Nobody's Angel (16 page)

Reverently, she pushed aside wads of cotton batting to lift out the contents of the box. In the dusky light, Adrian
couldn't immediately discern what she held, but the shape and a flash of color tugged at a broken chord somewhere inside him.

“I'll give Tony credit for one thing,” she murmured as she lovingly fondled the object in her hands, “he always had perfect taste in gifts. I've never found anything as beautiful as this.”

She eased through the box stacks toward the sunlight. Adrian backed out of her way so she could hold the object to the light, and his stomach nearly dropped to his feet when he saw what she held.

It sparkled with a particularly luminous pale silver-green, the porcelain luster so bright it nearly blinded. Sunshine gleamed through the translucent fineness of the vase's scalloped lip. The line and curve of the base flowed smoothly into a perfect fit for Faith's small hands.

His vase. The one he'd sweated blood over. A year's worth of nights he'd spent developing the perfect glaze. He'd experimented with clay compounds for years to find the perfect mixture of alabaster and kaolin. Billed out at the rates he'd charged for legal work, the damned thing would be priceless. He'd sold it to Tony for a pittance when he needed ready cash for Belinda's last semester of school. He remembered Tony saying his wife liked pretty glass.

“Better wrap it up good if you're taking it back with you,” he said curtly, returning to the dim interior to rip open another box. He'd known even as a kid that he couldn't earn a living with talent or creativity. He had to use his brains. His brains now told him he was an idiot to keep searching.

But he couldn't bear facing his family as a failure. He needed a little more time.

“I'd always hoped to find the artist so I could put together a display.” Apparently abandoning their fruitless search, Faith perched sideways on the driver's seat, her tanned legs stretching out from beneath the shirt hem. She wasn't wearing panty hose. Not noticing his interest, she turned the porcelain in her hands, then poked her fingers inside to remove the packing that prevented full appreciation of the china's fineness. “Most
artisans prefer the simplicity of stoneware. I've only seen fine china like this in Europe.”

She wadded up the packing and threw it at him. Adrian caught it and shoved it in a box. He could tell her it wasn't profitable to make pieces like that, that Americans wouldn't pay the price of the labor and materials, much less for the creativity. But she knew that. She just wasn't listening to herself. Since he had no intention of ever wasting more time like that, he didn't feel behooved to reveal his artistry—or his stupidity.

She frowned as another piece of packing stuck in the wide bottom beneath the narrow neck. Turning the vase upside down, she shook it until the packing caught in the throat, where she could almost reach it with her fingers. “Why in heavens name did I pack so small a wad in this thing?”

“Too angry to care?” he suggested, taking the vase from her so he could stick his longer fingers inside. “I'm amazed you didn't break it over Tony's head.”

“He wasn't worth it. Besides, the only time I ever saw him after I left was in court at your trial. It wouldn't have been too cool to attempt assault and battery in front of a courtroom full of judges and attorneys, most of them golf buddies of his.”

Adrian grunted acknowledgment of that as he caught the packing and eased it through the vase neck. “Sure you didn't pack your diamond necklace in here while you were at it? This thing is hard.”

Faith's eyes widened as she stared at the crushed yellow legal paper he produced from the vase. “I didn't do that. I used packing paper from the movers.”

A mockingbird sang into the silence as they stared at the wad of crumpled paper. Adrian couldn't bear the tension. He handed the package to her to do the honors. Still holding the smooth surface of the porcelain vase, he tried not to hope. He'd lived on hope and determination for four years. He couldn't believe anything would come of it now.

“Keys,” she whispered as she folded back the paper. “Tony's keys.” The yellow wad dropped to the ground as she
produced a silver trophy key ring from a golf tournament. On it dangled half a dozen small keys—bank box size.

“Why the hell would he put them in a vase?” Adrian growled, refusing to believe that his prayers had been answered this easily. “It's a wonder you hadn't filled it with flowers and water and rusted them.”

“I don't think keys rust.” She turned them thoughtfully, measuring one against the other. They were all different.

“Let's pack up and get out of here. You taking the vase with you?”

She emerged from the fog she'd lost herself in. “If the deposit boxes are in the corporation name …”

“We'll clean up and start looking as soon as we leave here,” he said, his heartbeat finally returning to normal. He didn't know what he'd done to deserve this break in fate, but he wasn't one to be ungrateful. He'd make the most of it.

She looked at him as if she'd just discovered his existence. “If you're right and Tony really did abscond with those funds—”

“What do you mean, ‘if’?” he asked angrily. “He damned well took every penny. Or what he could without those keys,” he amended, his mind taking another giant leap forward. “Do you think they'd be the only set?”

She looked from him to the keys. He ought to be annoyed that she still didn't believe him. But he was still having a hard time shaking his own entrenched convictions that she'd profited from Tony's embezzlement. So, neither of them had a reason to trust. They'd figure it out somehow.

As if reading his mind, she held out the key ring. “I don't know if safe deposit boxes have two keys, but if they don't, it's a miracle Tony didn't kill me when he discovered I'd packed these up and moved.”

That
was a thought to ponder. He was grateful Tony was dead. Adrian traded her the vase for the keys and shoved the ring in his pocket. Tony would probably have strangled her with his bare hands if he could have found her back then, but he probably had too many other problems to juggle after the trial, and before he could search properly, he'd died.

“Maybe we'd better think this thing through a little more,” Adrian said thoughtfully, heaving the last of the boxes back into the building. He took her silence for agreement.

Lost in their separate thoughts, they passed the pickup on the way out of the exit lane, and neither noticed as the truck followed them through the gate.

“I can't go into a bank and act like a corporate officer in these clothes.” Faith tugged at the soft flannel of Adrian's shirt as they drove down the highway.

“You're about the same height as Belinda. We can borrow something of hers. I just don't know her work schedule and don't have her phone number. She lives in one of these anthill apartments out here. I'll try finding it.” He eased into the slow lane to look for the next ramp.

“I don't know if these corporate papers are enough. What if they don't believe me?” She'd wrapped the precious vase in cotton batting and packed it in a sturdy box, but she held it securely in her lap for extra protection. The vase was a treasure she understood. The keys worried her. And the old corporate papers she'd retrieved from one of the boxes should have been things left in the past.

“You've got the seal and the corporate resolution. That should be enough. You're an authorized officer—”

Adrian shouted a curse and slammed an arm across Faith's chest as a truck swerved from the left lane onto the ramp in front of them. Fenders collided with a grinding crunch, and the VW tires skidded off the pavement.

Faith screamed and clutched her box as the lightweight car careened off the banked ramp, into the air. Before she even realized they were tumbling, the roof crunched. Glass shattered. Pain shot through her head and neck. Somewhere, she heard Adrian screaming her name, just before she blacked out.

Crawling out of the wreckage, Adrian heard cars screeching to a halt on the road above him, but he had no problem focusing on the situation at hand. Faith was still strapped in her seat, and she wasn't answering him.

The car lay on the passenger side. He couldn't pull her out without righting it, or possibly hurting her worse.

Debris lay scattered across the field. The photos she'd so carefully chosen, books, everything that had been under the hood, now blew in the breeze. The vase box rested on the shattered and bent window beside her.

Blood poured from a gash on her forehead. The impact must have thrown her against the window. He tried to think, take one step at a time as panic shrieked through his veins. He needed to stop the bleeding.

He took off his shirt and ripped a sleeve from the seam. Folding it into a pad, he leaned into the car to hold it over the gash. What should he do next?

“I've called 911,” a good Samaritan called, sliding down the embankment toward them. “They should be here soon.”

“Help me right the car. I have to get her out of there.”

The minutes blurred into a haze of hot sun and sweat and blinding panic. People appeared out of nowhere. He couldn't have said if they were white, black, or yellow. The turquoise VW blazed across his eyeballs, its trunk hood crushed, its roof flattened, with Faith lying quiet against the blood-soaked seat.

Ambulance sirens wailed as he and the others righted the vehicle and eased Faith from the interior. Someone shouted not to move her, but Adrian saw her eyelids flutter, and nothing could have prevented him from lifting her into his arms.

She was frail and light. Choking on a lump in his throat, he eased her out of her bent position and sat with her across his lap. He'd tied his other shirtsleeve around her forehead to hold the bandage in place, but blood still seeped beneath it, matting in her hair.

His fault. He should never have brought her here, never involved her. He should have understood that she'd made a new life, risen above the ashes, and he should have followed her
example. Why had he insisted on dragging her down into the cesspool with him?

She was everything he couldn't have, and he'd destroyed her in childish revenge.

Faith's eyelids flickered again. As the paramedics scrambled down the hill carrying a stretcher, she blinked and stared straight into Adrian's soul.

“The vase?”

He wanted to laugh and scream and throttle her. He was holding her life in his hands, and she worried about that shitty vase? The woman was crazier than he was.

“It's fine. I've got it. But I smashed the bug.”

She closed her eyes and smiled. “Now I can get a Miata.”

Oh, hell. Oh, triple hell. A vast emptiness yawned within him as he hugged her close while the paramedics set up the stretcher. He thought maybe he'd wrecked more than the car. He didn't want to let her go. Her heart beat steadily next to his, pouring life from her into him. He had been dead inside longer than he'd realized, and she was so very much alive. He had to see that she stayed that way.

A police car arrived, giving him something new to worry about. He still hadn't renewed his license. He couldn't let Faith out of his sight, and they'd want a report. They'd probably haul him away in chains.

Ignoring the cop still sitting in his car, talking into his radio, Adrian clutched the box with the vase under his arm and held Faith's hand as they carried her up on a stretcher. Let them track him down at the hospital. They could lock him up after he saw that Faith was safe.

Adrian called Cesar from the emergency room. His brother arrived as the police completed their report and admonished him to renew his license. Adrian half listened while he paced the waiting room floor. He nodded at his brother but didn't involve him as the cop handed him a ticket.

Some jackass had sideswiped the car he was driving, rammed them off the road, injured Faith, and
he
was the one who got the ticket. Fate had a funny way of laughing at him.

“You okay?” Cesar asked as the policeman departed.

“I'll ache all over in the morning, but yeah, I'm fine. Faith's not. She's down in X ray.”

Cesar whistled and shoved his hands in his pockets. “How bad does it look?”

“She was awake when we brought her in, that's all I know.”

She'd treated him like a human being, a desirable male, and soothed all the wounds these last years had knifed into him. And what had he given her in return?

Mistrust and a broken head.

He wasn't in any humor for talking. One thing about Cesar, he knew when to keep his mouth shut. Pity he couldn't say the same about the women in his family. They'd be all over his case when they found out. And they'd find out. He had nowhere else to take Faith but to his mother's house.

Eons later a nurse emerged from the forbidding depths of the interior to assure them Faith was lucky. She had a badly bruised knee, pulled ligaments, and maybe a minor concussion. She was groggy from painkillers and needed bed rest, but she'd be all right.

They rolled her out in a wheelchair with a crutch across her lap. She looked pale and almost ethereal beneath the white dressing on her forehead. A huge elastic bandage encompassed her bare knee. She wouldn't be dancing anytime soon. From beneath the hideous white gauze she offered a shaky smile.