“I know it.” He turned back to her, then stepped closer. Too close. “And it seems to me it does a better job of exposing people rather than exploring them.”
Angel managed to deflect the hit with a friendly smile. “The magazine prints plenty of other types of stories too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She mentally thumbed through her recent tear sheets. “I wrote a story on a philanthropist who promised to put a kindergarten class through college.” No need to mention she’d also reported that the dirty old man had reneged on the promise and spent the dough on his fifth Bunny-turned-bride.
“And last month I did a feature on the national women’s curling team.” A completely innocuous, though inspiring piece, if she did say so herself. “The sport, I mean, not hair.”
“I knew what you meant.” But despite that, he reached out and twirled a lock of hers around his index finger.
“Well, then.” She couldn’t feel his touch. Hair cells were dead, she reminded herself. Like fingernails or…horses’ hooves. Maybe that was why her heartbeat was starting to gallop like a mare trying to elude the domineering stallion.
Oh Lord, she thought with disgust, what was wrong with her? Mares and stallions! Get a grip on yourself, Angel.
But Cooper did that, holding tighter as she tried to move away from him. The tug on her scalp didn’t hurt, but it did make her reckless.
“Is there some problem with the idea?” she asked baldly. “Why would you object to a story on your brother-in-law?”
“It’s not that.” He looked over her head, fingering her hair absently. “It might be good, as a matter of fact. Helpful.”
Helpful? Angel puzzled over that for a moment, but then decided to let it go. “So we’re set, then. You’ll talk to your sister about me?”
“You?” His gaze shifted back to her. “Oh, that’s right, there’s you,” he said, as if she were a bad taste in his mouth.
Angel had had enough. She grasped her hair above his hand and yanked. Free of him, she stepped back.
Then, remembering that artless charm had always been her friend, she gentled her voice and smiled up at him again. “Come now, you’ve certainly heard of freedom of the press. I don’t need your permission to write a story about Stephen Whitney.”
His eyebrows rose. “What do you know about the Sur?”
She shrugged, vowing to look through the intern’s research as soon as she checked into her room.
“It’s a reclusive area,” Cooper said. “Private. Its people are even more so. If we ask our friends and neighbors to shut you out, they will.”
Angel stifled her sigh. While she didn’t doubt that she could wheedle her way past a lot of ill will, it was so much easier when people wanted to talk. “I don’t understand what you’re being so cautious about,” she grumbled beneath her breath.
He heard, though, because he swiped a single fingertip along her cheek and asked, “Don’t you?”
The question hung in the air and the oxygen backed up in her lungs. Oh God, had he sensed that momentary flash of attraction she’d felt toward him in the church? The way his palm on her skin had made her quiver?
But before she could determine the answers, he turned abruptly away. “Reporters are…intrusive.”
“Yeah,” she admitted, breathing a little more easily. “Nosy might be a better word. But people like to talk about themselves and we writers are good listeners.”
“Too good, sometimes, at asking questions.”
Angel’s eyes narrowed. If she wasn’t mistaken, there spoke a voice of experience. Interesting. Very interesting. Mr. Inn Manager must have had some former run-in with the press.
Cooper swung around to face her. “How would you like someone probing into your life, your past?”
Without hesitation, Angel shrugged. “My life’s an open book.”
“Is that right?”
“Sure.” The gesture of her hand was carefully careless. “Ask me anything you want.”
“All right.” He settled back on his heels and crossed his arms over his chest again. “Where did you go to school?”
“Graduated from Bay High School in San Francisco.” No need to mention the seven elementary schools she’d attended before she and her mother had escaped to Europe. “I majored in journalism in college. When I graduated I’d already been interning at West Coast for two years. The magazine hired me and I’ve been working there ever since.”
“Family?”
She’d been skating over this forever. “It was just my mom and me for a long time.” Truth. “Now she’s remarried and lives in Paris.”
“Do you get along with your stepfather?”
She shrugged. “Sure.” At least he hadn’t abandoned her mother like Stephen Whitney. Or hurt her mother like the other bastard she’d hooked up with.
“And you like your work?”
“Love it.” When he didn’t say anything for a moment, she pulled out another of her trust-me smiles. “See how easy it is to answer questions? Piece of cake.”
“I’m not through yet.” He let her stew through another beat of silence. “Are you married?”
Funny, how the simplest question stumped her. When it came to this particular subject, she had nothing to cover up or cover over, but suddenly she wasn’t sure that telling Cooper Jones the truth was such a good idea.
There was that strange sense of recognition. That sexy little shimmy she felt inside just looking at him. “Uh…no,” she finally confessed.
“Engaged?”
Given that the fourth finger on her left hand was as bare as a baby’s behind, she didn’t think she could pull that one off either. “No.”
“Dating, then?”
“No,” she said a third time, staring down at her shoes and feeling like an idiot. The closest she’d been to male companionship lately, if you didn’t count Tom Jones the cat, was the articles on dating she read in Glamour, Mademoiselle, and Cosmo.
“Then this definitely isn’t going to work,” Cooper muttered.
Angel’s head jerked up. “What do you mean?”
“Someone else, maybe. Another reporter. But not you.” He started to move away.
Angel grabbed his arm. He’d taken off his suit jacket and she was diverted for a moment by the warmth of his skin and the fine linen of his shirt. Expensive duds for a guy in the service industry, she mused, tightening her fingers around his hard arm. “Another reporter from West Coast, another reporter from any publication, won’t tell the story that I will.”
“Angel—”
“An extensive, in-depth exploration of the art and the man. What’s the source of his immense popularity? What inspired him? What motivated him? I’ll write about his life.”
She hoped her voice didn’t sound as desperate as she felt. “And I’ll write about what he left behind.” She swallowed. “Who he left behind.”
“No—”
“—way will we turn her down just like that,” a feminine voice finished for him.
Angel whirled. It was Lainey Whitney. The artist’s widow gave her a small, tired smile. “I had a call from your editor—I’ve known Jane for years. She says you’d do a good job on the story.”
Trying to ignore the woman trailing him on the path through the woods, Cooper shifted the luggage in his grip and cursed the kindness of his sister. Not only had she practically agreed to cooperate on Angel Buchanan’s story, but she’d volunteered his services in guiding the woman to Tranquility House. Angel had appeared thrilled with his sister’s help on both counts. She’d still been smiling when they’d climbed out of their cars in the Tranquility parking lot, and though he should have known better, it had worked a spell on him. He’d offered to help her with her bag.
She had a bag, all right. Bags. Luggage. He had three bulging totes cross-strapped over his chest and a briefcase in each hand. The weight of them kept his pace along the softly lit path slow and steady. Behind him, she trundled a suitcase the size of a steamer
trunk on wheels.
“Wow, she said. “It smells so good here. The trees, right?”
He didn’t bother to answer, because over the rich scent of ferns and redwoods, what he was smelling was her city-girl perfume. It caused old memories to surface, the sharp sound of ice striking a rocks glass at a cocktail party, the gut-tightening anticipation he’d felt in the crowded elevators that took him to a courtroom and his next case, the casual pleasure of a beautiful woman passing him on a city street, her hurry affording him glimpses of her rounded ass shifting beneath an austere business suit.
For the first time in months, the craving for a cigarette pierced him.
Biting back an oath, he picked up his pace.
So did she, her mouth speeding up along with it. “I’ve never been to this area before. It’s almost as if nature has swallowed us up.”
That had been his grandparents’ intention, to make their guests realize that they belonged to nature and not the other way around. But he didn’t want Angel appreciating what Tranquility House and the Sur had to offer. Not when he had good reasons for booting Ms. Buchanan out of his family’s business.
“Growing up here must have been something out of Huckleberry Finn or Treasure Island. Pirates and shipwrecks and mermaids.”
He grunted. It had been idyllic growing up with the woods and the ocean as his private playground. But then Cooper had become the man of the family and play had been supplanted with twenty-hour workdays fueled by too much coffee and too many cigarettes. All three had become a lifelong habit.
“We’ll get some great photos of the area for the article.” Angel was still chattering away, fueled by who knew what. Nerves, maybe, because he could feel something waving off her whenever they were alone.
Something. Hah. He wasn’t so out of touch that he couldn’t remember what mutual sexual awareness was like. That and his lawyer’s inherent distrust of the press were the reasons he didn’t want her doing the story, even though the family was in no position to turn down the publicity.
But sex in the air would distract him from the serious business of making sure any press would depict his brother-in-law in just the right manner. Stephen’s licensing venture included the trademarking of the “Artist of the Heart” phrase and the use of certain Whitney images on everything from Christmas decorations to floral arrangements.
It was imperative to keep the Whitney name untarnished, and to keep it in the forefront of the public’s mind. Otherwise, no one would call FTD for an “Artist of the Heart” bouquet, no one would buy the “Artist of the Heart” bed-in-a-bag set at Macy’s.
No income would be generated for his sisters and his niece.
“You know, I keep thinking that I know you.”
Angel’s comment jerked his focus back, and he stumbled.
“Do you think it’s possible we met somewhere?”
Without turning to look at her, he shook his head.
“Are you sure?”
The landscape lighting was bright enough for her to see him, so he merely shook his head again.
They reached the first buildings of Tranquility House. The “house” was actually comprised of two dozen stucco cottages tucked for privacy among the trees, yet all within walking distance of a grass-covered clearing and an adjacent communal structure that housed a kitchen, dining room, first aid area, and office space.
“Are these the housekeepers’ units?” Angel asked, slowing. “I like extra pillows. Will I need to call for them, or can we just stop and gather them up? And what about dry cleaning?” Her chin tilted toward the trees towering over them. “You must need a satellite dish for television. Shoot, I was having trouble using my cell phone at the inn. How does yours do out here?”
Cooper halted, turning to stare at her. Extra pillows. Dry cleaning. Cell phones and satellite dishes. Then he grinned to himself. Oh, this was going to be good. Better yet, easy.
Angel Buchanan wouldn’t be staying long.
“Well?” she said, sounding half-puzzled and half-impatient. “Are you going to answer my questions or are you just going to stand there looking silently amused?”
Though darkness ringed them, the light from the outside fixture of a nearby cabin made perfectly legible one of the several signs posted around the Tranquility property. Angel’s expression wasn’t quite so readable as he dumped her stuff at his feet and then approached her.
She made a muffled noise when he detached her grip on her rolling suitcase, but she didn’t protest as he used her shoulders to push her toward the wooden sign that depicted the “Tranquility House Tenets.”
Perhaps she couldn’t believe her eyes, because she spoke the painted words out loud. “‘Please respect nature’s noise. No radios. No TVs. No phones.’” Her head whipped around to stare at him as she read out the last rule. “‘No talking’?”
He only smiled in response.
It was either her surprise or his smile that kept her quiet until he got her into her cottage. That’s when the fun really started. After showing her in, then shoving her stuff over the threshold, he stepped inside and shut the door behind him.
He watched as her gaze roamed over the unadorned white walls, the simple woodburning stove, the stack of wood beside it, the narrow bed made up with white sheets and a gray wool blanket. One pillow.
Several silent moments went by. Finally, she looked at him, her expression full of hope. “The magazine will pay for a room upgrade,” she tried.
He shook his head.
“This is all there is?”
He nodded.
“No salon services?.”
He shook his head again.
“And I…and I can’t say anything to anyone?”
She looked so dejected it was hard to keep a straight face. “Not in the common building or on the grounds of the retreat. But you’re free to speak in the confines of your own cabin.”
“Retreat.” She rolled the word in her mouth as if she’d never heard it before. “This isn’t a resort, it’s a retreat.”
He tried not to laugh. “Right. Definitely not a resort.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Hey, you’re enjoying this.”
Immensely. It meant that all his worries were for nothing. No doubt the spartan atmosphere would send her hightailing it for home, tomorrow probably, or at the very least she’d hie herself to some resort that would keep her at a safe distance from his family and from him.
Still, he made an effort to wipe the smugness from his face. “Don’t worry, all is not lost,” he said, crossing to the tiny closet to pull open its door.
From the top shelf he snagged something, handing it to her as if it were a special prize. “Your extra pillow, Ms. Buchanan,” he said solemnly. “Accept this as your official welcome to Tranquility House. And please don’t hesitate to call on me if I can assist with any of your other needs.”
Her eyes narrowed on him again. There was something on her face; speculation, maybe. Or maybe it was sex, because suddenly he replayed what he’d just said—call on me if I can assist with any of your other needs.
Damn. Though it was surprising the hell out of him after all this time, the one with needs was him. His blood moved heavily toward his groin while his brain went off on its own, fantasizing an image of her on the bed, that angel hair spread across the first pillow, the second shoved beneath her naked hips. He saw his mouth trailing from the pulse at her throat down to—
“You know, there’s something about you…” Speculation filled her voice.
Yes, it was definitely speculation, not sex, and it chilled his blood and slowed his heartbeat and probably saved him to see another day.
“I’ll be going now,” he said, quelling the worry that she’d recognize him by reminding himself he was about to get rid of her. “Though there’s just a few more things…”
“Tomorrow’s menu?”
Poor kid was still thinking resort. “Meals are served in the community building. It’s the largest one and you should have no
trouble finding it. But I’m afraid Judd handles all the culinary details, so I don’t know what’s being served.”
She sighed, her expression glum. “Okay. I can take it as it comes.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, speaking of, uh, taking…Tranquility House has an ironclad policy. All its guests must relinquish anything that runs on batteries or electricity.” With a nod, he indicated one of the briefcase-sized bags he’d set down. “Like your laptop there.”
“No! Not my computer.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Those are the rules, and have been since my grandparents built this place. If you need writing implements, we have paper and pens available.”
She scowled. “I have paper and pens.” After a moment’s hesitation, she waved at him with a hand. “Go ahead, fine. It’s all yours.”
As he bent to lift it, she turned away to push her big suitcase into the corner with her foot. “Is there anything else?” he asked her.
“No, only the one laptop.”
“I mean, anything else that runs on batteries or electricity?”
“Nope.” She wasn’t looking at him.
He cleared his throat again. “I believe you mentioned you have a cell phone.”
She froze, muttered, “Me and my big mouth,” then stomped over to another bag to retrieve it. She slapped it into his outstretched palm. “There. Satisfied?”
“As long as that’s all you have.” His eyebrow lifted. “Is it?”
“Yes.”
He lifted his other brow.
“Yes!”
“Uh, Angel, I may be a man, but I grew up with two sisters.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her gaze slid off his face.
Sighing, he prompted her. “Come on, every woman I know uses one. You must have with you—”
“Well!” Her eyes widened in offended embarrassment. “I can’t believe you’d have the nerve—the nerve!—to mention it.”
He blinked. “It?”
“You know…” Her expresson was all innocence. “My vibrator.”
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