Do Not Disturb (11 page)

It seemed that the only person he'd ever failed was her.

She shook her head, refusing to let the thought take root. She was a journalist, Stephen Whitney was the subject of a story. Nothing more. Hadn't she proved that over the last ten days, not to mention during the last hour? It took a wealth of professional detachment to calmly sit through a graphic blow-by-blow from the first person to arrive on scene at the accident that had killed the painter.

Okay, her insides might have wobbled a time or two,
but she'd overcome the weakness by mentally repeating a short, soothing mantra. It only went to show that she had a cool reporter's mind—not to mention an iron stomach, she added—hurrying toward the bar as she saw the matronly bartender slide a thick white plate at her place. Her side of fries!

Sliding onto her stool, Angel breathed deep. The delicious, decadent smell of greasy potatoes sent a shiver of ecstasy down her spine. She pinched one french fry between her thumb and forefinger, moaning a little when she found it gritty with salt and almost too hot to handle.

Perfect,
she thought, wiggling against the vinyl cushion in anticipation. Closing her eyes, she lifted it to her mouth.

“Did I tell you about the carnage in '52?”

Angel opened one eye. The man she'd come to The Well to interview, Dale Michaelson, had wandered away after her questions and the two mugs of beer she'd bought him had run dry. But now he was back, stroking his palm down his grizzled, foot-long beard.

“Carnage?” Angel echoed, still holding on to her fry. “Exactly what kind of carnage?”

“Flock of gulls,” Mr. Michaelson replied. He reached for one of the hand-rolled cigarettes tucked behind his ear. “I'm an explosives expert, you know, came to the Sur as a young man to work on the highway.”

Well, then. Angel bit into her fry—
nirvana
—and made some fast calculations. Highway 1 had been built with prison labor and completed in 1937. If Mr. Michaelson was speaking the truth, he was well into his eighties and a former convict to boot.

“What exactly does it take to be an explosives expert?” she asked, reaching for another fry.

In blatant disregard for California's no-smoking laws, Mr. Michaelson pulled out some matches and lit up. “Can't be afraid of fire, young lady,” he said around his cigarette, then drew deeply on it.

Angel glanced over, then stared as bits of flaming tobacco and cigarette paper fell, catching on his beard. The grizzled hair started to smolder.

“Uh…” She gestured toward the smoke.

He cackled and casually batted at the tiny blaze. “See what I mean? You can't be afraid of fire.”

Someone slid onto the empty stool on Angel's other side. “Are you trying to impress the women again, Dale?”

Cooper. At the sound of his voice, Angel's breath caught. Determined to hide her reaction, she gave him a mere glance. But that's all it took for something—okay, lust—to hit her bloodstream like a jolt of adrenaline. The rush made her light-headed, but she couldn't look away.

She was accustomed to seeing him in the usual Sur-wear—jeans or baggy shorts, T-shirt, heavy boots. But this evening he was dressed city-slick, in a pair of black slacks and a form-fitting pullover that was summer-blue and just had to be out of a silk Italian knit. Post-heart-attack clothes, was her first thought, because they fit him to a T.

Her second thought was that he had a date.

Dale Michaelson leaned around Angel to talk to Cooper. “Is this your woman, then, Cooper? You scared of a little competition?”

Angel frowned, turning away from Cooper to draw her plate of fries closer. “I'm my own woman, Mr. Michaelson.”

The old man cackled again. “There. She told you, Coop. But me, I was telling her about that flock of seagulls we accidentally bar-bee-cued in '52. They started one of our big wildfires too—not as big as that one just twenty years back, but almost. But boy-howdy, did those birds smell good when we cooked 'em.”

He broke off and pointed with his cigarette at the bartender, who once more pushed through the door from the kitchen, Angel's burger in her hand. “Better than Maggie's Fourth of July chicken special,” he said.

Eww
. Angel allowed herself a small shudder, but then drummed up her reporter's objectivity and forced the image out of her mind as the fat, juicy burger was set in front of her. Stacked with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and onions, then cut in half, the burger's meat steamed with fragrant, flagrant temptation. Angel lifted the top bun to add a helping of ketchup and mustard.

“That'll kill you, you know,” Cooper said, leaning close to her ear.

The skin on the side of her neck goosebumped. “But whatta way to go,” she retorted, without lifting her gaze from her food. No sense in giving herself another chance to stare at him, or Cooper another chance to see how he could so easily capture her.

“Now, I heard that, Cooper,” Maggie-the-bartender scolded. She leaned one ample hip against the counter behind her and gave him a mock frown. “There's no call for you to discourage business.”

He grinned. “Maybe I just want a partner in my new misery, Mag. Who was always your best customer?”

“You,” she said. “When we could pry you away from the city.”

“And that's exactly where I found Coop,” Mr. Michaelson put in, ash drifting from his cigarette to the bartop this time. “Just like I told you, young lady. The first person I called after the sheriff was Cooper's big-city law office.”

“What?” Cooper folded his arms on the top of the bar and squinted through the cigarette smoke at the old man. “What is it you told Angel?”

Maggie answered for Mr. Michaelson, thankfully keeping it short but sweet. “About Stephen.”

Ignoring a little clutch in her stomach, Angel clapped the top of the bun on one half of the burger, then went to work on the other.

“Told her how the truck blew him right out of his shoes,” Mr. Michaelson said. “Pair a size-eleven Nikes.”

Her stomach clutched again and she fell back on her little mantra.

 

subject of a story subject of a story subject of a story

 

Breathing deeply, steadily, Angel picked up her hamburger.

“Recognized all that blond hair of his, course,” the old man continued. “But not much else.”

Her fingers tightened on the burger, squirting ketchup out the side.

 

subject of a story subject of a story subject of a story

 

“Jesus, Dale,” Cooper muttered. He leaned closer to Angel. “You all right, honey?”

 

subject of a story subject of a story subject of a story

 

“You all right?” he asked again.

“Of course.” She jerked a shoulder, hunching it to create a barrier between them. “I'm a journalist. Details are my job.”

“Angel—”

“Don't you dare think I can't handle it.”

In third grade, the other boys at her new school had tortured her for months by scaring her at every opportunity. They'd said she screamed like a girl, so she'd toughened up, learned not to make a sound, not to blink, even when she found crickets in her lunch-box and snails squished between the pages of her binder.

Angel put her elbows on the bar and brought her sandwich to her mouth.

“I told her I think he must have flown forty feet.”

She closed her eyes, not sure whether the old man had actually said the words again or if she was just recalling them. It was her father who had been hit by the truck. He'd flown forty feet through the air, flown right out of his shoes. Blond hair. Her father. Blood.

Tired of the penny-ante stuff, one day the third-grade bullies had cornered her on the walk home from school. They'd grabbed her backpack, stuffed what
they claimed was a dead, bloodied cat inside, then shoved it back into her arms.

Now, like then, she'd heard herself screaming, high and girlish. Now, like then, the sound was only in her head. On the outside she was calm, cool, collected, just as she'd been that day. Tough. Strong. She'd rescued herself.

“
Angel?
”

“What?” She knew she still held the half-hamburger a few inches from her mouth, but she couldn't take a bite quite yet.

“Honey,” Cooper said. “You're white as a ghost.”

“Ghost,” she echoed. Suddenly the word made her want to giggle, but Angel Buchanan was too tough to giggle. That's right. She was as tough as she needed to be.

The “cat” had turned out to be a bundle of dirty red rags dipped in molasses, but it was one of her ghosts, a part of her past that wouldn't quit haunting her. That “cat” and the man, the father, who had died a few miles from here. She couldn't forget him either.

But had he ever remembered her?

Her fingers loosened and her hamburger dropped to her plate.

“Maggie.” Cooper's hand clamped on Angel's upper arm and he spun her toward him. “Bring tea. Hot tea with lots of sugar.”

Then he shook her arm. “Are you sick?”

“Of course not.” She stared at the middle of his chest. Right there, under that pretty-colored Italian knit, he had a scar, because Cooper was tough too, too tough to
die, despite two heart attacks. “I don't want tea. Sick of tea.”

“We're getting out of here, then.” He hauled her to her feet, his touch not the least bit gentle. She stared down at his shiny loafers.

Nikes. Flew right out of his size-eleven Nikes,
she thought.

And swayed.

“Christ,” Cooper said under his breath. He shifted to slide his arm around her. But he was tall and she was short and so his hand brushed against the side of her breast. “
Christ
.”

More prickles, hot, skittered toward her nipple, snapping Angel out of her strange reverie. She pulled free of Cooper's hold and shoved her shoulders back. “I'm fine. I—” Turning to find her purse, her gaze landed on the abandoned, ketchup-drenched hamburger instead.

Her stomach rolled. Then, though he hadn't said a word, she forced her gaze toward Cooper. “Don't you dare think I can't handle it.”

“Of course you can handle it.” His voice was soothing and he slipped his hand beneath her elbow as if he could tell her knees felt mushy.

Which they didn't.

“Just let me help you—”

“I don't need any help! I never need any help.” She put her hand on her forehead. “I have a headache, that's all. Too many vegetables give me a headache.”

He had her purse. She snatched it from him, the abrupt movement nearly overbalancing her. He caught
her again, pulled her toward him. “Let's dance. Someone just put a quarter in the jukebox. It's my favorite song.”

Angel listened for a moment. “‘Hakuna Matata' is your favorite song?” she asked, incredulous. “‘Hakuna Matata' from
The Lion King
?”

“Shh.” He pushed her head against his shoulder. “It's our song now.”

“Our song is a duet by a rodent and a pig,” she muttered. “That's perfect, just perfect.”

But she leaned into him because, after all, she had that headache. Not to mention that “Hakuna Matata” had an engaging beat and she didn't remember the last time she'd been dancing, or the last time she'd smelled a delicious man's cologne on real male skin instead of on a peel-and-sniff sample in
GQ
.

Holding her close, his chin against her cheek, Cooper began to hum. He was a hummer! The slight vibration of it buzzed against her temple.

It made Angel snuggle closer. She was a whistler in the dark herself, so she felt a certain kinship to hummers. Though she bolstered her bravado with a Seven Dwarves–type tune in times of trouble, hummers did their thing to express their contentment.

Angel closed her eyes. It was kind of nice to think Cooper was contented with her in his arms.

Shutting off everything else, she floated on that thought, nearly slumping in his arms, as he did all the moving for them both. In that warm haze, a sudden slap of cool, fresh air came as quite a shock. Her eyes popped open and she realized he'd hustled her outside and was now unlocking the passenger door of his SUV.

She blinked. “What are you doing? I—I have my own car.”

He took her purse from her and threw it inside. “We'll get it tomorrow.”

“No—What the
heck
are you doing?” Instead of listening to her, he'd picked her up and placed her on the seat. “I have my own—” The door slammed in her face.

She was more puzzled than angry when he slid into the driver's seat. “What's going on?”

“When was the last time you ate?” he demanded.

“The last time I ate?” She shook her head. “I don't know. What does that—”

“I have a wet sock that weighs more than you do,” he said, his voice tight, almost angry. “I didn't see you in the dining room for breakfast or lunch today, and then you almost fainted back there. You were nearly comatose on the dance floor, for God's sake. I'm taking you back to Tranquility and getting you something to eat before you fall on your face.”

She pointed back toward the tavern. “I have a meal—”

“No.”

She tried again. “My hamburger—”

His impatient gesture cut her off. “Don't play games with me. You don't want to eat that.”

“But—”

“For God's sake, give a little here, Angel. Let me take care of you. If just this once.”

If just this once
. Angel eyed his determined expression. If she looked at the situation objectively, she
was
hungry, and tired, and tired of fighting. Him. Herself. “All right.”

Letting someone else take the reins for a short while didn't mean she would lose complete control.

Together, they raided the Tranquility kitchen. Well, Cooper raided and Angel was waited upon. It was nice, she decided, and even nicer when he was sitting across the narrow table from her, sharing eggplant lasagne leftovers. When she pushed her plate away, he did too.