planting in her mind the notion that it was she who chose to end the
possibility of that kiss.
She swallowed and straightened. Disappointment sparked in her heart,
then guilt. A year had passed. She missed Keller so much, craved his
touch and his warmth and his love so badly, that she had tumbled to a
total stranger and pretended it was Keller.
And as if that weren't enough, no matter how disloyal and wicked she
ought to feel, her eyes still fixed greedily on the bronzed hairs at
Kiel's throat. She admitted to herself that she had wanted that
kiss.
She took a deep breath, reassuring herself that it didn't make her a
despicable person, and that she still controlled her destiny. Whatever
attraction she felt to this man, this... angel, she could handle. She
look ex up at him. "What now?"
"Let me help you, Robyn. I promise you we will get to the bottom of
Keller's death."
"I make the calls?"
"So long as I'm with you," he agreed, an unruly lock of bronze hair
falling over his brow, "you make the calls ." '
"Good." She angled her head toward the open door and the invisible
barrier that blocked out the weather and shut her in. "You can start
by opening the cage door."
Without the least outward sign that he was banishing the force field,
he did so. When she could smell the snow and feel the cold, Robyn
accepted the absurd. Kiel had supernatural powers.
Devil or angel?
She had no basis for a decision other than his word, which even with
her deeply ingrained 'skepticism, she somehow, finally, believed.
Kiel must be an angel.
She could trust him. Together, they would avenge both Keller's death
and that of Spyder Nielsen's, the man whose murder remained unsolved
and unpunished because Keller had died before his time.
SHE WANTED TO DO THINGS the ordinary way. No angel tricks, and she
made that clear. He donned shoes and socks and put the small piece of
ivory carving in his sheepskin coat pocket. His boots, the Sorels, one
of the true trademarks of a native of the Rockies, looked broken in,
another trademark.
"Your ear," he said, "is on the other side of that ridge. Am you sure
you want to hike out of here?"
"I'm sure." The snow had stopped and the clouds parted. Sunlight
glittered on the blanket of white snow, reducing it to drifts and
patches where the late summer alpine flowers peeked through. Bedraggled
as they were, the pretty blue wood asters, columbines and alpine
gentian weren't ready to give up the ghost for winter.
Robyn took heart from their example and went through the door. "I
could use the exercise. Besides--" she shot Kiel a look "--you can't
be popping up with golden steeds and mountain hideaways all the time.
Not if you're sticking with me."
"No more wish fulfillment?"
"None. Mitts off my fantasies, Kiel." She glared at him. "They're
mine, and they're secret, and they won't be fantasies anymore if you
make them come true. I'm
SeriOUS." '
His look said it was her seriousness that was the problem. "You've
heard why angels can fly, haven't you?"
"Because they take themselves so. lightly She rolled her eyes. Every
angel book in a decidedly flooded angel-book market contained some
variation on the theme. "Silly me. I thought it was the wings."
But without any wings of her own she was feeling incredibly light on
her feet, and stronger than she had been even before the rotting mine
shaft timbers had crushed her legs. Toting her own suitcase on
principle, Robyn struck out in the direction Kiel had indicated.
He caught up with her, matching his much longer stride to hers. Dressed
in jeans and the plaid flannel shirt, he let the gorgeous shin-length
sheepskin coat flap open. They went along for several moments in
silence. Robyn spent the time thinking about how striking the deal
with Kiel had changed her own plans to confront Stuart Willetts and
Trudi Candelaria.
After a while she also unzipped her parka--the one she hadn't packed,
either--and put back the rabbit-fur-lined hood. The sun warmed
everything in Colorado, melting off snowfall in a few hours everywhere
but atop the fourteen-thousand-foot mountain peaks.
Rugged granite dominated the landscape. She picked her way across the
rocky ground, choosing a path over damp layers of pine needles. It was
easy to believe in back country like this that you might never find
your way out. She should be thanking Kiel--without him she would have
had no idea which way to go to get back to the road. On the other
hand, she wouldn't he where she didn't know where she was if it weren't
for him.
She spotted two squirrels chasing each other over a boulder jutting out
of the ground. The bushy-tailed little guy in the lead must once have
put up a hell of a fight--he had a raggedy ear and only one front leg.
Kiel stopped and knelt to watch the pair of squirrels. Robyn finally
asked herself the obvious question... why wasn't her own leg' actively
protesting the strenuous hike?
She gave Kiel a sideways glance. "Are you going to fix the squirrel's
leg, too?"
"No leg to fix." He kept watching the pair of squirrels. "I didn't
fix your leg, either. I just speeded up the progress you would have
made yourself."
"Put it back. I'd rather do it myself."
Squinting against the sun, he gave her a quizzical look. "You really
want it back the way it was?"
"No." She meant to say yes, but the truth popped out. How contrary
would she have to be to wish her leg ached again? She had to clamp her
jaw hard so her chin didn't start trembling. His question went to her
heart, to the way she dealt with the world.
She put her suitcase down on a rock and sat down on the one next to
that folding her long legs up like a grasshopper and wrapping her arms
around them. While everyone left in her life was busy encouraging her,
telling her how well she was fighting back, coping and rehabilitating,
she didn't much like herself anymore.
She didn't even like her plan to march in and get in Stuart Willetts's
face about his affair with Trudi. The whole idea lacked any hint of
the finesse she had prided herself on in her career.
"I didn't used to be like this," she said, resting her chin on her
knees, watching a patch of snow melt away under the blazing sun. Kiel
sat down beside her. "My dad was always making whatever happened that
didn't suit him into this huge battle. There always had to be someone
else at fault, something to be overcome, some evildoer to be defeated.
You 'n' me against the world, kid, he'd say."
She didn't want to be against the world--with or without her father,
she. explained to Kiel. And she hadn't been, not since she'd figured
it all out at the tender age of eight when Bobbie Cantwell stomped her
100 percent spelling paper into the mud on the playground and she
decked him and her third-grade teacher made her come back inside the
school room
and write one hundred times on the blackboard Fighting is
never the answer.
But this past year she had let everything in her life be reduced to
fighting. She had to fight to live after Keller had died, fight the
dark inside and out, fight to recover, fight to perform the grueling
physical therapy work, fight her stubborn heart, fight a mugger, and
now, fight her leg being better even though doing so made no sense at
all.
Kiel cuffed her gently on the chin when she had spilled all that
letting his fist come to rest on her shoulder. "Some things are worth
fighting for, Robyn." Her name sounded like an endearment on his lips.
"You just have to be a little more discriminating."
"Tears prickled at her eyelids. She nodded. "I know." She blinked
back the pooling tears.
"This rule about angel tricks, for instance," he said, straight-faced,
his smiling eyes goading her out of her pity party. He gestured toward
the cabin, which still sat nestled at the low point of the valley. "I
can't exactly leave a mountain hideaway where there isn't supposed to
be one."
Robyn looked askance. "You remind me of Keller's five-year-old nephew,
Nicholas." "Me?" he croaked. "Is that so surprising?" "Well... I've
never been a kid."
"Well, you're just like him. One more angel trick is the same thing as
one more cookie or one last glass of water before bed. In a pinch
he'll even go for another kiss." She smiled. "Though Nicholas isn't
real big on kisses anymore."
Kiel laughed, but the sound faded in the thin mountain air. "Give him
a few years."
Robyn broke off the look Kiel gave her. "Do your angel thing, Kiel."
He did the angel thing and made the mountain cabin where he had made
love to her vanish into thin air. The human thing, kissing Nicholas
Trueblood's auntie again, would have been a terrible mistake.
DESPITE HER UNHAPPINFS with her plan to confront Stuart Willetts and
Trudi Candelaria, she knew it had to be done. If nothing else, Robyn
thought, the respectful, professional approach was to allow them both
to state their side of the story.
When Kiel led her back to her small coupe, the snow had melted, and the
ease with which Kiel pushed her out of the mud made her shake her
head.
She pulled a U-turn and headed back down the mountain. She needed a
shower and fresh clothes. She drove to The Chandler House, a
bed-and-breakfast in Aspen proper, checked in to her small
Victorian-style bedroom, showered and lay down for a while. Later,
alone in the four-poster bed, Robyn woke and got up, enormously
reenergized.
Kiel had arranged a light supper to be brought in on trays. By seven
that night, Robyn was prepared. Kiel stopped her only long enough to
put around her neck the small ivory carving he had completed and strung
on a fine strand of gold. Standing behind her at an elaborately framed
mirror near the door, he showed her what it was.
Robyn stared at the intricate pair of angel's wings, joined in the
middle, resting against her flesh. The ivory seemed to take on the
radiance and sheen and warmth of the strand of gold. Centered in the
deep V-neck of her mauve mohair sweater, the tiny wings were more
beautiful than those of a butterfly.
"A reminder," he said.
She swallowed; the wings seemed what?"
"That an angel takes herself lightly."
to move. "Of
THE HOME OF THE MURDERED Spyder Nielsen sat on the most coveted piece
of residential property in all of Pit-kin County, Colorado. The view,
the sheer panorama, was unmatched anywhere in the Colorado Rockies.
The house itself was enormous, eleven thousand square feet, Robyn knew.
Foreign nationals, princes with fabulous wealth, had built houses in
the area nearing fifty-thousand square feet, so this house could only
be called pretentious in a relative way.
As Robyn drove up the circle drive and parked near the garage, she
thought this was the most stunning, natural use of granite and glass
she had ever seen. The native landscaping hid the single-story house
from the view of the road until the last possible second. Such was the
power of very deep pockets.
Spyder Nielsen had parlayed his ski jumping into a reputation exceeded
only by his fortune, and Trudi Can-delaria, by escaping the conviction
for his murder, had fallen heir to it all.
Robyn drew a deep breath and opened her door slowly, but Kiel bolted
from the car. Accustomed as he was to flying to the stars, traveling
the firmament, closed-in spaces smaller than a house this size made him
crazy. Panicked by the dark, she knew what that kind of phobia was all
about, but she was still smiling when Kiel punched the doorbell. Angels
with egos and phobias amused her.
A sharp-faced middle-aged woman answered the door. "Ja?"
This was not a surprise. Frau Kautz had returned from her holiday, but
Robyffs curiosity rose. Elsa Kautz had been Spyder Nielsen's
housekeeper long before he ever brought Trudi Candelaria home. Robyn
would have expected Trudi to get rid of her, or that the woman would
not have wanted to stay on with the woman accused of murdering Elsa's
beloved Spyder.
Robyn sucked in a quick breath and stepped forward. "Frau Kautz, my
name is Robyn Delaney. This is my associate, Kiel..." She rushed on,
not having thought to ask what he used for a last name. "We've come to
see Ms. Trudi Candelaria, if we may, and Mr. Stuart Willetts. Are
they--"
"Kiel?" she interrupted, looking right through Robyn. "What kind of
name--"
"Ezekiel, Fran Kautz." He turned on a thousand-candle smile, glided
forward, took the daunting woman's hand and kissed her knuckles in a
gesture reminiscent of a European count. "Kiel Alighieri. At your
service." In spite of herself Elsa's stern visage cracked.
Kiel pressed his narrow advantage, "Ms. Delaney is a famous writer.
She's considering a work on Spyder Niel It took all Robyffs mental
resources not to go slack-jawed at Kiel's choice of a surname to use,
or his approach. This wasn't the game plan--wasn't even close to the
cover they had decided upon, but he was winging it blithely past a
barrier Robyn. hadn't prepared for, deftly turning the forbidding Frau
Kautz from a harpy at the gates into a valuable ally.
With a few brilliantly conceived asides on how vital the old Frau would
be to the success of the biography, Kiel had the woman leading them
into the house, through the icy elegance of the stark and Pristine
white living room and the superlative ambience of a dining room done in
shades of gray and mauve.
"Alighieri?" Robyn managed to whisper as they followed Frau Kautz.
"Yeah," he grinned without even looking at her, talking sideways. "You
know, Dante's surname?"
"I know Dante," she whispered disgustedly, "I've just never seen such
rank impudence!"
"Me, neither," he shrugged, still grinning. "Just a lit-He spin on the
inferno thing since I'm down--never mind. Show time."
In the massive entertainment room where they had arrived, Trudi
Candelaria sat curled up on a chaise longue flipping indolently through
a recent copy of Town & Country. Dressed in gray raw silk leggings and
a pink cashmere sweater, she had kicked off a pair of gold sandals
Robyn had recently seen on sale in Denver for three hundred dollars.
The room itself was enormous. Twenty-foot ceilings, three conversation
pits, a fireplace at each end, floor-to-ceiling glass windows. A wall
of glass, really, perfectly framing the Maroon Bells, the most famous
and photographed mountain peaks in all of Colorado. An Enya CD played
on a flawless acoustic system.
Facing the double French doors into the room, Stuart Willetts sat at
the foot of the chaise massaging Trudi Candelaria's feet.
Robyn's anger at Willetts, at this proof that he had in truth taken up
with Trudi Candelaria, rose like bile in her throat. She exchanged
glances with Kiel. She felt a calming aura swathe her. She could
almost hear Kiel's sentiment. Easy, Robyn. Frau Kautz rapped softly
on the doorframe.
"What is it, Elsa?" Trudi deigned to glance up from her fashion
magazine. She seemed indifferent to visitors, and gave no hint of
recognizing Robyn. Willetts ignored the interruption entirely 'until
Trudi's interest sharpened when she saw Kiel.
"A Ms. Robyn Delaney to see you, ma'am, and Mr. Kiel Alighieri. Ms.
Delaney is a famous author interested in interviewing you for Spyder's
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