Nobody's Angel (15 page)

She wouldn't ask where they were going. She didn't want to know.

Heart thumping so hard she thought it would burst through her chest, Faith sat silently as Adrian took the next ramp off the interstate, maneuvered into a motel parking lot with a blinking vacancy sign, and switched off the engine.

The lights of the motel office beckoned. If she could just shut off her mind and listen to the humming of life Adrian had woken in her …

“I can't do this,” she murmured, calling herself coward even as she said it. Other women did this. Who did she think she was?

Hands frozen to the steering wheel, Adrian stared straight ahead. “It's a crummy, cheap motel. I'm sorry. It's all I can afford with what's left in my pocket. I should have known better.” He reached for the ignition key.

The note of self-disgust turned Faith's head, giving her a view of his angular profile outlined against the motel sign. “It's not the motel.”

His hand halted above the key, and she could see the effort it took before he withdrew it and looked at her. “You deserve more than this,” he said with a hitch in his voice as he ran his hand over his hair. “I know better. I'm just not thinking clearly right now.”

“It's not you either,” she said wryly, hearing the pain of rejection behind his calm admission. Tony had
never
understood rejection. He'd been so full of confidence she could have said no with her fists and he wouldn't have understood. Not that she'd ever told him no. She'd always done whatever he asked.

Tonight she had a choice, and she was flubbing it. Badly.

Adrian braced his forearms on the edge of the steering wheel and watched her warily. She didn't want to know what she looked like after a night of sweaty dancing. Her hair had come down and it probably stuck to her face and flew around her shoulders like a rat's nest. Any makeup had long since worn off. And the red and blue neon light probably did wonders for her complexion. But Adrian didn't turn away.

“I'm a desperate man,” he said carefully, enunciating each word as if it were his last. “I want you so much, I think the top of my head will blow off. I thought the feeling was mutual. Am I wrong?”

His words and tone stole into those dark, hidden recesses of her soul that had been empty for so long. He wanted her. No one had ever really
wanted
her, not with this primal hunger bubbling up out of nowhere. The intensity of Adrian's raw need terrified her.

“You're not wrong,” she admitted. Her body wanted this criminal, this ex-con lawyer who had all but kidnapped her. She'd lost track of her mind, but not her honesty.

“All right,” he said in acceptance, not moving his hands from the wheel. “What would I have to do to persuade you to walk into that cheap motel room with me for a night of messy, sweaty sex?”

Faith almost laughed at the wryness of his tone. He was being as honest as she was. This wasn't any long-term commitment. This was two diametrically opposed people coming together in the heat of lust.

She still couldn't do it. She sighed at her conventional morals. It wasn't as if she'd been brought up that way by her free-spirited parents. It was just who she was. “You'd probably have to be a pirate and that motel would have to be your ship,” she admitted. “I've never done this before and I can't—”

He stopped her with a disbelieving gesture. “You've never done this before? You ran with Tony's crowd for how long and you've—” He cut himself off by banging his head against the steering wheel. Resting it there, he sat very still for a moment.

“I'm insane. I'm clearly insane. Let me have the shower first, all right?” He climbed out and stalked off to the motel office without looking back.

Faith wrapped her arms around herself and tried to stop shivering. She
wanted
what he had to offer. She wanted mindless, steamy sex. But this was the wrong man and the wrong time. She blocked out all images of what they could do in that cheap hotel room. She'd been used before. She simply couldn't do it again.

Adrian didn't touch her when he returned from the office with a room key in his hand and opened the car door. He barely even looked at her as he jerked his duffel from behind the seat. Once inside the room, he slammed the key on the dresser and aimed for the bathroom. In minutes she heard the shower beating down full force.

She sank into the plastic molded chair and in the dim light from the hotel parking lights through the window stared at the dismal room. She was turning into a dried-up, shriveled-up creature who wouldn't take risks.

She hadn't turned thirty yet, and she felt a hundred years old.

She couldn't even convince herself with that argument. She would just have to accept that she was a grown-up now and couldn't act as stupidly and impulsively as she had as a teenager. Look at what that had gotten her—Tony.

By the time Adrian emerged, still rubbing a towel over his dripping hair, wearing jeans but not his shirt, Faith had the courage to walk right past him and into the bathroom. He'd probably had some hope that she'd weakened while waiting and that the sight of him half undressed would change her mind. If she looked closely, it might have. She simply wouldn't look. She wouldn't look, wouldn't listen. She would set her mind to achieving her goal and going home.

By the time she'd showered and donned a long T-shirt from his duffel, Adrian had pulled the comforter off the bed and lay sprawled on the floor, watching the flicker of the television. Wordlessly, she stepped over him and climbed into the empty bed.

There really wasn't anything they could say to each other.

She turned to face the wall, stomach clenched in knots.

Faith sent Adrian a covert glance as he backed the VW from the motel parking space the next morning. He had scarcely said two words since she'd woken to discover him returning to the room with a sack of Krispy Kremes. His silence stirred her easily susceptible guilt.

Setting her mouth and staring straight ahead, she refused to fall into that trap again. She didn't have to please anyone but herself. She didn't owe Adrian a thing. In fact, he owed her. Maybe that's what bothered him.

“Wanta talk about it?” she asked cautiously.

“I'm thinking. I learned to keep my thoughts to myself these last few years.” He steered the bug into the morning traffic. “You sure those doughnuts were enough?”

“They settled my stomach, if that's what you mean.” She refused to look at him. The doughnuts weren't enough for what really bothered them. Even with the beer and the music and the night behind them, the quivering itchiness remained. She would not think of how Adrian Raphael looked with his shirt off, or the way the sun sparkled against his earring, or that moment of vulnerability when he'd thought she was rejecting him.

“I used to take my fiancée to that pancake place in South-Park. You ever had one of those monster apple things they fix?”

Faith relaxed and let the sun and the memory replace the night. “Way too big for me. I had a bite of Tony's once. I like the strawberry crepes best. We always went there in May, when the strawberries were so fresh you could practically see the dew on them.”

“Yeah, Misty liked them, too, but she'd order only half a portion and then eat just a few bites. Wasted more money on that girl and food.” He shook his head in disbelief.

“Do you know what she's doing now?” Faith asked quietly. He didn't talk much about his prior life.

Adrian shrugged. “She married a doctor. I heard they're already separated. I'm better off without her, so I'll thank Tony for that one.”

She didn't have anything to say to that. Maybe happy relationships existed only in romance books. Her parents were happy. Of course, her parents were weird.

Adrian steered around a semi trying to make a left turn over a double yellow line across two lanes of rush hour traffic. Faith closed her eyes and prayed as the VW toddled around the blockage and straight into the path of a towering SUV hurtling out of one of the many shopping center driveways. South Boulevard needed six lanes—all out of town.

“I've got to get back to work.” She needed to return the focus of this little jaunt to the impersonal. “I figure it shouldn't take more than an hour to search the unit, and I can be on the road in time to reach the store before closing.”

“You really don't think we'll find those keys, do you?” Adrian asked as the traffic flowed again.

“I packed that stuff. I would have remembered keys. You may be right about the bank boxes—Tony liked his secret caches. But I cleaned out his safe before I moved. All I uncovered was Sandra.”

He grimaced and his shoulders slumped. “I've waited four years. I guess I can wait a few months more for bureaucracy to crawl along and produce that death certificate.”

“What will you do with yourself?” Faith asked, understanding his unhappiness. He wanted his reputation cleared right now, so he could go back to work and help his family. She'd hate to have this blot on her name, too.

He shrugged. “Fry hamburgers. I don't know. There aren't too many law firms willing to take on ex-cons as legal aides. I sent out a few letters before I left prison and didn't get any response.”

“Can you write wills and give legal advice to people too poor to pay the big firms?”

He gunned the VW into an illegal left turn across oncoming traffic and into the storage company's drive. “I'd make more flipping burgers. Give me the code.” As they
pulled up to the computerized entrance gate, he rolled open the window and punched in the buttons she recited. The gate creaked open. “Nine, twenty-two, seventy?” he asked with a grin. “Your birthday?”

“Wanta make something of it?” She crossed her arms and glared straight ahead. “Turn left. It's the third row, the one past the exit gate.”

Adrian glanced in the rearview mirror. “That pickup followed us in before the gate closed.”

“Probably forgot his number. Good luck on getting out, though. Unless he follows us again, he's stuck. He needs the code to exit.”

Forgetting the pickup, Adrian focused on finding the right cement box in rows of cement boxes. Intense concentration had always been one of his better traits, but he was having some difficulty ignoring the sexy female wrapped in his flannel shirt. The collar was so big on her that the first button fell at the top of her breasts, and she hadn't fastened the damned thing. She wasn't wearing a bra either. He'd watched her stash it with her crumpled blouse. The tail of his shirt came to the hem of her skirt, so she looked as if the shirt was all she wore. She should look like a slob. Instead, with that silken tawny hair caressing her shoulders, she looked like every man's
Playboy
fantasy.

“That's the one.” She reached for her purse on the floorboard, and the overlarge shirt gaped enough to reveal the curve of her breast. “I should have the key in here somewhere.”

The pickup rattled past, then backed up and returned to the exit row. Adrian clutched the VW's steering wheel with both hands and tried not to stare at Faith's nearly bare breast as she rummaged through the satchel she called a purse. He needed his focus back. She'd be gone in another hour, and he had to get a life.

“Here it is.” She singled out a small key in a ring of keys and opened the passenger door without waiting for him.

Taking a deep breath, Adrian swung out of the wretched small car without knocking himself out or emasculating himself. Faith already had the padlock unfastened.

He helped her lift the door, then gazed dispassionately at the neatly stacked and labeled cartons in the dim interior. Organized and efficient. She must have been one hell of a secretary.

She hadn't finished more than a year of college. She'd been a secretary and a country club housewife, but went on to develop two successful careers, while he'd poured years of his life down the drain for a law degree he might never use again. Someday, he'd ask himself if a college education was worth it.

“Most of this stack is books.” She gestured at the front row of small boxes. “I can't bear to give away books, but I have no shelf space.”

“All right, let's not mess with them just yet.” Rolling up his shirtsleeves, Adrian started hauling the heavy boxes into the lane between the buildings. Maybe physical exercise would soothe his straining libido.

Faith clambered past him to tear at the tape of the top box on the next stack. “This should be mementos, yearbooks, report cards and the like.”

He pulled out his pocketknife and systematically ripped open every box so she wouldn't have to break her nails. She wore them unfashionably short, but perfectly manicured. He'd wanted them dug into his back last night.

Focus.

They rooted through old papers and files, ornate and useless wedding gifts, sentimental keepsakes, and all the other foolishness a woman like Faith couldn't throw out. They would have all had a place in the pricey house she'd called home, but not in her Spartan closet of an apartment.

“Look!”

They'd reached the back corner of the unit, and he had swatted enough spiders for one day. Sweat poured from his brow in the unventilated heat, and he straightened his aching back to glare at whatever silly treasure she'd uncovered this time. She had already filled the car with old photos and books she'd decided to take back with her. He'd been out of his mind to kidnap her for this.