Nobody's Angel (25 page)

Considering what Faith had done to Tony when she'd discovered his perfidy, Adrian could appreciate the warning. She was definitely not the type to take a beating lying down.

“I introduced her to a friend of mine after that,” George continued. “He teaches martial arts, not specializing in any particular kind but mostly teaching teenage nerds not to get beat up. He had a class in self-defense for housewives, too. Faith took to it like a swan to swimming. I think she took the balls off the last guy who groped her.”

Adrian didn't want to hear this. He didn't want to imagine Faith desperate enough to sing in front of drunken crowds. He didn't want to think about men groping her. He wanted to see her all prim and proper, behind the wheel of a Mercedes, where she belonged.

But she had definitely left a heel print on the forehead of a two-hundred-pound gorilla. And politely removed her stilettos before she did so.

Belinda patted his arm. “Doesn't she sing beautifully?”

“No.” Undeterred, Adrian clung to his anger. “She doesn't hit half the notes right.”

George grinned and pushed back his chair. “But she's got passion and drive, and that's what sells. If I could have persuaded her to Nashville with me, she'd be at the top of the charts by now. There's a damned lot of talented singers out there, but only a few of them have that kind of focus and determination. And smarts.”

He stood and nodded at someone behind Adrian, who
didn't have to look over his shoulder to know who it was. She wore baby powder—
baby
powder, for chrissakes—and he could still recognize Faith's scent.

“I have no ambition, George,” she chided him. “I just needed some easy money to pay the rent.”

“I dread the day when you find ambition then.” George leaned over and kissed her cheek as she circled the table and took the chair he offered. “See you at practice Monday? We can work out some new routines.”

“Monday it is,” she agreed, watching Adrian challengingly as she did so. Someone had apparently retrieved the red shoes for her, and she plopped them in a canvas tote she set on the table.

He didn't know this woman. He couldn't presume to tell her what to do. But he sure as hell disliked her advertising her presence to the entire city. “Like living dangerously, do we?” he mocked as George departed.

“What do you think will happen to me in front of a crowd?”

“Planning on having the crowd follow you home?” Anger simmered without an outlet, but he didn't know how to frighten the fool woman into understanding her danger.

“I could do that. Or I could ask George,” she goaded.

“Or Jim,” Belinda intruded weakly, gesturing toward the door. “He's on dinner break this time of night.”

With a sigh of resignation, Adrian turned to see his cop brother-in-law strolling through the crowd, his blue uniform sending several bar patrons scurrying for their cell phones to call taxis.

“Jim, good to see you. Since when do you let your wife hang out in bars?” Adrian stood and shook the younger man's hand. He could have wished Belinda had chosen a wealthier husband, but she couldn't have found a better man.

“I'm not stupid enough to tell Belinda what she can do,” Jim said mildly, wrapping his arm around his wife's shoulders as she joined him.

“Only Adrian does that. Faith, meet my husband. I wish he'd arrived in time to see your show.”

“Maybe another time.” Faith reached over the table to shake the policeman's hand. “I put Belinda's things back in the bag.” She nodded at the canvas tote. “I'm glad you can escort her home. I hated having her drive down here like this.”

“Wild horses couldn't have kept her home.” Jim dropped the bag over his shoulder and affectionately rubbed Belinda's abdomen. “She'll slow down soon enough.”

“What?” Adrian shouted in outrage at the gesture, his anger finding a new focus. “Are you out of your mind?”

Faith dug her fingernails deep into his hand and interrupted his tirade. “You can congratulate Belinda later. Did you recognize the description she gave you of the visitor?”

Growling irascibly, Adrian diverted his attention to the new subject. “Visitor?” he demanded.

He radiated anger and tension, but at least he'd found a new focus for his intensity. Faith watched his expression change from anger to suspicion to incredulity as Belinda described the blowzy blonde in the red SUV. Faith had seen the woman only once, but she couldn't think of another person on earth who would fit the description better.

“Sandra,” Adrian swore before Belinda even finished. “Why the hell is Sandra looking for me?”

“Sandra's too damned dumb to plot anything.” Wearily, Adrian glanced over the set of professional letters Faith had produced from Cesar's laptop. She'd created letterheads for an imaginary attorney's office with his name on it, and another letterhead with the name of Tony's corporation and her official title as president. He figured she'd promoted herself. Tony would never have given her that designation.

“Sandra wouldn't have downtown connections.” Faith curled up in the ratty recliner and massaged her knee. “But she was smart enough to hold onto Tony and have his children. Don't underestimate her.”

Reading the succinct letters requesting notification of any safe deposit boxes in the corporate name, Adrian tried not to watch Faith. He was tired, he was angry, and he was too worried about his family to get mixed up with this contrary female. He couldn't believe Belinda had gone and got herself pregnant. The burden of his family threatened to overwhelm him.

Setting the letters aside, he sipped his beer and contemplated the path Faith's conclusion had opened. Faith made instinctive if not altogether logical deductions. “All right, if we assume no member of my family told anyone I'd found you, then we have to start with our day in town. Who down there would know you or have reason to call a loose cannon like Sandra?”

She grimaced and gave up the massage. “It wouldn't be a matter of knowing
me.
I was just the corporate wife, the ornament on Tony's arm. No one at the courthouse had reason to
know me. Some of the bankers and lawyers from the country club might recognize me—I saw at least one of Tony's golfing buddies that day. But they would think nothing of seeing me around. It was seeing me with you that set someone off.”

“Aside from the D.A.,” Adrian mused aloud, trying to distract himself from wanting to massage her leg for her, “the only other person I can think would be interested in us is the guilty party.” And the guilty party was Tony—who was dead. This wasn't getting them anywhere.

“I don't want to believe he's alive,” Faith whispered, so faintly he almost didn't catch it.

She looked defeated. The proud, confident woman from the stage had crumpled into a scared woman whose safe world had been shattered. He could comfort her, but his self-control wasn't great at the best of times, and right now didn't qualify as anywhere close to a good time.

“Why the devil did you marry a creep like Tony anyway?” Hell, that was a fine way to comfort a distraught woman. Cursing, Adrian headed for the refrigerator, hoping for a beer.

“I don't know. For the same reason you went to work for him?” she suggested with a large dose of sarcasm.

“Desperation?” He grabbed a bottle, popped the lid, and took a long swig.

Demure Miss Perfect gave a piggy snort. “Probably, although I'm certain that's not what I thought at the time. I was
eighteen.
What did I know? I'd traveled the entire western hemisphere but didn't know a single soul. My older sister died of meningitis on one of our jaunts, and I felt as if I'd lost my only friend. After that, my parents wouldn't take me with them, and then my grandmother died, and I was the loneliest person in the world.”

“That's when Tony stepped in,” Adrian finished for her, offering her the bottle instead of the physical consolation she needed. Even he wasn't desperate enough to play on her vulnerability like that.

“He'd just graduated.” She shook her head at the beer. “He was headed to law school. He turned my world upside down—an older, handsome, reliable man, what more could a
girl ask? He said he wanted what I wanted—a pretty house and a stable home and someone to love. I thought he'd offered me heaven. I
adored
him.”

Knowing he was out of his mind, Adrian tugged her from the chair, took her place, and pulled her down on his lap. Talk about
heaven
— she felt good there. He wrapped his arm around her waist and wouldn't let her go when she struggled. He'd be in hell real soon if she kept up the wiggling, but he figured they both needed a human touch right now. “Tony knew all the right buttons to push,” he agreed. He could scarcely condemn her for her innocence.

She gave up the fight easily. Pulling her feet into the chair beside him, she curled up in a ball and rested her head against his shoulder. “Yours, too?”

He grunted and took another swig of the beer, but it didn't distract him from the round curve of her bottom snuggled into his lap. “He graduated law school just as I was starting. He got pissed, once, when his debating partner lost to me, a lowly undergrad, and a spic at that, but we didn't have much contact until after I started sending out résumés my final year. Nobody was particularly impressed with my credentials, or lack of them.”

All that seemed so trivial now. Adrian tested the slender curve of her waist beneath his hand, waiting for a protest. Damn, but she felt good. If only—

“Tony said it was all about who you know, and he made certain he knew all the right people,” she agreed sleepily.

Hell, she was exhausted. He had no business taking advantage of her now. He withdrew his hand to a less tempting spot. “I had to work to support a family. I didn't have time to make connections. So when Tony offered me a position, I snapped it up, no questions asked. We cordially despised each other, but I'm good at detail and he wasn't. So he found the clients, and I did the work. It seemed fair at the time.”

“That
was Tony's talent,” she said dryly, groaning as she unbent her knee. “He knew precisely how to play a weakness to his advantage.”

She struggled to rise, and however reluctantly, Adrian
helped her. He didn't think he was in any state to follow her, unless it was into her bed. And after that last comment on Tony, he didn't dare say a word and risk falling into the same category.

He threw his can at the newly emptied trash basket. “I told Rex I'd work all day tomorrow. Come with me?” She hesitated, and he figured he'd been too hasty. “If you have other plans, that's all right.”

“No, I don't have plans,” she said softly. “I just wish you could be with your family, is all.”

“You and me both, but they've managed without me for four years. They'll hang on a little longer.”

From the corner of his eye he could see her nod agreement. He tried not to take too deep a breath. He didn't know what he was doing here. He only knew he would lose some piece of himself if anything happened to her, and he didn't have much left to lose before he vanished entirely. More had ridden on her answer than he cared to examine.

“All right.” She limped off without giving him any argument or excuse.

She had class, and he liked her a hell of a lot more than was good for him.

“How can you be sure this is the color you want?” Faith wrinkled her nose at the leaden gray oxide glaze in the pot Adrian handed her. “It doesn't look anything like the cobalt in the example you gave me.” She knew glazes didn't match their color, but she needed conversation to break the awkward silence.

“Heat gives it color.” Adrian wiped sweat from his forehead with the hem of his T-shirt as he glanced over her shoulder at what she was doing. “You have to work quickly with that brush. It's not like oil. The clay sucks it dry the instant you brush it on.”

“It's a simple design,” she said doubtfully, studying the sample plate he had given her. “I used to draw flowers like that on my schoolwork in high school.”

His laugh was curt. “Whoever ordered these might as well
have gone to the factory outlet and bought manufactured stoneware. Crude and boring. But Rex caters to customers with more money than taste.”

“Well, the plates you did yesterday were colorful,” she said doubtfully. “I don't think those hues would be available commercially.”

He shrugged, leaned over her shoulder to show her how to hold the brush for the best effect, then stepped back. He was soaked in sweat from working with the kiln, but it was a healthy male musk that Faith enjoyed. His sheltering, non-demanding arms around her last night remained imprinted on every cell of her body.

“It isn't art,” he said bluntly. “It's dinnerware. But we both know one pays for the other.”

She glanced around at the crowded shelves. “From what I can see, Rex should stick with dinnerware.”

Adrian chuckled. “I tried to teach him how to use slip coloring once, but it was messy and took more imagination than he possesses. He's good with a brush, has an eye for color, and he knows how to turn a cup. We all have our skills.”

Faith bit her lip and concentrated on filling in the flower design Adrian had sketched for her. She would rather have watched him, found out more about his knowledge of stoneware, but they were back to treading carefully around each other. She didn't think she could look at him without drooling over that sopping shirt plastered to his chest. He'd obviously spent the last four years working out a lot of frustration in a gym.