by Carly Bishop
She waited at the traffic light a few feet away from the teenagers eyeing her obscenely. She swallowed hard and straightened her spine, refusing to be intimidated.
Cradling Seth at her shoulder, she crossed the street back to where she had begun. The scarred sanctuary door, marked with graffiti she hadn’t noticed before, brought home a sick, defeated feeling. Humbled—humiliated—so quickly, so easily, Isobel knew she would have to come up with a better plan.
She sank back down on the decaying adobe stoop and leaned against the rough plaster wall. Exhausted from his ordeal, sleeping longer, maybe, in his shock, Seth had gone without waking. He wouldn’t make it much longer.
She rested her head on the door and prepared to wait, trying to imagine what she would have done if she still had the powers of a guardian angel.
She had been aided already. Someone, some angel, had driven off her attackers. She knew that because it was only by a miracle that she had escaped with Seth.
And somehow in all the confusion and hysteria, she had been left alone with little Seth. No one had come looking for her or the babe—not the police or paramedics—and that must have been an angel’s touch too, leaving her time to comfort and ease the traumatized child into sleep.
But now she needed more help.
Now she needed the parish priest to return. With her angelic powers she might have found him and put the imperative into his mind—whether or not he had intended to drop by this afternoon or not.
In her very human fantasy of herself imagining her way out of this corner, the priest would know of a sanctuary where she might go to stay with Seth until she could get her bearings.
She needed a haven far from the church, a place so unlikely, so removed from this place where the murderers had shot down Seth’s mother, that they would never find her. A nun’s cell would do, or any homeless shelter, at least for a while.
She sat in a deeply shaded place, but the heat of the afternoon sapped her energy. She found herself struggling to stay awake—another human limitation she hadn’t counted on. The toll which becoming human had taken on her was too great, and Isobel soon fell asleep.
When she woke, the midday heat had relented, but Seth was awake and fussing. Though his diaper was wet and heavy, through some miracle of modern science, the skin on his bottom felt dry.
But even if Seth wasn’t physically uncomfortable, he was still crying, by now in a heartbreaking fashion. His tears wrenched at her heart. He didn’t recognize her face, Isobel thought, or her scent or…her body.
Confused, his head turned demandingly toward her breasts, and his sweet bow lips made small sucking motions. His small, dimpled hand patted her impatiently, and the extraordinary sensation of her breasts readying themselves for the babe crept upon her.
If she had ever felt or imagined anything so startling or so exquisitely earthy or so sweetly sensual or rich, she didn’t know when.
Awed at the miracle of her woman’s body, she shifted to raise her clothing and offer herself to the hungry babe. He fussed a moment longer. Isobel felt to her core the babe’s deep confusion, his hunger playing against the uncertainty. Isobel was not his mother, but her nipple tightened painfully all the same. After another moment, Seth latched hungrily onto her, and her pain became something else again, something profoundly pleasurable.
After a while, by instinct and wonder, she turned Seth and fed him from her other breast. When he had his fill, not a moment before, almost as if by a miracle of timing, the priest she had prayed for appeared before her.
A slightly built elderly man in a clerical collar and simple black clothing, he sank to his skinny haunches beside Isobel and Seth, who burped and stared unblinking at him. “I am Father Ramon Sifuentes, my dear. What have we here?”
Isobel breathed deeply, a sigh really. “Father. Thank God you’re here.”
He nodded, offering his finger to Seth to cling to. “When I was notified by the police of the shooting on the street, I hurried to the scene. They had already removed the dead woman before I could perform last rites, so I went to where they took her body.” He hesitated. “Something told me I should stop by here…”
Her fellow guardians had been at work on her behalf, shepherding the pastor back to his small barrio church. “I’m very grateful. I need a place to stay, to take Seth and be safe. Do you know of a place where they will take us in for a while, some place away from here?”
Father Sifuentes’s gentle brown eyes searched hers. His chin angled up. “You know the baby’s name?”
“Seth.”
“And he’s your child?”
How to explain? Surely no answer was better than some made-up story.
“There was talk on the street about a baby caught in the middle of the shooting.” His tone invited Isobel to confess that this child was not hers, but the dead woman’s.
Why hadn’t she thought of this? Realized she would have to answer to someone? Why hadn’t she known that, of course, sitting here on the sanctuary steps, so close to the scene of the crime, anyone would realize that this child was the one who had fallen from his murdered mother’s arms?
She didn’t know how to lie. And it would be beyond his ability to believe that she was a guardian angel come to earth to save Seth’s life.
Seth gurgled and jabbered, grabbing a hank of Isobel’s hair, wrapping it around his small fist. The priest’s eyes never left hers. She swallowed hard, swallowed what felt like her human heart in her human throat. “Like your coming here, Father, I came upon the babe because I was needed.”
Father Sifuentes bowed his head, taking in what she had said, testing it against the instincts of a man who had served the best and the worst in his flock for generations. Isobel prayed he would leave it at that, let it go and simply help her to a place where she and Seth would be safe.
He had little reason to trust her. He had never seen her before, and even Isobel knew that there were women deranged enough with a need of a babe of their own that they would steal a newborn from his bassinet in the hospital. Would the priest think her such a desperate woman?
And isn’t it half true, Isobel?
More than half?
She stroked the baby’s plump thigh, and his sweet, dimpled elbow, containing his thrashing about in her lap. As much as she had wanted to save this beautiful child from the men who murdered his mother, she wanted more for herself than the prissy and pristine existence of a guardian angel.
She wanted to be a natural woman, a human mother. She had been cheated of that pleasure in her own time on earth, and she wanted her human existence now more than anything in heaven or on earth.
She wanted to gaze into wide, innocent eyes, to feel the tug of a baby’s lips at her breast again, to soothe the tears and spend the decades it took to raise a male child to a man.
She wanted this babe so much, that she had willfully abandoned her duties and risked the wrath of the heavenly councils by plunging outside her element—and all because of a fleeting and dangerous and too-human maternal instinct.
She couldn’t begin to explain these longings, or how she had simply materialized, not even to herself. The mortal existence she craved was but the blink of an eye in all eternity. Surely it wasn’t too much to ask?
Her very human panic must have shone in her eyes. The priest reached for her arm. “I think I must take you and the baby to the authorities.”
“Give me a few days, Father,” she begged him, cringing from his reach.
“What is your name?”
“Isobel. Isobel…Avedon,” she added.
“What purpose will a few days serve, Isobel Avedon? So that you may fall more in love with a child that is not yours?”
“I could not be more in love with this babe, Father, but—”
The priest’s eyes narrowed. “But?”
“I believe he is in grave danger from the men who murdered his mother. I only want to be certain that he does not become a target again. A few days. That’s all I ask.” Dear
Lord, how easily the lie came… She wanted many more days.
“Are you saying, my child, that you believe the baby would not be safer in the protective custody of the authorities?”
“I don’t know about that. What I believe is that I am meant to protect him.”
Father Sifuentes squinted off into the distance, toward the western horizon and the setting sun and the gate where she had come into the churchyard. At last he drew a deep breath and shook his head. “You will not be safe in a shelter. There are those in such places who would turn you in to the authorities for another week of food and housing—or the money to return to the streets in search of booze or drugs.”
Isobel nodded. She knew this to be true. “But—”
“May I suggest a bed-and-breakfast? There is one near San Juan Capistrano that belongs to a friend of mine, an elderly parishioner.” His left eyebrow quirked upward. “Do you know the mission?”
Isobel smiled brilliantly. Know San Juan Capistrano? She knew it from long before the time that it was said that the swallows returned there each year. “I know it, Father. That would be wonderful.”
Hope swelled in her heart. Even Seth gave the first precious, toothless little grin she had seen. There must be guardians in heaven looking out for her. “Can you take me there?”
He helped her to her feet, and led her to his serviceable old pickup truck. They stopped on the way at a department store. The priest paid for disposable diapers and a few small outfits for the baby, along with some sweaters and slacks and undergarments for her. Afterward he drove her to the century-old house on a bluff high above the aged Spanish mission.
The priest helped her settle into the small upstairs quarters his parishioner agreed to let. The main room displayed a rocking chair of some age, a view to the ocean from a window seat, and heavy twist-legged furniture adorned with authentic Victorian lace. Even the original heating system remained, and though Isobel jumped and cried out when the old steam pipes clanked, nothing could have dimmed her pleasure in the small rooms she had been given.
In the midst of taking his leave, the priest turned back to her, his eyes settling on the babe in her arms before returning to hers. “You speak of ensuring the child’s well-being,” he said. “I believe you.”
“I intend only his well-being, Father. You may believe me.”
He held her determined gaze. “Well enough. But soon, my dear, sooner rather than later, you must report to the authorities. Seth may have family already desperate for his return.” His gently flowing Hispanic accent gave his pronouncement an added weight.
Isobel shifted Seth’s weight to her hip. Was it possible that she could have abandoned her angel’s essence for this baby only to find herself having to give him up? To be strapped with some overriding moral obligation to turn Seth over to his family, to another woman’s care? Perhaps a grandmother or aunt who already loved him.
Her chin went up. “I’ll make that decision when I know who killed his mother and why.”
“You may never know that,” he warned. “You must still reach his family and turn him over to their care.” He held his hat in his hands. “Do you swear, Isobel, on your word of honor?”
She swallowed. Even though she knew that what she meant to do and what he meant for her to do were two different things, she said, “Yes.”
Seth whimpered and jammed a small fist into his mouth, solemnly regarding the old man.
A shiver ran down Isobel’s spine. A presence seemed to fill the high-ceilinged room. The old priest felt it too, Isobel was certain. His shoulders seemed to drop, as if released from tension, as if he had somehow been satisfied with her unsatisfactory answers.
As if, she thought, he had been reassured in some other way, by some other being. Her uneasiness mounted.
She thanked the priest again for all his help and then closed the door behind him, determined not to worry, not to waste one precious moment with Seth.
She drew a bath and shared it with the babe, tended to her shoulder, dressed in a light cotton shift, then settled in the rocking chair to nurse Seth again. She rested her head back as the babe found her breast again and began to suckle noisily.
Pleasure almost too intense to endure cloaked her, body and soul. She stroked his sweet rounded cheek with her finger. But when she opened her eyes to gaze into Seth’s, she looked—and then looked again—at the man sitting on a flowered chintz settee much too small for any man, but especially for a man his size.
“Angelo,” she breathed, her heart thrumming as the babe nursed at her breast. “Angelo,” she repeated in a disbelieving whisper.
“Isobel.”
His voice resonated inside her, his eyes penetrated to her soul. Heat rose in her, making her flush, but whether from the heat of embarrassment or her attraction to Angelo, she didn’t know.
Memories of his touch, of his kisses—memories now centuries old—flooded back to her. Powerfully built, virile, utterly pitiless, and exuding unending arrogance and strength, he commanded her attention. In every respect but one, he was the man she had loved centuries before, loved more than her own mortal life.
In that single aspect she found the cause of the gnawing anxiety that possessed her. Angelo had looked upon what she had done, and she’d come up severely lacking in his fearsome judgment.
Chapter Three
Isobel cradled the baby closer. The heat in her body refused to abate. “Are you here to deliver your judgment, Angelo?”
“I am not your judge.”
“Thank God of that.”
“Iso,” he began, then stopped, his voice, so nearly human, strained. “Why? Why, when there were so many options open to you?”
She broke off meeting his gaze, looking instead at the child for whom she had sacrificed everything she knew. Her own mortal life had been stolen from her before she could bear and raise children of her own.
How could she explain? How could she make him understand what incredible joy the babe had already brought her?
How his delight in splashing their bath water charmed her heart. How his fingers, poking into her mouth, touching her teeth, stole her very breath. How his sweet rounded tummy and curled-up toes begged her touch.
How his laughter made her cry and his tears broke her heart. He missed his own mother desperately, and Isobel had no doubt that the brutal imprint of her death would linger in his subconscious for a very long time.
“You know what was in my heart, Angelo. The babe’s mother was murdered. He needs me. I still need what I could never have as an angel. It is as simple as that.”
He shook his head slowly. His beautiful, brooding dark eyes held hers. “It is far from simple, Isobel, and you know it. As you said, the babe’s mother was murdered. His own life is now very much at risk. How will you protect him? How will you find the men who murdered his mother?”
“The police—”
“The police have the gunmen, Iso,” he told her softly, “not the ones who sent them in the first place.”
She didn’t trust the police or any authorities of the state, would never trust them even when another millennium had gone by. But…in so simple a matter? “The murderers will be forced to reveal who hired them and—”
“You will live happily ever after.” Angelo stood and raked a hand through dark, wavy hair held back with a short leather thong.
His sarcasm was lost on her. Instead, the match of his exasperated gesture with her memories of Angelo de Medici stole her breath away. She had been a constant source of exasperation to him in their secret courtship, but then he had loved her to distraction for precisely that reason. He never knew what to expect from her.
Once, there had been another issue of great importance between them. The authorities had resolved the issue, in their jackbooted, blackhearted, murdering way. But this was different. Surely, in God’s name, this was different.
“Do you think this can all end like some fairy tale, Iso?” he demanded.
“Isobel,” she correcte
d. Her temerity made it difficult to breathe. She didn’t believe in fairy tales, or even, among the human race, the power of love, but she trusted that there was some reason—some higher purpose—operating here. Why else would she have even been allowed to abandon her angelic form, and given a human one suited to nursing an infant? “I am not your beloved Iso anymore,” she went on. “That time, that existence was stolen from us. And for the mortal life of me, I cannot think why this must end badly.”
“Of course not. Your intentions are always so good.”
She stared at him. “And your pronouncements have always galled me!” she cried softly. “How can you be such a prig? Do you believe you are in sole possession of the truth? Are you the Lord’s own arbiter of right and wrong, good and evil? Is it your judgment upon which He rests His own? How He must depend upon you!”
“Stop it, Iso!” The glow surrounding Angelo’s powerful, masculine form quivered ominously. “Twice now you have acted on rash decisions, but my judgment is irrelevant. Had you the sense God gave a goose, you would know that you are in serious trouble, and for the sake of the babe, for your mortal life,” he echoed her, pacing the room as if caged, “you had better figure it out.”
Twice. Twice now.
She swallowed hard. Her throat seemed not to work. Her human heart clapped like a kettledrum pounding a dirge. “Are you saying that you believe our deaths were my fault? That because I told my father…Angelo, do you blame me?”
He stopped, facing away from her. His broad angel’s shoulders stiffened. “No.”
Her chair ceased rocking. Seth fell asleep in her arms, and his lips released her nipple. Covering herself, she backhanded a tear. “Will you face me, Angelo, and say that you do not blame me?”
He only half turned toward her. “It doesn’t matter, Iso.”
She knew that he lied. He had no grievance toward her until the moment she had brazenly informed her father that she intended to marry Angelo de Medici. Any de Medici…