Faithless Angel (33 page)

His mind replayed visions of the night before, the fear when she’d stared into his eyes and seen the truth….

For the length of two seconds, he’d thought he’d fouled things up royally; then their lovemaking had overwhelmed her and he’d been safe, his identity still a carefully guarded secret.

But she was sure to remember and want an explanation.

I’m not really a man. I mean, I am a man, but I’m not. I’m an angel—a spirit who looks and feels like a man, and I’ve got a miracle for you before I say goodbye
.

Dread washed over him. There was no way she would believe the truth. She would think he’d lied to her, manipulated her feelings to get her to open
up to him, then duped her into bed for a quick lay before going on his merry way.

And what if she did believe him?

It still wouldn’t change the fact that he
had
lied to her, manipulated her feelings to get her to open up to him, then duped her into a quick lay—or a couple of them—only to say
adios
. Good-bye …

A knifelike pain sliced through him and buried its blade in his heart. Had he really thought he could push everything aside, have one terrific night with her, then turn his back? Had they snatched his common sense when they’d been handing out miracles?

He took another deep breath and the scent of her—roses and fresh rainwater—filled his senses. He had to get away. To think. To calm his raging hormones, he realized when he glanced down at his already pulsing flesh.

But at that moment, the throbbing in his groin was nothing compared to the pain gripping his heart.

He didn’t want one night. He wanted every night with Faith Jansen. Every tomorrow.

“Dammit,” he muttered, sliding from the bed to yank on his jeans.

His hand paused at his pocket, his fingers diving inside to pull out the scrap of lacy silk. Faith’s panties. He’d carried them around since that night in the restaurant. They’d tormented him, tantalized him almost as fiercely as the woman herself.

Almost, but not quite.

He forced his fingers open, letting the panties fall to her dresser. He’d never meant to get this close, to fall this hard, to
love
her….

Holy hell, what
had
he done?

“Have you heard anything about Daniel?” Faith asked Bradley early the next morning as she sat on the edge of the bed, the phone clutched in her hand.

“Not a word, but the police seem to think he’ll turn up. I thought Mike and I would hit the streets in a little while. Trudy knows the area pretty well and she said she’d be glad to help us out after she meets with Estelle this morning.”

“Thanks for looking out for her yesterday and last night.”

“No trouble. She and Emily took to each other right away. They talked about everything, mostly you. Emily and the others were really glad to see you yesterday.”

Faith smiled. “I was glad to see them.”

“Good, because I expect you to be even more glad in the weeks to come. Even with Jesse around, I
need help over here, especially with summer break just days away.”

“I’ll be back,” she promised, almost amazed at how easily the words came. But then they’d always been there inside her, buried beneath the pain and grief. The fear.

And though she was still afraid, it wasn’t the paralyzing fear she’d felt only a few short weeks ago. Jesse had seen to that. He’d helped her overcome the emotion to see what really mattered in her life. Her kids.

Him.

“Daniel’s one tough kid.” Bradley’s voice drew her away from her thoughts. “Did you and Jesse find out anything last night?”

Too much, Faith thought, her gaze going to the empty space on the bed next to her, the indentation still warm and smelling of Jesse.

“We came up with a couple of leads.” She picked up the pillow and lifted it to her nose, drinking in the scent. The musky mingling of raw male and soap drifted through her senses and fed her determination. “I’m going to hit the pavement again and start passing out flyers this afternoon, as soon as I take care of something,” she told Bradley. She said goodbye, slid the receiver into place, and sat there for a few minutes, the pillow cradled in her lap.

She’d found out something last night, all right, but it had nothing to do with Daniel and everything to do with the man who’d run out on her this morning. Again.

Her gaze shot to the dresser, to the silky panties she hadn’t seen since Jesse had stuffed them into his pocket that night at Flaco’s. He’d left them behind,
a memento to say what he didn’t have the courage to.

Good-bye
.

It shouldn’t have surprised her. He’d made no promises last night.
No tomorrows
. But while his mouth had been warning her away, she’d seen a future in his eyes.

Those incredible eyes. She closed her own, seeing the brilliant white of his, so warm and mesmerizing. So … out of this world. There’d been no play of light, no overactive imagination—nothing to dismiss the impossibility of what she’d seen.

It had been real. He’d been real.

She could still hear his thoughts, feel the double heartbeats thumping away in her chest.

Jesse wasn’t merely a man. She knew it in her heart, and perhaps she’d known it all along. The signs had been there—the faint glimpses of that unnatural light in his eyes, the strange coincidence of his presence at Faith’s House, his knowledge of Jane—yet Faith’s head hadn’t wanted to acknowledge them, to believe.

She did believe now, but in what?

Moving the pillow aside, she headed for the closet. She didn’t have a clue at the moment, but she intended to find out.

“Jesse,” Faith said softly as she sat in a downtown branch of the Houston Public Library later that afternoon and stared at the result of hours of research on the microfiche screen in front of her.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find when she’d started researching Jane’s brother. Maybe a link as to Jesse’s identity—the mention of his name as a friend, a co-worker of the murdered cop. She hadn’t thought to find Jesse, himself.

His image, so handsome in a police uniform, glared back at her. But it wasn’t the sight of his handsome face, his dark, intense eyes that froze the air in her lungs. It was the front-page headline printed above the picture.
LOCAL POLICE OFFICER MURDERED
.

She swallowed against the sudden tightness and went on to read the story about a rookie cop who’d only been with the Houston Police Department for a few months when the tragedy had happened. He’d had no friends, no family other than his brother.

Or so the authorities had thought, because no one really knew Jesse Savage. He was a loner, a new kid in town. The authorities had known only what they’d found in the house. Two bodies. Two brothers. Surely someone, somewhere had known there was a sister. Jesse had more than likely signed insurance papers, or listed her as his beneficiary in case of death. But the knowledge had slipped through the cracks.

And so no one had realized that the wounded girl who’d been anonymously dropped outside a hospital across town had been Jesse Savage’s sister. No family had come forth to claim her. In a city the size of Houston, there’d been no way to link Jane with Jesse. But she’d been the sister he’d mentioned. Faith knew it in a heartbeat.

Rachel
.

Faith clutched the friendship medallion and whispered the name, feeling the syllables on her lips, and a warmth spread through her, a temporary reprieve from the turmoil raging inside her. Rachel lived on. Inside of her.

But Jesse?

The warmth faded into a chill that seeped into her bones, causing her to tremble. Jesse was dead.
Dead
.

Denial raged through her, sending the blood pounding through her veins. She’d been prepared for something odd, but this was insane. It couldn’t be! She’d talked to him, touched him, loved him only last night, and he’d been very much alive.

The papers had made a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake. He’d survived….

Only to abandon his sister?

As fiercely as her conscience ranted against the notion of his being dead, the facts were too clear to ignore.

Most compelling was Jane’s continued anonymity. Faith remembered the softness in Jesse’s eyes when he’d mentioned Rachel’s name, the affection in his voice. He’d loved her. He wouldn’t have abandoned her to the foster-care system. Never in a million years. She knew it in her heart. He would have found her and nothing short of death would have kept him away.

Death
.

Her gaze flicked to the closed casket in the far corner of the photo, the American flag draped atop, and she knew, despite logic and reason that denied the possibility, that Jesse
had
died that night. He’d been buried alongside his younger brother. He’d gone on to the hereafter.

No, he hadn’t gone on. Somehow, some way, he was here now.

And Faith had fallen in love with him.

Tears filled her eyes, spilling over.
Love? No way!
She didn’t want to be in love with a man full of secrets and lies and—

Goodness, strength, and warmth
.

She’d seen the goodness in the way he treated the kids at Faith’s House, felt his strength as he’d drawn her out of her grieving shell and helped her stand
up to her own fears. She’d reveled in his warmth when he’d looked at her, into her, to see past the barricade she’d built around her heart.

He was
dead
. The truth was there, in front of her, inside of her, yet it wasn’t enough; She needed more—the how and why and where.

She flicked off the screen. The newspapers had told her all they could. There was only one man who could fill in the blanks and turn the impossible into the possible, or tell her that the papers had, indeed, been wrong.

He was a man who’d walked into her life under false pretenses, telling lies and weaving some kind of magic spell she’d been unable to resist.

A man who’d loved her so fiercely, only to turn his back on her, not once or twice, but three times now.

A man who was more than a man … or less.

And he was the man she loved, despite everything.

In the garage apartment at Faith’s House, Jesse stepped into a cold shower. He grimaced, feeling the water prickle his aching muscles.

He really was a man again. Flesh and bone. Muscle and tissue. The knowledge still overwhelmed him. One minute he’d been drifting; trapped in a black void with only his damned conscience for company, and the next he’d been knocking on Faith’s door. She’d opened her door to him, and her life.

Faith’s vision filled his mind, and he saw her as she’d been that morning, sleeping next to him amid a tangle of sheets. As he watched her chest move in a steady rise and fall, felt each soft breath she took, he wasn’t sure which was more beautiful: the warm, encompassing light, or this woman.
His
woman. The woman he loved.

Who was he kidding? He knew. Hell, he’d known from the beginning, he just hadn’t allowed himself to recognize it. He’d needed to fulfill his mission, to move on to an afterlife of forgiveness.

Yet leaving no longer held the same promise as before, because Jesse Savage had already found forgiveness.

He’d realized it the moment he’d kicked the motorcycle into gear and roared out of Faith’s driveway that morning. As he was running, hiding.

In a crystal-clear second, the stormy turmoil inside him had given way to a clear, cloudless sky, and Jesse had understood what had happened to him with his murderer outside of The Dungeon last night.

Why he hadn’t killed the man and avenged his own and his brother’s deaths.

He leaned against the cool tile of the shower. Cold water hammered at him as his mind replayed the scene—the desperation in Bryan’s eyes, the terrified apology bursting from his lips. Of course it didn’t make up for what had happened to Jesse and his family. Words meant absolutely zero. Actions carried the only real weight.

And Jesse knew now in his heart—his beating, flesh-and-blood heart, that it didn’t matter that he’d never said the words to his brother and sister.

I love you
.

They had known. He’d given up his own life to make theirs better—forfeited a chance at a football scholarship to quit school and get a job; he’d sacrificed his own time and energy to work two, sometimes three jobs to keep clothes on their backs and food in their stomachs. Perhaps he hadn’t been the
best brother in the world, but he’d always done his utmost.

And they had known that.

He felt it in his gut, a knowledge that had been with him since that last breath, but he’d been too bitter, too busy villifying himself to acknowledge it.

Always blaming himself …

If only he’d been more obedient, more helpful, better at sports or cards or fishing, maybe his father wouldn’t have left in the first place. And if he’d been bigger, stronger, more handsome … more like his father, then maybe his mother wouldn’t have drunk herself to death. And if he’d been a better listener, a stronger role model, then maybe his brother wouldn’t have fallen in with those drug dealers. And if he’d kept his brother and sister in Restoration, away from Houston, then maybe Death never would have paid them a visit. And …

The
and
s were endless. Pointless, he saw now.

His father had left because he’d wanted to, his mother had died because she’d given up, and that fateful night had been beyond his control. He couldn’t control everything. There was a predetermined time to come into this world, and a time to leave. Everything in between was left up to chance. Even if Jesse had done things differently that night, his brother would still be gone. It had been his time.

But it hadn’t been Jesse’s time. He’d died too soon, and so he’d been given a chance for salvation—before Judgment Day—a chance to ease his troubled conscience and find forgiveness.

But he’d found forgiveness here on earth, inside himself. Last night. He’d faced his past—the man who’d robbed him of his family and his future—and the tight leash of rage had snapped.

He’d realized then that speaking the words to his
brother and sister wouldn’t gain him forgiveness any more than killing his murderer would soothe the anger festering inside him. Jesse had to forgive himself, make peace with his conscience. And now he had. The moment he’d let go of Bryan, he had. Bryan and Little J would pay for their crimes sooner or later—everyone did—but not by Jesse’s hand. Vengeance wasn’t his objective, or his duty.