Angel With an Attitude Page 8

  “Iso—”

  She stopped him. “Don’t say it, Angelo. Please. I have only one choice, it’s true, but it is my choice, and I will not even ask for your promise.”

  She would not ask, but in all heaven and earth, he swore, no harm would come to baby Seth…or to Isobel Avedon.

  Chapter Six

  At midnight, he left her sitting before the upstairs fireplace in the old Victorian house on the cliffs above San Juan Capistrano, nursing the babe at her breast. In the morning she would make the call to Ian Candless, committing herself, body and soul, to the path she had chosen when she took on her human existence again.

  He thought, as he roamed the heavens in search of peace in his soul, that he would not make it. That Pascal was right. That he would, in the end, defy the heavenly councils, forsake his role and return to earth, to Isobel.

  The clash of duty and desire had never been so stark.

  He could not take issue with his own decision to transform himself into his mortal being in the hour of Isobel’s greatest need, but the cost to his equilibrium staggered him. He had not expected or prepared himself for the onslaught of human sensations, mortal feelings, and the desires of a human male in the presence of the woman he loves.

  His physical body had betrayed him, and were it not for Isobel’s strength in turning back from the brink herself, he would have denied himself nothing of the pleasures of finally making love to Isobel Avedon. The immigration agents could have stood motionless and unwitting on the porch of Gina Sellers’s condo until dawn, for all he cared.

  How Pascal would laugh to learn the truth. The great and mighty Angelo de Medici—principled, arrogant and honorable Avenging Angel—born a virgin, had died one as well, for he had only ever had eyes for Isobel, and he would not bed her until the day she became his wife.

  He had counted himself a master in the art of postponing his gratification. Character, he told himself, was forged in such fires as he had gone through denying himself the service of her body. He knew of no one else—including the priests of his acquaintance—who had never once indulged the pleasures of the flesh. Angelo de Medici was different, above the rest, special.

  And a total, monumental, epic fool.

  He would not have been taken off guard on that night in Isobel’s memory had he had any instincts about him but the rutting sort. When he was with her, he could think only of her, and that had proved to be his downfall.

  He was empowered differently now, even when he took human form. If he chose, he could make the world go still for as long as it took to finally make love to her. In his mind, that would more truly join them through all eternity than any vows before any mortal official.

  And Angelo de Medici did not take vows lightly.

  So he could not even tell himself that he must back away from his desire for Isobel in order to keep his wits about him, to protect her. His wits as an angel were always about him, and the threat of any danger could be countered in any split second—even supposing he forgot to stop the world while he made love to Isobel.

  He wanted her. There could be no danger. To make love to her would in both their minds be to unite them inextricably through all the ages. They had served heaven’s purposes a thousand years between them. Surely in God’s eyes they were entitled one night together.

  He would settle for one night.

  All that kept him from her was Isobel herself…that and the knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to settle for only one night.

  ANGELO CARRIED the two suitcases and diaper bag to the BMW parked below. Isobel watched him from the window in her second-story room, where sunlight streamed through the aging windows, casting prisms of wavering light.

  She held Seth close to her shoulder, his head tucked beneath her chin, her finger tucked in the sweet little folds at his neck. His baby smell mesmerized her heart. She could not remember such deep content as in these moments when his tiny fingers and gurgling noises and sweet smell crowded everything else from her mind.

  In an hour, maybe less, she would make the call to Ian Candless. Already she felt trapped, like a sparkling dust mote caught in the sunlight, carried on currents not of her choice. This was the part of being human she knew all too well but had forgotten in the chaotic moment before choosing to become human again to save Seth’s life.

  But if she had it to do over again, she would make the same choice. The baby gave her this comfort and joy. The world quickly swallowed up the simple pleasures. Mortals took them too much for granted. Isobel resolved to try in every single moment to savor the sweet and learn from the bitter.

  And then there was Angelo, whose dark hair shone like the coat of a mink in the sunlight below, whose human physique made her mortal mouth water, who had held her during her crisis with the immigration agents. Dear, sweet Angelo had let her go, despite his obvious desire, to deal with those agents and her life herself.

  Her heart thumped just watching him clean the windows of the car with a chamois and spray he had carelessly conjured out of nowhere. Yesterday in Kathryn Weston’s sunroom, she had wanted to take him on. To have it out. To make him stop wanting her. To make him realize she could not possibly fall in love with him all over again, only to have to live through losing him again.

  Standing there in the window, holding Seth to her shoulder, Isobel finally understood what rubbish that was. How could she fall in love with him all over again, when what she felt for him had never lessened?

  So Isobel finally admitted to herself that her heart would not break to lose him back to the Avenging Angels. She would survive because that was what she chose. But, just once before he left, she wanted him for her lover.

  She turned briskly away from the window and put Seth into his infant seat, tickling his tummy, smiling for him, cooing and making baby talk while she buckled him in and tears spilled onto her cheeks.

  She might as well wish the sun would rise in the west and set in the east. Angelo would never so forsake his honor as an Avenging Angel.

  IT HAD TAKEN the combined efforts of three federal law enforcement agencies to prepare her, virtually overnight, for their Trojan-horse operation.

  In the suitcases Angelo loaded into the BMW were half a dozen skirts and blouses, several pairs of slacks and jeans, sweaters, a sweat suit, clothes for Seth, and a cellular phone in case of dire emergency.

  In addition to Landau and Terrence, a couple of men from the FBI and a woman INS agent, Carolyn Mapes, came to deal with the incredible opportunity that had dropped into their collective lap. Because of the artist rendering, Isobel was the only woman on earth with the leverage Gina Sellers had had in getting into the Candless estate.

  Isobel had been instructed for hours yesterday afternoon in the art of behaving as if she had no interest in the Candless household, except for Seth.

  That wouldn’t be a problem for her. Seth was all she cared about. Still, she worried. “Candless will have to agree to hire me as Seth’s nanny first.”

  Candless was on record calling Isobel a heroine, and he could not very well turn around and demand she be arrested for the kidnap. But all four of the men had been tempted to discount any possibility that Candless would refuse. After all, he’d offered the woman who’d saved his baby any reward she desired. But Carolyn Mapes, whom Isobel had liked at first sight, agreed with her that this might be difficult.

  “He probably will try to put you off,” Carolyn said. “He’ll be expecting to part with money, not to take a stranger into his house. Maybe he’ll take to it more easily if you just ask for a couple of weeks to prove yourself.”

  She’d laughed then. A pretty, dark-haired woman with a few extra pounds and a generous smile, Mapes had three kids of her own. “Trust me on this, Isobel. Candless will have his suspicions. There will be serious questions. Obstacles. But you have nothing to hide. Let him ask. Let him doubt. He will find you to be exactly what you are. Besides, when that household sees what it is to deal with a five-month-old, they won’t wan
t you to go.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Angelo had put in, his eyes fixed on her. “Want you to go, that is.” Invisible to the agents, he’d been keeping up a running commentary. She couldn’t stop herself from looking up into his dark eyes. To the agents she must have appeared to be daydreaming.

  Carolyn reached across the space between them to touch Isobel’s icy hands. “Are you okay? You look

  a little…flushed.”

  She had had to force her attention back from Angelo. “I’m fine, really. I just don’t understand my role, you know? If I’m to be the baby’s nanny, why would anyone in that house say anything around me that could be useful to you?”

  Carolyn nodded, but she was watching Isobel more closely. “This is the thing, Isobel. We believe that there is always going to be a falling out when people get greedy and start breaking the law. Some get more greedy and want to crowd their luck, and some just want to stay on the safe side. Or they don’t believe after a while that the division of the spoils is fair anymore. They get nervous, tempers start to flare, and,” she shrugged, “under pressure, they start dividing into camps. They begin grumbling and plotting against each other. The story’s as old as Cain and Abel.”

  Angelo was staring off into space now. In some way she couldn’t explain, she knew he was reminded of their own history. She knew that despite the vast amounts of information available to him as an Avenging Angel, he had never known before what he saw in her memory—that it had been his own brother who had struck the blow that took him from her. Family, one pitted against another, as old as the sons of Adam and Eve.

  “Anyway.” Carolyn sat back, apparently satisfied that Isobel was okay. “We’re interested in what goes on in the Candless family. Our investigation may have stalled, but if they’re like everyone else, they’re feeling the pressure.”

  Isobel nodded. “And now, Ian Candless wants to bring his illegitimate son home to his family.”

  “Exactly.” Carolyn grew more earnest. “Additionally, someone murdered Gina Sellers, and it’s not a far reach to suggest her continued existence, and Seth’s, was a powerful motive to any of the legitimate heirs.”

  Isobel nodded. The murder investigation would continue. Carolyn Mapes made it clear that no one involved was discounting the murder.

  “It’s a pressure-cooker situation, Isobel, and we desperately need you to be our eyes and ears. Whatever alliances you can manage to strike up among the staff will be useful, because the hired help inevitably sees a lot of what’s going on. In short, we are looking for ways to exploit even the smallest fractures in family loyalties.”

  Other agents came and went in discreet clusters at the small Victorian mansion. She was provided with several dozen listening devices smaller than the backs of pierced earrings, powerful enough to pick up both sides of telephone conversations, virtually undetectable by conventional sweeping methods. She had only to leave one behind wherever she could.

  Although Angelo agreed with the underlying logic, that Isobel’s and Seth’s presence in the Candless stronghold would drive up the stakes, he thought the state-of-the-art bugging contrivances primitive and hokey. They would doubtless work in their haphazard way, but their value was entirely dependent on Isobel’s gaining access to places a nanny was unlikely to be welcomed, or even allowed.

  No. It was well within Angelo’s powers to open the entire estate, every private encounter, every telephone call, to a single multichannel recording device, for his own purposes and theirs, and that’s what he intended to do.

  The agents promised to be listening to every bug at all times. If she needed advice or help, if she needed out fast, she had a set of key phrases to alert the agents who would be on the listening end.

  Now, facing the moment in which she must enact the Trojan-horse operation in Gina’s stead, Isobel left the baby in his infant seat to go wash her face. She hadn’t been crying, yet her eyes felt swollen. Splashing cold water on her face felt like a very powerful metaphor for what she was about to enter into. A dip in the ocean might be even better. Like it or not, she was now in the thick of a criminal investigation, when all she had wanted was to love one motherless little boy.

  She swept the cold droplets from her face and stood up. She knew Angelo was behind her, even though there was no reflection in the mirror over the sink pedestal. His image would not reflect. Another reminder to her of the way things were—it was the one reality check she really didn’t need.

  “Are you ready, Iso?” he asked.

  Patting her face with a hand towel, she nodded. “Almost.”

  “I’ll carry Seth down to the car. Take your time.”He turned away.

  “Angelo—”

  “Iso?” He turned back.

  “I…” She broke off. What had she been going to say? She didn’t know. She wanted some reassurance, maybe, where none was possible. “Thank you.”

  She thought he knew instinctively that there was much more she couldn’t put into words. He only answered in kind. “You’re welcome.”

  SHE SAT on a cement bench in a sliver of a park on Dana Point above a marina near Laguna Niguel watching the yachts and gulls. Angelo had taken Seth with him to a spot more than a hundred yards away near a small playground. Isobel couldn’t see them, which meant Candless couldn’t either. But Angelo could see her, and he would bring the baby when she gave the sign. She would only wave when she had satisfied herself that Candless had come alone, and they had struck a bargain.

  Exactly on time, and alone, wearing ordinary jeans, a light blue polo shirt and a baseball cap, Ian Candless approached her bench. He moved without any of the infirmities of old age. She thought the television cameras had done little to convey his vitality. Or perhaps he’d regained it when she called.

  “Ms. Avedon?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Isobel.”

  He offered his hand. She gave him hers. He seemed choked up. “Where is my son?”

  She screwed up her courage. Everything depended upon gaining his respect. “Nearby. I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to meet you first.”

  He shoved a hand through his full, snowy white hair. “You’ll have to excuse me, Ms. Avedon. I’m anxious, naturally, to finally see for myself my new little son.”

  Isobel wanted intensely to dislike him. He was, at the very least, a philandering husband, and if the federal crime strike agents were to be believed, much worse, exploiting human labor. But in person and outside those realms, he could not have seemed more genuine or been less demanding.

  “Seth is a wonderful, special baby,” she agreed, “but he’s had a very hard time of it.”

  “Of course. Terrible, terrible how Gina died, holding him in her arms.” Candless asked if he might join her on the bench, then sat when she agreed, careful not to crowd her in any way. Squinting against the sun, he swallowed. “I regret very much what happened to her.”

  “She didn’t deserve to die.”

  “No. No one does. Not that way.”

  His words seemed genuine enough, but she wanted badly to abandon everything else and ask him straight out if he had had anything to do with Gina’s death. Would he be so genuine then, so sympathetic? No. She needed to be discreet now, and let the charade play out. If Candless had ordered Gina’s murder, he would pay. She had to believe that.

  “I’ve handled this poorly,” he admitted. “I wish I had done better. I wish, frankly, that Gina had come to me sooner.”

  “You’re a very formidable man, Mr. Candless, and well-insulated from…distractions. Problems. Do you know for sure that Gina never tried to come to you?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose, that whatever attempts Gina might have made could have been stonewalled by well-meaning employees.”

  “I don’t think they could have been well-meaning, sir, and still have turned Gina away. Not by any definition I know.”

  He stared a moment at his hands, which, more than any other part of his appearance, disclosed his age. “You are daringly honest, Ms. Avedon. I�
�ll say that for you.” He looked closely at her. “But I may not be quite the cad you undoubtedly believe me to be.”

  “Do you feel you must have my good opinion?”

  “You wanted my measure, isn’t that right? You wanted to know what kind of man you are turning Seth over to?”

  “That’s true.”

  Nodding, he went on. “I hope to be judged, Ms. Avedon, not by what I have done, but for what I am willing to do and be for Seth. I hope, perhaps, to make it up to Gina by giving our son a good life.” He looked at Isobel. “Tell me, how can I thank you for what you have done in saving Seth’s life? What reward would you like? What dream—”

  “I don’t want any reward, Mr. Candless.” And it was not in his powers to fulfill her dreams.

  “Surely there is something you need, something you want. Please. Name your price.”

  “I have nothing, Mr. Candless, so I want nothing. I have no family, no ties, no friends within a thousand miles, no one except Seth. What I want is to stay with him.”

  Candless frowned. “Stay with him?”

  “Yes. He needs me. You must have need of a nanny—”

  “I’m afraid that’s all been arranged. I’ve already hired a very competent woman who came to me highly recommended.”

  “But if you’re asking what I want, Mr. Candless, as a reward for saving your son’s life, then I’m telling you, that is what I want.”

  “I can’t just dispense with the woman—”

  “I think,” Isobel interrupted softly, “that you are a man who can do anything he wishes to do. Give whatever financial reward you were prepared to make to me to the woman you hired, to compensate her, and let me stay with Seth instead.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Quite serious, Mr. Candless. I want this position. I think Seth has already been through enough, don’t you? This is not a good time for him to have to get used to still another caretaker.”