Errant Angel Read online

  So now what was he supposed to do?

  Angie sighed and tightened her arms around him in a hug. “Thank you, Dalton. I finally understand.”

  “Understand?” he repeated warily.

  “Mmm-hmm. I never did, before. I mean, I always did fine, up to a point. But because I never knew how powerful it could be, I could never seem to anticipate what people would do when love came into the picture.”

  Dalton stopped breathing for a long moment. “Angie,” he said, his voice brittle. “This was not love. It was sex, pure and simple.”

  She blinked, as if puzzled. “Well, I know it was sex, but—”

  “Don’t try to make anything more out of it. I wanted it, so did you, so we scratched the itch. That’s all.”

  He yanked himself away from her, overbalancing and winding up on the floor of the car, giving his bum ankle a wrench that made him wince. Damn it, he should have known she would have to dress it up and make it pretty. That was the trouble with virgins, once they gave it up, they had to convince themselves they’d only done it because they were in love. Well, he wasn’t in love. He never would be. He understood that and accepted it. She would just have to accept it, too, because he wouldn’t change it even if he could.

  He shifted, trying to get up, but he was caught at an awkward angle on the floor between the seats, his legs too long to let him maneuver easily.

  “Damn,” he swore under his breath. “I’m too old for this.”

  “For what?”

  Her voice was so calm that he looked up at her in surprise. He’d expected her to be hurt when he’d bluntly classified what had happened between them as merely sex. In his gut, he knew it was much more than that, but his mind veered away from the fact like a race car with a blown tire had once veered into him.

  Her expression was as calm as her voice had sounded. And she was looking at him expectantly, waiting for an answer.

  “What do you think?” he snapped. “We’re in the back seat of a car, for God’s sake, my jeans are around my ankles and your dress isn’t even off. You’d think we were a couple of hormone-laden teenagers.”

  “Is that so bad?” she asked with an innocence he would have sworn was unfeigned. Then, incredibly, she smiled. A wide, teasing smile that flicked at something deep inside him, something that had been frozen for so long he’d forgotten it existed. “I’m sure I’m not the only one to have had her first time in the back of this car.”

  He stared at her in wonder. What was that she’d said, about not being able to anticipate what people would do? Well right now he was so bewildered by her reaction he didn’t know what to say. The memory of another time when he also hadn’t known what to say—incredibly, less than an hour ago—rose in his mind, only to be quashed immediately. He wasn’t ready to deal with that yet. For that matter, he wasn’t ready to deal with this, either. The only thing he was ready to do was get away.

  “It’s all right, Dalton,” she said quietly. She reached over to lay a gentle hand on his arm. “You don’t have to run from feeling alive.”

  He went rigid. It was as if she’d dug down into his shriveled soul with her gentle touch, and found the core of his agitation.

  “Damn you,” he rasped, “whatever you’re doing, stop it.”

  “You have a right to be happy, you know.”

  The whip of guilt snapped, stinging a sharp retort out of him. “Like hell I do.”

  He scrambled out of the car, yanked his jeans up and zipped them.

  “Get dressed,” he ordered. “I’m going to open the door so you can get out of here.”

  Still her expression of calm never wavered. With a dignity he would have thought impossible under the circumstances, she gracefully climbed out of the car and fixed her clothing, the barely noticeable trembling in her fingers as she began to button the dress the only outward sign that anything was unusual.

  He watched her, his jaw clenched. His body tightened fiercely at the sight of the curved flesh of her breasts disappearing behind the soft fabric. It was just that it had been so long, he told himself. He would have felt this way with any woman, after all this time without release.

  She finished at last, and lifted her gaze to his face. God, how could she look at him like that? How could she look at him as if she’d heard none of the cutting, harsh things he’d said? Or as if she’d heard them, but they didn’t matter. As if she understood the deepest, darkest reasons for his sudden coldness, reasons he wasn’t sure he understood himself? He only knew that what had happened between them had been too intense, that things were tumbling far too fast, that he needed some time and space to regain his balance.

  And to convince himself that this idea of some sort of inexplicable mental connection between them was totally crazy.

  Nine

  Angie rolled over in bed and, grudgingly, opened her eyes in surrender; she obviously wasn’t going to get any more sleep tonight. She had initially dozed off quickly enough, so wonderfully satiated had her body been, but she’d awakened in the gray light of predawn. And had been awake ever since, aware only of her sadness at Dalton’s resistance to letting go of that burden of guilt, to coming out of the lonely, isolated life he’d condemned himself to.

  Then the not unpleasant soreness of certain intimate parts of her body reminded her that this haunted, withdrawn man had given her a miraculous gift of knowledge, a knowledge that even the bosses hadn’t been able to give her. A knowledge she wondered if they, in their superior but sometimes detached wisdom, were even capable of understanding.

  The bosses.

  She sat up sharply. Her hand instinctively went to the pendant, but it was still dead, cool and silent to the touch. Just as well, she thought gratefully. If they’d decided to reconnect tonight, while she’d been—

  Lord, even if they had, she wouldn’t have noticed. She’d been incapable of noticing anything amid the storm of sensations that Dalton had caused in her. Color and heat flooded her cheeks, and she pressed her hands to her face in the darkness. Next time she would take the pendant off.

  If, of course, there was a next time.

  She fingered the gold charm, wondering if she had been deserted altogether. Were the bosses finally fed up with her? Had they written her off?

  If they hadn’t already, she thought wryly, they certainly had cause now. Of course, they didn’t know that, yet.

  But if they had truly abandoned her permanently, they wouldn’t just leave her here, would they? They had always said it was a one-way deal, that if she quit, she’d wind up right back where they’d found her. It was a surefire way of guaranteeing loyalty.

  Well, there was one way to find out. If they’d abandoned her, she’d be powerless now. She knew they would never leave her that, if they truly had deserted her.

  She looked across the room at the stack of school papers she had yet to grade. Immediately she knew Jimmy’s was halfway down the stack; she could see the bold if slightly crooked scrawl of his writing as if it were suspended in front of her. She shifted her gaze to the doll that sat on the bureau, one of the multitude of Mrs. Webster’s collection that cluttered the house. She concentrated and, after a moment, the doll tilted, then toppled over, protected from damage by the stiff fullness of the lace petticoat.

  So far, so good. Angie closed her eyes and probed close at hand. The response was immediate; Lilah Webster was sound asleep, not even dreaming at the moment.

  Now for the acid test, she thought.

  By the time she realized that if she were going to test this stronger power, she ought to be testing it on Jimmy, she had already reached out to Dalton. It was a much greater distance, to that painfully tidy little room over the garage, but when the connection clicked in, it was as clear as if he were in the same room with her. Once she got through the chaos of his still spinning thoughts, she got the sense of the same sleeplessness she’d been suffering, the same physical awareness of a body unused to lovemaking and a mind shocked at the sweetness of it....

&nbs
p; And then it hit her, a swirling mass of heated memories, vivid images of his body sliding over hers, into hers, of her soft, wondering cries, and she realized with a little shock that she was feeling what he had felt as he had driven himself into her with an urgency that left her breathless—then, and now. It was incredible. She felt the heat boiling up inside her, felt the pulsing throb of need as the two bodies etched with vivid clarity in her mind approached that consuming climax.

  Even as her body responded to the power of the feeling, she realized with no little amount of awe that in this glowing vision she was both taker and taken, and perhaps the only woman alive who truly knew what the man who had made love to her had experienced.

  Damn it, Angie, stop it!

  She gasped out loud. Immediately every shield, every safeguard snapped into place, severing the bond that should never have existed in the first place.

  This was impossible. It had never, ever happened before. As far as she knew, it had never happened with any of the bosses’ operatives. Reading a person not directly connected to a mission was difficult enough; having the connection go both ways was unheard of.

  She clasped the pendant, but it remained cool and still. She tried sending a message, anyway, but the familiar hum and slight vibration didn’t materialize.

  None of this made any sense. They’d seemingly deserted her, yet had left her her powers. What happened now? Surely they wouldn’t just leave her like this. One of the main reasons for their success rate over all these years of doing this was the fact that they remained unknown and unremembered when the task at hand was finished. Only that secrecy had allowed them to function so freely, and so successfully.

  They couldn’t possibly just leave her here, not with all the knowledge she held. Even if they had relented, decided to make an exception in her case and not put her back where they’d found her, they would have erased her memory of them, and of everything she’d done since they’d saved her for their own purposes.

  So did this mean they would pop up again, reestablishing the connection when they saw fit? Would it be soon, or would she be going about whatever her business might be, years from now, and then the pendant would thrum to life, recalling her?

  She wrestled with the seemingly unanswerable question all day as she struggled to get through her classes without remembering that amazing mental joining, that moment when Dalton’s memories had become hers and she’d felt his remembered responses as if they were her own.

  And every time her guard was down and those images crept in again, the connection was there. Dalton was there. She no longer had to even try; all she had to do was unintentionally think about him, and his consciousness invaded hers and she had to slam the doors of her mind. It was up to her to do that, she sensed; Dalton had no idea how to control this. She also sensed he was beginning to wonder about his sanity.

  He was getting scared.

  And, she thought wearily as the last class of the day—Jimmy’s class—filed in, from her experience, when men got scared, they got angry. And right now the last thing she needed was an angry Dalton MacKay. For, she admitted ruefully, her own sake as much as Jimmy’s.

  But no explanation she could give Dalton would suffice. This was too strange, too impossible.

  Of course, she thought as she tapped a pencil idly on her desk, she could always just tell him the truth. Her mouth quirked; that should go over well.

  She was distracted throughout the class—as was Jimmy, she noticed—but the other students were so primed and enthusiastic about the history they’d once groaned about that she barely had to do anything to keep the discussion moving. She’d accomplished that, at least. And she’d enjoyed it; perhaps, had she continued in her other life, she would have become a teacher.

  No, she thought wryly, she never would have made it, not then. The opinions that she’d always held, opinions that fit into the world view now, would have made her a bluestocking at best then, and at worst, an outcast, a woman who didn’t know her place.

  And just what, she thought glumly, is different now? Aren’t you exactly that, a woman who doesn’t know where she belongs?

  “You okay, Jimmy?” she asked when the class was finally over and the students began to leave—still, she thought proudly, arguing about whether the Tories should have been allowed to go free after the war was over.

  The boy shrugged. “Yeah.”

  She remembered then, and apologized silently to the boy for her forgetfulness. “Good luck at your meeting with the social worker tonight.”

  For an instant, fear sparked in his eyes. Then, with an effort that was visible—at least to her—he fought it down. “They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do,” he said carelessly.

  She’d thought she’d reassured him, but apparently he needed a bit more. “They’re going to do what you make them do, Jimmy. You, by what you do, how you act, will determine what they decide.”

  His eyes widened. “I...never thought of it like that.”

  “Think about it, Jimmy.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I will.”

  He turned to go, reached the door, then looked back over his shoulder at her, grinning.

  “You got company, teacher.”

  Angie heard the deep tones of a man just outside the door as he, as she had, wished Jimmy good luck tonight. She stood there, frozen, unable to move, not needing to see, not even needing to expand her senses; she knew it was Dalton.

  When he stepped through the classroom door, she almost forgot to breathe. He was as beautiful as she remembered, his long legs clad in a pair of snug black jeans that scrunched up over black boots. He wore a white, long-sleeved, button-down shirt, with the sleeves rolled up over muscled forearms. The loose fit of the shirt only emphasized the leanness of his hips and the flatness of his belly.

  He also looked haggard, weary...and as she had feared, both scared and angry.

  “I need to talk to you. Alone.”

  His voice matched his expression. “I...” She knew she couldn’t deny him. “All right.”

  “Not here.”

  “All right,” she repeated.

  “My place.”

  For a man who needed to talk, he surely wasn’t doing much of it now, she thought. But she merely said a third time, “All right.” Then she added, “I have to turn in some paperwork—”

  “I’ll wait there.”

  She nodded, and without another word he turned on his booted heel and walked out of the room. This was not, she thought with a sigh, going to be pleasant.

  When she arrived at the garage, to her surprise it was closed. She walked up the outside stairs to the door of the room above and knocked; nothing. She stood there for a moment, pondering, then heard footsteps on the concrete of the garage driveway. They were slightly uneven, and when she caught a glimpse of him, she realized he was limping.

  He glanced up and saw her, and started up the stairs.

  “I guess I drove faster than you.” Her attempt at a quip fell flat.

  “I walked. I don’t have a car. I don’t drive.”

  A car mechanic who didn’t have a car? A former race car driver who didn’t drive? True, she hadn’t heard a car, or ever seen one here that he wasn’t working on, but it seemed odd that when he wound up limping after less than a mile-long walk, he didn’t own some kind of transportation. Especially if, as Maggie Kirkland had said, he made house calls.

  She stepped back as he brushed past her and reached for the doorknob. She was startled when he simply turned it and the door swung open.

  “You don’t have a key, either?”

  “Nothing worth stealing.”

  And you wouldn’t care if it happened. She had, she thought grimly, overestimated how pleasant this was going to be.

  She stepped inside when he gestured her ahead of him; at least he wasn’t so angry he’d discarded his manners. The room looked much as she’d seen it that first night. Painfully clean and neat, and lacking in anything that might make it less anonymous. As if he’
d kept it this way to remind himself he wasn’t worth anything better, Angie thought.

  The door shut with a slam. She barely managed not to jump. He walked past her—not limping now, she noticed, although the set of his jaw suggested he was controlling it at some cost—then turned to face her. He didn’t comment on the room, or how he must know it appeared to strangers. He’d so thoroughly shut himself off from everything else, she supposed he didn’t care about that, either.

  “I want to know what the hell is happening. What you’re doing to me, and how you’re doing it.”

  So much for small talk, she thought. Playing ignorant was obviously out of the question; he knew as well as she did something was going on. Besides, she didn’t think she could do that to him, despite doubting that the fact that she was just as confused about it as he was was going to help her much.

  “I don’t know what’s happen—”

  He swore sharply, pungently, cutting her off. “Don’t lie.”

  She took in a deep breath. “Let me put that differently. I don’t know why it’s happening. I only know...I’m not doing anything to make it happen.”

  And that was the honest truth, now. All she had to do was think about him for more than ten seconds—something she did all too often—while her guard was down, and the connection was there.

  He let out a long breath, and she saw a flicker of relief flash in his eyes, lighting the shadowed green for an instant. He’d been afraid she would deny it was happening at all, she realized. And then he’d be faced with the possibility that he was truly losing his mind. She was grateful she hadn’t tried to deny it.

  She watched him pace the room. He came to a halt in front of the narrow bed against the wall. She followed him, wondering where all her easy words had vanished to. Apparently that was another thing she’d never understood; it was easy to know what to say when it wasn’t your heart that was involved. And she could no longer deny that her heart was most definitely involved with this man.

  “This morning,” he said slowly, “just before dawn, I...”