I stared up at him. “Angel.” My throat nearly seized up as I spoke. It had grown as dry as cotton gauze, and my head felt as if it might float away like a newly released helium balloon.
“Yes, of course.”
I climbed the last few steps and stood in front of him. He smelled of a spicy cologne, and I liked it. And I liked the firm set of his mouth. It was a strange thing to notice but I had. It was a mouth that could read bedtime stories to a kid just as easily as it could give medical advice to a patient.
It seemed, at first, that he was at a loss for words then he blurted out a request. “May I hug you?”
“I was hoping you wou—” The last word was lost on a cry as he reached forward and pulled me into his arms. It was a hug I should have experienced hundreds of times already, but I hadn’t. I’d had my father’s hugs taken out of my life by someone I’d trusted and loved. But what she had taken from the man whose arms were around me now, so tightly that it seemed he would not be able to release them, had been far worse. I’d had no concept of the pain or suffering my disappearance had caused. I had lived what I thought was the life that I’d been born into. I’d had no notion of the heartbreak or sorrow people suffered because of me.
He lowered his arms. “Let’s go inside.”
The marble entryway led to a comfortable looking family room with dark wood floors and pale blue furniture. “Where is my moth—” I stopped and my father looked back at me. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to call her… or you.”
“You can call me whatever you’re comfortable with, but I hope that in time you will consider calling me Dad.” His hands shook as he motioned for us to sit. He didn’t strike me as a man who ever had trembling hands, but this was more than even the most confident and stoic man could endure without some degree of shaking. I was holding myself together, but barely.
He sat next to me on the couch. “Your mother has been in surgery all morning. I left word for her to come straight home, but I haven’t told her yet.”
I could not hide my surprise.
He took my hand in his. I stared down at it. It was a doctor’s hand, a strong, wise hand that had, at its fingertips, the talent to heal others. It was what I’d always imagined my hands doing.
“She’ll be here soon. There were other incidences where the police were certain they’d found our ba—” He hesitated, and he closed his eyes as if he was still trying to decide whether this was real. “There have been other times when we were given hope that you’d been found. Obviously, they never panned out.” He looked over at Luke. “And when this brave man approached me, I nearly bit his head off in frustration.”
Luke smiled. “It was a little rough, but I couldn’t blame you.”
“I couldn’t do this to Marilyn again, so I decided to wait until the results came in. Only my sister knows, and she is bursting at the seams to tell everyone. But she’s been sworn to secrecy under the threat of a major round of big brother noogies.” He had a brilliant set of perfect white teeth, and I grew to like him more with each second.
I smiled at his response, and he stared at me. “My God, you are beautiful just like your mother.” His voice broke and tears welled up in his eyes. We were in each other’s arms again. The muscles in his back tensed as a car pulled up to the house. “That’s Marilyn, your mother,” he said. “Christ, I can’t believe I’m saying that.”
“I wonder if you should break it to her first,” Luke suggested. “We could wait in the next room.”
He thought about it. “Yes, good idea, but Luke, why don’t you stay so I can explain to her how this all began.” I stood and followed my father to a room off the main room. It had a gleaming mahogany table and crystal chandelier, a dining room, I decided. He looked at me, and I was quickly growing accustomed to his face, it had lines of wisdom and charm, a good combination. And there was not an ounce of evil behind his warm grin.
I could hear the front door open as he took hold of my hands. “I hate to even leave your side,” he said, and kissed the top of my head before exiting the room. Seconds later, I heard her voice, the voice of the woman who was supposed to have sung me lullabies and comforted me when I scraped a knee. It was a strong but melodious voice, one that was distinct enough to memorize almost instantly. And I had. I stood behind a slightly ajar door, just out of sight of the room where they were all standing. I could hear the conversation. I hadn’t realized at first that I was twisting the worn cotton fabric of my dress in my fingers as I listened.
“What on earth, Richard? All I had was a vague and slightly alarming note to head home after the surgery. Who is this young man?” She sounded worried rather than angry.
“Marilyn, this is Luke Barringer. He is a special agent for the DEA.” I shook my head. Only a man would start with something that would be even more alarming than the original note.
“My God, what has happened?” she asked. “Wait, did you say Barringer?”
“Yes, and this has to do with our baby.” I wanted badly to see her, but I couldn’t without showing myself.
“Mr. Barringer approached me at work a few days ago. He knew of the case, of course, and matched some of the evidence in his father’s files with a girl he’d met. She’d been living in her grandfather’s off-the-grid compound up in the remote part of the desert off Highway 50.”
“No,” she said with a slightly frantic laugh. “Not again. I won’t go through this again. Thank you for your time, Mr. Barringer, but—”
“Marilyn,” my father said sharply. “We’ve already taken a paternity test.”
“You’ve done all this without telling me?” her voice wavered, and the strength that was there earlier had faded. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t want you to get your hopes up. She is our daughter. The girl is our daughter and her name is Angel.”
I heard a short cry, and I had the urge to run out and throw my arms around her. “How is this possible?” she sobbed. “How can it be? Where is she? When will I meet her? My God, where is she?” she said frantically.
A profound silence followed and then sharp heels clacked over the wood floor, and she stepped into the dining room. My own eyes stared back at me from a creamy smooth, ivory face.
“Hello,” I said meekly.
She dropped to her knees. I reached her before Luke and my father.
I leaned down and took hold of her hands. They were icy cold and shaky. “Let me help you. Let’s get you to the couch where we can elevate your feet.” I helped her up. She wavered slightly, but shook off help from the men. “No, I’m fine.” She held tightly to my hands, and I held tightly to hers as we walked to the couch. Her shoulders shook with a sob as she gazed at me. “You were in the elevator at the hospital. I remember your extraordinary face.”
I looked questioningly at Luke and he nodded.
She pulled her hand from mine and reached up to my face with trembling fingers. “It is you. My baby, it is you. You were so young when you were taken from me, but I’d know this face anywhere.”
I fell into her arms and we cried. The emotion radiating from her was almost too much to comprehend. All of it was too much to comprehend. One crazed decision by a woman, a woman who I should never have known, and my entire life had changed forever. And being only a few months old, I’d had no say in any of it. I was unwittingly taken from the life I was supposed to have to a completely different upbringing, a childhood that was so far out on the spectrum that I was sure few kids had experienced the same.
The man who just a few seconds ago was a stranger, but a stranger who had suffered the last twenty-two years because of me, a stranger who I could now refer to as Dad, sat next to us on the couch. His strong, capable arms went around the both of us. I was sitting with my parents, my real family in the middle of the house I should have grown up in. Somewhere between the sobs, I heard th
e front door open and shut. I could only assume that Luke had walked out to leave us alone. And that’s when it hit me, the irony of it all. If none of this had happened, if twenty plus years ago Angelica Sharpe hadn’t had the audacity to think she could steal off with another woman’s baby and raise her as her own, then I never would have met Luke. At the same time, if I had never met Luke, I never would have discovered that I was the missing Starlight Baby. I never would have even known about the baby if I hadn’t met Luke. It was a strange circle of thought, and it had no real beginning or end, like the chicken or the egg question. I’d always felt that Luke and I had been connected forever, and it seemed, I’d been right all along.
Chapter 20
Luke
One month later
I drove up to the house with its immaculate, rolling front lawn and stared at its stately elegance for a moment. It was certainly a far cry from the stark walls and crudely built cabins of the compound. But Angel could have grown up anywhere and still been perfect.
The front door opened as I was just halfway up the long set of steps to the house. Angel was wearing a pair of jeans and a white sweater and her long shiny hair was swept up in a pony-tail. She hopped down the steps toward me and threw her arms around my neck for a quick kiss.
She pointed down at the worn, black lace up boots on her feet. “Look what we found. They feel almost exactly like my old ones. Marilyn—” She smiled. “I mean, my mom drove me to an army surplus store to find them. She kept trying to talk me into going to the mall to find a new pair, but once I’d found them, she decided they’d been worth the hunt.” She took my hand. “Why don’t you come inside. They are setting up tables for the party.”
I stopped her from going back to the house. “No.” I pulled her back into my arms. “I’ve been sharing you with your new family and relatives, the police, the press and in an hour I have to share you with a hundred people coming to celebrate your return. Please, Baby, I need to have you all to myself for an hour. I’m going fucking nuts without you.”
She kissed me again. “I’ll just go let them know we’ll be back in an hour.” She ran into the house, and her mom came to the door and waved to us as we left.
“She’s having a little problem with separation,” Angel said as we reached the car. “Sometimes she’ll come peek in my bedroom if I’ve been in there too long, and I know that she’s just checking to make sure I’m still there.”
“I imagine she’ll be like that for awhile. You were right in deciding to move in with them. After all this time, they deserve some time with their daughter.”
We climbed into the car.
She smiled over at me. “I confess, I thought it would be fun to have a traditional dating life for awhile, one where you come to pick me up at the house all formal like and everything. Is that totally weird, or what?”
“Not at all. As long as I’m the only other person involved in this new traditional dating life.” There had been moments when I’d worried that I would lose Angel to this new life. She would meet so many new people, and in spring, she would start city college. The thought of it weighed heavily on my mind.
“A maiden always stays true to her knight.” She reached over and took hold of my hand. “Luke, there has never been anyone for me but you. I think that’s obvious more than ever now. We were meant to be together. Too bad Gage and Seth are at the house right now, I was thinking we could spend that hour alone doing stuff.”
I pulled away from the curb. “We think alike, and you know how much I love stuff. When I left, I told my brothers to make sure that they were gone when I returned.”
“By the way, I mentioned to Dad— I love saying that word— I told him that we were very sexually active—”
“You what? Holy shit. And you used the word very? You couldn’t have used the word mildly?”
She blinked at me completely unaware of why I would be so upset. “I guess I still have to learn some things about this traditional dating stuff.” She slumped back dejectedly. “I guess I still have to learn the rules of civil society.”
“No, no you don’t, Angel. You have to stay exactly the way you are and let society adapt to you. I’m sorry I reacted like that.”
“Truthfully, he didn’t seem all that shocked. He is a doctor after all,” she said with a prideful smile. “He suggested I get some birth control since I’m starting school and a pregnancy would be very inconvenient. Becoming a doctor takes a lot of years.” She turned in her seatbelt and faced me. “My mom is an orthopedic surgeon. How cool is that? I’m thinking of going into the same field. And get this— when she was younger, she rode horses. She rode hunter-jumpers.”
“Is that where the horse flies over the fences?”
“Yep, and we’ve decided to take some lessons together.”
“Sounds kind of dangerous,” I said.
“Yes, because motocross is just like packing balls of cotton in a box.”
“I guess having a bone surgeon in the family might come in handy. Are Cash and Jericho coming today?”
“They said they would.” She grew quiet for a second. “Jericho says he’s going back to the club. He says it’s different now that Dreygon is gone. They picked a new president, this guy named Stowe. Dreygon hated the guy, but the club members respect him and he wants to open a bar so the club can earn some legitimate money. He wants to work on building up a better reputation for Bedlam. Jericho wants to be part of it.”
“That doesn’t sound too terrible.”
“I guess not. Cash is leaving town next week. He’s going to head to the coast to see if he can find work. I hope he’ll be all right alone.”
“Cash? If anyone is good on their own, it’s Cash.”
“I suppose.” She relaxed back in the seat. “Enough talk about everyone else, how are you doing? I know I’ve been neglecting you some, but you understand.”
“I am definitely feeling neglected. But I do understand.”
She leaned over the console. “Well then . . .” She placed her hand on my thigh and moved it along to the front of my jeans and rubbed her palm against my cock. It strained against my fly. “I guess I have an hour to make up for weeks of neglect.”
***
Hardly having patience for the tedious chore of putting a key in the lock, I nearly kicked in my own front door. I slammed it shut behind us and yanked off Angel’s sweater before she had a chance to take one more step. She fumbled to get my shirt off. My mouth devoured hers as we struggled desperately to shed the rest of our clothing.
“It’s been too fucking long.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her down the hall to my bedroom. I nearly pushed her down onto the bed, and she laughed at how wild I’d become. “Now I’m understanding that whole long journey Viking thing,” I said. I lowered myself over her and her long legs went around my waist. I reached for the condom on my dresser and barely had the composure to put it on before I drove myself into her. She cried out and met my urgency with her own.
“Faster, Reno.”
I slid my hand beneath her ass and brought her higher to meet my thrusts. Seconds later, she cried out, and I pushed into her one last time before my own release came in shuddering waves. I collapsed down next to her and pulled her into my arms.
Angel snuggled against me, and I realized how badly I’d been missing having her tucked in my arms.
She sighed contentedly. “It’s all so surreal for me still. Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and find myself in my little cabin all alone and stuck in that world. I wonder if I would have turned out completely different if I’d grown up as Lyndsey Palmer instead of Evangeline Sharpe.”
“I’m sure you would have been different, but your heart, your compassion for people and animals, was something you were born with. That would have been there no matter what, and that’s what makes you so awesome.”
She kissed my shoulder. “You’re pretty damn awesome yourself, Special Agent Luke Barringer. And you’re a damn fine detective.” She stroked her fingers over my chest. “And you’re highly skilled in the stuff department, which is quite the bonus.”
“Otherwise, I’d be kicked to the curb, is that what you’re saying?”
She laughed.
“Did the name debate get cleared up?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m officially Lyndsey Palmer on the birth certificate, and that’s how it will stay. But they’ll call me Angel. I could understand their point of view, but they could see my side too. My whole life has changed drastically, and it seemed really jarring to suddenly be called a completely different name. I needed to hang on to that part of my identity, even if it was tied to the Sharpe women. I don’t want to forget that part of my life. It was my childhood, and it will always be part of me. Besides, Mom thinks Angel is a very fitting nickname.”
I kissed her forehead. “I couldn’t agree more.”
Chapter 21
Angel
It was an almost ridiculously lavish party, but it had made my parents happy and so I’d gone along with it. It was mostly people from their world, but the most important people of my old world were there too, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled.
Cash, Jericho, Gage and Seth sat around the bonfire sipping beers and talking to Luke. I picked up yet another whipped cream cupcake and headed over to them. “What are you wallflowers doing alone over here? My new cousins and some of my parents’ female work colleagues are having a debate about which one of you is the hunkiest.”
“I’m, no doubt, coming out on top of that debate,” Jericho said. He’d brushed his long hair back off his face and worn a nice shirt and jeans. He always cleaned up spectacularly.