would on one of those rare occasions when Todd spoke to him. Accepting that, he forced the tempting images from his head, picked Will up and started toward Henrietta’s, not even waiting for Heather, Sissy and Angel to catch up.

  He’d gone a whole block before he finally slowed to wait for them. He glanced at Heather, saw the questions in her eyes, but ignored them with the mental excuse that they could hardly discuss his thoughts with Sissy, at least, listening avidly to every word.

  Something told him, though, that Heather wouldn’t let the matter rest.

  Fortunately she was distracted by the appearance of the judge out on Henrietta’s porch. Though he was partly hidden by the shrubbery, it was possible to see him holding out his hand. Henrietta placed her hand in his, rose slowly from the porch swing and took a step toward him. As she neared, he bent down and touched her lips with his in a tender gesture not unlike the kiss Todd had just shared with Heather.

  “Thank you for a lovely evening,” the judge said, his words carrying to where Todd and Heather stood frozen in place with the silently gaping children. “I’ll look forward to another one.”

  “We’ll see,” she said, sounding as tart as ever.

  “You’re not going to give an inch, are you, Henrietta?” the judge asked.

  Todd could hear the amused exasperation in his voice. He could also imagine the smile that Henrietta would find equally annoying.

  “If I give an inch, you’ll take a mile, same as always,” she retorted.

  “Would that be so bad?”

  She hesitated for so long Todd thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer, but then she said with apparent reluctance, “No, I suppose it wouldn’t.”

  As if she’d granted him a long-withheld reprieve, the judge’s arms went around her and he twirled her in circles until she was giddy with laughter.

  “Stop it, you old fool!”

  “Only if you’ll agree to have Sunday dinner with me in Laramie this weekend.”

  “You’re pushing your luck, old man.”

  “Henrietta,” he chided.

  “How can I? The restaurant—”

  “Heather can handle it, I’m sure.”

  “The children—”

  “Can come along,” he said at once. “They’ll enjoy a change of scenery.”

  “You wouldn’t mind?” she asked, clearly skeptical.

  “Why would I mind? They’re wonderful children and they matter to you.”

  Henrietta reached up, hesitated, then rested her hand against his cheek. “Thank you for saying that. We would love to have dinner with you this weekend.”

  “Sunday, then.”

  “Sunday,” she echoed as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d agreed.

  The judge strolled off whistling, still unaware of his audience.

  “You can come out of the shadows now,” Henrietta said dryly when he was some distance away. “I suppose you all got yourselves an earful.”

  “We didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” Heather apologized. “We just didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “I can see why that would bother you since you went to so much trouble to set the whole thing up,” she said, then glanced at Todd. “I suppose you were in on it, too.”

  “Don’t look at me. I’m a totally innocent bystander. I had no clue what was going on until after you’d left work. I just got roped into the ice-cream excursion.”

  “Did you have a nice dinner?” Heather asked anxiously.

  “Not as good as my own cooking, but nice enough. Did you know he remembered that I liked Chinese?”

  Heather grinned. “He mentioned that.”

  “Wonder what else he remembers?” Henrietta murmured, more to herself than to either of them. Then she caught sight of Will sound asleep in Todd’s arms.

  “My goodness, what am I thinking? I have to get these two up to bed. It’s way past their bedtime.” She reached for Will.

  “I’ll carry him up,” Todd volunteered. He glanced at Heather. “You’ll wait? I’ll take Angel and walk you home.”

  “I’ll wait,” she said, settling into the porch swing with her sleepy daughter cradled in her arms.

  Todd followed Henrietta and Sissy up the stairs, then deposited the still-sleeping boy in his bed. He would have turned and gone, but Henrietta snagged his arm.

  “How was your evening?”

  “Fine.”

  “That’s it? Fine? What kind of an answer is that?”

  “An honest one.”

  She shook her head. “At thi
s rate, it will take the two of you longer to get together than it has the judge and me.”

  “Henrietta, there’s nothing in the cards for Heather and me.”

  “Then you’re a damned fool. The woman’s crazy about you. And you share a daughter. If that’s not enough for a starting point, I don’t know what is.”

  “Henrietta…” he began in a tone warning her to steer clear of this particular topic.

  “Don’t waste your breath, young man. I know what I’m talking about. Now, you think long and hard before you turn your back on Heather and that little girl. Believe me, nobody knows more about regrets than I do.”

  Todd couldn’t argue with her. Thanks to a long-ago tragedy, he’d been living with regrets for most of his life. He knew better than most that the ones he’d have if Heather left were nothing compared to the ones he might have to face if she and Angel stayed and he took a chance on becoming a part of their lives.

  Todd’s mood was bleak when he came back downstairs from carrying the little boy to bed. Heather cast surreptitious glances at him all the way back to her apartment. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Okay, spill it,” she demanded. “What happened while you were upstairs with Henrietta?”

  “Nothing,” he said tersely.

  “Don’t tell me that. You were cheerful enough when you carried Will up those stairs. Now you look as if you’ve just lost your best friend.”

  He turned his head slightly, looked over Angel’s head, which rested on his shoulder, and asked, “Isn’t that what’s about to happen? You said it yourself, you’re going back to New York anytime now.”

  She blinked in confusion. “Wait a minute. I thought you wanted me to go. In fact, you’ve all but offered to pack my bags and drive me to the airport.”

  “True,” he admitted, “because it’s for the best. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  “Whose best?” Suddenly she recalled the way he’d phrased his distress a moment earlier, the admission he’d all but verbalized. “Are you saying that despite everything, you still think of me as your best friend?”