Beyond Ordinary

A flash of fear flittered across Missy’s face. “About what?”

“Phil,” Angel rushed on, determined to say something before Phil returned.

The garage door screeched.

“No,” Missy breathed.

“Mama, please,” Angel said, but heard Phil on the stairs. A second later, Phil entered with the last bag. It joined the others on the counter.

Angel’s frustration mounted.

“How much did we save?” Phil asked Missy.

“Four-thirty-five.” Missy smiled at him, obviously absurdly relieved that Angel hadn’t been able to vocalize her thoughts about Phil.

“Good girl.” Phil caressed her hip and she preened under his attention. Phil sat at the table again.

Angel turned away.

Missy pulled a frying pan out of a cupboard.

“What are you doing?” Phil asked.

“I’m making an early lunch for Angel.”

“So this is what you’re planning to do here?” He directed the question toward Angel. “Have your mother cook for you?”

“I didn’t ask her to cook,” Angel said, hating the way Phil questioned everything Missy did.

“I want to make her lunch, Phil.” Missy’s placating tone grated.

Phil stared at Angel with a thunderous frown and asked, “Are you planning to freeload off your mother?”

“What about you?” she snapped. “Are you working?”

“No.”

“Then you’re freeloading,” she shouted.

“Angel, he can’t work,” Missy explained. “He has a disability.”

“Yeah? I didn’t know they considered being brain-dead a disability.”

Phil surged out of his chair.

Missy slapped a restraining hand on his chest and held him back. “Angel!” Distress rode high in her voice.

Phil breathed loudly and stared at Angel with something close to hatred in his eyes.

The plastic clock on the wall ticked a loud cadence in counterpoint to Angel’s hard-driving pulse.

“Go ahead,” Angel said. “Take a swing at me, big man. Prove to Mama who you really are.”

Too clever to show his hand, Phil retreated, his thin smile bordering on insolence.

“While you live in my house, Angel,” Missy said, “treat Phil with respect.”

Angel reeled from the disappointment on Mama’s face. What? Had that really happened? Had Mama taken a man’s side against Angel? Mama and she were a team. The Donovan girls against the world.

What were they now? A crowd of three, with Angel the odd person out? Shocked, she left the kitchen, shaken by Mama’s need to defend Phil over her.

She sat on the bed in her room and hung her head, so scared. What if she lost Mama?

Phil was too clever. Angel led with her emotions, going off like lightning, while Phil calculated every angle, every advantage.

A short time later, she heard Phil leave. Wherever he was going, it was without the car.

She rushed to the kitchen.

Mama sat at the table with her cheek resting on one hand, looking so despondent that Angel put her arms around her from behind and whispered in her ear, “I’m sorry, Mama.”

She couldn’t bring up the issue of Phil again today. She’d handled it all wrong. Time to regroup and figure out how to do it better.

Missy patted her arm and said, “I know, honey.” There was a subtle but tangible distance in her.

Abruptly, she stood and said, too brightly, “Let’s have lunch.”

Throughout the meal, Missy maintained that distance. For the first time in their lives, the chatter between them was uncomfortable, made more so with her forced gaiety and Angel’s equally forced responses.

God, how was Angel going to get rid of Phil? For the first time, it occurred to her that if it came to a showdown, Mama might choose Phil over her. The prospect seemed impossible, but Angel could never have predicted her mother’s earlier behavior.

Oh, Mama, I don’t want to lose you.

Angel swallowed the last mouthful of her sandwich, and it felt like sawdust clogging her throat.

Refusing to believe that anything would come between her and Missy, she forced the dire thoughts from her mind.

They’d be okay. They always had and always would be.

Deciding to stick with her original plan to visit Matt—and to put some space between Mama and her—Angel asked to borrow the car. Before leaving, she kissed Mama’s forehead. Her responding smile was so vague it chilled Angel.

What was going on in Missy’s mind these days? Was it only the outburst between them and Phil that had her distracted? Or was something else bothering her?

Angel worried that question all the way to her brother’s place with no resolution.

Matt’s ranch was large and prosperous. Matt and his wife, Jenny, worked hard for what they had.

As she drove up the lane, Jesse ran out of the stable.

“Auntie Angel,” he screamed when he realized who was in the car. A second later, Matt stepped out into the sunlight with a big grin splitting his face.

She stepped out and Jesse threw himself against her legs, wrapping his arms around her. He was getting so big. She adored this little guy.

Her blue funk fell away.

Here, with these people, she found a peace foreign in every other area of her life.

This was a good family that Matt had made work by overcoming all of the pain and sorrow of his past. Angel wondered whether someday she would be able to do the same for herself. She planned to. Somehow.

“Where are Jenny and Rose?” she asked, her voice muffled by Matt’s chest because he’d wrapped his arms around her tightly.

Angel loved having an older brother. Maybe if she’d known about him in high school, she could have gone to him for advice when boys started to sniff around her once she’d started to develop this double-edged sword of a killer body. Maybe things could have gone differently for her….

“I can’t breathe,” Jesse wailed against her thighs, and Matt pulled away, laughing.

“How long are you staying this time?” Matt asked.

“I’m staying in Ordinary only a few weeks.” She refused to call it home. As soon as she figured out how to deep-six Phil and Missy’s marriage, she was getting out of here and staying away. She’d warned Matt enough times that she wouldn’t end up in Ordinary permanently. At some point, he would have to believe her.

They all entered a house that smelled like bananas.

They found Jenny and Rose in the kitchen. Half a pot of chicken-noodle soup sat on the stove and a loaf of banana bread cooled on the counter.

Angel spotted the mix box in the recycling bin in the corner of the kitchen. Jenny was a terrible cook. She did nothing from scratch.

She rushed to give Angel a big hug, but not before Angel noticed her belly and hooted.

“Another baby?”

“Yes,” Jenny said, beaming.

Women everywhere were having babies, while Angel…well, none of her encounters with men seemed to last long enough to reach the let’s-commit-and-make-babies stage. She swallowed her sorrow.

Enjoy your niece and nephew.

She walked to the table and kissed the little blond-haired, blue-eyed doll sitting in the high chair.

Rose giggled and kicked her feet. “Up, Auntie Angel.”

Angel lifted the tray away from the chair. It looked as though more noodles had ended up on it than inside her niece.

Rose kicked her feet and said, “Angel. Up. Peese.”

Angel laughed and blew her a raspberry. “Hold your horses, squirt.”

Rose blew a raspberry back at Angel, sending spittle flying. Angel made a show of jumping out of the way, and Rose giggled.

Angel unbuckled Rose’s belt and lifted her into her arms, sniffing her kid scent of powder and baby shampoo and chicken-noodle soup.

She kissed Rose’s nose. “What are you up to today?”

“I played dollies and bocks and pee-peed in my potty.”

“You did?” Angel exclaimed.

Rose nodded emphatically. “Big girl now.”

“You certainly are.”

Rose picked up a strand of Angel’s long hair. “I grow up pitty like you.”

No, don’t. It’s too much. It’s a burden. I want to be loved for myself, not for my face and my body.

She wanted the same for Rose, to be loved for the beautiful person she was inside. “Auntie Angel?”

“Yes, Rose?”

Rose spread her hands, as if puzzled. “What you bring me?”

Everyone laughed and Angel sent Matt and Jenny a wry smile.

“This habit of bringing gifts every time you show up is going to have to stop,” Matt said.

“Sure,” Angel said. “Next time. Come on. There’s something for each of you in the car.”

Matt wrapped his arm around her as they walked outside.

Here is where I feel at home, where I’m accepted and loved, completely and utterly. On Matt and Jenny’s ranch, she wasn’t trashy Angel Donovan. Here, she wasn’t Missy’s daughter. In this house, she was a good sister-in-law, a loving sister and a world-class aunt.

WHEN PHIL RETURNED TO the house, Missy still sat at the kitchen table, exactly where she’d been when Angel had left, with her head in her hands, trying to figure out what to do.

“Hey, babe,” Phil said. “Come on.” He walked down the hall to their bedroom.

Missy followed him, less and less happy about their afternoon “dates,” as Phil called them. Why couldn’t Phil ever get enough no matter how often she satisfied him—every night, most mornings and every afternoon?

Her frustration grew. Maybe today she could change that. How? For a woman who knew as much about sex as anyone could, she was drawing a blank. She had to make this work with the man she was about to marry.

When she entered the room, Phil was naked from the waist up and unbuckling his belt.

His pants dropped to the floor. Skinny legs. Small chest. It was hard for Missy to whip up enthusiasm day after day.

Phil’s face turned hard. “Where’s the car?”

Warily, Missy said, “Angel took it to visit Matt.”

She pulled off her blouse and Phil stared at her breasts. She swore he liked them better than her face.

“You shouldn’t have let her take it.” His lips pulled back into a snarl. Phil was angry. Could she use it to charge up the sex?

She dropped her pants and the tiny scrap of red lace of her thong. She turned her back to him and climbed onto the bed, hoping that the sight of her would excite him to new heights.

“Hurry up,” he said. “Get under the blankets.”

She didn’t want to hurry, was sick of hurrying, of giving and not getting. She turned onto her back but didn’t climb under the covers. Instead, she bent her knees and spread her legs. Go down on me, Phil. He never had before. She wasn’t sure what he would do if she asked. She needed satisfaction today.

“Please,” she whispered. Phil, honey, give an inch.

He shook his head, pulled off his boxers and lay on top of her, entering her without foreplay.

He worked on top of her while Missy pictured massive biceps, big penises, large hands rough on her skin, anything to excite herself.

“Do that thing,” Phil ordered.

“What thing?” she asked, trying to spike his anger, trying to spark an unpredictable reaction, hoping he would get a little rough with her.

“Move your muscles inside.”

She did and he shook. His arms trembled and he dropped onto his elbows.

He was done.

“Thanks, babe.” He breathed heavily in her ear.

For a second, she held him close to bind him to her, afraid to let go. Phil, I need you. Angel will be gone soon. Then all I’ll have is you.

In only one more week, they were getting married. Then everything would be fine. It had to be. She had no one else.

Phil rolled off her. “Move, babe.” She did and he slid under the covers.

Missy opened the drawer of the bedside table and handed him a big cotton hankie. “Here,” she said. “Don’t mess my sheets.”

He took it, cleaned himself, handed it back to her and said, “Wake me at four.”

As if she could forget. He did the same thing every day. Such an overgrown boy. A child in a man’s body. What had happened to him when he was a kid?

Missy had asked, but Phil wouldn’t talk about it.

She showered, dressed, then returned to the kitchen, where she stood in front of the window, frozen by her own unanswered needs.

The grass needed mowing.

TIMM SAT IN FRONT OF his computer. There was something he needed to know, not quite sure why he felt guilty delving into Angel’s business.

He was a reporter. Reporters were naturally curious people.

He looked up the bike’s license plate. It had been a Montana plate. His memory was one asset that worked in his favor as a journalist.

Angel owned the bike. Even more curious, he typed her name into an internet search engine and found an article dated nearly three months ago.

Young Man Dead—DUI

Both Neil Anderson’s motorcycle and his girlfriend, Angel Donovan, came away from a single-vehicle accident with minor scratches.

Neil, a promising young student at Bozeman University, wasn’t so lucky. He died on impact when he was thrown and his head hit a tree.

At the autopsy, he was determined to have had a blood alcohol level higher than .08.

Close friends and family of the victim expressed shock, since Anderson never drank and didn’t frequent bars.

The officer who investigated the crash stated that Montana has the highest incident rate of alcohol-related car accidents in the country.

Timm jumped up from his desk to pace. Angel hadn’t changed. He’d watched the impetuous fool try to burn a bike—scratched and dented, maybe, but nearly new. He remembered the party girl she used to be. Clearly she’d gotten the Anderson kid started on drinking. Timm was a fool to like her, to defend her, to lie to Cash through omission.

So, she was burning the bike…because? Probably because it had killed her friend.

Angel was wrong, though. The bike hadn’t killed her friend. She had.

CHAPTER FOUR

ANGEL, MATT, JENNY and the children sat amid the detritus of cannibalized chocolate animals. They’d fought the good fight, but hungry mouths had prevailed.

Jenny stood to take the kids to the washroom to clean up, leaving Angel and Matt alone.

“Matt, I need to talk to you.”

At her serious tone, he nodded. “Let’s step outside.”

They wandered to the corral, where Masterpiece joined them at the fence. Angel scratched the horse’s jaw, while Matt took a caramel from his shirt pocket, unwrapped it then offered it to Master.

“What’s the problem, sis?”

“I need to ask your advice. About Phil. And I hate to ask because I know you probably don’t like Missy.”

“I never had anything against Missy. Your mom doesn’t have a bad bone in her body. She just lacks good judgment.” He leaned back against the white fence and crossed his arms. “Besides, that relationship gave me you. You’re my only blood relative on this earth, except for my children.”

The sun glinted from hair a dozen different shades of brown and blond. He studied her and she felt his affection like a gentle stroke.

“Shoot, Angel. What’s bothering you?”

“Mama’s going to marry Phil at the end of next week. It’s why I came back.”

Master nudged her shoulder and she scratched his forehead. He closed his eyes and pushed against her palm. “I have to stop it, Matt. Phil doesn’t love Mama.”

“I don’t get a great feeling from the guy, but if Missy wants to marry him, that’s her decision. How do you think you can stop her?”

“I don’t know.” Frustration ate a hole in her gut. “Any ideas?”

“Have you told Missy about your concerns?”

“She knows how much I dislike Phil. You know me. I’m mouthy and come out swinging. I haven’t had a chance to tell her about the way he stops by my bedroom in the middle of the night and rattles my doorknob, but I don’t want to hurt her.”

Matt straightened away from the fence. “He does what?” His voice had gone flat with a dangerous depth.

“He doesn’t come into my room. He just pretends that he will.”

“Come on. I’ll drive into town and have a talk with him.” When he said talk, Angel had no doubt that Matt had no intention of simply talking.

On impulse, she threw her arms around him. “I love you, Matt. You’re the best big brother.”

His arms snapped around her. “I love you, too, girl. I’m not going to let Phil get away with that shit.”

Angel pulled back. “It’s okay. Don’t get into a fight over it. I just need to convince Mama to not marry him.”

Matt shook his head. “I don’t know what to say other than to be honest and tell her what’s happening.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll try it again—she didn’t take it well earlier when I said how I felt. Mama’s being pretty stubborn right now.”

As Matt walked Angel to her car, he said, “You call anytime day or night if Phil threatens you. Got it?”

“I can handle Phil.” She climbed into the car.

“Uh-uh. I think there’s a hell of a lot more to that guy than meets the eye. Don’t trust him, Angel. Don’t turn your back.”

“You really think he’d hurt me?”

Matt leaned on the open window. “Don’t know, but my gut tells me he can’t be trusted. Be careful.”

Angel kissed his cheek and nodded. “Say goodbye to Jenny and the kids for me, okay, big bro?”

“Will do.”

Angel drove away, feeling worse. His assessment of Phil was much the same as hers, but Matt’s interpretation went a step further. So, if Phil could be a danger to her, could he also be one to Mama?

AT A QUARTER TO SIX that evening, Angel headed to work at Chester’s Roadhouse.

Since returning from Matt’s, Angel hadn’t had the chance to talk to Mama, because Phil was hanging around. She wanted to confront Mama alone, so she and Phil wouldn’t have a chance to form a united front against Angel.

Cash Kavenagh pulled up in his cop car and grinned at her through his open window. “Hey, Angel.” He pulled off his aviators and his hazel-eyed glance skimmed her body. “You’re looking as good as ever.”

She grinned right back. She liked Cash. She remembered one heavy petting session she’d had with him before she left for college.

His smile told her that he was remembering that particular evening, too. Cash was handsome and a couple of years older than she and he’d sure known his way around a kiss and a woman’s body, but Angel was glad they hadn’t taken it all the way. She’d already started to want more for herself, to shake off Ordinary’s expectations of her.

She wandered closer to his cruiser. “Hey, Cash. How’s it going?”

“Timm told me that bike out on the highway is yours. Said you ran out of gas. Listen, sorry to be the one to break it to you, but someone tried to set it on fire.”

She widened her eyes and tried to look surprised.

Apparently it worked. She had no idea why Timm had covered for her, but she appreciated it.

“Maybe it was one of the bikers who hang out here these days. They drive in from Harris County.”

Angel nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“Alvin will pick it up free of charge if he can use the bike for parts.”

“I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

“Want me to go ask him now?”

“That would be great, Cash. If you don’t mind.”

Cash jerked his thumb in the direction of the bar. “You’re not heading in there, are you?”

“Chester gave me a job as a bartender. Evenings until closing.”

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