Angel knew Cooper Jones—Katie Whitney’s uncle—was stalking her.
Not physically—she stood apart from him and the fifty or so others waiting quietly on the oceanside bluff where the private farewell ceremony was to take place. But behind his dark lenses she felt his gaze following her, the sensation of being closely watched as tangible as the Pacific-cooled breeze tugging at her hat.
Pulling the hat’s brim lower on her forehead, Angel kept tabs on the dark-haired figure from the corner of her eye. He was standing by himself on the other side of the small crowd, his arms crossed over his chest, bodyguard-style. When a gust of wind flapped the hem of his suit jacket and whipped his too-long hair over his face, he shook it back with a single toss of his head.
Obviously a guy who didn’t waste movement. In general, she liked that in a person, just as she, in general, wasn’t averse to intense scrutiny from attractive men. But it was vibes of distrust, not desire, she was picking up from this one, so she figured it best to stay out of his way.
“Hello, there,” a voice from behind her said, its friendly tone loud enough to be heard over the unceasing rush of the ocean. “Are you a friend of Stephen’s, or a relative?”
Angel froze. It’s just a casual question, she assured herself. Nothing to feel jumpy about. Her name was even on the guest list—her legal name, although it wasn’t the one she’d been born with. Lifting her lips in a polite smile, she turned to face the—
Priest? Friar? What did you call a man wearing an ankle-length brown robe and heavy silver crucifix with Berkenstock sandals?
The stranger smiled gently back. “Friend or relative?” he asked again.
And should you, could you lie to such a man? Angel swallowed. “Neither, I suppose. I’m an, uh, observer.”
It was true enough. Biology aside, nothing had connected her to Stephen Whitney in well over twenty years, not since he’d dumped her and her mother for his muse and free rent in an artist’s colony in Big Sur.
“I’m Angel Buchanan,” she added, holding out her hand.
The robed stranger shook it. “And I’m Brother Charles, from the monastery over the hill.”
She blinked. “I had no idea there was a monastery nearby.” Though her intern at the magazine, Cara, had gathered a copious amount of information on the artist as well as the area where he’d lived, Angel had stashed the files in the trunk of her car without glancing through them.
“Ah, well, the Sur holds several surprises.”
Angel could only nod in agreement to that.
“Much of the land is under federal protection,” Brother Charles went on, “but there are also private residences scattered around, as well as our monastery. Even a fancy inn or two like that one.” Brother Charles gestured up the zigzagged flights of steps they’d taken to reach the bluff. At the top was the elegant, Victorian-style Crosscreek Hotel.
Angel’s gaze lingered on the place. Cara had booked her at an inn farther south on Highway 1, closer to the Whitney compound. Angel hoped her accommodations would be on par with the well-appointed luxury the Crosscreek Hotel promised. Even now she could almost taste steaming breakfast muffins, thick grilled steaks, luscious pillow chocolates.
She’d reward herself each day with a bit of pampering, she decided, because surely Cara had selected an inn that would offer the most up-to-date spa services. Floating off on daydreams of herbal wraps and aromatherapy sessions, it took her a moment to register that the man in the robe had half-turned and was beckoning someone closer.
“Brother Charles, what are you doing?” her voice croaked out.
The man glanced over. “I want to say hello to Cooper. Cooper Jones,” he explained. “Stephen’s brother-in-law.”
She was already shuffling backward, trying to look casual as the soles of her black pumps slid along the gritty sandstone.
“Don’t run away.” Brother Charles reached out, looping his elbow through hers to lasso her back. “I’ll introduce you.”
“We’ve already met,” she demurred. “And perhaps this isn’t the best time to further our acquaintance.” Not to mention that she was planning on avoiding Mr. Cooper Jones and his patent mistrust for the rest of her life.
“Well…” Brother Charles looked back toward the other man, then dropped her arm. “Never mind. Lainey, the widow, is coming down the stairs. She’ll need Cooper now. You can see that they’re a very close-knit family.”
Angel squinted to study the small group descending the final flight of steps from the hotel. There was the girl—Katie—close beside a dark-haired woman in her thirties.
Angel frowned. “Wait. There are two women. Twins.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Brother Charles nodded. “Elaine and Elizabeth. Lainey was Stephen’s wife and Beth was Stephen’s business manager.”
That’s what you get, Angel thought, annoyed with herself again. If she’d prepared like she would have for any other story, she would have known about the twins. About the daughter. But no, for all those years she’d resisted even submitting her father’s name to an internet search engine, which forced her to play catch-up now.
As a matter of fact, Angel had never walked into one of the Whitney Galleries—as common in American malls as Starbucks and multiplex theaters. The only thing about Stephen Whitney she hadn’t been able to evade was the knowledge of his mass popularity and his goody-goody reputation.
But all that was going to change.
Studying the women walking toward the crowd, Angel noted their similar-but-not-matching knee-length suits, one in a soft yellow, the other in green. Their hair was styled differently as well, a layered style for the twin in yellow, a sleek bob for her sister.
“The widow, Lainey, is the one in the green, I assume,” Angel said. Even from this distance, she could tell the woman had been crying.
“No, that’s Beth.” Brother Charles’s voice filled with concern. “I hope Judd is keeping a close eye on her.”
Angel didn’t look away from the small group. “Is Judd another brother?”
“A family friend. Judd Sterling is the gray-haired man just now putting his arm around Beth’s waist.”
The family friend was forty-something and prematurely gray, with handsome, chiseled features. He continued to support the widow’s sister, while the worrisome Cooper character wrapped one arm around Katie and the other around Lainey Whitney.
So that’s what it looks like when a man comes through for a woman in a time of need.
Startled by the stabbing thought, Angel took a hasty step back. There was no call for bitterness, she reminded herself. She only desired the truth.
“It looks as if the service is ready to begin,” her companion said. “We’re being signaled forward.”
“I think I’ll stay right where I am.” As she saw the others drawing together, her throat was tightening, just as it had in the church. “I’m only here as an observer,” she said again.
Not as a mourner. Not as a daughter. The fact was, she didn’t even have one simple memory of the man who’d fathered her.
Brother Charles sent her a compassionate look. “I understand. Some people find it difficult to face death.”
Angel’s spine snapped straight. “I don’t find it difficult to face anything,” she protested, but Brother Charles was already moving away. Her avoidance of Stephen Whitney had nothing to do with fear.
So to prove that to them both, she wiped her palms on the skirt of her dress and without further hesitation made for the circle the others were assembling near the edge of the bluff. Though she quickly found a place, she suffered another pang of—of something, when her eye happened to catch Katie’s. Edging back again, Angel created a gap between herself and the person next to her.
Of course, she paid for it. That’s what weakness gets you, she told herself grimly as Mr. Sunglasses-and-Suspiciousness instantly stepped in beside her.
She pretended not to notice his presence, though, as a sudden gust of wind yanked at her hat, forcing her to quickly clap her palm against the straw crown.
“You might want to take that off”—his murmur was a mere notch above the low thunder of the ocean below—“or the wind will do it for you.”
And give him a chance to look at her naked face? She thought not. Now was not the time to throw caution—or her hat, for that matter—to the wind. Without answering, she tugged it farther down her forehead and blessed its elastic band, hidden beneath the hair coiled at her nape.
At the farthest point in the circle from Angel, another berobed man began to speak. It was difficult to hear him over the sound of the waves below, but now and then the wind tossed a word her way. “Nature,” “beauty,” “reunion.”
“Family.”
Family. Ducking her head, Angel sucked in a sharp breath. The air tasted salty on her tongue. Like tears.
A large hand closed strongly over hers.
Angel jumped, her chin jerking up. From beneath her wide-brimmed hat, she shot a glance at the dark lenses of Cooper Jones’s sunglasses.
“We were asked to join hands,” he explained.
She wrenched free of him anyway, then her gaze took a turn around the circle. Everyone was linked, except for her. Everyone was staring at her too.
Embarrassed, she instantly thrust her palm toward the woman on her left. She made a gesture toward Cooper with her right hand as well, but only allowed the lightest brush of their knuckles, just enough to make it look as if they were holding hands.
When the man in the robe started reciting some sort of benediction, Cooper leaned toward her again. “What’s the matter? It’s just a little thing.”
It’s just a little thing. Exactly what she’d said to him in the church, right before asking him about the Whitney widow. Oh, he had suspicions about her, all right. It wasn’t likely that she allayed them any either, by jumping about two feet when his fingers happened to brush hers once more. But she didn’t want their hands touching again. Once was enough. His palm had felt too warm, too big, too solid.
That was the problem with men. They made you want to hang on to them.
That unpleasant thought caused her to miss the final “amen.” The next thing she knew, the leader of the service was directing the group into a single line, placing Angel at its head, with Cooper her faithful shadow.
Once the ceremony was over, she vowed, easing another cautious inch away from him, she’d make sure they were never in the same place at the same time again.
The robed leader was now approaching her, an elaborately carved box in his arms. “One last request to fulfill Stephen’s wishes,” the man said, his voice carrying clearly this time. “Then we’ll return to the hotel for refreshments.”
When he stopped at Angel, she turned her back on the ocean to face him. His smile was brotherly as he flipped open the wooden lid. “Take some in each hand,” he instructed, “and toss them into the sea.”
Angel peered into the depths of the box. Then her stomach cramped. Ashes? Ashes. She was supposed to take some in each hand and toss them into the sea.
Her father’s ashes.
Her stomach cramped again.
This is nothing to me, she assured herself, embarrassed by her hesitation. I don’t even remember Stephen Whitney, so it’s nothing. The ashes would feel weightless, meaningless, more nothing in her palms. But she couldn’t force her locked arms from her sides.
“To the sea,” the man with the box urged. “Stephen wanted the ashes of his last paintings to ride free on the waves.”
His paintings.
His paintings. Her muscles released, and, near giddy in relief, Angel quickly scooped her hands into the box. Then she spun and took a step toward the bluff’s edge.
Pausing, she glanced down at her lightly clenched fists, feeling the slick, soft ash inside them clinging to her skin. The giddiness evaporated and her stomach spasmed again.
Now desperate to free herself from the ashes, from the moment, from him, she took a hasty, giant step forward and flung open her hands. As the ashes swirled up, into the air, she felt the ground shift beneath her feet.
Her heart lurched. She twisted, her pumps scrambling for purchase against the crumbling edge of the cliff.
A big hand appeared in front of her. A man’s hand.
Instinct and experience warred. But when her heels ran off of solid ground, she ran out of options. To save herself, she was forced to reach for, grasp, depend upon Cooper Jones.
If his brother-in-law hadn’t already been dead, Cooper Jones thought, he would have done the job himself. Stalking through Crosscreek Hotel’s terrace restaurant, he ran his gaze over the small group who had attended the ceremony, the one that had just ended in that ridiculous throwing of ashes. It had almost been like tossing handfuls of cash off the damn cliff.
Jesus, it was exactly like tossing handfuls of cash off the damn cliff. Feeling a sharp cinch of his neck muscles, a sure sign of his stress level climbing, Cooper slowed down to take a few deep breaths. Funerals topped his personal “To Avoid” list and he wished he’d done just that.
Then he could have sat at home worrying about what financial stupidity had caused Stephen to sink every penny into a risky marketing venture while leaving the stipulation in his will that any unreleased paintings be burned. A year’s worth of the prolific artist’s work had been destroyed. Paintings that would have made a hell of a hedge against Stephen’s potentially bad investment.
If Cooper had been the Whitney attorney he would have insisted on striking that clause from the will, but since his specialty was criminal defense and not probate law, he hadn’t known a thing about it until it was too late. Now his sisters’ and his niece’s long-term security was rocking on the fulcrum of the artist’s popularity.
Perhaps that underlying anxiety was to blame for the way his hackles had risen when he was near the black-hatted female who’d been beside him at the church and then again on the bluff. Something told him she was trouble.
He scrutinized the subdued crowd on the patio again, relieved when there was no further sign of her. She’d made herself scarce after he’d hauled her from the edge of the cliff, and with luck she was gone for good. Damn, but he hoped he wouldn’t regret rescuing her.
“Uncle Cooper.”
At the sound of Katie’s voice he swung around. She wore the blank mask she’d rarely let slip since being told of her father’s death. More disquiet slicing through him, he reached out and pulled her against his chest.
“How are you doing, honey?” he asked, holding her tight. “I wasn’t much older than you when my father died. I remember how hard it is.” And in the last year, the memories had only sharpened.
Katie leaned into him for a moment, her shoulders sagging in a soft sigh, but then she moved back again, her expression carefully empty.
Cooper scrubbed a hand over his face. The only occasion she’d shown any natural animation in the past week was outside the church today, when she’d spoken with that woman—a fact that had his hackles rising all over again. He made another quick scan of the patio. “Did you need me for something, sweetheart?”
“Mom wants Aunt Beth. I thought she might be here.”
“I think I saw her head inside.” Cooper looked back down at his niece and chucked her on the chin. “Go tell your mom I’ll round up Beth. Then why don’t you get us both a Perrier and stake out the perfect spot for sunset-viewing.” During the past year, he’d been learning to count a day a success if he was there at its end to share the sunset with his niece.
As Katie turned to obey, he headed for the hotel’s back door. He pulled it open, then strode down the hall, glancing into doorways right and left. Three down, in a small room that also contained a desk and two pay phones, he found Beth sitting on a couch, crying in the arms of the black-hatted woman.
“Please don’t,” the woman was saying to his sister, her voice laced with panic. “Please don’t cry.”
Suspicion once again leaping along with the hairs on the back of his neck, Cooper vaulted into the room. “Beth! Are you all right?”
His sister’s face stayed hidden behind handfuls of tissues, but the other woman started, then jumped to her feet.
The movement looked guilty as sin. “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded.
“Am I glad to see you!” the woman declared.
Yeah, right. After their brief conversation in the church, she’d given him the distinct impression they shared a mutual wariness. Crossing his arms over his chest, he lifted an eyebrow. “Do tell.”
“I don’t know what happened.” She glanced down at Beth and patted her shoulder, the gesture awkward-looking, perhaps due to the mammoth snowball of Kleenex in her grip. “I found her like this when I came in to use the phone—I can’t get a signal on my cell.”
Damn. Apparently Beth had finally fallen off that emotional edge she’d been balancing on all week. He’d seen her struggling to keep calm, and he supposed she’d been hiding her sadness from Lainey, who as Stephen’s widow was entitled to the majority of the tears. But now Beth needed Cooper’s comfort.
Which he’d supply—right after confronting the black-hatted woman.
Maybe she read the intention on his face, because she suddenly went into action. A shuffle, a sidestep, a murmured “I’ll be going now,” and she’d ducked around his bigger body to give herself a clear shot at the door.
“Wait just a minute,” he said, grabbing for her. He wasn’t going to lose sight of her again, not until he’d satisfied his niggling uneasiness by finding out exactly who she was and why she was here. His hand latched on to her shoulder.
Beneath his palm, her bare shoulder stiffened. But that didn’t register nearly as much as the satiny feel of her pale skin. It seemed to warm in response to him, and because he hadn’t touched female flesh in such a long, long while, his fingers instinctively flexed.
She made a little sound of distress, then twirled on her high heels to face him. “What?” she demanded.
Though his hand still gripped her shoulder, he was too tall, or she was too short, for him to get a good view of her features beneath that wide black brim. Fair skin, rosy lips, some sort of nose. He didn’t have a clue about her hair; it was either very short or tucked under that overlarge hat.
His gaze wandered down to the sleeveless black dress she was wearing. It modestly skimmed over breasts and waist, hinting rather than revealing, but ended at a point that barely cleared her midthighs. A knee-skimming filmy overskirt-thing was probably intended to make the hemline appear modest too, but it only served to draw Cooper’s attention to her pale, naked legs.
Stockingless, you idiot. Not naked.
But all the same, the “naked” notion started a surge of half-forgotten pleasure in his blood. His heart made an odd ka-thud against his breastbone.
And just like that, fear poked its icy fingers against the back of his neck.
Yet somehow he ignored them, his focus concentrated on the sensation of his skin touching hers. The curve of her shoulder molded his hand into a cup, and it was so reminscent of cupping a breast that he automatically caressed the crown of the curve with the heart of his palm. He thought she shivered.
The small reaction made his blood pump faster, and his gaze roamed along her bare legs as he imagined his palms sliding up her inner thighs to open them for his eyes, his touch, his body. His heart lost its rhythm again, only to play catch-up with another ominous ka-thud, redoubling the alarm gathering at his nape. When his heart skipped again, it tumbled down his spine in an icy rush.
And still he couldn’t make himself let her go.
That’s what finally scared the shit out of him.
His release was so abrupt that she stumbled back. He shoved the offending hand in his pocket. It was his left hand, and he squeezed his fingers into a fist, making sure it hadn’t gone numb.
“Are you all right?” she asked, taking another step back.
He wanted to laugh, but it wouldn’t have been a pleasant sound. “I’m dandy, just dandy,” he muttered. “Now go.”
He probably imagined her slight hesitation. Because in half a breath she was out the door, leaving only a lingering note of her perfume. He sniffed, surprised that after more than a year away from the city he still recognized a city girl’s sophisticated scent—Joy.
Dragging his attention from the woman gone to the woman at hand, he turned toward his sister. “Beth,” he said, dropping to the couch beside her. “What’s the matter? What can I do for you?”
She shook her head. She wasn’t crying any longer, but she shuddered with each indrawn breath.
“Something.” Despite all the opportunities life had thrown at him lately, he still had miles to go toward accepting any kind of helplessness. “I must be able to do something, say something.”
“I’m sorry, I know this isn’t helping.” Her head lifted and she swiped at her cheeks. “I keep wondering, thinking, replaying everything.”
Replaying the accident that killed Stephen, Cooper guessed. Lainey had talked to him about it too, wondering aloud if Stephen had felt any pain. Well, yeah, Cooper figured it probably hurt like hell to be hit by a truck going fifty-five miles an hour. And he was entirely certain that in Stephen’s last moments it only gave him more pain to realize he was leaving behind ones who loved him. But there was no point in telling either of his sisters that.
“We’ve just gotta give it time,” he said, for want of anything better. He let a beat go by, then spoke again. “Lainey’s been looking for you.”
“Lainey.” She swiped at her cheeks some more, even as fresh tears filled her eyes. “Oh God, Lainey. I…I’m not doing right by her again.”
A man paused in the doorway, catching Cooper’s eye. “Judd,” he said with relief. If anyone could soothe his sister, he could.
Without a sound, Judd approached Beth, flowing to her in a smooth motion that looked like one of those tai chi movements he practiced. They all had poetic names like Cloud Hand or Wind Rolls the Lotus Leaves, and as Judd knelt at Beth’s feet and linked his fingers with hers, Cooper titled this one Tiger Finding Flower.
Something unspoken yet palpable passed between them. Judd would probably say it was their chi—the life energy that moves through all living things. He’d earned the right to call it whatever he wanted, Cooper thought, because with just that simple touch, Beth relaxed. Her tears dried, her color evened out, the next breath she took was long and deep. Oh yeah, Judd’s yin was definitely balancing Beth’s yang.
Feeling unnecessary—and grateful—Cooper rose off the couch.
“I’ll be all right,” Beth said softly. “Thanks.”
He didn’t bother determining if she was talking to him or to Judd, instead leaving the room to them. There was that date he had with Katie and a Perrier. Even on a day like today, surely the sunset would bring him some measure of peace.
But when he threw open the door to the terrace, he knew there wasn’t going to be any sunset to enjoy after all. The fog had moved in, and the wet mist was swirling around the tables like the cold, gray breath of ghosts. Several gas patio heaters had been lit against the dampness, and knots of people were gathered beneath each one.
His gaze wandered, then skidded to a halt.
The black-hatted woman. Again. Still. She was standing to the right, chatting with Brother Charles. That odd uneasiness she awakened in him set off another clanging round of warning bells.
So, no sunset tonight, and no peace either. At least not yet. Not until he discovered who she was and exactly how to get rid of her.
With a measured stride, he headed toward that big black hat. He’d been a pretty canny attorney not long ago, so he began concocting a strategy, outlining his cross-examination on a mental legal notepad. But the pages blew from his mind as he watched her lift her hands and remove her hat.
His feet stuttered as she shook out her hair, using one hand to fluff out miles of the stuff that had been confined all afternoon. Under the comb of her fingers, the miles descended, then sprang back up into a shoulder-blade-length mass of blond spirals.
“Jesus,” he heard himself say loudly, as he regained the use of his legs and started moving again. “Who—what the hell are you?”
She spun to face him. It was as if she’d fluttered out of one of his brother-in-law’s more fanciful paintings. Outside of his customary depictions of hearth and home, Stephen had occasionally painted fairies sleeping in the stamens of flowers, elves hiding among the leaves of a tree, pixies peeking from beneath four-leaf clovers. There was something about her appearance that reminded him of magic creatures like those.
He knew he was staring at her, but the woman’s looks were nothing short of arresting. Her small size and wealth of blond hair was paired with a heart-shaped—heart-shaped!—face and eyes of a pure, blameless baby blue.
He swallowed. “You…you’re…”
Those remarkable eyes rolled and she released a resigned sigh. “I’m twenty-seven years old.”
He wanted to laugh. Apparently the world usually took all that blond fragility for youth. But as a damn good criminal attorney, he’d honed his ability to size up people quickly, and he sensed that beneath all the marshmallow fluff was something much more substantial. No wonder his instincts had been tipped off. This woman looked lethal.
Yes indeed, her sinless appearance couldn’t fool him.
So he stepped up to her, the warmth of the patio heater washing over his head and shoulders but doing nothing to dispel his cool sense of purpose. “Who are you?” he asked again.
Lifting her chin, she matched him stare for assessing stare. “I’m Angel. Angel Buchanan.”
Shit. A magical creature, all right. An angel.
For a weird instant he wondered if he’d actually died this time. But then he sucked in a breath of air, inhaling a heady shot of her perfume with it. The sophisticated fragrance sparked the memory of her skin beneath his hand—his palm actually tingled—and he decided it was a safe bet that his first thought in heaven wouldn’t be about stripping naked one of its winged residents.
Then she smiled at him, and it was so sweet that he thought angel again until he caught the amused glitter in her eyes.
“And,” she added, all moonbeams and sugary whipped cream innocence, “I’m also the woman who’s going to be living with you for the next few weeks.”