My Special Angel (3 page)

“Counting myself?”

“Sure.”

“Thirty-one.”

Owen silently groaned. The chances of finding Nadia alone at home were about as good as hitting the lottery. Curiously he asked, “What movies did you watch?”

“I’ve been living in the United States for five years now. My illusions about America vanished a long time ago.” She walked out onto the porch and waved at her uncles.

Owen stood on the porch and saw his car off in the distance where he had parked it earlier. Why did she have to sound so sad when she mentioned vanishing illusions? Who had crushed her dreams? He jammed the money into his pocket. Now was not the time to argue about it. There were too many questions about Nadia and her family that needed answering first, and he knew just the place to find some of those answers: the Prescott Mortgage Company.

He reached out and took her hand on the pretense of shaking it. A small, jubilant smile teased his lips when he felt the slight trembling in her fingers. He had not imagined it; she was feeling it too. “Good-bye, Nadia. It’s been an experience meeting your family and a definite pleasure meeting you.” He tenderly ran his finger over her wrist and felt the rapid pounding of her pulse.

“Are you going to press charges against them?” The violent trembling in her fingers had to be from the fear she felt for her family, didn’t it?

“Should I?” His grip tightened, and his gaze bore into hers.

“That wasn’t my question.”

He glanced over to the corral and encountered the hostile glares from her uncles. Could he in good conscience leave without doing something about the Kandrataviches? He owed the people of Crow’s Head more consideration than that. “Will you talk to them about selling bottled water to unsuspecting folks?”

“I promise to give them such a lecture that their ears will blister.”

“While you are at it, could you cover the topic of hanging one’s neighbors?”

“I’ll put hanging before swindling.” She was going to give her family more than blisters on their ears. How did they ever expect to get jobs and become respectable members of the community if they acted like outlaws?

Her serious expression pulled at his heart. Her shoulders didn’t look broad enough to carry the weight of her entire family, but they were. He released her hand and slowly raised his fingers to her forehead. With a tender stroke he smoothed out the worry wrinkle marring the graceful brow. He wanted to pull her into his arms and comfort her. His gaze locked in on her sweet mouth. Correction: He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her worries away. “Then I guess I won’t be stopping at the sheriff’s office on the way home.”

Nadia released the breath she had been holding. “Thank you, Mr. Pres—I mean Owen.”

He stepped off the porch before he could change his mind and kiss her anyway. There was work to be done, and if her uncles’ glares were any indication, her family could use some cooling-off time. “Try to keep them out of trouble.” He turned and headed for his car.

Nadia leaned against one of the peeling porch’s posts and allowed herself the luxury of watching him stroll away. She usually thought jeans were the sexiest pants a man could wear, but the gray dress pants accenting Owen’s rear did a superb job. Was it the pants or the man under them that she found so fascinating? She bit the inside of her cheek as he walked away. She should be congratulating herself for her magnificent acting job. Not once that she was aware of did she drool, gape, or sigh over his gorgeous body. It had been years since she last enjoyed the intimacy of a lover’s caress or the pure satisfaction of mutual pleasure, but she knew potential when it landed on her front doorstep. And Owen J. Prescott radiated more potential than she knew what to do with.

Why, after all these years, did her hormones have to kick in, especially with Owen? He was the town’s golden boy, the perfect southern gentleman, and she was entirely wrong for him. With a heavy sigh of regret she pushed away from the post and reentered the house. Why was it that you always hungered for what you couldn’t have?

Owen softly closed the file after reading it a second time. He now understood Bill Meyers’ decision to grant Nadia a mortgage. Not only had she put two thirds of the money down on the ranch but her collateral was a lucrative music contract. Nadia Kandratavich was on her way to becoming a famous international singer.

An hour ago he had caught Bill just as he was locking up the office for the evening. Bill had graciously offered to stay and answer any questions, but Owen had insisted Bill go on home to his wife and family, hastily assuring the man this had nothing to do with the way Bill was running the mortgage company. In the years since he had inherited the numerous businesses, Owen had purposely stayed out of the picture and let the managers run them, unless his opinion was asked for. His days were spent doing what he loved to do, designing buildings and homes and keeping his fingers in the running of his own construction company.

He leaned back and propped his feet up on Bill’s desk as he glanced out of the office window overlooking the town square. The setting sun was gleaming off the bronze statue of his great-great-grandfather, General Jeremiah Prescott. Old Jeremiah would have had a fit if he could see what his great-great-grandson had done. A proper southern gentleman never invaded a young woman’s privacy. Owen laced his fingers behind his neck and grinned. Then again, maybe old Jeremiah would have understood. After the Civil War Jeremiah had defied society and married a part-Cherokee maiden named Morning Eyes.

Owen glanced once more at the brown folder he had tossed onto the desk. Nadia was still shrouded in mystery. Why did she leave New York, where she was singing in a nightclub that paid her an astronomical salary, to move to a small, out-of-the-way town like Crow’s Head? The nearest nightclub was in Asheville, a good thirty-five miles away. The contract had specified that Nadia was to write and record an album in four different languages by the end of the year. There was even an option for a considerable amount of money if she could produce the same album in two more languages by December 31. Nadia either had one hell of a job cut out for herself or she was fluent in at least six languages besides English. The part that really baffled Owen was that the contract called for songs that a renowned nightclub singer from New York wouldn’t even think of singing. The album was to be a children’s record with a title song called, “Animals Under My Bed.”

With a heavy sigh Owen stood up and placed the file back into the cabinet. Some of his questions had been answered, but now there were twice as many others. He glanced at his watch as he hurriedly locked the office and got into his car. Tonight was Aunt Verna’s bridge night, and with any luck he could make it home and into his office before any of her lady friends cornered him about eligible nieces and granddaughters. Sometimes he thought Verna’s Thursday-night bridge club was an elaborate front for Matchmakers Anonymous.

* * *

Nadia stubbornly glared at her aunt Sofia and shook her head. She could think of a thousand ways to spend her Saturday, this was not one of them. “I don’t want my tea leaves read.”

Sofia pushed the antique bone-china cup across the counter toward Nadia. “You must.” The cup had been in her family for generations, and she had lovingly held it in her lap during the entire flight to her new home in America. “Your mother had the dream again last night.”

“Mama always has dreams.”

“This is the sixth time she has had this same dream.” She pushed the cup closer to Nadia’s fingers. “Drink. Let me put her mind to rest.”

“How can you put her mind to rest when she doesn’t even know what the dreams mean?” Nadia’s fingers lightly grazed the cup and saucer. Years before, Sofia had read her leaves and predicted a move of great distance for the entire family. Nadia had foolishly thought they would be leaving Russia and heading for Germany, Poland, or some other Eastern European country. Who would have thought six years ago that they all would be living in America?

“She knows the dreams concern you. She’s afraid her love for her oldest child will cloud her judgment.”

Nadia couldn’t resist teasing her aunt, who was like a second mother to her. “Don’t you feel any love for me, Sofia?”

“Foolish questions deserve no answers. Now, drink.”

Nadia picked up the cup and glared at her aunt over the top of it. “I don’t want to hear about any tall, dark, and handsome strangers.”

Sofia placed her hands on her well-endowed hips as Nadia drank the tea. “I only say what I see, nothing more.”

Nadia finished all but the dregs of the tea. With a triumphant smile she turned the cup over onto the saucer. “You will find only music, hard work, many responsibilities, and great happiness there.” She purposely pushed the image of Owen Prescott from her mind. It was bad enough the man plagued her dreams—must he intrude on her every waking thoughts too?

Sofia waited a couple of moments for the liquid to drain out of the cup before slowly turning it back over. She carefully carried the cup over to the light pouring in from the window. With both hands cradling the cup, she stood there staring down into it.

Nadia’s fingers absently tapped along with the music playing in her head. It was the song she had been working on for the past two days, the one she forcibly repeated over and over to block out any wayward thoughts of the tall, dark, and handsome Owen. The song was about a crocodile with a toothache and how no one wanted to help him for fear of being eaten.

“He will be carrying a gift,” said Sofia, looking at her niece.

“Who?” Nadia had a sinking feeling she already knew.

Sofia sadly shook her head. “Foolish questions deserve no answers.” She gazed back into the cup.

“I thought I told you I didn’t want to hear about any tall, dark, handsome strangers. Save it for the gadjos when they plop down their money.”

“I didn’t say anything about him being tall, dark, or handsome.” Sofia looked up and grinned “Besides, he’s not a stranger any longer.”

Nadia took the saucer over to the sink and carefully rinsed it. “This is what my mother’s dreams had been about? Romantic foolishness.” Foolishness was all it could ever be. Owen Prescott was a highly respectable man, the crowning son of Crow’s Head—and totally out of her reach.

“No.” Sofia moved away from the window and its light. “I see what your mother sees.” She gazed at her niece with love and sadness. “The music stops.”

Nadia’s hands froze as she was drying the saucer. “What do you mean, the music stops?” The color drained from her face. Everyone knew how important her music was to her and to the family. “My music?”

“Yes, your music.” Sofia rinsed the cup and carefully took the saucer from Nadia’s trembling hands.

“Do I get it back?” demanded Nadia.

“I couldn’t see.”

“When does it go?”

“I couldn’t see.”

“Does he take it from me?”

Sofia shrugged her shoulders and gently replaced the cup and saucer in the velvet-lined wooden box her great-grandfather had made over a century ago. Her hesitation seemed to be hiding something. “I couldn’t see.”

“Could my mother see?” Her mother, Olenka, and her three aunts were as close as any family could be without being born of the same mother. The four Kandratavich brothers had counted their blessings more than once that all their wives got along so well, considering that they all lived as one family. They had also cursed many a time when the women stuck together and demanded their way. Olenka would have surely told Sofia everything that had happened in the dreams.

“No, her vision was blocked also.”

“That’s why she sent you over, isn’t it? Everyone is afraid I will fail and lose the ranch.” She walked over to the kitchen door and stared out through the screen. Uncles Yurik and Rupa were still working on the fencing of the corral. It was a difficult task made nearly impossible by the lack of proper materials. Nadia had persuaded her entire family to give up everything they knew and loved in Europe and to follow her dream of starting a new life in America. One that wasn’t dominated by wars not of their making, one that knew no hunger but only a life of freedom. Had it all been a mistake?

“No one is afraid you will fail, Nadia.” Sofia stood silently beside her and gazed out at her husband, Rupa, as he nailed a board into a fence post. “The ranch is our home too. We all must work hard to make it prosper. You have done more than your share, child.”

Nadia cringed. At twenty-eight she was only five years younger than Sofia. “I haven’t been a child for years, Sofia. When will you accept that fact?”

“When you hold your first babe against your breast,” teased Sofia. She studied the younger woman’s face. “If you are that worried about the music, I will send Yelena over to look at your hand.”

“If I wanted my baby sister to read my palm, I would go to her.”

“Yelena is nineteen, a full-grown woman, no?”

“No. There is much for her to learn yet.” Nadia glanced at her aunt. “Why is she a woman, and I still a child?”

“Because you are more fun to tease.” Sofia hugged her niece. “Your sister could answer many of your questions. The gift is heavy with her.”

“I know.” Yelena’s skill at reading palms would be remarkable if it wasn’t downright frightening. Nadia had thanked her lucky stars she didn’t possess any fortune-telling capabilities. Her first and only love was her music. Her fingers and the music that played constantly in her head were treasured gifts that she cherished beyond all else. “My losing the music could be anything from a sore throat to my death.”

Sofia muttered a prayer and clutched the gold crucifix hanging from a chain around her neck. “Don’t say such a thing.”

Nadia chuckled and hugged her aunt. “Now who is teasing whom?”

Before Sofia could answer, a car slowly made its way up the rutted drive. Both women recognized Owen Prescott’s shiny red car, but only Nadia recognized it for what it was, an American classic. Sofia raised one eyebrow as the candy-apple-red ‘65 convertible Mustang stopped in front of the house. “He’ll have a gift.”