“How’s Lizzy been?” Angel asked Esther, pulse still hammering from her last-minute decision not to kiss her husband, but to give him a taste of his own selfish medicine. She might not know much, but she hadn’t forgotten how to tell when a man wanted to kiss her.
“Fussy as the devil at St. Peter’s dinner party.” The sitter passed Lizzy like a deflated football into Angel’s outstretched arms. Not only was the baby wide awake, but red-faced, as if she’d spent hours crying. “I don’t know what kind of hold you’ve got on that girl, but I can tell you this—it isn’t natural for a child to be this attached to a woman who isn’t even her—”
“Thanks, Esther,” Jonah said from the door. “How much do we owe you?”
The old woman waved him off, gathering her purse and a tattered copy of GQ. “I don’t want your money. As miserable as that child’s been all day, I still like looking after her. ’Night all.”
“Let me at least walk you home.” Jonah hustled to open the front door.
“Lordy, no. I need peace and lots of it. Lived here all my life. Think I can find my way across the road and up my own drive.”
With Esther gone and Lizzy in her arms, Angel gravitated toward her favorite rocker, her breasts aching. “Wonder what could’ve happened?” she asked, raising her halter and unfastening her nursing bra. Lizzy didn’t need an engraved invitation to latch on. The poor thing was starving. “She seems fine now. Just a little flushed and tired.” Lizzy grunted and sighed, closed her eyes, kneading her tiny fists into Angel’s tender skin. “Was this how she was when I was gone?”
“Yep.”
She looked up to find her husband leaning against the still-open front door. In her haste to feed Lizzy, she hadn’t turned on any lights beyond the dim lamp Esther had been reading by. Jonah had turned on the porch light, but in his current position it backlit him, making it impossible for Angel to read his expression.
“Would you mind either scooting or switching on a light?” she asked, stroking Lizzy’s flushed forehead.
“Sure.” He flipped the overhead switch.
The instantaneous brightness startled Lizzy and she began to cry.
“Here,” he said, “let me take her.”
“She’s not done.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, I do. She’s already had a rough day. Why would you want to make it worse?”
Glowering, he perched on the sofa’s end.
“Jonah? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He pressed his lips tighter.
“Come on, don’t ruin what’s been a perfect day.”
After a sharp laugh, he turned away, slashing his fingers through his hair. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?” She wished she could go to him, put her arms around him to tell him everything was going to be okay. But not only was there the logistical problem of Lizzy being in her arms but, at this point in their lives, she had no way of knowing whether everything would be okay.
Was their marriage back on the right course? Or were they headed down the road to divorce? One thing Angel did know was that if they were headed for a final split, Lizzy was staying with her.
But that was a worst-case scenario.
She and Jonah were nowhere near that point, right? “Please, Jonah,” she urged yet again. “Talk to me. What am I supposed to get?”
He stood, paced to the fireplace and back. “Okay, it’s like this. For as long as I can remember, Esther has been like a mom or grandmother to every kid in town. Babies love her. Dogs and cats love her. Everyone loves her—everyone, that is, except my daughter. She only loves you.”
“What’s wrong with that? Lizzy’s going through a clingy stage. Most babies do.”
“To this degree?”
She shook her head, trying to clear the confusion. What happened to the easygoing, carefree spirit she’d spent the day laughing and sharing ice cream cones with? “You’re talking crazy. So Lizzy loves me. She loves you, too, Jonah.”
“Does she? Let’s just see.”
Before Angel could stop him, he took Lizzy, who’d fallen asleep at her breast.
Startled awake, the baby wailed.
Angel sighed, tugged the flap to her nursing bra up and her halter down. “That doesn’t prove anything other than that you gave her a fright.”
Jonah handed the baby back and her crying stopped. After a few more sniffles, Lizzy rooted around at Angel’s breasts.
“Still hungry, sweetie?” In seconds, Angel was back to nursing her child.
Jonah slowly backed away, planting himself against the far wall.
“I know…” Angel said to her precious daughter, smoothing the backs of her fingers against the infant’s velvety cheek. “Daddy’s in a grumpity mood. He’ll be better in a little while.”
“The hell I will.” Face in shadows, he asked, “What’ve you done to her? Purposely turned her against me?”
“No,” Angel fought back, swallowing tears. “She adores you. Why would I ever do anything to hurt that bond?”
He laughed. “Good question. Once you’re done answering that, tell me why she refused to eat the whole time you were gone.”
“That was only a few days. She’s fine now.”
“Right. She’s fine now, but what happens when you leave again? Who’s left to pick up the pieces?” He poked his index finger at his chest. “Me. Only that’s the problem, Geneva. Katie doesn’t want to be picked up by me, rocked by me, and fed by me. She wants you.”
Angel drew Lizzy closer. “Jonah, stop. You’re scaring me.”
“Good. I want you scared. I want you to know how I’ve felt every day since you first walked out that door.”
“Y-you called me Geneva. You called Lizzy, Katie.”
As if forcing himself to wake from a nightmare, her husband shook his head. “I did?”
She nodded. She’d long since ceased to rock.
Hollow-eyed, he stared at her, but not really at her, more like right through her. And then he crossed the room, fell to his knees and dropped his head in her lap.
She’d never heard him cry, but cry he did now, with ugly racking sobs that tore through her with more power than if they’d been her own.
“Don’t leave us again.”
Smoothing his hair, crying right along with him, she said, “I won’t, sweetie. I promise.” And just like that, Angel McBride was whole once again.
Chapter Nineteen
A few minutes later, Jonah raised his head from Angel’s lap. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what brought that on.” Can’t freakin’ imagine what brought it on. He stood, grazing his hand over his stubbled jaw. He needed a shave, a shower. And while he was at it, how about a brand-new, squeaky-clean life?
“Why are you sorry?”
“Why do you think? For being a blubbering idiot. Geez, I haven’t bawled like that since I was ten and fell out of my tree house.”
“Maybe that’s part of the problem.”
A sharp laugh escaped his lips. “It’s a problem, all right. A sure-as-hell sign I’m teetering on the edge of a breakdown.”
Gazing at the baby, his baby, with the sweetest smile any woman had ever given a child, she said, “Funny. I see what just happened as more of a breakthrough.” She lifted that jewel-toned gaze of hers, seducing him with nothing more than the Voodoo of her aquamarine stare. “You opened up to me, Jonah. Thank you for telling me I left. That was something I needed to know. I mean, no wonder you’ve been cool with me. I don’t blame you for being mad.”
“I’m not mad,” he said. “Just frustrated.” With a dead woman. “Look, can we drop this? I’ve had all the touchy-feely stuff I care to participate in for the next fifty or so years.”
“Great. Then let’s go to bed.” Lizzy had long since drifted off to sleep in her arms. “Here, you take the baby.”
He did, instantly contrite upon holding the reason for all of this in his arms. Gazing into his daughter’s sleeping features, he’d neve
r wished more that she could talk. Tell him what was behind her mysterious link to Angel and why his love wasn’t enough.
Katie’s head resting on his shoulder, he made his nightly rounds, locking doors, turning off lights.
He heard Angel mount the creaky stairs and wished he could find words to express how sorry he was. Sorry for his flash of injustice, for freaking out on her like that and, most of all, sorry for not being man enough to put his own petty jealousies aside in order to spend every remaining second Angel lived in his house thanking her.
Even though, in her mind, she was doing nothing more than honoring the vows she believed she’d made long ago in some quaint country church, he knew better.
He knew better and, by God, if it killed him, he was going to start behaving better. Treating Angel with the kindness and respect she deserved.
She’d never asked to be put in this situation, yet how many times had he prayed for a miracle cure for Katie that he’d feared might never come?
Leaving on one small lamp on the table at the base of the stairs, he climbed them, every muscle in his body aching from even this minor exertion.
At the top, he found the bathroom door shut.
From inside came the sounds of Angel brushing her teeth. She turned the water off, just like him. Geneva had always left the water running. He’d asked her countless times to turn it off in case the well ran dry. Toward the end of their failed marriage, he’d figured she left it on just to spite him.
Katie still cradled to his chest, he stood there, taking it all in.
The faucet going on for a final tooth rinsing.
The chink of Angel placing the new toothbrush he’d rummaged up for her in the hot pink porcelain holder Geneva had bought at a flea market for five bucks. She’d paid too much. Which, in turn, had made him pay by having to work even harder, worry even harder, to make up for the money she’d frittered away.
The bathroom door opened, giving him a start.
“Jonah.” Angel put her splayed hands to her chest. “You scared me.”
“Me, too. I mean, you startled me.” Listen to him. The woman attracted him to the point that he couldn’t even speak. Did she have any idea how pretty she looked with her hair all piled high, wavy tendrils damp from where he guessed she’d held a washcloth to her face? She’d changed into an ivory satin nightgown that provided a shimmering showcase for her every curve, straining against hard nipples, that if he hadn’t noticed them, he wouldn’t have been a man.
She tried getting past him without touching, but the old house had a narrow upstairs hall. His arm grazed her full breasts. Couldn’t be helped. Neither could the shift beneath his fly.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Want me to put the baby to bed?”
“Nope. I can handle it.”
She smelled good. Like the expensive body lotion Geneva had bought at the Harrison JC Penney to match that pricey perfume. He’d been mad as hell over that, but catching a whiff only made him appreciative, and sad that he’d felt he’d had to yell at Geneva for spending all that money on what he’d considered useless when, in actuality, the perfumed lotion was providing him with an awful lot of pleasure now.
“Okay, then. Good night.” On her tiptoes, she kissed his cheek. “Thanks again for today. I really did have a great time.”
“You’re welcome.” Only after she’d closed herself into what used to be his bedroom did he lift his palm to his still warm cheek.
“Christ on a cupcake…” Wednesday morning, Sam slammed his palm to his desk. “Thelma! When you get a sec, could you please come in here?”
The station secretary, big as a rambling farmhouse, and just as cozy, had been with him ever since he won his first election over seven years earlier. Though he’d never asked, he guessed her age to be somewhere in her early forties. After work, she went home to raise three rambunctious boys all on her own—thanks in large part to her cross-eyed, wife-beating husband, who was now in the state pen for counterfeiting hundred-dollar bills on State Farm Insurance’s color copy machine.
Thelma stood at his office door, and in the hand where she usually held a doughnut was a celery stalk.
Sam groaned. “Don’t tell me the Boy Mayor’s on your case, too?”
She nodded. “Said if I don’t lose fifty pounds by Christmas, he’s gonna see what he can do about canceling my health coverage.”
“He can’t do that.”
“Who says?”
“I say.”
She laughed. “You only wish you had that kind of power. Face it, Sam, in these parts that boy’s akin to God.”
Sadly, as he glanced at the paperwork that had been stacking up ever since his computer went down, Sam had to agree.
“Anyway, what’s up?”
“Can you believe it? Now I can’t even get a dial tone.”
Chomping a bite of celery, panty hose swishing between her thighs, she sashayed around to the far side of his desk. “Don’t suppose this could be your problem?” Had he detected sass in her tone as she wagged the unplugged phone cord in his face.
“Seriously?” He clamped his hand over his throbbing forehead. “Sorry about dragging you into my technology nightmare. Must’ve tripped over it last night when I was running to that fire at Cecil’s.”
Thelma plugged in the phone. “Is it true what folks are saying about him torching it for the insurance?”
Sam shrugged. “After the trouble he’s had trying to unload it, and now with his mom having cancer, couldn’t say I’d blame him if he’d tried.” For over forty years Cecil Stump had run Stump’s Hardware on Main Street, located just two blocks south of Jonah’s diner, right in front of the prettiest stretch of Riverside Park.
Six months earlier, just about the time the new super-discount store had gone up alongside the highway, Cecil’s business had fallen so sharply he’d been forced to shut the doors. The building had been up for sale for quite a while but, so far, Josie Duncan at Rusty Pine Reality hadn’t had a single nibble, except for some guy from Little Rock wanting to put in a strip club and bar. Even though it probably would have been bursting at the seams every night of the week, that idea had gone over about as well with the mostly Baptist planning commission as the time Stacy Clements had tried turning the old drive-in into an outdoor disco with rock videos being projected onto the screen.
“Oh—” Halfway to the door, Thelma stopped to wink. “Before I forget, it might make you feel better knowing I got a juicy email this morning from Dallas on Jonah’s missing woman.”
“No kidding?” Hot damn. At least one part of his day was looking up.
“I’ll get it.”
When she was gone over ten minutes, Sam pushed back his chair and ambled into the front office. “Everything all right?”
On her knees in front of the printer, she’d removed the upper lid and paper tray. On the worn brown carpet, pages with smiley faces and peace sign faxes ringed her. “What’s wrong with this thing? Not twenty minutes ago there was an email from a Dallas detective. It had a photo of a real pretty blond and a handwritten note asking, This your girl? Now the e-copy and print version are gone.”
Geneva beamed. Damn, I’m good.
“Sure you ladies are gonna be all right?” At ten past six on Thursday morning, Jonah was surprised both of them were already up.
“Of course.” Angel leaned forward to wipe dribble from the baby’s chin.
Katie sat in her high chair, eyeing the rice cereal Angel served with suspicion.
“Come on, pumpkin…” Angel made silly buzzing noises while waving the baby’s princess spoon, “This is gonna help your tummy feel so nice and full.”
Katie grinned and ate the offered bite, but Jonah couldn’t be sure if it was because she liked the meal or the show. Once again, Angel had cast her spell over his daughter and him and, no matter how hard he fought it, there was no place he’d rather be.
The welcoming aroma of coffee Angel had brewed for him still lingered, as did the feeling of warmt
h stealing through him at the thought that, even after his blow-up Tuesday night, she wasn’t holding a grudge.
He asked, “Will that cereal help put meat on her bones?”
“That’s the idea…” She coaxed Katie into taking another bite.
“I’m catching a ride with my cook, so you can have the truck.”
“Thank you.” Her surprised smile made him long to please her more. “You didn’t have to do that. But it’ll be good to go to the store.”
Nodding, he said, “I left forty bucks and the keys in the bowl by the back door. Be extra careful until I can get Sam to get you a new license.”
Hand over her heart, she said, “I hereby promise not to go over forty and to obey all road signs and safety laws.” Her grin, the light in her eyes, the way the belt on her robe had loosened, giving him teasing glimpses of the deep vee between her breasts, all worked against him in his quest to leave the house.
Focusing on Katie, rather than Angel’s miles of smooth legs which he wouldn’t mind being wrapped around him, he asked, “You remember how to fasten Lizzy into her safety seat?”
“Yes, Mr. Worrywart.”
He had the craziest urge to seal his instructions with a kiss but, thankfully, a chugging truck engine and honked horn salvaged what little was left of his sanity. “That’ll be Leon,” he thumbed toward the back door.
“Good. Have a wonderful day.”
“Sure. You too.” Why couldn’t he stop staring? “I left the diner number next to the phone. Call if you need anything.”
“I will.” In one graceful motion, she rose from the table, then met him by the door. Her robe parted, dazzling him with a view of her long, lean legs that led straight to Heaven—white-pantied Heaven.
“Be really careful driving, and sorry I didn’t have more cash.”
“Stop. We’ll be fine. And don’t worry. Stretched right, forty bucks’ll go a long way.”
Dear Lord, I’d like to stretch you right over my—
Angel Baby (Heaven Can Wait) Page 11