Angel With an Attitude Page 9

  His frown deepened. “Have you a résumé, Ms. Avedon? Credentials?”

  Isobel met his look straight on. “I saved your son, Mr. Candless, and I kept him from harm. He is used to me. He trusts me. I’ve eased his nightmares and dried his tears. What other credentials would you like?”

  He gave her a rueful look. “You’re taking advantage of an old man, young lady.”

  “I want this very badly.”

  “Well, you certainly make a powerful case for yourself.”

  She pressed her advantage. “Then you agree?”

  He laughed. “Do you know when was the last time anyone handled me so efficiently?”

  She didn’t know what to say. “Nineteen-fiftyseven?”

  He chuckled again. “Well before you were born, let’s put it that way. Where did you get such ovarios?”

  Isobel laughed out loud, but she would not be charmed out of her request. “I’ve taken care of hund…dozens of babies, Mr. Candless. I’ve never fallen for one like I fell for Seth. He’s a charmer, too, even at five months. Please. Will you give me chance? A month to prove myself?”

  Candless breathed deeply and stood. “Show me my son, Ms. Avedon, and you will have your chance.”

  HIS MEETING WITH SETH went poorly. Angelo, appearing in the guise of the priest who had first helped Isobel, came at her wave, carrying Seth. Isobel introduced him as Father Ramon Sifuentes. Meeting Isobel’s eyes in a dark and shadowed look she didn’t understand, not even acknowledging her success, he handed the baby over to Candless.

  Seth began immediately to fuss and squirm. Candless was scarcely more comfortable himself. He hadn’t a clue how to hold a baby. He grimaced in keen disappointment, adding a helpless smile. “I suppose my expectation of an immediate bond with my son was a bit…unreasonable. Ms. Avedon, would you help me, please?”

  Isobel nodded and took Seth from him.

  Angelo smiled humorlessly at Candless’s attempt at self-deprecating charm. “The baby isn’t all that happy anywhere outside Isobel’s arms, Señor Candless, I can assure you.”

  She buried her concern about Angelo’s dark mood in the baby’s neck. What he had said wasn’t, strictly speaking, a lie, but neither was it too near the truth. Seth could lie for hours in Angelo’s hands, contented, communicating in a sacred, special sort of way humans rarely achieve between themselves.

  Shading the truth, implying Seth was only truly happy in her arms, protected Candless from disappointment. She might have been amused at how adept Angelo was at skirting an out-and-out lie, but his demeanor as the priest wasn’t exactly warm.

  “Am I to understand that you’ve agreed,” he said in the priest’s sonorous Hispanic tones, “to allow Isobel to be the child’s nanny?”

  “I have.” He gave her a considered look. “She’s a very persuasive young lady. And my son has certainly taken to her.”

  “I would like very much to stay in contact with Isobel,” Angelo said. “Would you allow me to visit her?”

  “She will perhaps prefer,” Candless countered smoothly, “to have some time off once each week. I would not object to her visiting with you. Do you feel you must keep tabs on me, Father Sifuentes, or on Isobel?”

  Angelo shrugged as if this was not the case at all. “The Lord keeps tabs, señor. As for me, I would only like to hear of this young man’s progress in the world,” he answered, cupping Seth’s head in a sort of blessing.

  The baby smiled and reached out a hand to touch his father’s face. The old man melted, exactly, Isobel guessed, as Angelo had wished him to do.

  Meeting Candless’s chauffeur with Isobel’s luggage in hand to preclude any questions as to why a barrio cleric would be driving a BMW, Angelo assisted with the transfer, then took Isobel’s hands, offered a blessing and turned away. Candless offered Isobel a hand in, then slid comfortably into the seat opposite her. After the limo turned the corner, Angelo dematerialized as Father Ramon, then appeared at her side in the limousine so that only Isobel could see him.

  THE FRONT GATE was a formidable combination of form and function. No one gained access to the estate without the gatekeeper’s direct action. Angelo guessed the approved list was a short one.

  Spectacular mountain vistas surrounded the estate, but it was set upon grounds so completely flat for miles around, that it would have been impossible for crime-force agents to stake it out, set up or conceal state-of-the-art directional listening equipment, or even approach with less than a minimum of ten minutes’ notice to the Candless staff. The gardens were landscaped in desert style to within a hundred yards of the house, and an impregnable stone fence began at that point and circumscribed the residences.

  Angelo counted four such structures—the main two-story residence, with wings stretching out from a central building, two guest houses and one that appeared to be a much smaller echo of the main house. Candless pointed from one to the next.

  “My second son, Conrad, lives in the closest guest house with his wife, Michele. The one at the far end is occupied by my daughter, Kelsey, and her husband, Emory St. John, who is chief counsel for IJ Candless. They’re expecting my first grandchild at Christmastime. My other sons, Bruce and Harrison, live in separate wings of the main residence, and that one,” he pointed to the smallest outbuilding, “is divided into several small apartments for staff.”

  At last the limousine pulled into the circle drive of the enormous main house. The drive was cobbled and exquisite, lined with gracious, extravagant bushes and vast numbers of flowers and flowering cacti. The house itself was done in authentic stucco, with clay roof tiles; the architecture would have compared favorably with international five-star resorts.

  The chauffeur, Halpern, opened the door and helped Isobel out. Candless followed. The front door opened and a beautiful golden retriever puppy bounded out, barreling for the car.

  Candless laughed delightedly, bending low and clapping his hands for the puppy, who wriggled and jumped and barked uproariously. “Brandy, girl! See here, Ms. Avedon, my son Seth’s first dog. What do you think of her?”

  “What a pretty puppy! See the puppy, Seth?” She turned the baby so he would see the dog, but the five-month-old was more startled than enchanted by the barking. Isobel smiled. “She’s wonderful, of course. Brandy is her name, did you say?” Kneeling with the pup between his legs, Candless crooned her name. “I think you’ll have to give Seth a couple of months, frankly.”

  He glanced up at her. Seth had not started to cry, but the puppy hadn’t held his attention either. “I suppose he is a bit young, but…What can I say? I want my son to have the best of everything, right from the start.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Angelo commented laconically, leaning invisibly against the roof of the limousine, one booted ankle crossed over the other.

  “Will you stop?” Isobel demanded, crooning to the baby as if his chewing her finger—and not Angelo’s running commentary—was what she meant.

  “Take it easy, Iso. If you only had more than a primitive mortal brain stem,” he teased, “you could hold up your end of both conversations.”

  She shot Angelo a look. He shot one right back at her. He’d been teasing, yet not teasing. He meant her to know it. He’d been oddly quiet on the entire fortyminute drive. She had no idea what had put him in such an un-angelic mood, which, she supposed, just confirmed her pea brain and aggravated him more.

  Candless turned the puppy back over to a servant, one of the housemaids he’d introduced as Helena, and was carrying on about having this picture in his mind of how things should be.

  Already on edge, she turned to Candless, wanting to tell him to back off his expectations as much as she wanted to tell Angelo where he could take his attitude. “Seth will love Brandy when he gets a little bigger, I’m sure. For now, could I settle in with him for a while?”

  “Of course. Halpern will bring your bags, and I will show you to your quarters. I would like him well rested to meet the rest of my family tonight.”
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  She had to bite her tongue about what she thought about putting Seth on display. He led the way into the house, then held her elbow in a gentlemanly fashion while escorting her to the baby’s suite of rooms.

  Angelo had disappeared, and she was glad. Maybe he’d read her mind and taken his temper elsewhere in the universe. Moving through the house was like making her way through a museum. She could not imagine a child growing up here. When she saw the suite decked out for Seth, she felt even more appalled. There were private day-care centers, supported by outrageous tuition fees, endowed far less conspicuously than Seth’s playroom, with its lifesized stuffed giraffe and a jewel-encrusted bridle on the rocking horse.

  Seth was scrubbing his little eyes and fussing to be nursed. Isobel turned to Candless, who seemed to be expecting her to display wild appreciation for all he had done in preparation. “This is all a little overwhelming, Mr. Candless, I have to confess. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it, but the baby and I need to be alone now.”

  And again, he took her at her word, gracious in retreating the moment Halpern passed in the hallway to deliver her suitcases. Weary herself, she traced the chauffeur’s steps to what was to be her room. She found it furnished with a skirted, king-sized bed covered in a thick peach paisley comforter, a sofa, easy chairs, each with its own oversized ottoman, a stone fireplace, and the most ornate antique cherrywood armoire and writing desk she had ever seen.

  Gina Sellers would have felt very, very pampered here. Preferring her rooms in the old Victorian mansion above San Juan Capistrano, Isobel found this overmuch and stifling.

  She pulled back the comforter and lay on the bed with Seth, nursing him until he fell asleep. The peacefulness she had found every other time she took the babe to her breast eluded her. She rose carefully and left him on one of the ordinary receiving blankets she had brought rather than taking him to the over-elaborate crib that still smelled of newness.

  Wandering, unsettled, she avoided the windows and turned the corner into the sitting room.

  Angelo sat there on the sofa, one arm stretched along the top of the cushions. His booted feet rested negligently on the thick glass coffee table. His shadowed, intense eyes fixed on her. He’d been lying in wait. He hadn’t taken his attitude anywhere; instead he’d been sitting here stewing in it.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Ovarios, Iso,” he spat, mocking Candless’s admiring tone.

  “You heard that?”

  “I heard.” He scowled deeply.

  “Well, what of it, Angelo? I thought it was…clever. Flattering. Candless was only complimenting me on—”

  “Your anatomy!”

  “—standing up to him…Dear Lord.” She began to laugh. “You’re…jealous, aren’t you!”

  “No, Isobel,” he contradicted evenly, though there was nothing especially even in his temper or his possessive look. “What I am is angry.”

  Chapter Seven

  Isobel flushed. “Forgive my poor primitive mortal brain stem, mi amor, but what are you angry about? Or at whom? Candless? Are you mad? Have you lost your vaunted mind? You are behaving like a Neanderthal!”

  As a matter of course, he had rendered useless every listening device given Isobel by the government agents the moment she saw him, but he was thick into his feelings and outrage. “Iso, I will not apologize. I am humorless where it comes to your honor, I concede, but I do not think ‘Neanderthal’ is quite accurate.”

  “Fine,” she retorted. “Like Don Quixote, then, hopelessly stuck in an age of chivalry long, longsince passed!”

  “Oh, yeah. The man of La Mancha, dreaming the impossible dream. Now there you’ve caught the essence of my hopelessly medieval attitudes, but again, I do not apologize, Isobel. In our time, I would have cut out the tongue of a man who dared speak to you of something so intimate.”

  “You would not!”

  “I would, Iso. I am the one who guarded your honor, who stopped short of—”

  “Making love to me?” she cried softly, seeing now the depth and roots of his anger. “Then get over it and make love to me, here and now, and we’ll both just have to suffer our tarnished reputations in heaven!”

  His eyes flared and then narrowed. He swallowed, scarcely able to croak her name. “Iso. You don’t—”

  “I do,” she insisted, meeting his look. Shivers skittered over her flesh. Her heart knocked crazily. She sank to her knees in front of him and took his hands. “I do mean it.”

  He swallowed. “Here.”

  “Now.”

  A vein in his mortal temple throbbed. He breathed as if the air had been sucked from his lungs. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Iso, my God—”

  He was interrupted by a sharp rap at the door.

  “Ms. Avedon?”

  Angelo pulled away from her and got up, skirting her. Her hands balled up. She wanted to scream. “Who is it?”

  “Helena, ma’am. I’ve been sent to see if I may bring your dinner on a tray. Is there…is someone there troubling you?”

  Isobel sprang to her feet, wildly frustrated. “No,” she called through the still-closed door. “Thank you, but I am not hungry.”

  “All right. But may I just come in and make sure everything is satisfactory?”

  “Let her in, Iso,” Angelo commanded harshly, his voice deep with his own thwarted desire. “She heard you talking to me. God knows what story she’ll run off with if she doesn’t get an explanation.”

  Isobel pulled her hair back with both hands, then crossed the sitting room and jerked open the door.

  Helena peeked in, then invited herself further. Isobel stepped back.

  “I thought I heard voices. Yours, anyway.” Peering up under her brow, not to be so bold as to invite a rebuke, she gave Isobel a concerned look. She had an Eastern European look about her cheeks and eyes, and a clear, pale complexion. “You look a little bit warm. Are you certain you’re all right, miss?”

  Fighting for her wits, she knew she must look disastrously flushed to the maid. She was sick with disappointment at having been interrupted at such a moment.

  “Embarrassed, is all,” she improvised. “I was comforting the baby. No. That’s not true. I sometimes talk to myself aloud. My…my mother did that.”

  Helena arched her head back and nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. I sometimes sing to myself,” she admitted.

  “Well, that’s much more lovely that yattering on,” Isobel said. “But as you can see, no one has disturbed me. Have…has the family already dined?”

  “Yes. They will all be gathering soon to greet the new baby.”

  Angelo stood looking out through the panes of the French doors, his stance impossibly contained. Feeling fevered and desperate to go to him, Isobel struggled to maintain her equanimity. She must deal with this, must get past the first meeting with the Candless family, and then it might be easier.

  “How long?” she asked.

  Helena checked the serviceable watch on her heavy-boned wrist. “Forty minutes.”

  “Does the household run so precisely?” Isobel asked.

  “Oh, it does.” Helena answered, nodding quite firmly. “Yes. It…may not be easy with the baby, but it will work out. Whatever Mr. Candless wishes works out.” She looked hopefully to Isobel. “Could I see him? I only caught a glance as you came in.”

  Isobel could think of no reason to refuse. In her hesitation, Angelo spoke, inaudible to Helena, still facing the door. “Iso, we have to talk. Ask her to sit with the babe until he wakes. She will be deeply flattered.”

  Isobel took a deep, ragged breath, hoping Helena would chalk it up to an appropriate case of nerves. “Would you mind sitting with Seth until Mr. Candless comes? That way I could compose myself—”

  “Oh, that would be so fine! May I?”

  Isobel nodded gratefully. “Please. He is asleep in my room.”

  Helena hurried away through the combined play and sitting room to the bedroom. Isobel followed
to thank the woman and close the door on her way out.

  Alone with Angelo again, everything that had ever been at stake between them now, she went to stand before him. She understood that he had caught Helena, even the entire household, up in some warp of time to prevent an interruption again.

  He looked at her, started to speak, and then gave it up, taking her into his arms instead. Fully human, he was aroused, and did not try to hide it from her or to hold her in such a way that she would not know. Still, leaning into him, her head against his warm chest, she sensed his intention. Her throat ached, clotted with tears.

  “Iso, don’t cry.”

  “Can Helena hear us?”

  “No. She will hear nothing.”

  Her heart twisted. “Angelo, don’t do this, I beg you.” She pulled back only far enough to search his eyes. “What is chastity but a useless vanity between us? Will the world stop turning or the sun burn out or heaven crumble to dust if you and I—”

  “No.” He cupped her cheek in his palm, stroked her tears away with his thumb. “But if I made love to you Iso, which I swear to you is the only desire in my immortal soul, I could not leave you as I must when this is done.”

  “Still you hold us to impossible standards!” she cried, pulling away from him.

  “Try to remember that you came back for Seth, Iso, and not this.”

  “Don’t presume to remind me, Angelo de Medici, of what I have done or why! We, you and I, would not have come to this if you had chosen to give this assignment to some other avenger.”

  “Then try to remember instead that it is because I love you more, not less—”

  “Don’t say it!” she cried, flying at him with all the pent-up fury inside her. “Don’t. If you ever loved me half so much as your precious honor, we would not have been reduced to necking in the courtyard of the palace where your enemies waited to strike you down!”

  He saw then that Isobel had long since recognized his unending arrogance, how he had been taken off guard because his vaunted instincts were blunted with wanting her and yet still he refused, in the name of honor, to consummate their love.