Angel's Lake Box Set: Books 1-3 (Angel's Lake Series)

by Jody Holford

  Their foreheads rested against each other, and Lucy closed her eyes. He was fast becoming her favorite smell. The mix of his cologne, his soap, and the heat of the day.

  “Yeah. A lot of those lately. But I think I found something.”

  “Oh yeah? What?”

  “Later. Tell me what your sugar daddy wanted,” he said, kissing her nose and running his hand up her thigh. The cat jumped off the bed with a disgruntled sound.

  “He misses me.”

  “Who could blame him? I’d miss you, too.”

  “Speaking of which…”

  A dull, steady thump began in her chest, right under her ribs, at the look on his face. Everything slowed down. His hand came to a stop, and he retracted his head, distancing himself from her.

  “You’re leaving,” he said, voice flat, his eyes darkening.

  She tilted her head, told herself that it wasn’t unreasonable for him to assume the worst. Even though she thought she had shown him that she wanted to be here. With him. She hadn’t mentioned being anywhere else because, for the first time in forever, she didn’t want to be anywhere else. She grabbed his wrist when he started to move off of the bed.

  “Slow down, Captain Negative. I’m going to New York for a couple of days. Then I’ll be back. I was actually going to ask you if you want to come with me. We could stay in a pretty hotel and order room service. Get one of those big soaker tubs.”

  He blinked, his eyes still shadowed with a doubt that made the ache in her chest intensify. “Why are you going to New York?”

  “I need to meet up with a couple of friends. I have to pick up the vouchers for the Mexico trip that we gave away at the town meeting a few weeks ago. And I’ve arranged to pick up some other big-ticket items. Kate and I have an old-school gala in the works, and we want to have an auction.”

  Even though Alex nodded in understanding and kept his gaze and his hands on her, she felt like he was too far away.

  “I can’t take off. But that all sounds great. You can’t get them to just FedEx you the stuff?” His tone made it clear he thought she should be able to—that he was suspicious of her reason to go.

  Irritation and a bit of hurt had Lucy moving off the bed. She walked to the chair that sat beside the gorgeous bay window, but she didn’t sit. From his bedroom, when the blinds were open, you could look out on the sleepy neighborhood and watch it come alive in the summer and get buried in the winter.

  “I could, but it seems kind of ungrateful to say, ‘thanks for the thousands of dollars-worth of donations.’ Wanna mail them to me’?” Alex stood and undid his pants. Lucy ignored the tightening in her belly and the urge to look at him.

  “Okay. Good point. I’m sorry. I jumped to conclusions. But I still can’t go. There’s too much going on here.”

  “Okay. I’m leaving tomorrow night.”

  His reply was brittle. “That was fast.”

  She turned and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from sighing at the sight of his body standing in the dim light of the room. Wearing only boxers, he was running his hands through his hair, watching her watch him.

  “It’s not that hard to book a flight, Alex. And just so you know, it’s not a one-way ticket. I booked a return flight.”

  He cringed at her tone and moved toward her. She bit her cheek harder, making her eyes water. Better from pain than sadness. He pushed his hands into her hair and covered her mouth with his, gentle but demanding. She gripped his wrists and held on, closing her eyes and letting herself feel. The hurt and the anger ebbed, leaving only longing and a bit of weepiness.

  His forehead rested against hers. “Again. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

  “I do have a track record.”

  She looked down, even though he continued to hold her face angled upward. “Lucy. Look at me.”

  She did. Her eyes watered again, but she was no longer biting the inside of her cheek. “I should go.” He shook his head, whispering, “Please don’t.” His breath washed over her.

  “You’re tired. You need sleep.” She was caving.

  “I need you. More than I wanted to. More than I should.”

  She moved one of her hands to the smooth skin of his waist, then stepped closer. She lifted her gaze to his and squeezed the wrist she was still holding. “That’s not one-way, either.”

  She closed the gap between them, showing him what she was too scared to say.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lucy liked the quiet, but sometimes she found the noise of a busy city like New York more soothing than the chirping of birds or the rush of the river. It offered a different kind of noise—a different kind of beauty. She stifled a yawn and checked her watch. She was meeting Lola Okar at her art gallery on 5th Avenue in just under half an hour. She sidestepped a homeless man’s outstretched legs and navigated around a yapping puppy on a leash. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, but she thought it would be better to check it when she stopped walking. There was more traffic on this one sidewalk in New York than in all of Angel’s Lake.

  The smell of fresh bread and garbage battled each other as the sun made its way higher in the slightly overcast sky. Horns honked and breaks squealed, but in Lucy’s mind, she only heard Alex’s voice: Telling her he was sorry for jumping to conclusions. Telling her she mattered. Telling her to come back. Telling her he needed her like air.

  Pressing the button for the crosswalk, she put her other palm to her stomach, hoping the pressure would settle the butterflies dancing inside. There was a Starbucks just before the gallery, and she ducked in to check her phone and further unsettle her nerves with some caffeine. The text from Alex made her smile from deep inside.

  Alex: My bed is empty. I like it better with you in it.

  She typed back quickly, her thumbs not pausing.

  Lucy: I’m sure Furball would be happy to sleep with you.

  She waited, watched it send, watched the screen say ‘read,’ and imagined him smiling. Alex: He hogs the bed and doesn’t smell as good.

  As she waited in the line, she received a couple of funny looks when she laughed out loud. Lucy: I think that’s a compliment? It’s only 2 nights. It’ll give u a chance to miss me.

  “Can I help you?” The barista’s voice was laid back, smooth, but his hand was already reaching for whatever cup Lucy wanted. She met his gaze, then wondered if getting his eyebrow pierced had hurt.

  “Can I get a Pikes Place with cream and sugar?”

  The studded eyebrow arched. Yes, she liked plain old coffee with all the fat and lots of sugar. She didn’t need skinny, flavored, half-fat, whipped, or drizzled. Just some caffeine. Straight up. He shrugged as if her order were ridiculous, asked her name, and took her money. When she moved to the end of the counter, she glanced down at her phone.

  Alex: I already do.

  Her heart pinched. She exhaled a long breath and tried to ignore the roiling in her stomach. It felt like her dancing butterflies had turned to seasick rowers. It was discomforting to realize she missed him, too. She rarely got lonely on her quests. She liked immersing herself in the culture of whatever place she found herself in, and that rarely left time for missing people or dissecting her life.

  “Lucy.”

  She thanked Studded Eyebrow Boy for the coffee and made her way to the door. She didn’t reply to Alex’s text. What would she say? I miss you, too? I feel like crying? I wish you were here?

  Alex tucked his phone away when Lucy didn’t respond to his last text. Pushing away from his desk, he shoved his hands into his pockets and walked out to the front counter.

  Dolores had booked a few days off to visit her mother who was turning eighty. The lack of hip-shaking pop music was blissful. “You need anything, Sheriff?” Mick asked, glancing over the top of glasses.

  “Nah. I’m going to head out to the group home on Perkins and see what those boys have been up to lately.” Mick nodded, closed the newspaper he was reading, and rolled his shoulders.

  “I was taking a loo
k at the pictures you got up in the conference room. Nobody jumps out at you, do they?”

  “No. But, in every photo we took of the tagged buildings, there’s the same symbol kind of hidden within the work. I’m thinking that’s not a coincidence.” Mick scrunched his furry eyebrows together and moved around the front counter. “I was looking close, but I didn’t notice a symbol.”

  They walked back to the conference room Alex moved to the white board and pointed to the red circles on each of the pictures that showed graffiti damage. It had taken hours of eye strain, combing through the pictures, but somewhere on each photograph—like a warped version of “Where’s Waldo”—was a small series of woven lines. It made him feel a bit better that most of the designs were a series of intricate swirls. He wasn’t unobservant; the tagger knew what they were doing—leaving a calling card, but only in an obscured way. Mick straightened his glasses and stepped closer to the board.

  “What the hell you got circled here?” he asked with his nose almost pressed to one of the photos.

  “Look. See how the top of these lines arches like a heart? Then it pulls down here like ribbons crossing over each other. They stem up from this line here like it’s a balloon string or a tail,” Alex explained, pointing it out in one of the photos, trailing his finger along the shape.

  “That’s just a b unch of squiggles. You seeing things, boy?” Alex gave a surprised bark of laughter.

  “I don’t think so. Look, see how the same shape is here, here. And here? Also, here.”

  Mick puckered his lips and pushed his glasses to the top of his head. He fisted his hands on his hips. “It’s a good thing you’re in charge, Sheriff. I wouldn’t never have found that.”

  Alex clapped Mick’s shoulder as the phone on his belt rang.

  “Whitman,” he answered. He motioned to Mick to follow him out of the conference room, and they made their way to the front desk.

  “No…Alright…Calm down, Mrs. Bellamy…Yes, I understand that…Okay…I’m going to come over now, and we’ll see if we can sort it out, okay? No…Don’t do that…You wait until I get there…Okay…I mean it.”

  He hung up, hooking his phone back on his belt, and sighed.

  “Now I bet you’re wishing there was a fire or some graffiti somewhere, aren’t ya?” Mick asked, his mouth turning up into a wide, toothy grin. Alex grabbed a bottle of water from the small fridge by Dolores’s desk and grabbed the keys to the squad car as well. Mrs. Bellamy called about once a month complaining about her next door neighbor trying to steal her land, one little piece at a time. Today, Mrs. Bellamy insisted that Mrs. Netter was trying to take her trees, and if someone didn’t come put a stop to it, Mrs. Bellamy said she would chop it down herself.

  “A little,” he admitted, making Mick laugh. Of course, the old man didn’t offer to take the call for him and go check things out. No, instead, Mick sat down at the desk, opened up his paper, and gave Alex a mock salute indicating he’d hold down the fort.

  “Give me another hug,” Lola Okar purred. She didn’t mean to, that’s just how the model-turned-artist-turned-gallery owner spoke. Lucy was happy to oblige and equally happy that the gallery was still closed for a few hours so they could catch up.

  “It’s not right for anyone to look as good as you do,” Lucy said, squeezing her long-time friend. They’d met when Lucy started photographing fashion shows and, in a sense, they’d come up through the ranks together. Lola was down to earth, loved pasta more than any model should, and had a rock solid work ethic. Her dark skin was flawless, and the camera loved her almost as much as Lucy did.

  “Says the one who should have spent her life on the other side of the camera,” Lola said. Her mocha eyes sparkled along with her melodic laugh. Lucy had always thought that if fairies existed, they would sound just like Lola.

  “Not likely. This place is beautiful. Show me around,” Lucy said, stowing her camera bag and her purse on the floor. Lola took her hand and led her through the gallery. Lucy could tell which images were Lola’s. Always. There was sadness in every paint stroke that Lola made. It transferred incredibly to the canvas, and her work was both visceral and poignant. Having lost her mother at a very young age, Lola had created hundreds of pieces that showed variations of a young girl searching for her mother, seeing her in the images around her but never quite finding her. Though Lucy had seen Lola’s work countless times, she felt teary as she looked at one of her latest. The black, grey, and white overlapped each other on the large canvas. A little girl, painted only in shadows, ran her hand along a rectangular stone. The subtle allusion to a gravesite made the emotion catch in Lucy’s throat.

  “This is incredible. One of your best,” Lucy praised. Lola gave her hand a squeeze and then tugged her around a freestanding wall. The lump had loosened in Lucy’s throat but she still couldn’t say anything.

  “Thank you, sweetie. You have no idea how happy it made me to know you were coming for a visit. I was going to send you pictures of the opening, but it is better in person, right?”

  About fifteen of Lucy’s photographs lined two freestanding walls, which created a hallway in the center of the main room in the gallery. Each black-and- white photo was of a different woman. The images were taken from different villages, cities, and countries around the world. Lucy could remember snapping every one of those shots.

  “Lola. You asked if you could show a couple photos. I had no idea you were going to create a whole exhibit,” Lucy whispered. She moved closer to each . Looked at them one at a time. Betra, an elderly woman from Kenya, who had taught her how to make the beads tribal women sold to earn money for their families. Lucia, a child activist in a small war-torn country near Somalia, who had shown Lucy the small school she and her friends had built. Every one of them had touched something inside of Lucy, made her feel like she was capturing something—someone—special on film.

  “That was my plan, but I couldn’t choose,” Lola answered, looking closer as well. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For showing my work in your beautiful new gallery like this. For believing in me enough to display my work in this way,” Lucy said, turning toward her friend and meeting her indigo eyes that Lucy knew were contact lenses.

  “Oh Lucy. None of us have trouble believing in you, my friend. It is always you. You need to see yourself the way you are seen,” Lola told her, giving her a warm, quick hug.

  They moved through the rest of the gallery. Lola put aside a couple of paintings that Lucy hoped would bring in some money at the auction she was planning. While they walked, Lola caught Lucy up on getting the gallery up and ready, the artist she was currently dating, and how she was thinking of taking some courses at NYU. Listening to her friend’s voice and laughter reminded Lucy of the nights they used to stay up in each other’s hotel rooms. The only difference now, other than their ages and the venue, was that a small part of her brain was wondering what Alex was doing.

  Alex sat down at one of the two-top tables and nodded toward Danielle when she waved to him. He didn’t need to pick up the menu before she wandered over.

  “Hey Alex. You’re all by your lonesome,” she commented, taking out her pad of paper and a little pen with miniature cows all over it. She smiled at him and tilted her head.

  “Yeah. That’s okay sometimes,” he said, even though he wished Lucy were with him. “You alright?”

  They had been friends in high school—or maybe just friendly, as they had made out on more than one occasion. But mostly, they’d been friends. Alex couldn’t figure out why when talking to her now—her giving him a sweet, concerned smile—he felt a pang of guilt.

  “I’m good. Just tired. Thought I’d grab a bacon burger and a coke before finishing my day,” he replied, pushing aside the worry, reminding himself it had been ten years since high school. They were friends when Lucy had been off on her travels, and he didn’t see Lucy as the type to take issue with him and Danielle being friends now. Still, there had been somethin
g between Lucy and her—some type of falling out. Alex didn’t understand—the women had never been close in school—at least not that he’d ever seen.

  Danielle scribbled on her pad before looking back up and speaking. “It’s a good thing Lucy and her sisters are doing for the town. I’ve seen some of her photographs. They’re beautiful. She did some family shots for my cousin, and they turned out gorgeous. Didn’t even want money. My uncle runs the Home Depot in Little Falls, so Lucy took the photos in exchange for a discount on materials.”

  “She’s got great ideas. She’s actually in New York right now picking up some things for an auction she has planned.”

  “Yeah, I read on the Facebook page that there’d be a bunch of great items to bid on,” Danielle said, a genuine smile making her face seem younger. She tucked the notebook in her pocket, along with the pen, then asked, “Do you think she’ll stay?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so. But I really don’t know,” he said quietly, feeling the guilt build up in him again.

  “She’s not who some people think she is,” Danielle finally said after holding Alex’s stare for a few seconds. The bell over the door rang, and a few teenagers shuffled in, laughing and giggling.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Danielle! Order up!” Cal yelled from the kitchen, not at all worried about offending customers. Most of the regulars were used to Cal’s bellow from time to time.

  “She’s just … a really good person. I have to put your order in and grab that one. You look tired, Sheriff. Get some sleep.” She walked away quickly, saying hello to the group of boisterous teens, treating them like she would any other customer.

  Franny Mourtzin ran the group home for boys. She had been taking in teens from the ages of thirteen to seventeen for longer than Alex had lived in Angel’s Lake. Rumor had it she had lost her own boy when he was twelve in a drowning accident. Alex had tried to pull the file one time when he’d been a deputy, but he couldn’t find anything more than ten years old. She was a large woman, but sometimes Alex felt like it was more her presence than her body that took up all of the space. When she yanked the door open—Franny never did anything delicately or slowly—she blew the grey curls out of her eyes and smiled warmly at Alex.