Melanie had just brought Sarah back to her room after a visit to the nursery when someone knocked on her door. She reached for the handle, demanding the usual “State your name and business.”
“Mel, it’s Mike Harper and I have someone with me who needs to speak to Sarah.”
Mel stepped aside to let him use his pass key to open the door. For the second time, she stared in surprise at the visitor Harper had brought by the hospital. It was the same woman Liam Nash had been all over at Annie’s wedding last year. What the hell was she doing with Harper?
Mike gave Mel a quick introduction then led Angelique over to the bed where Sarah was seated. “Sarah, this is a good friend of mine, Angelique Baptiste. Angel, this is Sarah Richard.”
Angelique struggled to catch her breath as she got her first good luck at the woman that Mike was so concerned about. Now that she saw the poor girl, she could understand his concern. There wasn’t a spot on this woman’s face that wasn’t covered with a bruise or a nasty looking cut, and she was far too thin. Even through all of that, she could see the stubborn determination in the gaze Sarah fixed on her as Angel extended her hand.
“Sarah, it’s very nice to meet you. I hope you’re feeling better.”
“I am, thank you. I’m over the worst of it. Trust me when I say it looks worse than it feels,” she said, pointing to the bruises on her face. “It’s nice to meet you too, Angelique. What a beautiful name.”
Angel smiled and thanked her before taking her seat in a chair Mike placed next to the bed. “Sarah, Mike tells me you have experience in office management and you’re looking to relocate to another city. It happens that I’m looking for a replacement in our Lake Coburn office so I can relocate to our Lafayette location as soon as possible.” She spent the next ten minutes telling her about the workings of the medical facility, as well as her employer, Dr. Maze. She spent another ten minutes gleaning information about Sarah’s work experience and training.
Once Angelique was satisfied, she stood up and smiled down at the other woman. “It seems you’ve got the experience, even though you haven’t worked in a while. I’m certain you’ll have no difficulty learning the system. When you get out of here do you think you could get a resume ready?”
Sarah beamed up at her. “I already have one, but it’s at the women’s shelter where the twins and I were staying. They were going to help me find a job. When I leave here, I can go and pick it up. I don’t have a vehicle right now, and truthfully I don’t know how I’ll manage getting one. I’m not sure how the insurance company will settle since Troy’s name was on the title, but if I have to use the public transit system to get to work, I’ll do it. I only hope this Dr. Maze is willing to give me a chance.”
Angelique extended her hand again. “Sarah, I’m responsible for hiring my replacement, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re hired. The resume is just to put in your file. When you’re ready, give me a call.” She reached into her purse and handed Sarah a business card with her contact information. After answering a few more questions, she left the room.
Melanie watched as Mike followed the tall brunette out of the room. Angelique Baptiste. She’d heard Mike mention ‘Angel’ dozens of times, but she had no idea it was a shortened version of her real name. Everyone in the office knew he was crazy about her. They even had a pool going as to when he’d pop the question. She looked toward the door as he re-entered a minute later.
“Your company left?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, she went to speak to a friend of hers who works on this floor. When she’s through, we’ll leave.”
Melanie tried not to broach the subject, but her curiosity finally got the better of her. “I think I’ve seen her before.”
“She was involved in the Benjamin Bradford case a little over a year ago. He’d earmarked her as a potential victim.”
“I wasn’t talking about that, but I do remember it now. I think she was with that Nash guy at Annie McAllister’s wedding.”
Mike gave a shrug of indifference. “Could be,” he mumbled. “That’s around the time they got together for a few months.”
“I mean, they were only dancing and talking, but it seemed as if they were close,” she quickly explained.
He stared at her for a moment then grinned in understanding. “It’s okay, Mel. Angelique and I only started . . . ” He paused here for a moment, as if he weren’t certain how to finish, turning his gaze to his size fourteens. He lifted his right hand to rub the back of his neck and groaned. “Hell, I’m not sure what we’re doing, and that’s the damn truth of it.” His eyes glazed over for several seconds as though he forgot there were two other people in the room.
He chose that moment to snap out of his pondering and glanced up in time to catch them attempting to wipe all expression from their faces. His chest rumbled with laughter. “Am I that transparent?”
“Only a little,” Melanie admitted.
Sarah released a snort of laughter then wrapped her arms around her tightly wrapped ribs. “Oh, crap. That hurts.”
Mel and Mike burst into laughter and Sarah joined in. After they’d finally slacked off, Mike turned to his co-worker. “Don’t worry, Mel, I’m doing my damnedest to make sure Nash stays a free agent, in case you’re wondering.”
“Oh hell,” she groaned. “Am I that transparent?”
Mike grinned as he held up two fingers. “Only a little.”
A soft knock at the door interrupted them.
Mike opened the door to Angelique. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes, but I wanted to let Sarah know that Dr. Maze is all for trying her out.”
Mike nodded, giving Sarah a big thumbs-up signal before he and Angel headed out the door.
Melanie locked the door after their departure and turned to see Sarah rubbing her sore ribs. “I guess we shouldn’t make you laugh for a while.”
Sarah smiled up at her. “It feels good to laugh. Especially since I didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to do that again.”
Mel shook her head. “It must have been torture for you, thinking he’d come back any time to . . . ”
“Finish what he started,” Sarah continued, when Mel didn’t want to. “It was. I’ve never prayed so hard in my life, Mel. I couldn’t stand the thought of my babies growing up without me, but better that than them not getting a chance to grow up at all. And I kept wondering what his horrible neighbors would do if they found us.” She let her head fall back against the pillow. “He used our children to control me.”
“Cowards like him use anything they can to control a situation,” Melanie explained.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Sarah added before changing the subject. “So you’ve met Liam Nash before,” she said, wearing a smug expression.
Melanie raised her eyebrows. “We weren’t introduced the one and only time I’d ever seen him.”
“When he was with Angelique,” Sarah added.
“Yes . . . or Angel, as Mike calls her.”
Sarah lifted up her glass of juice in a toast. “Well here’s hoping Angel is out of Liam Nash’s picture very, very soon . . . And that you’re in it.”
Angelique stole another look at Mike, slightly bothered that the smile was still on his face. Knowing what kept it there didn’t help her mood.
Mike caught her looking at him and flashed a full frontal grin at her.
She gave him a half smile and turned to look out the window once more.
His smile faded as he mistakenly assumed the reason for her quietness. “Hey, don’t worry, Sarah and the girls will be fine now. You did a good thing today, Angel. Thank you.”
She turned abruptly and spoke to his profile. “Mike, I didn’t hire her because you asked me to, or because I felt sorry for her. I questioned her first; that was an interview. If she hadn’t told me what I wanted to hear, I wouldn’t have told her she had the job.”
“Oh . . . I thought,” he murmured, then stopped.
Feeling waspish for snapping at him, she reached out a hand to cover his as she tried to explain. “Look, it’s Dr. Maze’s business, not mine. I’m responsible for my replacement because I’m backing out of an agreement to work in the Lake Coburn office for two years. The truth is, I’ll give her a two week trial period, but if she can’t cut it, I’ll have to find someone else. I owe it to Dr. Maze and the other employees of the clinic.”
“I understand, Angel. I’m impressed as hell that you’re even willing to give her a chance. If you could see her with her girls—I should have taken you to see them; if I had, you’d feel like I do.”
She bit at her lower lip worriedly before turning to face him. “Mike, are you beginning to care for Sarah Richard?”
Mike’s jaw clenched as what she’d been thinking suddenly came to him. He pulled inside the nearest parking lot and threw the truck into park before turning to her.
“Yeah, Angel, I care for Sarah. I care because she’s an abused woman, I feel compassion for another human being, and I really hope she can turn her crappy life into a good one for her and her girls. I’d hoped you would feel the same way after meeting her.” He turned his head away from her and stared out the front windshield of the truck. “I guess I hoped for too much.”
“That’s not fair, and it’s a crappy thing to say to me,” she said, her irritation rising to a dangerous level, especially when he still didn’t look at her. “You know, I only met her for the first time thirty minutes ago, and I hired her, without seeing her adorable twin girls. Shouldn’t that count for something?”
He continued to stare straight ahead.
Angelique tossed her clutch irritably onto the truck’s dashboard. “Enough, Michael,” she said in a tight voice. “Take me to my car.”
Her irritated tone seemed to jerk him out of his daze. He leveled a stern gaze on her, his brow furrowed with deep lines. After a few uncomfortable moments, he grinned smugly at her. “Be careful. Your skin tone’s beginning to match the color of your eyes.”
She swung around to face him. “What?”
“You’re jealous.”
“I am not,” she snapped, far too quickly. “But I do want you to take me to my car, please.”
Halfway to Lake Coburn, Angelique pried her aching fingers from her steering wheel and tried to ease the tension from her stiff shoulders. She’d left Mike’s place in the midst of an unusually icy silence, neither of them willing to concede to the other. She groaned loudly as she pictured his smug, satisfied expression as he’d given her one curt wave before turning his back to walk away from her car.
Angelique adjusted her rearview mirror and stared at her reflection. The color of her eyes seemed deeper, brighter than usual. Was it a result of the green eyed monster revealing itself? Was she jealous? Could she be possibly be so horrible a person to resent a woman who’d been through such an awful experience? An image of Mike hovering over the tiny figure of Sarah Richard flashed in her mind. She closed her eyes and turned from the mirror in annoyance as the truth slammed home.
She stared at the roadway ahead of her, half blinded by tears of shame and humiliation. Shame for feeling this way, and humiliated because Mike had seen through her pitiful attempts to feel justified before she’d realized it herself.
She wiped hastily at her eyes and tried to pay closer attention to her driving. After a torturous trip home, she finally entered her apartment. Exhausted from her feelings of turmoil, she threw her purse on the floor and dropped belly down onto her living room couch.
Tears made a trail down her face as she admitted the truth. She had taken Mike for granted—that he’d always be there, he’d never concede to Liam, and he’d never look at another woman. What would she do if he suddenly stopped being there for her? She’d asked herself that question before, but it had never bothered her . . . until now. Would she feel the same way if Liam walked away from her? She strongly suspected she would.
“God help me. I’m so confused,” she said, covering her eyes. She closed her eyes, hoping to clear the fog of futility from her mind for just a little while.
Mike came in from his run and waited for his breathing to steady before pouring himself a glass of water. He drank deeply then walked around his kitchen, trying to keep his leg muscles loose. When he thought he could participate in a conversation without sounding like a heavy breather, he called the one person who must have been put on this earth to drive him crazy.
It had been over two hours since she’d left him and he hadn’t heard a peep from her. After the third ring, he told himself that surely he’d given her long enough to cool off. He looked at the phone as her voice mail picked up after the sixth ring—or maybe he hadn’t.
Angelique reached for her chirping cell phone and cracked her lids enough to see Mike’s name flash across the screen. No way could she talk to him yet. She set the phone carefully on the end table to let her voice mail pick it up. She glanced at her watch and groaned as she realized she’d slept for two hours.
Raising herself from the sofa, she waited for the fogginess to clear from her mind. What would she say to that man when she spoke to him again? She got up to fix a cup of chamomile tea, knowing the coffee she craved would keep her up all night. Just as she sat down with the cup palmed between her hands, her phone rang again. This time she answered without checking the caller ID.
“Hello.”
“Hey Angel, how are you today?” Liam’s voice boomed from the other end.
“I’m good.” She sat back against the cushioned arm of the sofa and curled her feet under her. “I just woke from a nap and I’m trying to snap myself out of it with a cup of hot tea.”
“You need me to call back later?”
“Nope,” she said. “I’ve been gone all day and I have some laundry to do. I went to visit my parents today.”
After a slight pause, Liam spoke up. “Alone?”
Angelique took a sip of tea. “No.”
Liam grunted. “I bet your folks are crazy about Harper.”
Angelique pictured the earlier scene as her parents had spoken French with Mike. Her dad had enjoyed teaching him several more words and phrases from the Creole French language. “They like him.”
“I guess they were pissed at me for taking off like I did,” he added.
“At first they were upset with you, but now they know what you’ve gone through. They both admire you for doing what you had to do to get your life back.”
“They know about the fire?” he asked solemnly.
“I told mama; I hope that’s okay.” She listened as Liam took a deep breath and released it.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” he said. After an uncomfortable silence, he continued. “I almost forgot; I acquired a new client yesterday.”
“Mike told me about her,” she answered. “It’s good of you to take Sarah’s case on pro bono. I met with her this afternoon, and hired her as my replacement in the Lake Coburn office.”
“Your replacement?” he asked. “You’re leaving the clinic?”
“I’m transferring back so that I can be closer to my parents.”
“To the Lafayette office,” he stated dryly.
“Yes.”
“Lafayette . . . Where Mike Harper happens to live.”
“It’s also where my parents happen to live.” Dead silence. “This has nothing to do with Mike,” she added, when she could no longer bear Liam’s stony silence.
More silence followed. Finally he spoke. “So you say.”
Anger started as a slow burn in her belly, and quickly built to a fiery rage, and still she remained silent.
After several agonizing moments he finally broke the icy silence.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes…” Her voice low and controlled.
“Angel?” he said, after another prolonged silence.
“I’m trying to get my head around the fact that you just called me a liar.”
“I’m not calling you a liar, but I do think you’re in denial when you say your transfer isn’t about Harper,” he replied.
Angelique managed to respond in a tight voice. “My mother will be having hip replacement surgery, and my father needs both knees replaced. Not that I owe you or anyone an explanation.”
After several icily silent seconds, Liam tried owning up to his mistake. “I screwed up, huh?”
“In a big way,” she returned.
“I’m sor . . . ”
She cut off his reply with a push of the power button. “Men,” she muttered, dropping the phone on the couch on her way to the bathroom for a hot shower.