Angel Baby (Heaven Can Wait)

by Laura Marie Altom

  “Is that supposed to make the work better? Easier?”

  “What I do is a noble profession. Okay, so I might not wear a fancy suit to work every day, and I might not drive a Lexus, but when I fall off to sleep at night I’ve got a good tired. A hard-earned tired. Nobody—sure as hell not you—is going to tell me that’s bad.”

  “I never said that was bad, sweetie.” Her voice softened when she was once again cupping his cheek. “All I said was that for Lizzy, I want choices. You and me, we chose this life. It’s a hard one, but good. This is the only life you’ve ever known, and you love it. You’re able to cope with the stress of not knowing from one day to the next whether your livelihood’ll be snatched away by some corporate giant. But, Jonah, even you’ve got to admit there are days you’d like to just chuck it and start over from scratch. Maybe learn some nice, boring trade like accounting that you know people are always going to need.”

  Jonah turned his back on her. On her sensible words. Right now, he didn’t want sensible.

  In just this one afternoon he’d had enough harsh reality to last the rest of his life. If he were a smart man, he’d be down at that Braum’s trailer begging for a job—any job. But evidently he wasn’t smart, because no matter what kind of logic his pretend wife spouted, he wasn’t buying it. At least not till his banker forced him to post a FOR SALE sign on the diner’s front door.

  Gazing about the lofty space, Angel asked, “How many presidential elections has this place seen?”

  “Don’t know. Never counted.”

  “These old brick walls ooze history. Did you ever think about changing the diner’s format? You know, spiffing it up, then trying to appeal to a more sophisticated crowd?”

  “You mean like yuppie types?”

  “Yeah. This place has the kind of historic, feel-good vibe they’d eat right up.”

  He flashed her a weak smile. “Thanks, but no thanks.” Not six months after Geneva and he tied the knot, she’d gotten it into her head that the diner would make a great tearoom—only not just any ordinary tearoom. She’d wanted a head-banger tearoom. That idea had been lame, and so was Angel’s. Face it, he was a meat-and-potatoes, no-frills guy, running a meat-and-potatoes, no-frills establishment.

  “Anyone ever told you you’re stubborn?”

  He grinned. “Mom used to say I was more bullheaded than a bull.”

  “Yeah, well, your mother was right. And whether you like it or not, as your wife, I’m going to tell you what I think.”

  Jonah groaned, rolling his eyes.

  Big mistake. That really got her going.

  “You think this is funny? Maybe me not speaking up for what I believe in is partly to blame for us now being miles apart. Maybe if, instead of you being so mule-headed, you’d just for a second really listen to what I’m suggesting, you might find something in my idea that’s workable, both for your income and pride.”

  Hugging Katie tighter, nuzzling the crown of her downy head, Jonah turned away from Angel’s beady stare. His real wife had never talked to him like this. Where did this stranger get off? “I think you’d better leave.”

  “Is that how things work in this family? I say one little thing that gets your goat and I’m dismissed?”

  “No. I just think it’d be better for all of us if—” Katie started to cry.

  Angel was instantly there, reaching out for her. “She’s probably hungry.”

  Reluctantly, Jonah handed Katie over. Her cries instantly stopped, which only added fuel to his fire.

  Angel asked, “You’ve got a bell over the door, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Let’s take this conversation to the office, where we can all be more comfortable.”

  In the office, seated in her favorite rocker with Lizzy feasting away, Angel felt more capable of keeping their argument constructive, as opposed to letting it grow into full-out war.

  Jonah, however, must’ve felt differently, as he had yet to even enter the room. He stood glowering in the open doorway. Not looking at her, not looking at Lizzy. Just glowering, with his dark stare aimed somewhere between the neon Bud and Coors Light signs.

  She asked, “Ever considered applying for a liquor license?”

  He snorted.

  “What?”

  “My parents would roll over in their graves.”

  “So? Let them. If it means the difference between keeping their dream—your dream—alive, what would it hurt?”

  “Damnit, Angel, I said no. Would you please give this whole topic of restructuring the diner a rest? Isn’t going to happen.”

  “Fine. What time do you want me to pick you up tonight?”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll find my own ride home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  For once, though it pained her to admit it, Geneva had to agree with Blondie. Though she’d never said it in so many words, maybe she should’ve. Jonah was a flat-out fool for not at least trying to take the diner in a new direction.

  Granted, maybe her idea of a head-banger tearoom hadn’t been all that hot, but she could see Blondie’s idea of turning it into one of those yuppie places working out.

  However, since saving Jonah’s diner wasn’t in her job description, Geneva remained focused on what was. At the moment, that meant keeping Sam from getting to his appointment with that nosy Little Rock detective.

  “Oops…” She popped one of his patrol car’s tires while he slowed to round a curve.

  “What the hell?” Sam dragged the wheel right to compensate for the blowout.

  How come Fate was messing again with what had so far been a pretty good day?

  He’d found a new flavor of yogurt that, if he pinched his nose when he ate it, actually tasted like key lime pie, his phone had worked long enough for him to confirm his three o’ clock meeting with his new detective buddy, Luke. And he’d even managed more than two words to Stacy Clements—the hottest blond in town. Change that. She had been the hottest blond until Angel showed up. But since Angel had been taken off the market—twice—she didn’t count on any of his local hottie compilations.

  He pulled the cruiser to the tooth-jarring dirt shoulder and climbed out of the car just in time to see the other rear tire pop.

  “That’s for me not being at the top of all your lists!” Geneva gave him an otherworldly flick of her black and fuchsia hair. “After all, I may have been taken but, back when I was alive, I put every other woman on the planet to shame.”

  “Damn.” Being a Saturday, Sam wore jeans, a red Razorback T-shirt and a Blue Moon Bulls ball cap, which he removed to swipe beading sweat from his forehead. There was a downright unnatural heat for this time of year—especially for where he was—smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Hardwood forest and snaking vines arched over the equally snaky road. What little sun did manage to filter through was merciless.

  “Now you’re bitching about the temperature, too?” On her weather meter, Geneva had gone straight to hot. Not that she was allowed much tweaking beyond seasonal norms, but even a little bit of tinkering was proving to be a hoot!

  To show him what kind of girl he was messing with, Geneva kicked over a dead tree to the right of Sam’s cruiser.

  Sam leapt clear of a falling oak.

  “Christ on a cupcake!” Gazing at the sky as if trying to guess where the next hazard might fall, he clutched his hand over his chest.

  A jay called out.

  The sharp cry came in big contrast to the sudden racket raised by a couple of spring peepers, making him jump all over again.

  “This place gives me the heebies…” He paused at the driver’s side door, darting glances to his right, left, behind his back, all in an effort to shake the feeling someone was watching him.

  “Damn straight I’m watching you. For the way you treated me, all high and mighty-like when I was still alive, you deserve a whole lot more of a scare than this. Lucky for you, I’m on probation, so I guess I’ll be good and at least allow you to call
for a tow. After that… anything’s fair game.”

  To prove it she popped both front tires, too.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Just past six—considering he hadn’t had a customer since three—Jonah decided to close up early, then go home and hit the sack. In the process he hoped to avoid all contact with his opinionated pretend wife. Because, hey, if there was anything worse than being saddled with an opinionated real wife, it was being stuck with a fake one!

  As eager as he’d been inside to climb into bed, standing on the diner’s front sidewalk Jonah was that glad Leon was taking his time coming to get him.

  Geneva, and now Angel, had both tried ramming their opinions on saving his diner down his throat. So he figured that, also like Geneva, Angel would be waiting for him at the kitchen table, ready to pounce.

  Once she’d had hold of a particularly controversial topic, Geneva loved duking it out to the death—which usually meant he’d end up caving in to restore peace.

  Sighing to see his buddy pull up alongside the curb, Jonah prepared himself to face Angel. He assumed he was in for one toad-sucker of a night. Thankfully, Leon was too preoccupied, rambling on about Delilah’s penchant for pricey shoes, hats and purses, to drill Jonah as to why Angel wasn’t picking him up.

  After muttering a quick, sympathetic apology for Leon’s troubles and a curse for women in general, Jonah thanked him for the ride and slid out of the truck.

  The walk up the drive through the balmy night air felt akin to a death march. Crickets chirped warnings to turn back. In town, a train whistled. Was it traveling too fast for him to hitch a ride when it passed the mill pond?

  Hand on the back door, he took a deep breath, hardening his jaw. “Well, hell…” he muttered, “this is my house. If Angel gets too ornery, I’ll boot her out.”

  Yeah, right. Who’re you trying to kid? Even when Geneva was at her worst, to the bitter end you tried to salvage what was left of your marriage.

  Now, for Katie’s sake, he was trapped in that same old quicksand, trying his damnedest to play nice with a woman his child had chosen to love.

  Dragging in one more deep breath of the unusually steamy night, he turned the back doorknob and headed inside.

  “Jonah!” Angel cried. “You’re home early. And look at me—everything’s a mess.” Dressed in jeans, his old football jersey and one of his mother’s lacy white aprons, her hair caught up in a high ponytail, more tendrils escaping than contained, smudges of flour across her nose and left cheek, the mere sight of her took his breath away. Then there was Katie, grinning up at him from the rag rug in front of the sink. She rested on her tummy, clanging a stainless steel spoon against a saucepan lid.

  “Looks fine to me,” he finally said. Better than fine—assuming all this domestic bliss was real.

  He dropped his keys in a wooden bowl on the counter. Withdrew his wallet and set that in there, too.

  Okay, he told himself, steeling his shoulders for the grief yet to come. This had to be a trap. Like Geneva, Angel was a clever girl. Obviously all of this was nothing more than her misguided attempt at wooing him over to her way of thinking. Since she knew he wouldn’t fall for sex, she must’ve been working on his stomach. Good thing he finished off a chocolate cream pie just before leaving the diner.

  “I’m glad,” she said, “but I feel awful for badgering you this afternoon. To make up for it, I wanted tonight to be extra special.”

  “Okay...”

  She ushered him to a chair, only to tug him back. “What am I thinking—I’m sorry. You probably want to wash up first.”

  Eyeing her, he crossed to the sink, kneeling to ruffle Katie’s downy hair before notching on the tap. Immersing his hands in the water’s warm flow, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, working his shoulders.

  “Let me help.” Angel stepped up behind him and started to rub.

  Heaven. There was no other word to describe the feel of her strong fingers easing the day’s tension.

  “A big part of these knots was probably caused by me,” she continued to rub. “Knowing how much the diner means to you, I should’ve never butted in the way I did.”

  Jonah turned off the faucet, then wiped his hands on a damp orange dish towel lying on the counter beside a bowl of fresh-snapped green beans. He swallowed hard. Enough was enough. He was more than ready for her to declare her true intentions. Hardening his jaw along with every other muscle in his body, he turned to face her. “What do you want?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. What do you want? Money? A new car? Because whatever it is, I can’t afford it. Hell, forking out the dough for all those fancy medical tests of yours nearly wiped me out. I’m already working twelve to fourteen-hour days.”

  Her aquamarine gaze welled with tears.

  Oh, she was good. “I’m not saying the magic you work with Ka—Lizzy is anything less than a miracle, but—”

  “Stop.” Palms pressed to his chest, she made a little choking sound, then pushed herself away. She turned her back to him, angling toward the stove. “Just stop.” She refocused her attention to halfheartedly stirring the gravy simmering on one of the back burners.

  The old part of him—the tenderhearted man Geneva hadn’t destroyed—ached to cinch his hands about her slim waist, nuzzling the curve of her neck. But what would that accomplish, other than showing Angel her tactics worked?

  Katie, blessedly numb to the goings on around her, clanged ever harder on her pot.

  “You know…” Angel removed the wooden spoon from the saucepan on the stove, tapping it a couple times on the edge before slapping it to the counter, “I’m getting sick and tired of this cold shoulder of yours, Jonah. I’m sorry for whatever I did to you. More sorry than you’ll ever know. But that woman, whoever she was, isn’t the same woman I am today.” With the backs of her hands, she slashed away tears. “I desperately want to make this marriage work, but not enough to condemn myself and my child to a life with some…some coldhearted prick who doesn’t know the—”

  “Prick? Did you just call me a prick?”

  She notched up her chin. “Yes. Yes, I did call you a prick.”

  He laughed. Laughed so hard tears sprang from his eyes. Katie stopped clanging to stare.

  “What’s so funny?” Angel asked, her hands on her hips.

  “You. Calling me a prick. Something about the image of you standing there all Suzie Homemaker with flour on your nose, hurling out that rank an expression.”

  She stood her ground. “Yeah, well, there’s plenty more where that came from.”

  “Give me one.”

  “Well… Dickhead.”

  “Great. Love it. Give me another.”

  “Jack-off.”

  “Another.”

  “Slimeball.”

  “Ugh.” He made a face. “That was weak. Come on, surely you can do better than that?”

  “Sure, um…” She fumbled with her fingers to her mouth, looking at him, the floor, the baby. Her aquamarine pools welled again and then she broke into sobs. Ugly, hacking sobs that shredded Jonah’s soul.

  What had he done?

  She really was sorry.

  She really had meant her dinner to be nothing more than a goodwill gesture, and here he’d gone and blown it by accusing her of being no less a conniving bitch than Geneva.

  He looked to Katie, who was back to playing with her lid, then chased after his wife.

  He found her curled up in the rocker by the big bay window, crying and crying and crying.

  “Go away,” she said. “I never want to see you again.”

  “Don’t blame you.” He knelt beside her. “Most days I never want to see me again, but what can I say? I’m here, and you’re here, so we might as well make the best of it.”

  “How can I with you constantly talking in riddles? I feel like I’m on trial for crimes I didn’t commit.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not good enough,�
�� she said with a vehement shake of her head. “I want more. I deserve more. Either you’re going to be married to me—and I mean in every sense of the word—or I’m leaving, and this time I’m taking Lizzy with me.”

  Jonah sat back on his haunches and groaned.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  The woman he was only pretending was his wife was going to leave him? Taking his real baby, her pretend baby, with her? What was this? Some kind of cosmic joke?

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  From the kitchen came an orchestra of clangs.

  A week ago Katie had been too weak to lift her head, and now she was making such a racket it was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to pipe down.

  “Jonah?” Angel leaned forward, worrying her lower lip with her top teeth. Did she have a clue how sexy she looked? How much he wanted to claim her in every way a man could? “Don’t you have anything to say?”

  “Nope.” Back up on his knees, he easily slid her chair around so that she faced him, then cupped her face in his hands, drawing her forward for not the fanciest kiss, but one he hoped conveyed his heartfelt apology and thanks.

  At first he barely touched his lips to hers. It’d been a while since he’d done anything like this and he wasn’t quite sure where to start. But then instinct kicked in, and she was so very alive beneath him. So he upped his intensity and she was still there, not like in his dreams where she faded away.

  No, this woman was real.

  Kissing him back.

  Shuddering beneath him, increasing the pressure. Though his head reminded him this was supposed to be merely a friendly kiss, he took it a notch higher, parting her lips with his tongue, meeting up with hers for a few forbidden strokes.

  Okay, so he’d really gone too far now. But try telling that to his pounding heart, or the aching beneath his fly.

  “Make love to me,” she moaned, her mouth tasting of tears. Tears he’d made her cry.

  “Yeah…” he managed. Anything to make her never cry again.

  From the kitchen came Katie’s cries.