Angel With an Attitude Read online

  He walked with her through the hedges and fragrant flowers and the earliest sun rays over the horizon, and when she had changed Seth, settled into the sofa and taken him to her breast, she became practical again and asked whether Angelo had heard all of her encounter with Harrison Candless.

  He had.

  She shook her head. “I was prepared to believe that someone in this family was willing to go to any lengths to take Seth out of the picture, but I guess I would rather have believed that Gina’s murder was a random act of violence.”

  “Or that her death had something to do with her willingness to work with the strike force? That is still possible. But you knew, Iso,” he chided gently. “You had to know that once Ian Candless acknowledged Seth as his son, killing Gina and Seth was the most expedient and permanent way to solve the problem of another heir.”

  “Gina must have seen it coming.”

  “I agree. She had to have hoped that before that could happen, the Candless heirs would pay her to disappear and take Seth out of the picture with her.”

  “How could they ever be sure she wouldn’t come back for more?”

  “They couldn’t. But if you were Gina, and you believed the legitimate Candless heirs would kill you anyway, you’d have nothing to lose by asking, and everything to gain. Whatever money Gina could extort from them would have given her the means to disappear. What would you do?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought to extort money in the first place.”

  “But if it were you, Iso?”

  “Then—remember, this is not me—but if I had been in Gina’s position, I would have taken the money and given the baby up for a private adoption.”

  “You’re right. That’s nothing Gina would have thought of. But look at the cost benefit of proceeding with a murder. If the Candless heirs hired a hit and something went wrong, and something almost always goes wrong, one or all of them could wind up going to prison. On the other hand, if they paid Gina off, the worst-case scenario is pretty benign. They claim they were only doing what was right by Gina, compensating her for Seth’s care and the damage their father had done her reputation.”

  “Except Harrison, for one, didn’t have his share of the money. Do you know anything about the rest, whether Conrad or Bruce or Kelsey had that kind of money lying around?”

  “The only one who’s independent of IJ Candless & Sons is Bruce. I’ve heard him wheeling and dealing with his broker, and, of course, he owns a construction company that has government contracts all over the country for low-income housing.”

  Isobel had seen a feature in the newspaper a few days ago that held Bruce Candless up as a media darling and colleague of several mayors. They all sang his praises as being one of the visionaries of his generation, making a real difference in the inner cities.

  “Are you saying he could have gotten his hands on his share of Gina’s payoff demand?”

  “He’s the only one who could have done it without some fancy explaining to Candless’s suits.”

  “Suits?”

  “Money changers, Iso,” he teased. She rolled her eyes. He loved the flash of silvery blue, the shape of her eyebrows. The curve of her lips. His own mouth went dry to think how much he loved her, craved her. He cleared his desert-dry throat. “The guys who really control the family fortune.”

  A tiny vertical furrow shaped itself in her forehead just over her nose. She was not immune to the vibes of intimacy passing between them, but she wanted to understand. “Okay. The heirs had a problem. If they could come up with the money, they could get rid of Gina and Seth, but they couldn’t easily lay their hands on the amount she asked. Would Bruce have covered for them all? Or would they have come back to Gina and offered less?”

  “My instinct tells me Bruce had no interest in covering them.”

  “Really? Why not? He’s the one who’s always smoothing things over, always getting Candless off their cases.”

  “What does that prove, Iso? That he’s a good guy, or that he’s only a good guy when it’s easy? He’s smart, he’s made it on his own, he’s kind to his mother and he stands up for his siblings. But the kind of man he is doesn’t suffer fools well, Iso, and I think he’s suffered them about as much as he ever will.”

  “Are they such fools, Angelo?”

  “When you’re an adult and you depend on your father for your next meal or your next Porsche, you’re a fool.”

  “I don’t understand. Have you seen or heard Bruce treat any of them that way?”

  He shook his head. “Not even once. I told you, this is my instinct.”

  “Have you ever been wrong?”

  “No.” He gave a lazy smile. “But it could happen.”

  “You truly are insufferable.”

  But her own smile matched his. Seth grinned up at her with her nipple still in his mouth, and her smile widened. “You think that’s funny, little mister?” she scolded with nothing but love in her voice.

  The image could not have been any less provocative, and still Angelo’s sex thickened. More than her smile or her voice, more than her touch, the things most powerfully feminine about her were what drew him like the thornbird to its death.

  And he had died out there on the beach in the night, there could be no question. Died to everything he knew, everything he had been since the night he watched his murderers murder Isobel first.

  “Angelo, what is it?”

  The alarm in her voice rattled him. “What?”

  “You looked as if you’d seen a ghost—I mean, as if you’d—Angelo, what? What is it? Please tell me.”

  He had seen a ghost, seen her spirit leave her body, seen her body fall to the ground, her life’s blood dripping from the blade of a sword he knew too well.

  “There’s no point, Iso.”

  “But there must be, or you wouldn’t be so pale…”

  He supposed there was no point, either, in keeping the truth from her. He had heard the sentiment she had not spoken the night before, that she would not want his vengeance visited upon a flea. He swallowed hard, cleared his throat. “That night, Iso, the night you believed me dead, I did not die. I didn’t wake for three days, the morning of the day you were murdered, but I survived that long.”

  “Oh, God, Angelo. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  All she could think of, he could see, was how he must have suffered. That was the way her soul worked, the natural contour of her thoughts. Just as with Harrison Candless, she looked first for the suffering and, thereafter, discounted the danger, or the evil, or the malignant intentions.

  She was a hopeless romantic, in his never humble opinion, as relentlessly mired in compassion as he was in his quest for justice. But then, she had not been kept alive for the express purpose of watching him die.

  “Stow your compassion, Iso, and listen to me!” he railed, returning his thoughts to that night five hundred years before. “The bastards planned your murder all along.”

  She paled at that, but then shook off her dread.

  “Angelo, what does it matter now? Why torment yourself with such memories?”

  “I have no choice, Iso.” He dragged a hand through his hair, which hung loose from its usual thong. Why had the memories risen in him so strongly now? “The memories come upon me. There’s a lesson in them. Feel it,” he urged her. “There’s power in knowing the truth.”

  Seth had finished nursing. She sat him up in her lap and patted his back. “Go on with it then, mi amor.”

  He took a deep breath, touched deeply not only by her care of Seth, but also by her endearment. He rose and began to pace like a leopard suddenly caged.

  “When he learned that I had not died instantly, my distant cousin, the Pope, commanded I be kept alive. My arms and legs were broken. My eyes were all but swelled shut. I blacked out if I so much as tried to get to my hands and knees.”

  He was scaring her, he knew, but he felt compelled to continue, knew that if he could just get it out, she would see if there was some point
he had missed all these centuries, or, at the very least, understand how and why he had become what he had. “I didn’t die that night or the next. They spared no effort keeping me alive. I would die sooner or later, and if later, then I should learn before I went to my Maker what happens to a man who dared defy their little reign of terror.”

  Her palm rubbing small desperate circles on Seth’s back, Isobel’s eyes glittered with tears. She had lived through the religious and political intrigues herself, and still could not fathom the hidden agendas, the power struggles, and most especially not the murders. “I don’t understand.”

  He swallowed. He relived the hours in an instant, all its gore and the stench of his own bloodied body. “I’m not even sure I could see from both eyes, but they kept me alive so that I might have the privilege of watching you murdered.”

  “To what end?” she cried softly, clinging to the babe.

  “So I might know that I was…” he stopped, his voice thick with emotion, “powerless to stop them. Or even afterward, to avenge your death.”

  Sickened, she could find no words at all, none of consolation or even comprehension. Such vile intentions were outside her realm of thinking. Her throat ached with sorrow. “What happened then?”

  “I died. I was conscripted to the Avenging Angels, and I believed that was why, because vengeance was denied me in life. Because I had become vengeance incarnate, and there was so much evil to counter.” He paced toward the French doors and stood watching outside, the color of the ocean, the turmoil, the swoop of gulls. “I was good. I was the best.” His head hung low to hear himself making such a claim. He could hear his own arrogance, his own proud and overweening attitude. “I am the best.”

  “But you are not at peace.”

  He looked to Isobel and saw in her eyes the sudden and terrifyingly simple insight that in heaven and earth and hell combined, the most tortured souls belonged to the Avenging Angels.

  HARRISON, THEY SUSPECTED, would not be the only one to approach Isobel. If he expected to be blackmailed by her, then the others must as well. But none of them came around the following morning, which was Sunday. By lunchtime, none of the family had yet made appearances. Helena brought word that Ian Candless wished to see his son and speak with Isobel privately at one-thirty.

  She instructed Helena to tell Mr. Candless that she would be taking the baby outdoors then, and would see him on the lawn.

  From her vantage point on the grassy bluff high above the sea, she could see the sliver of beach where Angelo had made love to her. The visual memory provoked others more starkly drawn, of his hands cupping her, his brow furrowing in the sweet release of their lovemaking, the taste of his tears, the thump of his heart close to hers.

  He sat there now, his broad naked back to her, his hair pulled back into the leather thong, his attention at once on the hypnotic waves and, from a higher perspective, on her. He would hear every word that passed between her and Candless. He would be contemplating, she knew, what meaning there was to his existence after their coupling the night before.

  She couldn’t fathom how this might turn out. He had served the role of avenger for so long, and for such powerful, personal reasons, that he knew nothing else. He didn’t even recognize peace where he found it—in her embrace.

  Isobel shivered and drew her attention back to Seth. She spread a pillowy dark plaid comforter on the grass near a stone bench a short distance from the cliff side, then placed the babe in the midst with a menagerie of small stuffed animals. Seth favored the armadillo, whose snout went constantly into his mouth.

  Her heart, as it did in such moments, swelled with wonder. Were he one of Raphael’s beautiful blond cherubs, she could not have loved Seth more. The tiny dimples in his chubby little hands brought her to some indefinable brink of emotion. His toothless smile took her breath straight away. His babbling was a symphony to her ears, his struggles to match the wobbly movement of his arms and legs in an effort to crawl, a feast for her eyes.

  After a few more attempts, he gave up with a frustrated cry and rolled onto his back. Bending over him, Isobel crooned softly, gave him the consolation of a kiss and his armadillo, then sat with her legs tucked to her side. She took her needlepoint in hand, absently working stitches, and waited for Ian Candless to make his appearance, wondering what he knew of Harrison’s behavior last night.

  Candless arrived, as always, on the stroke of the appointed time. Feeling the level of Angelo’s attention to her rising, she looked up as Candless’s shadow approached, shading her own eyes. He was not, however, alone. His son-in-law, Kelsey’s husband, “Sinjin,” the family legal counsel, accompanied him. Isobel took a deep breath and gave a greeting. “Mr. Candless. Mr. St. John.”

  The attorney merely nodded. Candless replied. “Good morning, Isobel. And how is my sweet boy this morning? Happy as a little lark, I see.” He turned his gaze on Isobel.

  She smiled and scraped together a neutral reply. “He’s happy by nature, I think.”

  “And what of you, my dear?” Candless bent to lift the babe into his arms, while Sinjin remained carefully distant. “Have you any concerns thus far?”

  Candless’s tone was absolutely solicitous, interested, and…smarmy. She would rather have demanded what on God’s green earth Ian Candless had been thinking to have done what he did to Harrison that Easter morning of 1977 on his son’s seventh birthday. She held her tongue on that issue, let her gaze flick over the attorney, and broached the larger issue, the one for which she had come here.

  “I am concerned,” she said softly, watching him thrill Seth by gently tossing him in the air. “I have seen in the news that you are under a great deal of pressure.”

  “The issue of the exploitation of illegal immigrants?” He saw that was what she meant, and laughed, taking Seth’s tiny, exploring fingers from his mouth. “A tempest in a teapot, don’t you agree, Sinjin?” His son-in-law nodded. Candless went on. “Compared to the stories we released to the press, earlier this week, of your rescuing Seth and restoring him to me, such allegations are meaningless. Don’t let them concern you at all.”

  She would not be patted on the head in such a manner. “Meaningless, sir…but are they true?”

  “No.” He sat on the stone bench, bouncing Seth on his knee. Isobel had to turn slightly to face him. Sinjin stood stiffly, a packet of papers under his arm, but Candless seemed, if anything, untouched by the hints of furor set off in the media over the alleged exploitation of illegal immigrant labor by Candless Industries. Curious, maybe even vaguely suspicious of her interest, but without a trace of concern.

  “Even if the allegations were true,” he said, patting Seth’s cheek with his own tiny fist, “I would owe you no explanation. You are my son’s nanny, nothing more. But I will tell you this once, and then it will be put to rest. I have never resorted to illegal practices, less than humane management, sweatshops in the Orient or importing cheap labor.”

  Sinjin added, “Ian’s business ethics are of the highest order. He employs the handicapped. He employs design geniuses. He supports the business community and, for all this, IJ Candless & Sons has become an international success.”

  “The kind of success,” Candless concluded, “that will inevitably become the target of scurrilous rumors.”

  “Inevitably?” she echoed doubtfully, thinking how deep-seated must be the belief he had branded into his youngest son. Only the paranoid survive.

  He laughed again, not unpleasantly. “Perhaps not,” he granted. “But success brings with it certain risks.” He gave her a curious look. “You don’t think very much of me, do you, Isobel?”

  She lowered her head a moment to think. Her heart skipped beats. Instinctively, she knew his respect hinged on the same willingness to be straightforward that she had demonstrated at their first meeting. But she had not been truthful by half then, nor could she be now.

  “It’s true,” she admitted, “that I don’t approve of what happened between you and Gina Sellers. In my
mind, it is adultery. Could you be less than honorable in one portion of your life, and not have such dishonor seep into your business affairs?”

  “Or conversely, poison my baby son with my dishonorable conduct?”

  Isobel swallowed hard. He had effectively ducked the question of his business affairs and, in doing so, cut straight to the heart of her own concern. She was trapped there now, outwitted by him, constrained from any further questions into allegations of labor exploitation against IJ Candless & Sons. She was the nanny, and her only proper concerns were for Seth’s welfare.

  “Yes.” She kept her response that unelaborate.

  He pulled Seth to his feet on his knee, supporting the wobbling baby beneath his arms. Seth loved to stand, to stiffen his little legs and stretch his torso high. Candless appeared entranced for a moment, unable to take his eyes off Seth’s small triumph. But when he looked at Isobel again, his eyes reflected a good deal less than someone entranced, and when he spoke, it had nothing to do with his lack of honor poisoning his son.

  “It’s obvious to us all, Isobel, that you have fallen hook, line and sinker for my son.”

  Alarm skittered across her nerves at the realization that he saw how attached, how in love with this baby she was. It gave him a certain power over her. Control. He had only to threaten to remove her in order to make her toe his line, and despite the kind words, she saw that he intended just such a message.

  This, she thought, was the pressure, the subtle coercion, the bullying nature that Harrison and his siblings, even Candless’s wife Patrice, must have suffered.

  Maybe Isobel was being unfair to Ian Candless. It was obvious to her by the way he took the baby up and gently tossed him in the air, by the way he buried his nose in the babe’s neck, by the way he looked at his son, searching Seth’s face for features, expressions he could call his own, that he doted on the babe.