Angel lay on the skinny but surprisingly comfortable bed and listened to nothing. To her mind it was as loud as a dripping faucet, and the inky blackness of the little cottage was just another distraction from sleep. The dense surrounding woods made the whole place look and smell like a giant’s version of the Delancey Christmas-tree lot she visited every December, and the trees even muffled the sound of the nearby ocean.
“I’m a city girl,” she admitted aloud, because it seemed wise to make sure that it wasn’t sudden deafness that accounted for the thick silence.
After another few minutes of unrelieved quiet, she gave up on trying to sleep. She couldn’t, not with her mind fixed on the discovery that Cooper wasn’t the simple but suspicious resort manager she’d first presumed.
He was C. J. Jones! She gave a little bounce against the mattress, thrilled that she’d stumbled upon the elusive partner in the prestigious firm of DiGiovanni & Jones. Her menopausal editor, Jane, would have one of her notorious hot flashes when Angel called in with the exciting news.
When she called in from a pay phone. She sighed. It was inconvenient to lose her cell and all her other tools of civilization, but it was a fair price for the unexpected twofer. Two stories, one on Stephen Whitney and the other featuring the now-reclusive C. J. Jones.
She hadn’t broached the idea of interviewing Cooper yet. He’d managed to duck out of the room right after she’d made the I.D., muttering something about locking away her possessions. But he couldn’t get far.
What annoyed her was how long it had taken her to figure out who he was. But he had been wearing those sunglasses in the church—was it in order to remain anonymous?—and it wasn’t as if she’d been looking for him.
Or ever actually met him. Her previous contact with C.J. Jones had come in the form of what she’d read in the newspapers and then what she’d seen for herself a number of years ago. Early for an appointment at the courthouse, out of curiosity she’d ducked into a courtroom that was filling with an unusual number of onlookers.
She’d sat in the back row just as C. J. Jones began his closing argument in an infamous assault case. Within minutes, she’d been transfixed by his clipped voice and its leashed passion. He’d been heavier then, she remembered, his hair much shorter, his movements explosive.
Recalling that, it wasn’t as surprising that she hadn’t immediately seen him in the lanky, long-haired Cooper with his cool, calm air.
But it explained that prickly, tingly sense she’d experienced around him. Why, it was nothing more than her reporter’s intuition at work, trying to tell her to pay attention because it had already recognized the man.
She relaxed against the soft sheets, comforted by the rational explanation. Not that he wasn’t attractive enough to make a woman prickle and tingle. As a matter of fact, that day in the courtroom she’d developed the teeniest, tiniest of crushes on him. There was no shame in admitting it. She’d been young, impressionable, and, well, starstruck.
But she’d always been old enough and wise enough to put the story ahead of any female silliness. So she’d gone on to her meeting that day just as she would go on tomorrow, focused on the job.
Which led her right back to wondering why Cooper had left his job in San Francisco. She yawned, her eyes closing. Tomorrow she’d find out all she wanted to know about him.
The racket of the birds was loud enough to awaken her. Angel lay in bed, her eyes closed, and wondered if robins had made a nest under the eaves of her apartment building like they had last spring. But this wasn’t spring, and—
Her eyes popped open. And this wasn’t San Francisco anymore, Dorothy.
Sunlight had found a knife’s-edge opening in the drawn curtains. It was certainly past dawn, but beyond that Angel couldn’t guess. At home, she had her bedroom TV programmed to wake her at seven A.M. with the world and national news on MSNBC.
But without the customary rumble of the morning anchor announcing the time, she was forced to fumble for her watch on the wooden nightstand. In the dim light, she brought it close to her face to read the hands.
Nine A.M. Late, but not so late that there wouldn’t be coffee available, yes? Though at home the stuff would be auto-brewed, waiting for her the instant she opened her eyes, today she’d have to shower and dress before caffeine.
In an amazing ten-minute speed record, which attested to (a) her eagerness for coffee and (b) how much time she usually spent on hair care, she soon wore jeans and a T-shirt and was lacing up her Gatorade-green hiking boots. Without her precious blow-dryer and its “patented curl control” diffusor, it seemed safer to skip her usual daily shampooing. Instead, she went for a 1960s flower child look by tying a bandanna around her head.
The walk between her cottage and the main building passed in a blur of clean air and leafy scents. The guest accommodations were spaced among the immense redwoods and other semi-tamed vegetation, but the communal building sat at the head of an oval-shaped, grass-covered clearing. Unshadowed by trees, the outside of the door marked “Dining Room” felt warm beneath her hand.
Inside, she didn’t smell coffee.
But surely that couldn’t be right. She gazed about the empty room, taking in the simple picnic tables, the chafing dishes sitting on another long table against the far wall. As she walked farther into the room, an interior door beside the buffet swung open. A man stepped in.
Judd Sterling, Angel recalled. Family Friend. Close up he was definitely handsome, but even more interesting was the graceful way he moved—as if he’d found a current of air that she couldn’t see or feel.
She sent him the best decaffeinated smile she could muster up. “Coffee?” she asked. “I’m desperate for coffee.”
Smiling back in a friendly manner, he shook his head and pointed to her left.
Angel’s gaze followed his finger to a sign on the wall. “‘No’—” She swallowed her next word, grimacing. No talking.
Sorry, she mouthed. Taking a deep breath, she mimed gripping a mug. Coffee? she asked, just moving her lips.
He shook his head, giving her another warm, soothing smile.
She might have to strangle him. Caw. Fee. She exaggerated the movements of her lips, shifting her imaginary grasp so that she pretended to hold a handleless take-out cup rather than a mug.
Neither seemed to help. He shook his head again, but that might be laughter lurking in his gray eyes.
Listen, pal, she hoped her stomping footsteps communicated as she approached him, you don’t want to get between me and my ground beans.
Maybe he saw her annoyance, because when she was close enough to use her nails on him he slid out a small notepad and pencil, wrote, then passed the page to her.
Angel stared down at the words. Oh please, it couldn’t be, she thought. It couldn’t. It was his bad handwriting. Those neat block letters didn’t say…
“No caffeine?” she spoke out loud. So give her ten demerits, but they had to be absolutely clear on this.
He handed her another page with more of his neat handwriting. NO CAFFEINE, ALCOHOL, OR TOBACCO ON THE TRANQUILITY GROUNDS. ALL FOOD SERVED HERE IS ORGANIC.
Worse and worser. No coffee, no diet Pepsi, no nice five P.M. glass of pinot grigio.
And there would be bugs in her food! She’d eaten at a natural food restaurant in Berkeley once where her chopped salad came—free of charge, the waiter had tried to joke—with chopped caterpillars.
Judd touched her arm. Sunk in disappointment, it took a moment for her to notice his sympathetic expression and to realize he was directing her attention toward the chafing dishes. As he lifted each lid with a little silent ta-da!, Angel morosely inspected the offerings.
Gloppy, fiber-filled oatmeal. Scrambled eggs—from free-range chickens, she was sure. (Did anyone ever bother to find out exactly where those liberated chickens had been ranging?) Finally, he revealed some sort of cold dish that appeared to be tofu squares floating in unflavored yogurt.
Stomach going queasy, Angel averted her gaze. To her mind, if God had intended humans to eat tofu, he wouldn’t have made it resemble congealed kindergarten paste.
Stifling a sigh, she allowed the man to serve her some of each dish. Then she sat down on one of the picnic benches, turned her plate so that the tofu was as distant as possible, and resorted to a childhood method of dealing with unpleasantness—she pretended it away.
She was falling into a decent apricot-danish daydream when Judd set a steaming cup beside her elbow. Her hand made an instinctive grab for it, and though her sense of smell rebelled, her brain didn’t catch up quickly enough to stop her first sip.
“Ggh.” Her throat refused to accept what was swishing around inside her mouth. “Ggh. Ggh.”
My God, what can it be? Breathing in and out through her nose, she felt her face go red as her gaze lifted to Judd’s. Was he trying to poison her?
He grinned and held out a piece of paper that she snatched from him, even as she tried not to gag. YARROW TEA, it read. AIDS DIGESTION. YOU’LL GET USED TO IT.
Squeezing the note in her fist, she forced the pungent liquid down, then gasped in a breath of palate-cleansing air. “I’ll never get used to that,” she choked out.
She didn’t imagine anyone else could either. As a matter of fact, she had a sudden, sneaking suspicion the “yarrow tea” was a special concoction created just for her. Same with the awful, organic breakfast fare.
Her eyes narrowed. While Judd Sterling had a peaceful, benevolent air about him, there was someone else in charge of this whole operation. Someone who didn’t want her at Tranquility House.
Why, it made perfect sense.
Cooper Jones was planning on starving her out.
It was the stomach-turning breakfast that decided Angel’s first course of action for the day—well, that and the dearth of newspapers, apparently another Tranquility House no-no. Without anything worth eating or reading, the next logical step was to work on Cooper. Both the Stephen Whitney and C. J. Jones stories required his cooperation.
While it hadn’t gone well between them so far, she wasn’t really worried—she had a knack for making people comfortable. Her first journalism course had been Interview Techniques 101, and she’d never forgotten the professor’s three-pronged strategy for warming up a subject.
The formula never failed to ease the initial stiffness between herself and an interviewee. So though she and Cooper might have gotten off to an awkward start, in no time at all she would have him eating out of her hand.
Though Judd couldn’t provide the other man’s whereabouts as anything more specific than SOMEWHERE AROUND, Angel set off to locate Cooper, taking the first path she found leading away from the cottages.
The trail meandered eastward, up rolling inclines of dry, nutty-scented grass and down into shady notches with trickling creeks and arthritic-looking oaks. A girl from hilly San Francisco should have been able to manage all the ups and downs with one high heel tied behind her back, but within ten minutes the new hiking boots were pinching and the warming air made her wish for shorts and a tank top instead of her long pants and T-shirt.
Pausing beneath a group of trees at the base of the next hill, she plucked her shirt away from her sticky torso and moved it back and forth to fan her skin. Though she’d yet to catch a glimpse of Cooper, or any other human life for that matter, she couldn’t suppress the hope that any minute now she’d stumble across civilization—specifically, civilization in the guise of a Peet’s Coffee Shop. As if jeering at her fancy, a blue jay on a nearby branch screeched down at her.
“Fine,” Angel retorted, scowling at the headache starting to throb at the base of her skull. “Give me a Starbucks, then, I’m not picky. Even that ulcer-inducing stuff they serve at 7-Eleven will do.”
From behind her, someone spoke. “Sorry, kid, but we don’t do trademarks around here.”
Cooper! Her first jolt of surprise dissolved as she recognized his voice. Okay, she reminded herself, willing the headache away, here’s your chance. Put him at ease.
“Well, hello, there.” Her back still to him, Angel mentally checked off exchange pleasantries, then moved straight on to casual conversation. “What’s that about trademarks?” she asked, turning to face him.
“For the hundred miles of Big Sur coast, you won’t find a single national chain—not fast food, bank, or supermarket.”
Under other circumstances, his words might have made her groan in disappointment. But now they barely sank in, distracted as she was by Cooper himself. His hair was damply slicked back, and instead of yesterday’s almost sloppy-sized designer suit, today his body was wrapped in exercise gear that clung to, well…well…everything.
Wow. She swallowed. Wow.
Those loose-fitting clothes had hidden a hard, sculpted body that was cut and rippled in the most intriguing places.
Suddenly aware she was staring, she felt her face go hot and dropped her gaze to her feet. “So, um…”
Oh God. Though she remembered she’d been bent on winning Cooper over, now the thread of their conversation was completely burned from her brain. Floundering, she returned to the top of Interview 101’s formula.
“Hello, there,” she said brightly. The greeting rolled off her tongue with a stomach-sinking familiarity. Hoping she wasn’t making too big a fool of herself, she continued her inspection of the dusty toes of her boots. “So, uh, whatcha been up to this morning?”
“It isn’t obvious?”
His amused tone made her glance up again and she allowed her eyes another moment of free rein. There was a big metal contraption leaning against his right thigh.
His long thigh. His hard thigh. His long, hard thigh. The quadricep muscle seemed carved out of rock, and she followed it with her eyes as it curved from his lean hip to wrap inward at his knee.
South of Angel’s belly button, things clenched. It was her muscles, she realized as they tightened again, the ones that Cosmopolitan magazine recommended women routinely exercise in order to drive men wild.
Her face went hotter, but she couldn’t stop looking. His inner thigh was well defined too, she discovered, all firm as it led up to—
Eeek. She jerked her gaze up to his face, passing over the big plastic hat he held in one of his gloved hands as she tried remembering his last remark.
“Sure, sure, it’s obvious.” Assuring herself she sounded casual, possibly even intelligent, she made a vague gesture at the metal contraption against his leg. “You’ve been, uh, exercising with that, that thing there.”
His brows lifted. “It’s a mountain bike. But I’m betting you’ve seen a bicycle before.”
A bicycle? Angel blinked, then glanced downward again. Oh heck, it was a bike! And then, under her gaze, one of his big hands tightened on the handlebars, flexing a tendon running up his forearm.
She stood transfixed, that below-the-belt Cosmo area of hers contracting again. As a journalist, she considered herself a keen observer, but who had ever noticed that men had muscles like that in their arms? Sinewy, long muscles that—
“Angel?”
Jerked from her fascination, she shuffled backward, tripped on a root, and fell on her butt in the dirt.
In a blink he’d dropped the bike and the helmet and was squatted beside her. “Are you all right?”
“No.” Because on top of humiliation, now his hard thighs were near enough to touch. To stymie temptation, she lifted an inch and sat on both hands. “No, I’m not all right.”
He shifted closer. “Where are you hurt?”
Shaking her head, she scooted back, refusing to admit it was her pride, her professionalism, that was taking the hit. She was supposed to be thinking about the all-important story, for God’s sake, not the intriguing specifics of sexual differentiation.
“Sit still a minute and take some breaths,” he advised, moving forward to close the gap between them. “Deep breaths.”
His short-sleeved shirt was made of a stretchy, satiny fabric that fit closely at the neck and then molded itself to his chest. It clung so snugly, she had no trouble appreciating the wide planes of his pectoral muscles, each ridge topped by the tight buttons of his—Stop!
Wrenching her gaze away, Angel again struggled for control of her thoughts. She’d seen bikers wearing this same getup millions of times. Just because Cooper was wearing it was no reason to allow that tingling awareness she’d finally been able to dismiss as recognition-gone-awry to rebloom.
Anyway, women didn’t switch from fine to fascinated, from neutral to sexual with a glance, did they? The female of the species wasn’t visually turned on, she’d read that fact in an article in Men’s Health as recently as last week.
Not that she didn’t have previous experience to rely on too. She’d had relationships with men. She’d had sex on occasion. But the guys always had to sort of…rub her toward response. Never, not once, had she seen a particular man’s form and been instantly enthralled.
Realizing she was staring at his legs again, she choked back a mortified moan.
“Angel, what the hell’s wrong?” Putting one hand on the ground, he shifted nearer.
“I don’t know,” she answered, trying not to think about the way his arm’s movement had caused his biceps to bunch. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Then, finally, gratefully, she made the connection. When she was eight, she’d wanted to be a boy, a big, strong boy, more than anything. There had been a gang of bullies at her new school and she’d wished every night to wake up with the height and the muscles to save herself from the next round of intimidation. She’d already given up on her father rescuing her.
Maybe, probably—for certain!—Stephen Whitney was responsible for this temporary fixation. Past feelings and fears were resurfacing, that’s all. She wasn’t lusting after Cooper Jones. In a flashback to her past, she was lusting after his muscles, the physical symbol of the strength to take care of herself that she’d longed for so many years ago.
Relieved, she managed to smile and rise to her feet. “I’m fine. It’s just that…” Cooper’s eyes were that hazel, greeny-browny color that could appear light one moment and dark the next. They were dark now, and watchful, and sighing inwardly, she remembered that she was supposed to be inspiring his trust. “That I haven’t had my coffee this morning.”
He stood too. “I’ve seen some strong reactions to caffeine withdrawal before, but this seems pretty extreme.”
“You’re telling me,” Angel muttered. She gave herself some additional recovery time by bending over and brushing the dust off her jeans. Get back to the point, she told herself sternly. Focus on those interview warm-up techniques. Concentrate on getting Cooper to relax.
As he turned and stepped toward his bike, she straightened. “Which reminds me…” She kept her voice light, trying for a smooth segue into some more casual conversation. “You’ll have to tell me your secret.”
“What?” His voice sharpened and his spine stiffened.
“Your secret,” she repeated. “You know, where you’ve hidden your stash of those three banned substances: caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco. Around the courthouse you weren’t famous for your abstinence, you know.”
“Ah.” Cooper’s shoulders relaxed and he wheeled the bike around to face her. “Now I get you.”
She figured she was making progress with him, because his eyes had lightened and there was a tolerant half-smile on his face. Smiling in return, Angel sauntered closer, thinking good ol’ Professor Brown had been proven right once again.
“So, see,” she said, close enough now that she had to tilt up her face to look into his, “I’m guessing you have some triple roast hidden somewhere, right alongside a carton of cigarettes and a bottle of scotch.”
“What would you say if I told you I don’t smoke or drink—alcohol or coffee—anymore?”
“I’d say…I’d say…” Angel couldn’t think what she’d say because she was astonished. C. J. Jones had a reputation for playing as hard as he worked.
His laugh was short. “You’d say what?”
There was something in his eyes now, some kind of pain, that made her break their gazes. She let hers slide down to his neck—another strong, manly column—then on to his wide shoulders and long, lean body. God, he looked good.
“Angel?” There was a husky note in his voice. “What the hell are you thinking?”
What the hell was she thinking? She was supposed to be working. Getting Cooper to eat right out of her hand. Looking away, she ran through the preinterview formula again.
Pleasantries: Check. Casual conversation: More than enough. Her eyes drawn back to him, she realized that only the sincere compliment was left.
And for some impulsive, mindless reason Angel blurted out the first one that came into her head. “I’m thinking that abstinence gave you one awesome body.”
In the same time it took for her to absorb her own words and then to cringe with humiliation, she saw the leap of embarrassed color on Cooper’s face, his leap onto his bike, the leap the metal contraption made down the path toward Tranquility.
If that wasn’t proof enough that her warm-up technique had failed, the hasty manner in which Cooper pedaled off made it very clear she’d done anything but relax his guard.
“I’m an idiot,” she said aloud.
The blue jay above her jeered in agreement. Cursing the bird, the renewed throbbing at the base of her skull, and most of all herself, she hurried off in the opposite direction of Cooper.
At the top of the next rise though, her feet stuttered to a halt, the view below freezing her movement. The trail she’d taken had apparently wound north, because the dark-forested Santa Lucia Mountains were at her right. Looking to her left, her gaze flowed down gently rolling hills to miles of staggered bluffs that dropped into the ocean. On the nearest of the headlands, in the midst of all that natural wonder, sat a cluster of buildings that appeared enchanted.
Angel blinked, certain they were the figment of someone’s imagination—but not hers, because she hadn’t daydreamed fairy tales since she was four years old. Dominating the clearing was a huge three-story house with deep eaves and a rustic rockwork foundation. It was painted a pale gray, with a bright blue door that was flanked by flowering shrubs in pinks and red. Between the house and the ocean stood a tower, faced with the same rough-hewn rock.
Nestled in the curve of a small stand of pines, Angel glimpsed a portion of a pool and the roof of a poolhouse. Farther away from the big house was a cottage, one that Hansel and Gretel might have wandered from. It too was painted gray, but the trim was a triple threat of colors: salmon, saffron, and sapphire.
Angel realized she was holding her breath, as if the simple act of taking in oxygen might disturb a pretty vision. But then the toylike figure of a man appeared on the edge of the trees and strode toward the front door of the little house.
It was only then she accepted this was no hallucination. Because even from this distance Angel recognized Judd Sterling, and she knew he was flesh and blood. He knocked on the door and in a moment it was opened by a dark-haired woman, a cat at her heels. Beth Jones.
Which meant that the little kingdom below had been Angel’s father’s.