Angel couldn’t let it end like this.
The longer she waited alone in Cooper’s bed, the more certain she was of that. And she was certain that the night was hot, too hot for even the light nightgown she wore. Not too much for the warm temperature, but too much between her and Cooper.
In defiance of her usually modest nature, tonight she had to be closer to him. She had to be skin-to-skin from the very first instant.
Determined to have that, she drew the flimsy fabric over her head and dropped it to the floor. Then she sat up against the pillows, buck-naked beneath the sheet. Her pulse was racing and so was her mind—racing over all her previous objections to involvement with men, racing through all the reasons that he was too good to walk away from.
Yet Cooper hadn’t seemed the least concerned about her imminent departure. He wasn’t making plans for them to be together once he returned to San Francisco and his law firm. Why?
Because, perhaps, his heart wasn’t involved like hers.
But despite the evidence, she was beginning to doubt that. Hadn’t he said I want you with me that morning? He’d want her with him tomorrow too. Next week. Next month. She knew it deep in her heart, deep in the place where she’d found her love for him.
So why would he let her walk?
Because Angel Buchanan doesn’t need anybody. He’d said that too.
He was letting go because she’d never let him see how much she needed to be held.
The sound of the cottage door opening made her jump. Angel’s hands started to shake and she tried to control it by squeezing them together. But then she unlaced her fingers and let them rest, trembling, on her sheet-covered lap. Hadn’t she decided that hiding her vulnerability to him would only get her a goodbye?
His footsteps came toward the bedroom, thudding slow and steady against the tiled floors. When he reached the doorway, she leaned over and switched on the small bedside lamp. “There you are,” she said. “I—I’ve been thinking about you.”
She felt his gaze touch her face, flick down to her bare shoulders and then to the sheet tucked over her breasts. “Oh yeah?”
She swallowed, the dark note in his voice sounding like a warning. But no! That was her fear talking. “Yeah,” she echoed, trying to smile as she patted the place beside her. “I missed you.”
Instead of taking her up on her invitation, he leaned against the doorjamb. The lamplight was only strong enough to glance off his cheekbones and his chin, leaving the rest of his face in deep shadow.
He looked different—leaner, darker, harder.
Cursing her knee-jerk defenses again, she tried to suppress the shiver snaking down her back. Seeing a villain on every street corner had kept her safe…but it had kept her alone too. She didn’t want that anymore.
“I’m trying to change,” she blurted out.
He didn’t move. “Is that right?”
There was tension in the room, the air was crackling with it, but she couldn’t tell if it was something separate from the sexual awareness and the emotional upheaval that were so tangled up inside of her. “I, uh, I want to be honest with you.”
“Sounds promising.”
Her stomach knotted. Did she detect a remoteness in his voice or was it just her suspicious nature imagining the worst?
She thought of Cooper with Katie, with his sisters, the way he supported them, touched them, dispensing easy affection and genuine love. She remembered the warmth in his eyes when he’d looked at her earlier that day. I want you with me.
There was nothing to be frightened of, not with Cooper. He wouldn’t hurt her.
“I’m waiting,” he reminded her. “What was it you said? You wanted to tell me something…or was it show me something?”
Show him something! Yes. Her heart. How much she loved him. The future they could have together. “Show you something,” she agreed.
“Sounds even more promising. Why don’t you drop the sheet?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Drop the sheet. It’s nearly up to your ears. You’re acting like I’ve never seen you before.”
“Well…I…” Heat bloomed on her skin. Surely he realized she wasn’t the most natural nudist in the world. But it was symbolic, wasn’t it, laying bare her heart?
Edging away from the circle of lamplight cast across the bed, she took a deep breath and let the sheet slide. It slithered over the top slope of her breasts, caught briefly on her nipples, fell to her waist.
The night air was warm, she knew it was, but her revealed flesh prickled with a million goosebumps. Her nipples tightened in a rush, contracting to hard, aching points. She dug her fingers into the covers to stop from throwing her arms over herself.
“Pretty,” Cooper said. “Now let’s see the rest.”
The tone of his voice plucked at her stretched nerves. There was sex in the rawness of it, an edge that was exciting. Disquieting.
“You trust me, don’t you?”
She did. And she was willing to do whatever it took to demonstrate that. Taking a breath, she made another surreptitious move away from the lamplight. Then she shoved the sheet to her ankles.
The overhead light blazed on.
Angel froze, paralyzed by the sudden brightness. “Wha—?” Her hands grabbed for the covers.
But he had them quicker, and with a jerk, whipped them off the bed and threw them onto the floor. “How does it feel?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “How do you like being exposed?”
Angel rolled, but he was faster again. Before she could fling herself from the bed, he was on it too, holding her shoulders to the pillows. “What are you doing?” Her voice sounded unnatural. Weak.
“I’m letting you know how it feels to have your flaws laid bare to the light.” His gaze flicked down her naked body. “Not that I can find any on the outside.”
She tried to get up again, but he pushed her back onto the pillows. “What’s your problem, Cooper?” she demanded.
“My ‘problem’ is you. The real you.”
Oh God. She sagged against the cushy feathers, wishing she could believe this was a nightmare. “What…what do you know?”
“I believe it’s finally the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I was in your cottage. I read the story on your laptop.”
Stomach rolling, Angel closed her eyes and nodded. “It’s true,” she said, forcing the words from her tight throat and dry mouth. “All true.”
“Did you think you could get away with it? Waltz in here on a lie and then waltz out with our secrets?”
She didn’t know what she’d thought. Or rather, she’d been deliberately not thinking ever since she’d taken her fingers off the keyboard that morning. After overhearing Beth, she’d run to her laptop and written her exposé of Stephen Whitney in a white-hot, righteous heat. She’d written it in pain and she’d written it in anger. For all of them.
“So you’re Stephen’s daughter.”
Angel opened her eyes and met Cooper’s cold gaze. She reached for the anger again, trying to grab for it with both hands. Anger had always been there for her. It had been her protection too. “Yes, I’m his daughter.”
“And the rest of it…?”
“I found out this morning. Beth was talking to Judd, and she said—”
Angel broke off as Cooper shot up from the bed. “I don’t want to hear it,” he ground out.
“All right.” She swallowed hard, refusing to give in and wrap her arms around her nakedness.
“I don’t want to see you again either.”
“All right.”
He grabbed her robe from the nearby chair and tossed it at her. “Here.”
She shoved her arms through the sleeves, then wrapped it securely around her body as if it could hold her composure together too. Though she knew the temperature hadn’t changed, the night suddenly felt as cold as Cooper’s eyes, and she shivered as her bare feet touched the tile.
He leaned against a long dresser, watching her. “Now get out. Get the hell out.”
She shivered again. “Don’t worry, I’m going back to San Francisco.”
He sucked in a harsh breath, looked away. “In the morning. I don’t want you on that road in the dark.”
“Hah.” With a huge leap of imagination, the sound she made could be called a laugh. “You’re still the protector of the innocent and weak?”
He shot her a look. “I’ve always known you’re neither, believe me. But promise you won’t leave until it’s light.”
“You’d take my word?”
“If you give it.”
A strange calm was descending on Angel, as if this were a dream. Maybe she could pretend the past three weeks weren’t real. Later, if any memories popped up to plague her, certainly she could banish them with the same disdain that Cooper was using to banish her.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll wait until morning.”
His hands were braced on the dresser behind him. As she hurried past, the skirt of her floor-length robe brushed his leg.
He flinched. “We took you into our lives. You betrayed us.”
In the doorway, Angel paused, trying to deflect her hurt. “Well, there you go,” she finally said. “Now you know how that feels.” Then she squared her shoulders and moved on.
The next morning, Cooper stood in the retreat’s gravel parking lot and helped the last of the guests into the monastery’s van, then waved it off. The morning was another hot one, blazing hot, with a stiff, dry wind that was waving the pine branches and rattling the leaves in the oak trees.
As he turned to walk back to the retreat, his gaze found Angel’s car, lingered. Stacked in the backseat, he recognized the suitcases he’d trundled to her cottage that first night.
Despite everything, he almost smiled at that memory, remembering her chatter, her dismay upon seeing her utilitarian accommodations, the way she’d tried to protect her hairdryer from confiscation.
If only he could turn time back. He’d been wanting to do that since the very first chest pain, of course, but now he found himself wanting to return to a time that was after the heart attacks and the surgery.
But before he’d discovered Angel Buchanan’s true colors.
Identity.
Whatever.
He heard footsteps on the gravel and turned. There was Angel, her hair kicked up by the wind and floating around her shoulders, her heaven-blue eyes wary. As their gazes met, her feet faltered. She stared at him too, and he swore he heard a sound, the quick ftthht of a striking match. The very air seemed to catch fire.
With a jerky movement, she broke their gazes and beelined for her car as if he weren’t there. He told himself to ignore the combustion too. His feet scraping on the gravel, he strode off in the opposite direction. All the goodbye necessary had already been said. Right?
Right. He didn’t want to have any more to do with her. He didn’t want to spend any more time near her.
Then, he might remember how she burned in his arms. Then, he might remember how she made him laugh. Then, he might remember that his bastard brother-in-law had left her to run, fearing for her life.
His fingers curling into fists, he spun around again. He watched as she stowed her laptop and briefcase in the passenger seat, then slammed the door. In tight-fitting black pants and a matching sleeveless top, black high-heeled sandals on her feet, she was city-chic.
He stalked toward her, his imagination placing her on a San Francisco sidewalk. He’d recognize that gilt hair from fifty paces, and he’d hurry through the crowd to catch her. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself grip his briefcase tighter and jog around strolling tourists and the business types slowed by the cell phones against their ears.
There were a million details in his head, the complexities of his current court case, the back-to-back filing dates that could give an attorney fits, the ever-present organizational decisions of co-owning a law firm. But when he glimpsed Angel, their heavy weight lifted. When he was near enough to smell her sophisticated fragrance, his world brightened. His perspective righted itself—living first, work second—when he touched her shoulder.
Now she whirled to face him, and imagination and reality collided. Damn it! What was wrong with him? Why had he allowed himself this close to her again? This was the woman who had taken advantage of him and his family.
Anger rekindled inside him and he stoked it, adding piece after piece of evidence against her. She’d betrayed him. She’d betrayed his family. That story she’d written would wreak financial and emotional havoc that he might not live to see righted.
This wasn’t the city. He wasn’t a practicing lawyer any longer. And Angel wasn’t the light of his life. She was leaving whatever was left of it.
But he had one more item to take up with her first.
Staring at Cooper towering over her, Angel steadied herself by gripping the open passenger door. Her heart wouldn’t calm, though, so she sucked in a hasty breath. The air tasted faintly of smoke, thanks, she guessed, to the anger burning in his dark eyes.
“What do you want?” she asked, hanging tight to her poise. He wasn’t going to see her sweat. Hurt. Cry.
He would never see her cry.
With the wind blowing his hair off his face, Cooper shoved his hands in his front pockets and regarded her coolly. “Call me dense, but it didn’t occur to me until a moment ago what was behind all this. I think I have it now, though. Stephen’s attorney is John Abbott of Baker & Abbott in Monterey. He’ll require proof of your claim. I assume you have a birth certificate listing Stephen as your father. However, you’ll still need to submit to a DNA test.”
Angel blinked. “A DNA test?”
“I’m certain Abbott won’t recommend Lainey giving you any kind of financial settlement without one. I know I won’t.”
“You think I want a ‘settlement’?” For the first time since she’d finished writing the story on Stephen Whitney, Angel felt her fury rise again. “You think I came here for his money?”
Cooper’s gaze didn’t move off her face. “Why else?”
“I came here for the truth,” she said hotly. “The world was ready to canonize him and I wanted to see which Stephen Whitney was for real.”
“And what did you find out?”
She looked down at her laptop resting on the passenger seat. On the floor below it was her satchel-style briefcase, yawning open and bristling with notepads and the manila folders of research that Cara had accumulated for her. More papers and files were stacked beside it.
What had she found out?
Shaking her head, she closed her eyes. “He was a loving father…and he wasn’t. He was a loving husband…and he wasn’t.” Her eyes opened. “He was a fake.”
“Harsh, coming from someone who arrived here under false pretenses herself.”
That made her bristle. “I did not. I am a professional journalist.”
“And it was as a journalist that you were asking your questions and digging into our lives?” Cooper leaned closer. “What did you really want to know, Angel?”
Though she backed away from him so that she was plastered against the hot car door, she refused to look away from his face. “When I was twelve years old I wanted to be Bob Woodward, and I’ve worked my butt off to be the kind of reporter who uncovers the whole story and doesn’t hesitate to tell it. What does it matter that Stephen Whitney was my father? I know how to be objective.”
“Objective?” Though Cooper’s voice was still cold and controlled, it had a furious edge that stung like a fresh cut. “Is that what you call making friends with my family, with my niece?”
“Your family? I don’t ca—” Angel broke off as the breeze shifted, blowing a hank of hair over her mouth. But she did care about them, despite her best intentions. It had been so easy to slide into Cooper’s little family circle.
A circle where Angel didn’t belong.
She wasn’t surprised that he was so angry with her. He’d do anything to protect the ones he loved.
“And what about sleeping with me?” he demanded now. “Would you call that being objective too, or was that merely the sacrifice the ‘whole story’ was worth?”
Angel felt herself flinch.
Story-whore. In journalism school, that’s what they’d called women who had sex with a source.
“It wasn’t like that,” she whispered.
“Yeah? Then what was it like, Angel? Because I’d sure as hell like to know.”
But there was nothing she could say. No way to make him understand.
“It’s time for me to go.” She started to turn from him, thinking only of getting away, and getting away fast. “Past time.”
But a glance at his expression had her freezing again. It was tight, set, yet beneath the anger she suddenly thought…she suddenly wondered…she suddenly worried that there was—pain.
She’d hurt Cooper.
Her stomach fell. No. No.
Yes. Yes. A woman who’d spent a lifetime hiding her wounds could spot them in another easily. It was what she’d sensed in Beth too.
“Cooper.” She stepped toward him, put her hand on his arm.
The wind whipped his hair across his face as he pulled away from her touch. “Goodbye, Angel.”
“No!”
He turned his back.
She almost let him go. But then she remembered. This was Cooper! Cooper wasn’t like other men. He wasn’t the kind of man who was looking for an excuse to leave her. That was why she’d fallen in love with him, wasn’t it? Cooper would give her another chance, if she only had the courage to ask for it.
“Cooper!” When he kept walking, she put her heart into her voice. “Cooper, please!”
He paused, then slowly turned around.
Of course Cooper would turn around. He was such a good man. She could tell him what was in her heart, she told herself. She could trust him.
Swallowing hard, she gave herself one last chance to chicken out. But Angel Buchanan had never been a coward.
“Please,” she said softly, beckoning him to her. “Please come here.” She knew exactly how to make her point. “I have something for you.”
In the few seconds it took for him to return, her pulse rate leaped to thrum at a new, dizzying level. There was a half-panicked, half-excited whine in her ears and when he was standing in front of her, she thought she would probably talk too loud. But she went ahead anyway. “Hold out your arms.”
“Angel—”
“Hold out your arms.”
Looking wary, he obeyed.
Angel bent into her car and pulled a handful of files and papers from the floor, then shoved them at Cooper.
“What are you doing?” He grabbed at them, then grabbed at the next stack she dumped on top of the first. “What the hell are you doing?”
She didn’t speak, but instead kept piling on the papers, notepads, and files—all that represented her story on Stephen Whitney. Finally, when they reached his neck and the floor of her car and her briefcase were both empty, she brushed her palms together.
“There,” she said, looking at him expectantly. Her pulse was still beating, tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
“There?” he echoed.
She wiped her damp palms on her pants and nodded at the tall stack. “There. Now you know.”
His expression impatient, he shifted, struggling to keep control of the messy pile in his arms. “No. I don’t know.”
The whine in her head edged up a notch and she had to lick her lips, the air was so much hotter and dryer than the hot, dry state it had been minutes before. How else could she tell him?
Inspiration struck. She bent inside the car again and whipped her laptop computer from the seat. With a little flourish, she slid it to the top of Cooper’s stack. It wobbled, then wobbled again, forcing him to brace it with his chin.
Damn it, Angel.” With his jaw against the precarious pile, he had to speak through clenched teeth. “What the hell do you mean by this?”
She swallowed, then gestured at what he was holding. “It’s…it’s not obvious?”
He glared at her. “No. I’m afraid you’ll have to spell it out for me.”
Spell it out. Lay it on the line. Bare her heart. Expose her vulnerability.
Show him he could be—God, that he was—her weakness.
Her whole body trembled. She gripped her fingers together and braced against the car to keep herself upright. “I…”
She had to swallow, remind herself that Angel Buchanan was no sissy, then start over. The wind blew her hair across her eyes and she pulled it away to meet his gaze. “I choose you.”
He frowned. “What kind of bullshit is this?”
“None, none at all.” She was speaking too fast, but it seemed to come easier that way. “I choose you. Not the story. Not the truth. They’re not important.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Not usually,” she admitted. “Not when ignoring the truth protects the wrong people. Not when leaving the truth buried means that more people get hurt. But this time…”
This time the truth would only hurt. Closing her eyes, Angel wondered how many other times she’d plunged ahead with her story, with her own interests, without conducting the litmus test of pain first. Wasn’t that what Stephen Whitney had done all those years ago?
She opened her eyes and looked straight into Cooper’s. “This time it’s the story or it’s you. And I choose you.” Just as she’d wanted to be chosen by her father all those years ago. “The story is not worth losing you.”
His body tensed. “What? What?”
With an explosive movement, he dropped the pile of papers and the laptop onto the hood of her car. She didn’t even wince when her computer slid off the tall stack and landed upside down.
Then he grabbed her by the shoulders. “Now what the hell are you talking about?”
Her hands waved. “You. Choose. Whatever. You know.” It was pure babble again, pure protect-herself babble.
“I don’t know.”
It was easier if she closed her eyes. “When you come back to San Francisco…” It was easier, too, to talk about it as some future thing. “I want us to, um, be together when you come back to San Francisco, Cooper. I think we…I think we have something together. Something, uh, very special.”
It was a lame finish, but her heart was pounding so hard and he had yet to say a word. She let her eyes open partway.
He was staring at her, a strange—forbidding?—expression on his face. She had to be wrong about that. Of course she was wrong about that.
“What exactly are you saying, Angel?”
“If I’d known you’d be so slow, maybe I’d feel…” She tried to laugh. The forced sound fizzled out. This moment wasn’t about funny. She knew that. It was about truth. Her truth.
“Cooper…I…” The breeze suddenly died, as if the whole world were waiting for her to say the words. “I’m in love with you.”
His hands dropped and he jerked back. At the same instant, a gust of the renewed wind tugged at the papers sitting on her car. It caught a handful, and then another, sending them skittering across the hood and then into the air.
“No.” His eyes flickered to them, then flicked back to her. His voice was harsh and his face grim. “No, you don’t love me. You can’t. I’m never going back to San Francisco.”
“Of course you are.” She’d surprised him, she thought, swallowing her panic. He wanted her to love him. He loved her back! “When Lainey and Katie are settled, you’ll—”
“I’m dying.”
Her flesh flashed from hot to icy. “What?” she whispered. It was that whine, her speeding pulse, something about the day that made everything sound strange to her ears. He was lying, he’d said. Or sighing, buying, frying. Yeah, frying. “It is very hot,” she said desperately.
“I’m dying.”
“Dying?” The idea was so ridiculous she could hardly reply. “No, no, you told me your doctor said you were fine.”
“The doctors told my father he was fine, too. And then he was dead of his second heart attack within twelve months. I’ve already had my second heart attack, Angel. How much time do you suppose I have left?”
“That’s silly—”
“My time’s borrowed, sweetheart. Every day, every minute, every breath, borrowed.”
“But—”
“The stats will back me up.”
Give her a stat and she’d find a way to beat the crap out of it. “But—”
“So don’t tell me you love me.”
The wind picked up again, and another gust buffeted them, then another, wrapping her hair around her face. By the time she’d pulled it out of her eyes, the air was swirling with papers. She saw a half-sheet fly by with her messy handwriting on it, then an article from Health magazine she’d copied at the library in San Luis Obispo fluttered past. Her reflexes must have been as desperate as her mood, because she made a miraculous grab.
She held the paper up to Cooper’s face, rattling it beneath his nose. “I did my research on heart attacks. I know that with the right…”
But he was already shaking his head. “Listen to me, honey. This is for you. I didn’t—don’t—want us to get any closer because I saw what happened to my mother. How my father’s death sucked the life out of her. I wouldn’t wish that on you. On anybody.”
Honey. He’d called her honey. Hope reined back Angel’s alarm. “I’ll take the chance, Cooper.”
A light smack hit her back, then her legs. It took Angel a moment to realize it was more of the unleashed paper from the pile on her car. Then the wind flared again, more sheets joining the flurry, some scattering at their feet, others dancing at their ankles. When a photocopy of a Whitney painting blew between her and Cooper, she batted it away to move in on him. “Think, Cooper. Think of what we could have.”
Her hand reached to touch him, but he stepped away, shaking his head again. “No, no.”
“Cooper,” she tried again, laying it all out now. “I’m in love with you.”
“And I won’t love you back.” His eyes had turned from greeny-brown to inky-dark. “Ever.”
A paper slapped against her face. Then another landed against her chest, the wind keeping it pressed tight to her heart. Angel didn’t move it, glad for even that flimsy protection.
Because she believed him. Oh Lord, she couldn’t look into that set face of his and not believe him.
“Why?” Her voice came out sounding thin and lost. Young. But she didn’t have the energy to strengthen it, she only had what it took to ask the question that had always lived in the darkest, scariest corner of her mind. “Am I…am I so unlovable, then?”
Cooper staggered back. “No, God, no.”
The papers were whirling and twirling around them now, blowing across the parking lot, blowing against her car, blowing against their bodies. But through the tornado they stared at each other.
Cooper scrubbed his face with his hands. “Angel, Angel, I don’t…I can’t…” He scrubbed again, then looked at her once more, his expression somewhere between sadness and pity.
“Let me tell you what my father said as he lay dying in my arms.” Cooper’s voice was calm, so calm. “I was asking him to fight, to hold on, even though I could see how much pain he was in.” He glanced away. “I know how much pain that was, now.”
He took a breath, then met her gaze again. “He used the final moments of his life to give me advice. And the last thing he said was that it wouldn’t hurt so badly to die if he didn’t love my mother so very much.”
Angel shook her head. “Are you telling me that you…that you decided not to love anyone?”
“Yes.”
“You’d turn your back on what we could have? You’d turn your back on me?”
“Yes,” Cooper said gently. “For you.”
Angel tried making sense of what he’d just said. He was rejecting her for her own good?
“I don’t believe you!” She was suddenly furious. And determined to get at him. She launched toward him, batting papers out of the air on her way. “I don’t believe a word you say!”
He grabbed her wrists before she could strangle him. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
She twisted her arms, trying to get away from his grasp so she could give him the death he so richly deserved. “You’re not doing anything for me! This is for you, damn you!”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t you hear yourself? You’re afraid to love me. It makes it so much easier for you not to.”
He dropped her wrists and looked away. “Shut up, Angel. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She laughed. “Oh yes, yes, I do. Because you’re just like him. Loving someone only when it’s easy, when it’s convenient. You’re another one, just like him.”
His hand snaked out so fast she didn’t see him move. One moment she was an arm’s length away, the next he’d snagged the hem of her top and had her hauled up against his chest. Papers had been caught between them, and they made a crackling sound, like flames.
His gaze was flaming too, and trained on her. “Maybe you’re right, Angel, maybe you are. I’m human, damn it.”
“Human, or just plain male?” Angel spit out. “I should have known better than to trust someone from your half of the species.”
His eyes narrowed. “Well, then, you should know this too. You might call yourself Bob Woodward, but from here you look a lot more like Lois Lane. And believe me, baby, you’re looking in the wrong place for your Mr. Perfect. Superman is in the pages of a comic book, not Big Sur.”
Angel’s car peeled out of the parking lot and onto the narrow road leading away from the retreat. Sick at how things had ended between them, Cooper watched her dust rise in the air, bargaining with himself. He’d move as soon as the drone of her car engine no longer reached his ears.
But as it grew fainter, then fainter, he made a new deal. When that lingering dust finally settled, that’s when he’d make himself return to the solitude of the retreat. He was still waiting when he thought he heard her car turn back.
Yes, the sound of the engine was definitely coming closer.
He looked around the parking lot, strewn with the mess of her papers. She wanted them. Or at the very least, her laptop.
But when she’d sped off, the small black machine had skated along the hood of the car, then smashed to the ground. Hell. With his toe, he tried pushing the scattered pieces of metal and plastic into a neater heap, but then he gave up and decided to escape to the retreat. He wasn’t up to another explosive confrontation.
His head lifted as the revving car engine sounded closer. Too close. She’s driving too fast, he thought angrily. He wasn’t going to get out of the parking lot before she was back in it. The damn fool will hurt herself.
His foot jerked, messing the nice little pile he’d made. Then her car came careening into the lot straight for him. As he leaped back to save himself, her front tire ran over the remains of the laptop. The car stopped with a jerk and the combined power of the wind and the airstream she created picked up a mass of papers, throwing them high into the air again.
They rained like confetti over his head as she threw open her car door.
“For God’s sake, Angel.” He went ahead and shouted at her because he was so fucking tired of everything. “I was hoping to survive at least until lunchtime. What the hell are you doing now?”
From behind the steering wheel, she swallowed, her eyes wide. “Fire! There’s a fire.”
He leaped toward her. “What? Where?”
She made a vague gesture behind her. “There. Back there.”
“Get out of the seat,” he said, trying to pull her from the car. “Let me go see.”
“No, no. You can’t. It’s burning on both sides of the road. Moving fast, and moving right this way.”