Nobody's Angel (2 page)

But if she was Faith Nicholls, she had that power.

Normally, Faith wouldn't have noticed a stranger standing in the darkness. She tried not to see any of the men avidly following her every move. She hated the stares and concentrated on the words and the music. But the intensity of the stranger's gaze drew her like a magnet. Alone in a crowd, he collected shadows.

Did she know him? Was that why he was staring at her? She swung to the other side of the stage, away from him, but the spotlight only allowed so much leeway. She preferred not being recognized, but had always known the chance was out there.

Damn, why didn't he at least move? Out of the corner of her eye she caught the coiled tension in muscled arms folded tightly over a wide chest, giving the lie to his casual pose against the amp. Had he worn a cowboy hat or a workshirt or anything normal, she might disregard him entirely, but in black long-sleeve shirt and jeans, he was a silhouette of sharp, hard edges. He wasn't the usual city-soft Friday-night cowboy. She caught a glimpse of silver at his ear and the swing of coal-dark hair slicked back in a long ponytail. He had “Danger” imprinted on his forehead as clearly as any flashing road sign.

A beer bottle crashed somewhere in the rear of the bar, jarring her back to attention. On weekend nights the place could explode like a powder keg if not controlled. She could see Egghead elbowing his way to the shouting combatants, and she eased into a lighter song. The man in the shadows didn't break a smile at the sexual innuendoes and puns that had the rest of the audience howling.

She'd break after the next song and hope the stranger would leave. The regulars here treated her with respect and had a habit of removing hecklers without Egghead's help. But the stranger wasn't heckling. Maybe no one noticed him but her.

She shivered as the altercation in the rear escalated. She needed to concentrate on the music, soothe the savage beasts, give her audience the kick they came for, not obsess over lethal strangers. Keeping the bar from igniting into warfare was in her job description.

Even the stranger turned at the sharp report of gunfire. A woman screamed, men shouted, and the crowd broke in two directions at once.

It only took seconds, too fast to follow entirely. The dancers on the floor surged toward the stage as the crowd at the bar retreated from the brawl onto the dance floor. Someone took a dive over the sound and light booth, tilting it precariously. Beer spilled, amplifiers crashed, and the house lights shorted out just as a mass of bodies rammed into the plywood stage.

Faith tripped on a wire in the dark and started to tumble into the sweat-and-beer stench of the crowd.

Muscle-taut arms caught her by the waist and hauled her out of the melee with no more effort than a shopper heaving a bag of flour into a cart.

She gasped as she sailed over sprawling bodies and swinging fists into the relative safety of the harbor at stage right, sheltered by heavy equipment. The instant the hard arms released her, she gulped a deep breath.

“Some party you throw here,” a whiskey-velvet voice spoke through the dark.

She knew that voice, but she couldn't place it. The mellow drawl shivered down her spine, reminding her of ages past, better left behind her. Though she searched for the memory, it eluded her. Maybe, in the chaos of the moment, she imagined its self-assurance.

“We hand out balloons to everyone still standing when the lights come on,” she answered lightly, trying to ignore the electric vibrations emanating from his proximity.

“Faith, hey, you all right?” the drummer called from the stage.

“I'm fine, Tommy. I don't know about the mike. Maybe Artie ought to unplug the amps before the electricity returns. They may short the place out again.”

“Hell, let's electrocute a few of the assholes first,” the bass guitarist replied from the edge of the stage near them. “Where you at, Faith? Want me to get you outta here?”

“Go pull the plug, Artie, and stick your finger in the socket.”

Tommy hooted, and ungrudgingly, Artie apparently stood up and sauntered back to the sound and light booth.

“Speak softly and carry a big whip,” the stranger quipped dryly from behind her, nearly startling her to death. He was as still and silent as any phantom until he had a notion to make his presence known.

“They're good guys; they just don't think it's macho to give up.” Faith didn't turn around to look at him. Intuition told her it would be as dangerous as gazing at Medusa, even through the veil of darkness. “I appreciate your help, but I'll be all right now. They'll have the lights back shortly.”

“It has to be you,” he whispered.

Startled, she froze.

He hesitated. Even though she couldn't see him, she knew he wanted to say more.

To her surprise, he didn't.

As the lights flickered on, she turned, and he was gone.

Faith lightly brushed her fingertips over the silver-blue luminescence of an antique bowl before she returned it to its case. Against the backdrop of black velvet, artfully lit to resemble the moonlight it was named for, the clair-de-lune porcelain possessed a power to mystify and attract as no other piece in here could.

Carefully lowering the crystal lid of the case, she turned with dust rag in hand to contemplate the contents of her gallery. Had she riches enough, she still wouldn't collect more clair-de-lune pieces, although she'd dearly love to find a contemporary work that stirred her equally. She had an artist's appreciation of the beautiful, but not the collector's urge to acquire more. The one piece she owned satisfied her need for that particular slice of heaven.

She often scouted the catalogs, hoping to discover the same brilliance as the antique bowl in a contemporary artist, but so far she had acquired only the one modern example, and she didn't know who had made it. She'd left the unknown artist's vase packed in the boxes of her old life. She didn't need the physical reminder of all those wasted years, and she couldn't sell the vase without knowing its origins.

She specialized in high-temperature glazed stoneware, a stronger form of the earthenware made since the 1700s in this part of the country. She might love the elegance of the translucent porcelain few Americans created with success, but the sheer joy and practicality of the vivid stoneware appealed to another side of her nature. The ability to create heaven from earth had always fascinated her.

Carefully, she dusted her one Lucie Rie, an exquisite jade-green bowl balanced impossibly on a slender pedestal. People were beginning to recognize that pottery could be an art form, not just a practical place to put food or flowers. The artists in these hills deserved recognition for their talents, and the prices on the more contemporary works of unknowns were well within the budgets of many of her customers. She displayed them as carefully as the expensive Rie porcelain.

She lifted her latest acquisition. The cracked glaze known as “crazing” would have been considered a flaw in dinnerware, but as art it added an exotic patina to the Chinese red that would draw every eye in the room. She marveled that a flaw caused by cooling a glaze too rapidly could produce such drama when done deliberately.

As she finished dusting and unlocked the door to open the shop for business, Faith turned on the display lights and admired the total effect. Artie had helped her with the wiring, but she'd had to hire a professional to choose just the right lights for each setting. She might have an appreciation for art, but she knew she had no talent.

Still, she was proud of what she'd accomplished in four short years. When doubts crowded the back of her mind, she swept them away by standing here as she was doing now, knowing she was gradually filling the empty well of her life with something good and decent. She might not be in New York City or Miami, making a big splash, but she was introducing the area to fine porcelain and stoneware and providing an outlet for local artists. She was determined to like the person she was turning herself into.

The overhead chime rang, and Faith swung out of her trance. A visitor arriving just after she opened could mean only one of two things: a convention was in town and she'd have a busy day—or trouble.

She recognized trouble as soon as Annie walked in the door, her thin face screwed up in her perpetual frown of worry.

“Faith, do you have a minute?” she whispered, as if the shop were a museum.

Annie was one of those people Faith couldn't convince that art was for everyone and not just the wealthy. She supposed she understood the mindset. If one spent one's life scraping up coins for groceries, art was a ludicrous waste of time and money. But Faith's love of beauty mourned the bleakness of a life without art.

“What's the matter, Annie? Surely the roof isn't leaking again. It didn't rain last night, did it?”

Before Annie could reply, Faith's breath caught in her throat as a lean shadow materialized outside the shop's plate-glass window. Him.

A pulse pounded at her temple as she tore her gaze from the window and back to the waif of a woman before her. An observer would never know Annie was the director of a shelter for the homeless and not one of its occupants. Faith started nervously at the ringing door chime but concentrated on Annie.

“We had a woman with three children come in last night,” Annie whispered, darting an anxious glance at the man strolling through the doorway. “I'm sorry, you have customers. Call me when you can, will you?”

Faith didn't want Annie to leave. She knew the man in black presently perusing the Rie piece was the man from last night. She was already picking up his high intensity vibrations.

She caught Annie's wrist and steered her toward the counter. “There aren't enough beds?” she asked, keeping her voice low. She liked separating the various parts of her life. A customer didn't need to know of her involvement with the homeless shelter or the bar.

Annie heaved a massive sigh. “Not enough beds, not enough privacy, not enough clothes. The baby is still in diapers.” She hesitated, cast a glance at the customer, and continued hurriedly. “I think she belongs in the battered women's shelter, but she hasn't said a thing, and I can't make her go.
Faith, the kids are all
girls.
You know how many men we have in there. If only we could afford—”

Faith patted her hand. “I know, we need another building. Let me see what we can do about the beds and clothes first. The building fund will have to wait a little longer.”

“Bless you,” Annie said with obvious relief. Darting a glance at the lean, dark man now gazing at a consignment of contemporary Navajo pottery Faith had taken as an experiment, Annie hurried away.

The rush of cool fall breeze as the door opened and closed was all that stirred the palpable tension left behind after Annie's departure.

Faith reached for her telephone.

“Don't.” He stretched over the counter and closed his fingers over her own, holding the receiver pinned in its cradle. She hadn't heard him move.

Shaking, she clenched the hard plastic and dared to look up.

The impact of deep brown eyes framed in heavy black lashes nearly undid her. The physical contact of their hands was no longer tolerable as she floundered under the intensity of his stare. She jerked her hand from beneath his and awkwardly balled it into a fist.

“You.” She spoke first, breaking the stretching silence. “How did you find me?”

“Artie has a major crush on you,” he said dryly, returning his hands to the pockets of his trousers. They hung loosely on his narrow hips, as if designed for a better-fed man.

“Artie is twenty-three and has a crush on any woman who refuses him.” She spoke neutrally, grateful for the barrier of the counter as she tried to probe the stranger's vague familiarity. With Cherokee-straight black hair, naturally tan skin, and a lean physique accentuated by muscle rolling tautly beneath black cotton shirtsleeves, he didn't look like anyone she should know. Taut creases cut either side of his unsmiling mouth, and a sharp beak of a nose emphasized his uncompromising appearance. He held himself with an air of authority that terrified her.

He said nothing, only stared as if he could see beneath her skin. Nervously, Faith brushed her loose hair back from her face and wished she'd put a barrette in it. “Artie shouldn't have told you where to find me.”

“He had a lot of beers, and I'm told I have a persuasive tongue.”

Oh, yeah, that he did, but it was his voice rather than his words that stroked and wrapped around her like loving fingers. He would put a preacher to shame with a voice like that. Put him in a pin-striped suit and silk shirt and tie and stick him before a courtroom—

Faith gasped and stepped back, eyes widening. “You!” she exclaimed for the second time, for a different reason.

“We've established that.” He bent his head slightly in acknowledgment. Sunlight shot a gleam off the silver of his earring. He still didn't smile.

She'd seen him with an expensively styled haircut, in a tailored suit, with a gold watch on his wrist. He'd looked like a pirate—a corporate one.

Ridiculous. She shut her eyes against the image. She hadn't known him as any more than a shadow of Tony back then. “What do you want?” she demanded.