Do Not Disturb

by Christie Ridgway

  With her other hand, she reached up to toy with the ends of his shaggy hair. “But it could be fun, though. Wouldn’t it be fun?”

  His gaze narrowed. His fingers folded over hers.

  She tried to suck in some air, but her lungs seemed already overfull. Breathe out, Angel, breathe out. “We could—” She cleared her throat, trying to make her voice stronger, more confident. Bravado had always worked when she was a little girl, scared and lonely. “We could start with a kiss.”

  Beneath her hand, she felt the quick jolt of his heart. “No—”

  “Unless you’re afraid.”

  Be afraid, Cooper! She willed it, willed him to back away and admit that she’d won. That he shouldn’t ever underestimate her again.

  “‘Afraid’?” His voice roughened. “Of you? How could I possibly be afraid of a woman who looks like I should put a hook through her hair and hang her from a Christmas tree?”

  Then his free hand clapped against the small of her back to jam her against the front of his body. His mouth fell against hers.

  Angel’s mind slid from “tree” to torch to fire. Oh wow. She was on fire. But she opened her lips to its source and let him try to cool her with the stroke of his tongue. More heat sprinted down her body as he thrust it inside. Her fingers speared through his hair to keep his head bent to hers.

  He curved his forearm around her waist to haul her up on her toes and even closer against him. His body was Grade A, she’d seen that, but now she felt it, hard to her soft, protrusion to her intrusion. She wiggled against the firm plane of his chest and felt his groan through her hand that still covered his heart.

  She slid her hand out from between them and used it to touch him everywhere she could reach, racing it across his shoulders, his biceps, the granite wall of his back. He was all lean muscle and hot skin, and she couldn’t get enough of it.

  His mouth moved across her face and she turned hers against his neck, running her tongue over the faint stubble and the tangy taste of man. Everything inside of her was liquid, it was only Cooper who was holding her up, and when his lips found hers again she leaned into him, to absorb more of the flavor and feel of his body.

  It’s a delicious weakness, she realized, widening her mouth to take the heavy thrust of his tongue. And only he can save me from it.

  The thought, the fear of it being true pierced the hot haze. Locking her knees, she shoved against Cooper. Then, standing alone, standing straight, she took a step away.

  They stared at each other, and she was gratified that at least he was panting like she was.

  “What the hell was that?” he demanded, raking his hand through his hair. “What the hell was that?”

  Her revenge, her payback, her countermove, her way of keeping things cool between them. God, he would laugh her out of the room if she tried those out now. Angel scrubbed her hands over her face to hide how they trembled.

  “My mistake,” she finally said. Though it chagrined her to admit it, she’d underestimated him. Without thinking, she touched her fingertips to her mouth, and finding it still burning, jerked them away.

  He was still staring at her.

  “I…I’m sorry.” She rushed toward the door, opened it, was almost all the way through before he spoke.

  “Me too, Angel,” he called to her. “Me too.”

  It took Angel several hours to recover her equilibrium. But in the early evening, she ventured into the woods surrounding the retreat, eyeing the untamed environment with a new interest. Her last meal had been two bites of an unappetizing tofu-and-sprouts sandwich, so her grumbling stomach had her wondering just exactly what parts of the forest were edible.

  She splashed through a trickle of stream, disturbing a frog. It hopped off a few feet, to the camouflage of a feathery fern, and watched her with a nervous air. Like chicken, Angel remembered, assessing the plump little creature. She’d eaten frog legs on occasion during the six months she and her mother had lived in Paris.

  Her foot took a stealthy step forward.

  Good Lord! She jerked her boot back and her mind away from the tantalizing memory of meat in a delicate white wine sauce and a fluffy side serving of garlic mashed potatoes swimming in butter. “You’re safe from me, little buddy,” she reassured the frog.

  At least for now.

  “It’s this place,” she muttered to herself. It brought out the weirdest impulses in her. She hadn’t wanted a man in ages, and she’d never before wanted to capture her own meal either.

  At the moment, she wasn’t sure which worried her more.

  She tramped onward, following the sound and smell of the sea. A few minutes at the spot Katie had showed her yesterday might clear her head.

  But she missed the route they’d taken and was forced to backtrack. By the time she reached the edge of the trees, the sun was hovering just above the horizon and the spot was already occupied.

  Cooper and Katie sat silently side by side, their backs to Angel. For a moment she didn’t move, because it was such a pretty image with that backdrop of setting sun. The man’s hair fluttering back in the wind, his shoulder brushing the young girl’s. Katie’s knees were bent, her arms wrapped around them. She stared out at the sky.

  The sun slipped another notch and the breeze died. In the well of quiet it left, Angel heard the girl’s voice. “Mom wants me to go back to school tomorrow.”

  Cooper didn’t move. “Are you ready?”

  She shrugged, one of those teenage gestures that conveyed nothing at all.

  They were silent again, and even the sea went quiet enough that Angel didn’t think she could creep off without detection. So she stood where she was, surrounded by the smell of pines and salty air.

  Cooper raked a hand through his hair, revealing his frustration. She could feel his question in the air, her own mother had said it to her a thousand times. Are you all right? he’d ask any moment now.

  And Katie would answer as only such a question could be answered, the only answer the questioner wanted to hear.

  Instead of crying, yelling, railing against fate and fathers and fear, the girl would say the same words Angel had answered a thousand and one times herself. I’m fine.

  Cooper’s hand speared through his hair again. “It sucks, Katie. This sucks.”

  Both Angel and Katie jolted. The girl took a quick breath, but didn’t give her uncle a glance. “No, no. I’m fine,” she said quickly. “Just fine.”

  The words, the way they were said with so little emotion or inflection, poked at Angel like a dulled pin.

  Cooper reached over to rest his hand on the crown of his niece’s head. “I’ve been fine before, sweetheart,” he told her. “Just that same kind of fine. And it sucks too.”

  Angel’s throat squeezed at the bittersweet feeling in the words. Then it squeezed again when Cooper’s hand fell to Katie’s shoulder and drew her closer against his side.

  The girl didn’t protest, but she didn’t snuggle either, and that stiffness pricked at Angel again. She remembered Cooper with his arm around the girl and her mother at the memorial service and it had almost hurt then too, that sign of a man’s support. But now the pain she felt was for Katie, that the teen couldn’t, wouldn’t let herself be comforted by him.

  Little girls needed someone to stand between them and the big, bad world.

  She didn’t hear Cooper’s sigh, but she saw the way his shoulders moved slowly up, then down. “It’s a pretty good sunset, though, eh?” He reached up to fluff Katie’s hair. “Some days that’s all we have, so we might as well enjoy it.”

  Angel’s throat tightened again and the wind whipped up so that it stung her eyes, even in her sheltered hide-away. A clear signal for her to get a move on, she reprimanded herself. She’d been stalling, just as she’d been doing since her arrival at Tranquility House.

  As silently as she could, she headed back for her cottage. As soon as she got there, she’d develop a list of questions for her first interview with Katie’s mother. Thou
gh she’d pretended to herself for two days that she’d been soaking up atmosphere, she’d really been putting off interviewing the new widow. But the only thing that stalling had bought her was trouble with Cooper and this uncomfortable empathy for Katie.

  So Angel steeled her spine. If Katie’s mother thought Katie was ready to go back to school, then Katie’s mother was probably ready to talk about Stephen Whitney. She’d agreed, after all. She wanted Angel to do the story.

  The truth would set them all free.

  So, yes, it was time to put scruples, sex, and sisters aside. Especially since, so far, they’d only brought her trouble. WWWD?

  What Would Woodward Do? He’d get on with the story and then get out of here.

  Chapter 7

  For her meeting with Stephen Whitney’s widow, her first actual interview relating to the story, Angel dressed carefully. The September sun was searing hot again, so she selected a filmy, flowered dress. Her mother would have called it a “lady dress” and Angel thought a ladylike image would work well for her today.

  The night before she’d written a thorough list of questions, and then added several more this morning. Though her goal was to make the interview an extensive one, she’d try to let the other woman feel as if she were leading the conversation. People always revealed more when the questioning didn’t feel like an interrogation.

  Her hair was an untamable mess, but short of begging the widow for twenty minutes with a hairdryer and an electrical outlet, she was going to have to live with it. Sighing, she slipped on a thin, bead-and-wire headband to keep it out of her eyes.

  And last, for luck, for remembrance, and mostly because she was going nuts in the prevailing silence of the retreat, she latched her gold charm bracelet on her left wrist. The links bore a keepsake from each of the cities she’d lived in while on the run. Though they’d always been low on money, her mother had insisted on buying the charms. Angel suspected her mother had hoped it would make their secret life seem more like an exciting adventure than a life-and-death necessity.

  It was the thought that counted.

  She strolled toward the common building, in search of directions to the Whitney house. She hadn’t been face-to-face with Cooper since their kiss the day before, so she was just as happy to find Judd presiding over the breakfast buffet. And then even happier when he offered—via paper and pen—to not only show her the shortcut through the woods, but go with her himself.

  In less than half an hour, they found Lainey Whitney behind her house, on the flagstoned surface surrounding the pool. In a sundress, large hat, and gardening gloves, she was plucking withered pink blooms from a flourishing geranium. With a farewell wave, Judd disappeared.

  “He visits my sister at this same time every day,” Lainey explained.

  Angel was still trying to grasp what she’d learned about the man on the way over. “He doesn’t talk,” she said, looking again at the scrap of paper he’d pressed into her hand. “Not just at Tranquility, he doesn’t talk anywhere.”

  With the back of her wrist, Lainey pushed up the sagging brim of her sunhat. “He came to the retreat five years ago for a couple of weeks. He’s never left, or spoken, since.”

  Shaking her head, Angel shoved the note into the satchel she carried. “Weird.”

  “Maybe only because you don’t know his reasons why.”

  Reasons why. The innocent comment snapped Angel’s focus back to her purpose. She was here to find out another man’s reasons why. “You’re right, of course. And I’m sorry, Mrs. Whitney, for barging in on you like this. But since I don’t have access to a phone, I couldn’t determine if you had time to talk to me any other way.”

  “Time?” The other woman let out a strained laugh, even as her eyes went wet. “I wonder what I’m going to do with all the time I have.”

  Tears, Angel thought, her stomach clutching and her grip tightening on her satchel. Why hadn’t she thought to bring Kleenex? “I’m, uh, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Lainey, you don’t have to talk today if you don’t feel up to it,” a voice called from behind Angel.

  Cooper’s voice. Annoyed with his interference, she turned.

  And forgot why she was irritated with him. He had gloves on too, leather ones, their saddle-tan the color of his bare chest. His scar drew her attention, of course, but not any more than his wide shoulders and the heavy bands of muscle that rippled toward the low-slung cutoffs he was wearing. She’d termed his body Grade A before, but now she knew it was just plain great. So great, in fact, she had a sudden urge to run her tongue along—

  Shocked by the foreign craving, Angel stumbled back.

  “Watch out!” Cooper started for her.

  Which only caused Angel to retreat another step. But her sandaled foot only found air—the air over the surface of the pool—and she knew she was tipping. Then Cooper clamped on to her wrist and hauled her away from the edge.

  She yanked her arm out of his grasp, stroking the place he’d touched. “Ouch.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Most women would thank me for saving them…again.”

  Determined to keep herself from further danger, she turned her back on him to address his sister. “But truly, he’s right. If this isn’t a good time…”

  There was a different gleam in Lainey Whitney’s eyes now. “How about you? You look a little…flushed.”

  “She needs coffee,” Cooper put in, striding past them to retrieve a pair of long-bladed hedge clippers.

  Lainey frowned. “It’s too hot for—”

  “Coffee,” Cooper asserted again, attacking a nearby bush. “You won’t believe what it awakens in her.”

  Angel shot him a dirty look even as she felt her face going redder. “Coffee would be great, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, of course.” She refused to enjoy the play of muscles along Cooper’s back. “Maybe in the kitchen?”

  To her relief, the widow went along with the plan. Within seconds Angel was away from Cooper’s distracting presence and sitting at a long pine table in the expansive Whitney kitchen. Painted in a wash of pearly pastels, the walls and the country-style cabinets glowed in the morning light.

  Certain that by now they’d passed the greeting and casual conversation stages, she tossed out a polite compliment to finalize the interview warm-up. “It’s a lovely room, Mrs. Whitney.”

  If you liked Easter eggs and Italian sugared almonds.

  “Please, call me Lainey.” The other woman moved between the pantry and countertop with practiced ease. “I love this room too. After An Invitation Home, of course.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s the first of Stephen’s paintings that gained him national exposure. I’m sure you must have seen it….” She crossed quickly to a towering bookcase, then crossed back to slide a hardbound coffee-table book in Angel’s direction. “Here. It’s on the cover.”

  It was a book on Stephen Whitney’s work. The glossy image on the cover was a kitchen, like this one painted with colors usually exclusive to the Easter Rabbit. No modern appliances in sight, but flowers spilled out of an old-fashioned milk bottle sitting on a gleaming countertop. A child’s shoes were tumbled in a corner as if just tossed there by their owner. On a center table, old-fashioned canisters marked “Flour” and “Sugar” were opened, some of their contents dribbled onto the surface. Beside them was a bowl of dough with a wooden spoon stuck inside and a heavy platter filled with cookies.

  The only things missing were Aunt Bea, Opie, and any sense of reality.

  “Nice,” Angel said, as her gaze snagged on the signature of the artist. It read “Stephen Whitney,” all right, the W larger than the rest of the letters and sort of scallop-edged. Bothered by it somehow, she looked away. “Very, um, nice.”

  “Can’t you just see it?” Lainey asked, pausing to admire the image herself. “Whoever received the invitation home has just rung the bell and the family has rushed out of the kitchen to greet the arrival.”

  “Sure.” It w
as hard to argue with a woman wearing that sentimental half-smile. Still, it was time to get their little show on the road. “Lainey, would you mind if I record our conversation?”

  The other woman agreed, but there was a hesitation to it, so Angel decided against immediately retrieving the small recorder from her satchel. Instead, she tapped the book cover with her fingernail. “Is this your favorite of your late—of Mr. Whitney’s—paintings? An Invitation Home?”

  “Oh, that’s hard to say.” Lainey slid a sugar and creamer onto the table. “By the way, where’s your home, Angel?”

  She blinked. “My home? I live in San Francisco. I have an apartment on Sacramento Street in Pacific Heights.”

  “Do you enjoy living in the city?” Spoon, saucer, and cup clacked onto the tabletop.

  Angel leaned back in her chair. “Yes. I’ve lived in cities, some bigger, some smaller, all my life.” In a city, a woman and child could blend in. Be anonymous. Be forgotten. She fingered a charm on her bracelet, the St. Louis arch, sandwiched between the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben.

  Lainey scraped out the chair across the table. “You never lived in a small town?”

  Angel lifted the cup the other woman had placed before her, sipped. “Well, one summer we lived in a tiny village in northern Germany. I was horribly bored. Though there was a VCR and a large video collection, I didn’t know a word of German. My mom finally managed to find the only English language video in the area. It was All the President’s Men and I must have watched it a zillion times.”

  “Ah-ha! And a reporter was born.”

  Angel nodded, then caught herself. Wait, wait, wait! She was supposed to be interviewing Lainey, not the other way around. Taking another bolstering sip of her coffee, she tried thinking of a way to segue to Stephen Whitney. Her gaze drifted out the window, and then her focus drifted too, because Cooper, biceps bulging, was trundling by with a wheelbarrow of trimmings. Maybe she sighed.