Angels Fall

  reorient herself.

  A lamp was on beside the bed, and the light shone from the hallway. For a moment, she remembered none of it. When it flooded back, Reece wanted nothing more than to pull the blankets over her head and dive back to oblivion.

  Even the flying Ferris wheel would be easier to ride out.

  How could she face him? Face anyone? She wanted to find her keys, then slink out of town like a thief.

  She propped herself up on an elbow, waited to see if her stomach would hold, then sat up. There was a silver insulated cup on the night-stand. Battled, she picked it up, slid back the tab and sniffed.

  Her tea. He'd made her tea, and left it so it would be close and warm when she woke.

  If he'd recited Keats while showering her with white roses, she couldn't have been more touched. She'd said horrible things to him, had behaved abominably. And he'd made her tea.

  She sipped it, let it slide down and soothe her abused stomach. Because she could hear his keyboard now, she squeezed her eyes shut to help gather courage. A little unsteady on her feet, she got up to face the music.

  He glanced up when she stepped into the doorway of his office, and only lifted that single eyebrow.

  Funny, she thought, how many expressions that one move could transmit. Interest, amusement, irritation. And just now? Absolute boredom.

  She'd have preferred a good, hard slap.

  "Thanks for the tea." He stayed silent, waiting, and she realized she didn't have quite enough courage yet to begin. "Is it all right if I take a bath?"

  "You know where the tub is."

  He started to type again, though the gibberish he put on the screen would need to be deleted. She looked like a dark-eyed ghost, sounded like a penitent child. He didn't like it.

  He sensed when she'd slipped away, waited until he heard the water begin to run into the tub. Then he deleted, shut down. And went down to make her soup.

  He wasn't taking care of her; he was still too pissed off to consider it. It was just what you did when someone was sick. Some soup, maybe some toast. Just bare minimum stuff.

  He wondered how much of whatever poisons she'd had bottled up inside her she'd managed to reject along with the wine.

  If she started spewing at him again, he was going to…

  Nothing, he thought. It wasn't just Reece he was pissed at, he realized. He was pissed at himself. He should've expected her to blow at some point. She'd been handling herself pretty well, rocking back from each separate sucker punch. But she'd been swallowing down the fear, the rage, the hurts. Sooner or later, they'd have to spill out.

  Today had been the day.

  The nasty psychological warfare someone was waging against her, being asked to look at pictures of a dead woman. He didn't know dick about fresh dill, but obviously that had been one of the last straws for her.

  Now she'd apologize, and he didn't want her damn apology. Now she'd very likely tell him she had to go, had to find some other shelter from her personal storm, and he didn't want her to go. He didn't want to lose her.

  And that was lowering.

  When she came in, her hair was damp and she smelled of his soap. He could see she'd done her best to camouflage the fact she'd been crying, and knowing she'd been up there, sitting in his tub weeping, was another punch to the heart.

  "Brody, I'm so—"

  "Got soup." he interrupted. "I'ts no pollo arrosto—whatever the hell that is—but you'll have to live with it."

  "You made soup."

  "My mother's recipe. Open a can, pour contents into bowl, zap in nuclear oven. It's world famous."

  "It sounds delicious. Brody. I'm sorry, I'm embarrassed. I'm ashamed."

  "But are you hungry?"

  She pressed her fingers to her eyes while her lips trembled.

  "Don't." There was the barest trace of desperation under the hard edge of his tone. "I'm at my limit on that kind of thing. You want the soup or not?"

  "Yes." She dropped her hands. "Yes, I want the soup. Aren't you having any?"

  "I had a sandwich while you were lying upstairs in a drunken stupor."

  The sound she made was trapped between a laugh and a sob. "I didn't mean what I said to you."

  "Just shut up and eat."

  "Please, let me say this."

  With a shrug, he put the bowl of soup on the table, saw her blink in surprise when he put a plate of buttered toast beside it.

  "I didn't mean it. You are rude, but it works for me. You're not selfish, or what selfishness you have seems awfully healthy from where I stand. I don't want you to go to hell."

  "That one may not be your choice."

  "I can't remember it I said anything else I should apologize for, being drunk at the time. If you want me out, I'll go."

  "If I was going to kick you out, why did I spend all this time and trouble making you my mother's famous soup?"

  She stepped to him, wrapped her arms around him, pressed her face into his chest. "I fell apart."

  "No, you didn't." He couldn't help himself, just couldn't stop him-self from lowering his head and pressing his lips to the top of her head. "You had a drunken tantrum."

  "Several tantrums, and only the last one was alcohol-driven."

  "Sounds like interesting dinner conversation." He steered her to a chair, then poured himself coffee before sitting down across from her.

  She spooned up soup and confessed all.

  "I blasted everyone. Fortunately, it's a small population so there weren't many who came in range. But my spree's left me without a job, very likely without an apartment. If he wasn't so thick-skinned, I'd guess it would have left me without a lover."

  "Do you want them back? The job, the apartment?"

  "I don't know." She broke off a corner of a piece of toast, crumbled it onto the plate. "I could take today as a sign—which I'm big on—that it's time to go."

  "Where?"

  "Yeah, that's a question. I could prostrate myself in front of Joanie and swear a blood oath never to mention fresh herbs again."

  "Or you could go back into work tomorrow and fire up the grill, or whatever it is you do back there."

  She looked up, confusion in her tired eyes. "Just like that?"

  "It wouldn't be the first shouting match to play out in Joanie's. What do you want, Reece?"

  "To push rewind, I guess. But since I can't, to deal with the consequences." This time when she broke off a corner of toast, she ate it. "I'll talk to Joanie tomorrow, see where I go from there."

  "That's not to the point. Do you want to go or do you want to stay?"

  She stood, took her bowl to the sink to rinse it out. "I like what I see everywhere I look when I walk around town. I like having people wave as they drive by, or stop to talk when I'm walking. I like hearing Linda-gail laugh when she's taking orders, and the way Pete sings when he washes dishes."

  She turned, leaned back against the sink. "The air feels good on my skin, and any day the flats are going to bloom. But there are other places with beautiful views and friendly people. The trouble with them is they're not here. The trouble with them is you're not in them. So I want to stay."

  He rose and went to her, and in a gesture more tender than she'd ever expected from him, brushed the hair hack from her face. "That's what I want, too. I want you to stay."

  When he kissed her, gently, very gently, her arms slid up to wind around his neck. "If you wouldn't mind—I know you've already gone to a lot of trouble on my behalf today—but if you wouldn't mind, maybe you could show me what you want."

  Now she rubbed her lips against his. "If you wouldn't mind."

  Together, they circled their way out of the room, lips brushing, bodies wanning.

  "Indulge me," she told him.

  "That was my plan."

  "No." She chuckled against his throat. "Indulge me and say it again. Just say you want me to stay."

  "Women always want a man to grovel." He found her mouth again, turned her toward the living room. "I want
you to stay."

  Oh yes, she thought, better than Keats. And held him close when he lowered her to the couch.

  The fire he'd lit as he did most nights had gone to simmering red embers. That's what she felt inside her, felt from him, the warmth and the simmer instead of the flash of leaping flames.

  She could bask in it, stroking his hair, his skin, letting her mouth surrender to his. Tonight she could be soothed by his hands and know the quiet glow of contentment. He'd made her tea and soup, and he wanted her to stay.

  Love washed over her in slow, swamping waves.

  As she reached for him. as she offered, he wanted more than to take. He wanted most to comfort her, to smooth out all her troubles. Then to lift her from them. No one else had ever reached that tenderness inside him, no one else had ever coaxed it out until it drenched him.

  He could give her that, that tenderness. And every soft sigh she offered back only enhanced his own pleasure.

  As he undressed her, his fingers, his lips, brushed and stroked over newly exposed skin. The scent of his soap on her aroused a possessive-ness in him. His. To touch, to taste, to hold. Her fingers feathered over his face, into his hair as her body arched to give. And give.

  The strength of him, the muscles, the big hands, the tough build now so gentle thrilled her. That he could touch her with such care and patience, that his lips could meet hers, again and again, with such sweetness left her dazzled.

  Everything inside her went loose and liquid, and still he gave her more.

  The blood began to pulse under her skin; the first beats of urgency. As if he heard it, he took her up, let that coiled need spring loose. And as she drifted down again, she made a sound like a woman who'd just tasted something rich and honeyed.

  Her heavy eyes opened, dreamed into his.

  He fell into them, into the dark magic of them. His heart fell with him, tumbling, tumbling free. He couldn't stop it, couldn't catch it, or himself.

  He slipped into her, watched her start the rise again.

  "Don't close your eyes." He covered her mouth with his, still watching while thev moved together.

  Rhythm quickened: breath shortened. His body began its final rush while she raced with him. He gripped her hands and saw those eyes he couldn't resist blur as she fisted tight around him. As she said his name.

  His own vision dimmed as she pulled him with her.

  They lay together, wrapped together, as the night ticked away and the embers died. When he felt her begin to drift off, he simply reached up to pull the throw on the back of the couch over them.

  She cuddled in, murmured something. Then slept.

  Beside her he closed his eyes and smiled into the dark. She hadn't asked him to check the locks, he thought, but had slipped into sleep without fear.

  LO HAD HIS hand up Linda-gail's shirt and a condom in his pocket. The part of his brain that still remained above his belt buckle flashed back to when they'd been sixteen and the situation had been remarkably similar.

  Only this time they were in her little house instead of the old Ford pickup his mother had helped him buy. There was a bedroom close by, though the couch would do just fine.

  Her pretty breast—which he hadn't gotten a look at since that summer so long ago—was soft and warm in his hand. Her mouth, and heel never forgotten her mouth, was just as hot and sweet as spiced candy.

  And God. she smelled good

  She was so miraculously curvy. Fuller than she'd been at sixteen, but in all the right places. And it at first he'd been baffled, even a little annoyed that she'd gone off and dyed her hair, he was currently finding it damn sexy. Almost like having his hands on a stranger.

  But when that hand slid down to the button of her jeans, hers clamped over it. She said, as she'd said at sixteen. "Uh-uh."

  "Oh now, honey." He spread his fingers up over her belly, felt it tremble as he nibbled his way down her throat. "I just want—"

  "Can't always get what you want, Lo." Her voice wasn't steady, but she kept her hand firm over his. "And you're not getting it tonight."

  "You know I want you. God almighty, I always have. You want me, too." His lips made a lazy journey back to hers. "Why do you want to tease me this way, sweetheart?"

  "Don't call me sweetheart unless you mean it. And this isn't a tease." It took a lot of willpower to push away from him, but she did just that. When she did, she could see the surprise on his face, and the first hints of anger. "It's not going to be like that between you and me."

  "Like what?"

  "You won't be banging me, then moving on."

  "Well, for Christ's sake. Linda-gail." Sincere confusion rippled over his face. "You're the one who said I should come over."

  "To talk about Reece."

  "Now that's bull and you know it. You didn't scream for help when I kissed you."

  "I liked when you kissed me. I like it just fine. I always did, Lo."

  "Then what's the problem?"

  "We're not kids anymore, and I'm not looking for a couple of nights of wrestling. If you are, you might as well go find one of the women you know who're happy with just that." Fussily, she smoothed her half-buttoned shirt "I've got higher standards."

  "Higher standards?" The hints of anger coalesced. "That's a hell of a thing to say to me. You got me over here just to stir me up, then flick me off. Got names for women like that."

  Her chin lifted, very slowly, until their eyes met. Hers shot hot bullets. "You think that, you'd better get out. Right now."

  "I'm going." He shoved to his feet. "What the hell do you want?"

  "When you figure it out, you can come back." She got up, picked up his hat, tossed it to him. "But you leave here and go hunt up one of those women and I hear about it, you won't get in the door again."

  "So I can't have you, or anybody else until you say different?"

  "No, Lo, you can't have me or anybody else until you know the difference. One thing you do know is the way out."

  Twisted with unreleased lust and frustration, Linda-gail strolled back to her bedroom and shut the door. With a bang.

  For a moment Lo only stared after her. What in the damn depths of hell had just happened? He could still taste her, his palm was still warm from her breast. And she walked off, slammed the damn door?

  Furious, he stormed out. Women like her, he thought, women who used a man, ordered a man around, played games, should be made to pay a price for it.

  He slammed into his truck, sent one dark look back toward the house with the yellow shutters. She thought she knew him, thought she had him pegged.

  She was dead wrong.

  * * *

  Chapter 20