Angel of Desire
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Angel of Desire
By
Joann Ross
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
"I'm afraid of you, "Rachel said.
She felt Shade's hands moving up and down her back and tried not to think how they felt as if they belonged there. "Of myself." She lifted her own hands to his shoulders. "Of us."
"Join the club." His hands drifted below her waist, settling on her hips, drawing her closer.
She tilted her head back and looked up at him. "Are you saying—"
"I'm afraid of us, too."
"I dream of you, dammit!" He grabbed hold of her slender hand that had been stroking his face, then found, to his distraction, that he couldn't let go. "I think of you when I should be planning how I'm going to get into that damn prison. I can't afford any distractions right now. Yet I can't stop wondering what it is about you that's gotten under my skin. What secret you possess that makes you so different from
any
woman I've ever known…"
Jo Ann Ross is one of Temptation's most popular and prolific authors—and the sheer scope of the kinds of stories she writes explains why. From intrigues to swashbuckling alien adventures to sensual dramas, JoAnn does it all.
Angel of Desire
is a delightful tale of two very star-crossed lovers. In June, JoAnn weaves an emotionally compelling story with
The Return of Caine O'Halloran
, the first book in our Lost Loves miniseries. (What if you had the chance to fall in love all over again? Would you?)
Books by JoAnn Ross
HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION
382-DARK DESIRES
409-THE KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR
432-STAR-CROSSED LOVERS
436-MOONSTRUCK LOVERS
453-THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL
471-LOVESTORM
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For their friendship and years of lunches yet to come
ISBN 0-373-25582-9
ANGEL OF DESIRE
Copyright © 1994 by JoAnn Ross.
All rights reserved. Except for use In any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all Incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises B. V.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks Indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Printed in U.S.A.
Prologue
IT WAS CHRISTMAS DAY. The Vermont sky was dark and gloomy, the air so cold the icy crystals literally stole one's breath away. Prudent people were indoors with their families, feasting on roast turkey and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.
But the youthful residents of the Vermont boys' home had no families. And dinner, while an admitted improvement over everyday fare, had been less than festive. The younger boys had cried; the older boys, who might have secretly wanted to weep, as well, exhibited stoic faces.
They'd sat through the lengthy morning church service, raced through the obligatory grace, wolfed down the baked ham and candied sweet potatoes and had finally been freed to work out their anger and unhappiness on the frozen lake behind the rambling three-story brick orphanage.
While a rigorous hockey game was taking place on the ice, two eleven-year-old boys, one clad in a hand-me-down smoke-gray parka that matched the lowering sky, the other in a blue as bright as a jay's wing, straddled a log beneath a towering pine tree. It was snowing—white flakes that swirled in the frosty air, so thick it was nearly impossible to see the other bank of the lake.
The boy in gray took a red Swiss army knife from the pocket of his parka and without so much as wincing once, sliced a neat line across the tip of his left index finger. He solemnly handed the knife to the other boy, who did the same. Unwilling tears of self-inflicted pain glistened momentarily in the second boy's bright blue eyes.
They touched fingertips.
"Now we're brothers," the first boy declared. "Forever."
"Forever," the second boy agreed, immensely grateful to have found this friend who had made his sudden parentless state a great deal less bleak.
At eleven, they realized that the odds of them ever being adopted were slim to none. That being the case, the two boys—one who'd been abandoned by his alcoholic mother years ago, the other who'd recently lost his parents in a fiery car crash—had decided to adopt each other.
The blood staining the two fingertips congealed quickly in the cold afternoon air. The brief ceremony concluded, the boys skated back out onto the ice and rejoined the hockey game in progress.
The puck was a black bullet moving over the frozen lake like a penny skidding across a newly waxed floor. The boy in gray trapped it momentarily with his stick, then took off across the lake, skating in long, self-assured strides. The December wind howled and the snow fell in a thick white curtain, obscuring his vision. Intent on making this goal, he failed to hear the ice cracking beneath the serrated steel runners of his skates.
Nor did he see the jagged fissure widening in front of him.
The fragile ice gave way, sounding like shattering crystal. One minute the boy was streaking across the surface of the lake, a long-legged gray blur; the next minute he found himself sinking lower and lower, surrounded by cold dark water.
Refusing to give in to panic, he searched for an escape route, but either the ice had closed behind him, or his momentum had carried him far beyond the opening. The ice over his head was as hard as the granite mountains that hovered over the boys' home.
As icy water began to replace the air in his young lungs, the boy realized he was going to die.
And then, unbelievably, he saw her, swimming toward him, surrounded by a warm golden light, her long hair streaming wetly behind her. Her remarkable eyes, as gray as the ice overhead but a great deal warmer, offered the same calm reassuring comfort as her smile.
As he took her strangely warm, outstretched hand, it crossed his mind that the idea of a mermaid living in a Vermont lake was impossible.
Then the world turned black.
When he woke, he was lying on a cot in the home's infirmary. The doctor, irritated at having been called away from his own children on this holiday, brusquely assured the boy that he'd live, then scolded him for behaving so recklessly.