Alex And The Angel

“Compost,” she muttered. Coming out of the fog, she started hacking at the pizza, which was already cold. One of these days she was going to grow up and accept the fact that Cinderellas who wore combat boots never ended up with the charming prince.

Where was he right now? In his plush office, with his plush secretary? Playing tennis at his plush country club? Having supper with that cute-funny-sad daughter of his?

Not this early. Besides, people like the Hightowers didn’t eat supper, they dined. And not while they watched the six-o’clock news, either.

She remembered the first time he’d come to their house for supper. She’d been about fifteen—about the same age as his daughter was now. Pop had died just a few months earlier and she and Gus, Mama and Aunt Zee, had moved into Mama’s old house with Grandma Reilly.

Grandma had made one of her boiled dinners. Cabbage, corned beef, potatoes and carrots. Angel could’ve died. She had prayed for roast beef at the very least, pheasant and caviar being too much to hope for. She’d wanted to open up the dining room that no one had used for a hundred years, but Grandma had said if the kitchen was good enough for the cook, it was good enough for the company, and Mama and Aunt Zee had agreed.

So they’d sat around the kitchen table with an electric fan swiveling noisily on top of the refrigerator, and eaten off the dishes that had come from Krogers with coupons. Alex had asked for seconds and then thirds, and cleaned off his plate each time, and once she’d realized that he wasn’t just being polite, she had fallen another few miles deeper in love.

Not that he’d ever suspected it. He’d been kind to her in those days, but only in an offhand way, the way Gus was kind to her. Ignoring her, for the most part. Occasionally teasing her absentmindedly, but invariably coming to her defense whenever she got in over her head, which she was very good at. Polish and Irish was an explosive combination, even third generation.

Alex Hightower. Oh, my. To think she had actually talked to him face-to-face again after all these years.

Two

The rock concert option settled to his satisfaction—he’d bartered two weeks at a riding camp for a single wild, unsupervised weekend that would have been hard on her eardrums at the very least—Alex had dealt next with an even more ticklish matter.

Boys. Or rather, one boy in particular.

How did a father explain to a daughter who was wavering painfully between childhood and womanhood that just because a boy was considered the choicest guy in the whole school, just because his father had given him a Corvette for his sixteenth birthday, that that was no reason to allow said daughter to go roaring all over creation with said choice guy?

What was it Gus used to call it? The 3-H Club?

Hooch, hormones and horsepower. It had been a threat then. It was no less a threat now, but it damn well wasn’t going to threaten his daughter. Not if he could help it!

It occurred to Alex that what he needed was another trade-off, only what did you trade a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old girl for the sixteen-and-a-half-year-old jerk she thought she was in love with? Bubble gum?

“Daddy, guess who I saw in the park today?” Sandy slammed into the room, her lanky five-feet-ten-inch frame inadequately covered by a leather miniskirt and an angora sweater that only emphasized her lack of curves.

“Elvis?”

She rolled her eyes. “Daa-addy! The plant lady! You know—your old friend?”

Angel. “The plant lady? You mean the woman who reads meters for the power plant?”

“Daa-addy! Ms. Perkins! The woman you introduced me to last week? She had on these real cool coveralls with her name and everything on the back, and she owns her own company and everything. I think that’s real cool, don’t you?”

“Cool,” Alex agreed. Things had been cool when he was a kid. Later on cool had been decidedly uncool. Good had been boss, or neat, or bad, not necessarily in that order. Now they were cool again. Mini-skirts were back. He’d even spotted a pair of bell-bottoms last week.

Mark it down to the recycling craze.

“So anyway, I told her about the trees that keep gunking up our pool, and she said she’d come take a look while she was in the neighborhood, only you need to call her first. She won’t come unless you do.”

Alex unfolded himself from the deep leather chair, a frown gathering as he took in his daughter’s words. “You told her what?”

“Well, you did say they probably needed pruning back, didn’t you? And she does things to trees and all, so I thought...”

So she’d thought she could distract him by dragging a red herring—or in this case, a redheaded herring—across his path, and while he was looking the other way, she could run wild with Kid Corvette.

“No way.”

“But Daddy, you have to!”

One of the advantages of having dark brows with blond hair was the effectiveness of the scowl. Without even trying, Alex had perfected it to an art. He didn’t have to say a word.

“But, Daddy, you’ll embarrass me! I gave my word!”

“Your word is your own to give, Sandy, but the grounds are my concern. If I think the trees need pruning, I’ll have Mr. Gilly contact the proper people.”

The trouble was, they probably did need pruning. This time of year, the kid he hired to clean the pool spent more time raking the leaves out than Phil Gilly spent raking the yard in a season. Only he didn’t see any need to call in Angel Wydowski or Perkins, or whatever her name was now.

After Sandy flounced from the room—her favorite form of locomotion these days—he forked a hand through his hair and sank back into the chair where he’d been reading The Wall Street Journal. The stock quotations forgotten, he stared at the pattern of sunlight and shadow that danced across the faded Chinese rug.

Angel Wydowski. Trouble in a pint-size package. She used to hang around after games and wait until they’d each hooked up with a girl, and then ask for a ride home. Somehow, when they’d all crammed themselves into Alex’s Mustang, she’d usually managed to install herself between him and whatever cheerleader he happened to be dating at the time.

Devil Wydowski. Little Angel. Once she’d found his sweater after he’d left it on the court after a tennis game and taken a cab all the way to his house to return it.

His mother had not been amused.

Neither had hers.

Neither had she when he’d tried to reimburse her for the cab fare.

For nearly forty-five minutes, Alex sprawled in his favorite chair in his favorite room in the twelve-room house in which he’d grown up, and thought back to the days of his brief rebellion. In some ways—hell, in all ways—they’d been the happiest days of his life. He’d been alive then, really alive—aware of all the possibilities, of the promise that had sizzled in his bloodstream like newly fermented wine. Every day had been a fresh adventure, every game and every girl a fresh challenge.

Not Angel, of course. Back in those days, she’d had a crush on him, and he’d been flattered as all get out, because Kurt had been right there, too, and Kurt had been every girl’s dreamboat.

Dreamboat. Did that term date him, or what?

But, of course, Angel had been off-limits to both of them. She was Gus’s sister, and besides, she was just a kid. Still, Alex had always sort of liked her, even when she drove him up a wall. Nor, to be perfectly honest, had he been unaware of her budding attractions. But whatever thoughts he’d had along those lines, he had managed to shove out of his mind. She’d been a kid, after all. His best friend’s baby sister. Off-limits.

Levering himself up again, he poured a finger of Chivas and moved to the window, staring out at the scattering of dogwood and maple leaves that patterned the freshly clipped lawn.

September already. Another year slipped past.

Where had the years gone? All the old excitement? There had been a time when every sunrise had been like a big surprise package, all wrapped up in shiny gold foil with a big, floppy satin bow on top.

Somewhere along the way, he must have torn off all the wrappings and ripped open all the boxes, because they weren’t there anymore. Whatever had been inside them was gone, too. He couldn’t even remember what it had been.

Except for Sandy. His precious, maddening, hair-graying, blood-pressure-raising Alexandra. She was his gift, the most precious thing in his life.

And he damned well wasn’t about to share her with any card-carrying member of the 3-H Club!

* * *

Angel was in the tub when the phone rang. Having finished half a glass of port and just started on chapter seven, where things really began to heat up, she was tempted to let the machine take it. But then, what if it was a job? Some people still didn’t take kindly to electronic commands and hung up before the beep.

And face it—she’d been half expecting Alex to call. Sandy had said he would. Either way, whether he wanted her or not, the Alex she remembered would call and let her know. Gentleman’s code, and all that.

“Angel? I hope I didn’t call at an inconvenient time.”

“No, not at all,” she panted, dripping frangipani-scented bubbles all over the marble-patterned vinyl. “Alex? Did Sandy put you on the spot? She sort of insisted I should look at some trees on your property, but I told her I wouldn’t unless you said so.”

“No, that’s fine. I mean, they definitely need looking at. The thing is, the pool was built back in the fifties, and I never got around to enclosing it....”

“I know how it is, you keep on putting off things and then when you finally get around to it, you wonder why you didn’t do it years ago.”

“Right.”

Angel shivered in the draft that crept through the open back door. It was warm for September, but cool when one was standing stark, strip, dripping-wet naked in a draft. “Like storm windows. I never get around to putting them up until winter is practically over.”

“Yeah. Well, then. I suppose we should set a time.”

“A time for what?”

“To, uh—look at the trees?”

“Are you sure? I mean, just because Sandy and I were talking, and she said something about it—I mean, you probably have your own tree people. Or maybe you’d rather ask around? Actually, I’m more of a landscaper and plant salesman than a tree surgeon.”

She was turning down business? What was she, sozzled out of her skull on port wine and paperback romance?

“No, you’ll do just fine. So maybe you or your husband could come around? Or send somebody. That would be just fine, too. Either way, whenever someone’s in the area, my housekeeper can tell him anything he needs to know. Her husband—that’s Phil Gilly—he sort of looks after things outdoors.”

“Okay. Fine. Only, first, I don’t have a husband anymore, and second, I do all the estimates personally—and I can come anytime it’s convenient since I’m doing two places in Hope Valley and there’s this citizens committee that’s asked me to look at the magnolias outside your office building. Did you know some jerk wants to take them out because they hide his precious architecture? Those trees were there when the place was practically wilderness! Over my dead body will those trees come down! There’s probably a historical society somewhere that looks into—”

“Angel?”

“Oh. Sorry. Wait’ll I kick my soapbox out of the way.”

Alex sounded as if he were smiling. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”

“We’ve already done that routine. And Alex—I really like your daughter. She’s special.”

“Yes, she is,” he said quietly, and Angel could hear the pride in his voice. They settled on Thursday if it wasn’t raining, late in the afternoon. Long after she hung up, Angel could still hear that deep, whiskey-smooth baritone. If he had any idea what even hearing it over the phone could do to a woman’s libido, he’d be shocked right down to his patrician toenails!

* * *

The week crept past, but eventually Thursday arrived, and thank goodness, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky! Angel had to force herself to concentrate on measuring the Lancasters’ new patio and platting the placement of a dozen dwarf hollies, three fifteen-foot willow oaks, and an embankment of blue rug juniper.

Her crew had already taken up the balled and burlapped oaks and loaded them onto the truck. The whole thing should be in place, sodding and all, by Sunday, when the Lancasters planned to celebrate with a patio party.

With her mind on hurrying out to Alex’s house, she didn’t even take time to add up all the overtime, which just went to show that in some respects, she hadn’t improved one bit with age.

Sandy was waiting with a pitcher of fresh lemonade. “It’s not from a mix, either,” she said proudly. “Mrs. Gilly made it up just for us. Hey, if you need to use the john or comb your hair or anything, the bathhouse is over there.”

“Thanks, but combing won’t help. My mother says it’s a curse Granddad Reilly laid on her when she married my pop instead of the nice Irish boy he had all picked out for her. Neither comb nor brush, nor the finest conditioners shall ever unsnarl these tangled locks,” she intoned solemnly.

She grinned, and Sandy pointed to her own waterfall-straight hair. “At least yours is interesting. I wanted to have mine cornrowed, but Daddy wouldn’t let me. He won’t let me do anything.” Sighing, she poured two glasses of lemonade that frosted up invitingly, and hooked a lounge chair with her foot, dragging it over. “Sit. You look like you’ve been working. Hey, it’s really neat, owning your own business and all that. How’d you do it?”

It was impossible not to respond to such frank, fresh admiration. And besides, Angel had been working hard. She had plodded over every square foot of raw red mud on the Lancaster site, figuring what went where, allowing for root growth and overhang, and then drawing up a plat her guys could follow.

By the time Alex pulled into the driveway, some forty-five minutes earlier than usual, they had covered Angel’s widowhood, which she had glossed over in deference to her listener’s youth and innocence, touched on the problems of doing business in this age of city, county, state and federal regulations, backed up by the usual bureaucratic alphabet soup of agencies, and moved on to the stupid rules that prevented a woman of nearly fifteen from pursuing her own interests.

Which in Sandy’s case, included a boss hunk named Arvid Moncrief who drove a Vette, and becoming either an artist or an airline pilot.

Alex came around the house, having already shed his coat, turned back the cuffs of his white-on-white monogrammed shirt, and loosened his tie, in time to hear Angel saying, “—hooch, hormones and horsepower. My brother used to say any one of the three could cause trouble, but taken together, they were a surefire recipe for disaster. Now, I’m not saying big brothers can’t be a royal pain, because they sure as heck can, but I learned the hard way that it pays to listen to mine. Not that I always do.”

“Not that you ever did, to my knowledge.” Alex watched the color come and go in her face, watched her struggle to climb out of the low lounge chair, and felt a sharp, hot pull of sexual awareness that took him totally by surprise.

“What do you mean, the hard way? Hi, Dad, we were just having some lemonade before we get to work. Angel’s going to show me how to prune a tree so it scars over just right and doesn’t get infected. I guess that’s why they call ‘em tree surgeons, huh? You used to talk about being a doctor, didn’t you?”

How could she have known? That had been another lifetime. Before he’d become a father, before he’d met Dina. Before his father had hammered home his responsibility as the sole heir to two generations of furniture makers.

“Sorry you caught me goofing off,” Angel said, her smile as fresh and unabashed as ever. “Don’t worry, the meter’s not running yet.” She set her empty glass on the wrought iron table. “So! Shall we get started, Sandy? I can tell you right now, Alex, you’re either going to have to waste a couple of those gorgeous Japanese maples or bite the bullet and cover your pool.”

Another thing about her that hadn’t changed, Alex thought as she took out a grubby-looking notebook and put on her business face, was those eyes of hers. The color of lapis, with sparkles of gold that glittered when she laughed.

He’d almost forgotten the way she had of wrinkling her nose when she concentrated. He used to tease her about it back in the days when she’d look for any old excuse to hang around, gazing up at him in a way that had made him feel manly and worldly and about seven feet tall.

How would he handle it if she looked at him that way now?

“I suppose you know that maple roots always head for water. They can be a royal pain where you have a septic tank.” He was thinking hero worship and she was talking septic tanks?”I’m not sure a pool’s much safer.”

Sandy started humming the theme from Jaws, and Alex found himself grinning. Once, maybe twice every few months he found something to smile about, which made it all the crazier, the way the woman affected him, coveralls and combat boots notwithstanding.

They set off for the pool, Sandy and Angel moving on ahead, Alex lingering to empty the lemonade pitcher into the glass Angel had used. He didn’t deliberately seek the place where her mouth had touched, but he didn’t avoid it, either.

Kid stuff. God, just let him run into an old friend, and he reverted to his childhood!

Following the two females as they sauntered off down the hill, he couldn’t help but admire the way the center seam in Angel’s bright green coveralls twitched when she walked. She had the kind of build that, according to the medical experts, was the best kind to have for a healthy heart. Pear-shaped. Full hips, small breasts, tiny waist.

Studying that small-scale, pear-shaped body from behind, it occurred to him that it wasn’t his own heart that was giving him trouble at the moment, but a part of him that had been anesthetized for so long, he’d damn near forgotten it existed.

He was aroused. By a woman in coveralls and combat boots. A woman who had come to talk to him about trees and septic tanks. Not only was he embarrassed, he felt guilty! Angel Wydowski had definitely grown up, but she was still off-limits. She’d said she was no longer married, so that was no problem, and he was certainly long past the age where he could be led around by his gonads.

But she was still Gus’s kid sister. Now that he had a daughter of his own to protect, Alex understood fully why Gus had come down so hard on any guy who’d even looked at his kid sister for more than five seconds running.

The old 3-H Club. Kid stuff. This time, there was no hooch involved, only watered-down lemonade. Definitely no horsepower. What could be safer than a stroll across a backyard, with a daughter acting as chaperon? The only trouble was, a few hormones he’d thought had gone into early retirement were evidently still alive and kicking.

His stride took on elements of swagger, his grin a certain macho quality that would have sent him gunning for any kid who came sniffing around his daughter with the same look on his face. By the time he caught up with them, they were designating which branches above what height would have to go. Every time Angel lifted her arm to gesture, Alex found himself unconsciously searching her chest for any indication that she’d matured in the bosom department. Why couldn’t she wear jeans and a T-shirt like everyone else?

Judas Priest! When had he turned into a dirty old man?

Embarrassed at the direction his thoughts had taken, he stared at the spreading limbs and tried to concentrate on what she was saying. Something about how close to the trunk to make the cut so that it would scar over properly.

Before he could come up with a single intelligent question that would prove he was interested in her mind and not lusting after her body, the phone inside the house began to ring. Reprieved, he turned toward the house just as Mrs. Gilly stuck her head out the French doors. “Sandy, it’s for you. Your young man.”

Alex’s knees locked. His angular features took on a steely look that had made more than one young man swallow his Adam’s apple. “If that’s Moncrief, Alexandra, you can tell him—”

But Sandy was already gone, long legs flashing in the late afternoon, early autumn sunlight.

Angel came up silently beside him. “Not that it’s any of my business,” she said quietly, “but if Sandy were my daughter—”

“She’s not.” He regretted his short reply even before he saw the gold flecks in her eyes disappear, leaving them opaque. “Sorry. Nothing personal, Angel, but Sandy’s my problem.”

He might have known she wouldn’t back down. “Fine. But I hope you know how lucky you are to have such a problem. She’s a bright girl, Alex, but even the smartest girl needs more than some fathers are willing to give.”

“Are you offering your services?” Another dig he regretted too late. The trouble was, since his divorce he’d had to go on the defensive where women were concerned.

“To Sandy, maybe—if she needs me. Not to you.” Very deliberately, she scribbled a name and number on a scrap of paper, tore it off and then closed her notebook, twisted her mechanical pencil and tucked them both away in the pocket of her coveralls. With a smile that was about as genuine as a ten-dollar Rolex, she said, “Here’s the name and number of the best tree guy in town. He’s not cheap, but your trees will be in good hands. I’ll see you around, okay?”

Alex jammed the scrap of paper into his shirt pocket without even glancing at it. “Angel, wait! Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, it’s just that—”

“I’ll tell Gus I saw you, shall I? He usually calls on weekends.”

Feeling lower than pond scum, Alex watched her walk away, her short legs twitching the heavy cotton twill enticingly over her rounded buttocks. He cursed himself for being rude, for being an arrogant jerk. And then, as he watched her tug open the door of her van and swing herself up by the side view mirror, he cursed himself for being a lecherous bastard.

Watching her back down the driveway, he wondered if she still had to sit on a pillow, the way she had when he and Gus had taught her to drive Gus’s old Falcon. She’d begged to try out Alex’s Mustang, but Gus had put his foot down. Alex would probably have given in. He’d had a secret weakness for Gus’s kid sister in those days. Part of being an only child, he’d tried to tell himself.

“Hey, where’s Angel going?” Sandy asked plaintively, coming to stand beside him at the edge of the driveway.

“Home, I suppose. It’s getting late.”

“But I wanted to invite her to have dinner with us tonight. Mrs. Gilly said it would be all right.”

“Mrs. Gilly doesn’t make the rules around here, in case it escaped your notice.”

“Is it because she’s wearing, like, coveralls? Daddy, that’s just plain arctic! Nobody—”

“Archaic,” he corrected automatically.

“I mean, nobody cares about junk like that anymore! I think your old rules stink!”

“I’m sure you do, but as long as you’re—”

“I know, I know—as long as I’m living under your roof, I have to bow and scrape to your royal highness.”

A grin threatened to kick in again, against all logic. He had a pretty fair notion what she was thinking, and it wasn’t about his royal highness. “Sorry, sweetheart, it’s the system. It suckers us all in, and before we know it, we’re nothing but mind-numbed robots, having to wash up before meals, having to listen to DWEM composers instead of demolition derbies set to music while we dine. Having to—”

“All right, all right!” Out came the lower lip. Down came the scowling brows. “But I’m not going to stop being friends with her, I don’t care what you say! And I might even work at her place next summer. She hires, like, school kids sometimes.”