“All right.” She limped off without giving him any argument or excuse.
She had class, and he liked her a hell of a lot more than was good for him.
“How can you be sure this is the color you want?” Faith wrinkled her nose at the leaden gray oxide glaze in the pot Adrian handed her. “It doesn't look anything like the cobalt in the example you gave me.” She knew glazes didn't match their color, but she needed conversation to break the awkward silence.
“Heat gives it color.” Adrian wiped sweat from his forehead with the hem of his T-shirt as he glanced over her shoulder at what she was doing. “You have to work quickly with that brush. It's not like oil. The clay sucks it dry the instant you brush it on.”
“It's a simple design,” she said doubtfully, studying the sample plate he had given her. “I used to draw flowers like that on my schoolwork in high school.”
His laugh was curt. “Whoever ordered these might as well have gone to the factory outlet and bought manufactured stoneware. Crude and boring. But Rex caters to customers with more money than taste.”
“Well, the plates you did yesterday were colorful,” she said doubtfully. “I don't think those hues would be available commercially.”
He shrugged, leaned over her shoulder to show her how to hold the brush for the best effect, then stepped back. He was soaked in sweat from working with the kiln, but it was a healthy male musk that Faith enjoyed. His sheltering, non-demanding arms around her last night remained imprinted on every cell of her body.
“It isn't art,” he said bluntly. “It's dinnerware. But we both know one pays for the other.”
She glanced around at the crowded shelves. “From what I can see, Rex should stick with dinnerware.”
Adrian chuckled. “I tried to teach him how to use slip coloring once, but it was messy and took more imagination than he possesses. He's good with a brush, has an eye for color, and he knows how to turn a cup. We all have our skills.”
Faith bit her lip and concentrated on filling in the flower design Adrian had sketched for her. She would rather have watched him, found out more about his knowledge of stoneware, but they were back to treading carefully around each other. She didn't think she could look at him without drooling over that sopping shirt plastered to his chest. He'd obviously spent the last four years working out a lot of frustration in a gym.
“Juan seems to think you have talent. Could you make a living at this?”
He snorted and tested the tackiness of the glaze on a freshly painted saucer. “Not and support my family. My mother's family would have starved if they hadn't taken outside jobs. Playing in clay is just a hobby.”
She wanted to disagree, but she'd seen how many potters lived. Supplies were hideously expensive. One badly glazed batch, a poorly heated kiln, a sudden drop in temperature, anything could ruin a week's hard labor and a fortune in supplies. It had to be a labor of love. Art didn't pay in an industrial world.
Adrian carried out a tray of already glazed dishes ready for firing. Faith knew there were many ways of achieving color and design on stoneware. Rex had chosen one that was more labor and risk intensive. The pieces she was working on had already been fired once to produce a hard, dry bisque. She would hand paint the design, and later a transparent glaze would coat the entire piece. Then he'd fire it again. Two loads of fuel and twice the danger of the dishes cracking.
She grimaced at the dull color her brush produced, but the bright blues, reds, and yellows of the finished dishes on the table gave her hope. It might not be art, but it was useful and unique. She thought it relaxing—far better than contemplating how they would dodge Sandra and a knife-wielding thief while trying to locate a needle in a haystack.
Adrian worked more quickly than she did. While she painstakingly filled in the designs he sketched with a quick sure stroke, he glazed the painted stoneware and kept the kiln at an even temperature. In his spare moments he wielded a deft brush to finish painting the plates she hadn't completed.
She could tell he knew the business, with an inborn talent and appreciation for the clay. He was also far too intelligent and ambitious to waste his life baking dinnerware.
Finishing the last plate, she rose and stretched her back. She was limping less, but she tried to keep her weight off that knee as much as possible. She needed it to heal.
Wandering in to see what Adrian was doing in the kiln room, she nearly swallowed her tongue at the sight of him stripped half naked as he stoked the fire. Like some mighty Vulcan outlined against a fiery inferno, his bronzed back and shoulders glistened with sweat and rippled with power. The impact of all that raw male strength knocked the breath from her lungs.
Adrian swung around while her eyes were still wide and her breath hadn't returned. Using his shirt to mop the perspiration from his chest, he eyed her speculatively. His thick black hair looked as if he'd just washed it, and the clip he used to hold it back had slipped on the slick wet strands, leaving a short piece to fall forward around his ear, accenting the high plane of his cheekbone. In the flickering light from the kiln the silver ring on his ear gleamed against his dark skin.
“See something you like?” he asked when she said nothing.
“What I like has nothing to do with anything.” Recovering some of her equilibrium, she turned to leave. For heaven's sake, Faith, she scolded inwardly, you're almost thirty. You've seen naked men. Deal with it.
“Why doesn't it?” he demanded, following her, grabbing a dry pullover golf shirt from the back of a chair. “Why can't you let yourself go, admit when you want something and go after it?”
He was too close, too raw, too physical, and too damned male. She rubbed her arms and stopped retreating at the worktable. She still didn't look at him. “That's what a child does,” she snapped. “Adults measure the cost.”
“Sex doesn't cost a damned thing.”
She could hear him pacing. She hoped he'd put his shirt on, but she wasn't certain she was even ready for that. It had never occurred to her to compare male buttocks as other women did. She'd never looked at a man and wondered what he would be like in bed. Tony had taught her sex, and she'd found it a passable duty, a wonderful example of how he needed her. So, obviously, sex was a lie.
She'd never, ever, looked at a man as she'd looked at Adrian, and imagined him naked, shoving her against a wall and pumping inside her. Her body was still weak from reaction.
“Maybe sex doesn't cost you anything,” she replied bitterly, “but it costs me far more than I can afford.”
He stalked around the table and slammed his hands down in front of her, staring into her face at eye level. “Why? It's a physical act of release, far more pleasant than tormenting ourselves like this.”
Guilty pleasure shivered under her skin at knowing he wanted her—mousy little Faith. But then, he'd been without sex for four years and would probably make love to a chair leg at this point.
“Sex without an emotional commitment is an animal act,” she stated firmly, trying not to look too closely at the flash of his dark eyes. He had a thin, jutting patrician nose she admired entirely too well, and if she gazed at his mouth …
He jerked away from her to stalk the room again. His hair swung back and forth, and his lean hips moved with the lithe grace of a caged panther. She was shut up in a small room with a dangerous animal.
“Emotional commitment,” he spat out in disgust. “What the hell is an emotional commitment? Fury is an emotion. Frustration. Bitterness. Hell, I can give you emotion in spades. I could melt a little Nordic ice princess like you in a matter of minutes.”
That's what she was afraid of. “Adrian, we're both on edge and not thinking sensibly.” She tried to calm him, but she figured she had as much likelihood of accomplishing that as she would of dousing the kiln with words.
“We wouldn't be on edge if you'd let go and be yourself and forget all that prim and proper garbage Tony wanted from you.”
As soon as the words escaped him, Adrian threw up
his hands in disgust with himself as much as her. There it was, in all its ignoble glory, the barrier that stood between them. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he swung to face her.
Her cheeks were pale and her eyes had hardened to shards of ice. While he burned like a cauldron of hot coals, she froze up tighter than any iceberg. He must be out of his mind, he thought, to think of making love to a female as frigid as this one.
Except he'd seen her on stage. She wasn't frigid.
“Sex is just a physical release,” he repeated. “Going for it on stage is a poor substitute.”
“I don't wish to continue this discussion,” she said coldly, gathering up her purse. “If you're done here, I'd like to leave.”
Oh, hell, he didn't know why he'd tried. Or he did know. That wide-eyed look of admiration in her spectacular eyes had shot straight to his groin, and he'd turned rock hard in an instant like any adolescent. But he knew better than to listen to hormones.
He checked his watch. “Rex should be back shortly. Let me see if the temperature is holding steady, then we can leave.”
He damned well wanted her more than anything he'd wanted in his life. Right now he'd give up his law degree and his search for the evidence of his innocence if he could have this woman in his bed for a week.
He left her standing there, pale and shaken, while he checked on the fire. He knew better than to come at her that way. She didn't deserve his rage. But he was rapidly reaching the limit of rationality.
Returning to the workroom to find her examining Rex's god-awful tea sets, he put a hand to her spine and steered her toward the door. Even that contact shot steam through his ears.
“Come on. Cesar should have your things back from Knoxville now. You can dress like yourself again.”
In the familiar comfort of her navy blazer and cream silk slacks, Faith tucked her chignon into combs and wrapped confidence around herself once again. Cesar's tiny bathroom mirror told her she looked like Faith Hope, businesswoman, and not the shattered, ridiculous female Adrian had made her feel yesterday.
She didn't need sex or any man to make her whole. She was quite happy as herself. She'd be even happier once they found the money and the books and she could go home.
Returning her makeup kit to the tiny bedroom, she glanced in admiration at the vase she'd removed from the cardboard box in which Adrian had packed her storage items. She should never have hidden a thing of such beauty just because Tony had given it to her. She couldn't blame the vase for what Tony had done. When she returned home, she would put it in her window and redecorate.
Picking up her nearly empty purse, she joined Adrian in the kitchen. He was leaning against the kitchen sink, eating cereal. He looked up as she entered, but his gaze stayed shuttered, hiding the inferno he'd revealed yesterday.
“You talked to Annie?” he asked curtly.
“She called the Charlotte shelter,” she said. “They'll cash a trust fund check in exchange for a donation. Once this is all settled, I'll personally make good the difference.”
“I will,” he corrected, setting down the empty bowl.
She eyed him skeptically, but he stared at her with the pride of an arrogant aristocrat, and she didn't argue.
“We'll need good quality paper to print the letters,” she reminded him. “It could take us all week to scout the banks between here and Raleigh. I can't stay away that long.”
Politely, he didn't bother reminding her of the burglar. She didn't want to think of the violation of her home and shop right now. She was placing her bets on finding Tony's books in Charlotte, turning them over to the D.A., and returning to the business of living.
Sending letters to every bank in the state and waiting for their return would take far longer than she was prepared to wait. “You have the box keys?” she asked.
Adrian silently produced them from his pocket—his ticket to paradise.
They rode in silence to the shelter to cash the trust fund check, stopped at an office supply for the letterhead, then steered into traffic bound for the first bank on Faith's list.
“How can we tell if anyone is following us?” Nervously, she clasped her hands and watched the sideview mirror.
“We can't, not in this traffic.” Adrian expertly steered into a gap in the fast lane. “But unless someone knows where we're staying, they couldn't find us to follow us.”
That made sense. If someone knew where they were staying, they wouldn't need to follow them. They could have broken in during the night or anytime. Somehow, she didn't feel reassured.
“Could someone have followed Cesar from my apartment?”
“Going ninety miles per hour down those mountains at night when all anyone can see is headlights? They'd have to be crazy.”
He glanced over at her, and she tried to look composed. He was right. Knoxville was hours of heavy traffic away.
“We'll think of something,” he said soothingly. “For all we know, one of your bar admirers decided to stalk you. The burglaries might have nothing to do with any of this.”
That wasn't any more reassuring, and she knew better than to believe in coincidence. “I have new locks now. They can't get in. I'll be fine. I'd just like to find those books and get this over with.”
Maybe sometime in the next million years she'd rid herself of the vision of Adrian, nearly naked. Only right now, the vision grew clearer and more graphic every time she looked at him.
She didn't know if she was more afraid of him or the bad guy.
“Here's our first exit. Are you ready?” He asked it calmly, as if he had nothing riding on their success.
“I'm ready.” Far more ready than she had been last time. It was a miracle how her own clothes made a difference. She was Tony's wife in these clothes, the SouthPark matron who hobnobbed with the CEOs who commanded thousands of these tiny little branch banks. She fondled the strand of pearls at her throat, the symbol of the power and wealth she'd once possessed. She hadn't realized what a crutch money had been.
They had no luck at the first bank, or the second. Every exit was littered with branches from a dozen different financial institutions. If Tony had stuck with just one bank, the task would have been immensely easier.
By the time they reached the eighth or ninth brick box with columns, they had their routine perfected, right down to their polite smiles of regret at disturbing the manager with their request for a box that didn't exist.
“We knew it wouldn't be easy,” Adrian reminded her as they returned to the car after still another defeat. “Let's get some lunch.”
Well, at least they had some cash for food, thanks to the trust fund. Faith figured she should be grateful for what she had.
Instead, she simply wanted to kill Tony all over again.
“There are probably more banks in the Lake Norman area than there are in the whole world,” she grumbled as he headed for a nearby fast food outlet. She hadn't sampled so many different kinds of fast food since she was a kid in school. She'd already concluded half of America must subsist on grease and mayonnaise.
“I figure there's more in the south end. You still have a lot of farmland out here.”
Faith raised an eyebrow at a mile of brick and concrete shopping centers and offices. “Money is a crop these days?”
He grinned and accepted the greasy bag from the drive-through window. “I can see I'd better take you out of all this for a while. You get mean when frustrated.”
That had several connotations but neither commented on them as he drove toward a small grassy space near the lake and away from the shopping center. Other people had had the same idea, and several office workers strolled the path, dipping into their lunch bags as they walked, or finding seats in the grass. The September sun still shone brightly, but a cool front had chased away the heavy humidity.
“What will you do if we don't find the books?” Faith knew she shouldn't ask, but his problems took away from her own.
He sprawled in the grass, unconcerned about his jeans
or white dress shirt. “I can't even go into law enforcement unless I clear my record. The only things I know are law and pottery. And wrestling.”
“Wrestling?” Faith licked mayonnaise off her fingers and studied him dubiously. Professional wrestling was a popular entertainment here, but she had difficulty imagining Adrian in spangled tights.
He shrugged and finished chewing. “Good money to put on a show. Figured law was half acting anyway, and so's wrestling. Put myself through school that way.”
“Good heavens.” Stunned, Faith tried to see it, but she wasn't a wrestling fan. Her mind's eye conjured hunky bodies, flowing blond tresses, and outrageous costumes. She couldn't see lean, sleek, unadorned Adrian in a ring.
“Called me the Black Panther. I wore all black, and had to lose most of the time. Nothing I couldn't learn in a gym. It kept me in shape after hours in the law library.”
Faith shook her head in disbelief. “You're a natural in pinstriped suits and wingtips. You're making this up.”
“Ask my family sometime.” Finishing his sandwich, he crumpled the lunch bag and tossed it toward a barrel container. It hit.
“You should have taken up basketball.” Brushing grass off her slacks, Faith dropped her empty cup in the trash.
“Don't get paid for college ball. I worked off a lot of energy with wrestling, but I think I'm a little too old for that now. We'll find the books.”
Grabbing her hand, Adrian pulled her toward the car, showing no sign of age diminishing his restless energy. After last night, Faith didn't object to the contact. She trusted him not to pounce on her until she was ready.
Ready? She shivered at the tangent her subconscious had taken. She'd never be ready.
“The next exit is the turnoff toward Sandra's trailer park,” she commented, examining the map and avoiding any more personal revelations. “Do you think she's moved back?”
“We could take a look.” Adrian wrinkled his brow in thought. “How dangerous could she be?”
“Never underestimate a woman,” Faith warned.
Nobody's Angel Page 19