Miss Emmaline And The Archangel Part 3

Emma hurried to fix him a Scotch, a double, though he didn't ask for it, and told him she would be back as soon as she started a pot of coffee.

He probably wouldn't mind being alone for a few minutes, she told herself. A few minutes to grimace and groan and s.h.i.+ft around until he got reasonably comfortable would be welcome, she was sure. Maybe he would like to use the heating pad. And maybe he would be offended if she offered. Men could be so asinine about things like that.

Standing in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, Emma suddenly had the feeling that she was looking through some kind of distorted gla.s.s. The familiar room looked different somehow, and the familiar sounds of the house seemed ... threatening.

Uneasy, she rubbed her arms and looked around the room. It was as if ... as if the house had been invaded somehow. Nothing appeared to be out of place, everything looked just as it always had, but the sense of invasion refused to dissipate.

Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something move. Whirling around, her heart hammering, she looked toward the windows but saw nothing. Nothing. That didn't keep her from hurrying over and drawing all the cafe curtains against the night.

What was wrong with her? she wondered edgily as she hurried to prepare a tray with mugs and some leftover chocolate-chip cookies she had baked for the children's story hour. Nightmares, that ridiculous reaction to the photograph of what was surely some kind of historical artifact, and now this sense of ... of...

Unseen watchers.

A shudder rippled through her even as she scolded herself for silliness. She didn't believe in ghosts or things that went b.u.mp in the night. Even as a child such things had never troubled her, except for that brief time when, at four, she had become convinced there was an alligator under her bed. She had lived alone in this house for five years now, and never once had she felt uneasy.

Shaking herself, she thrust her anxiousness aside and filled two mugs with hot, rich coffee. It was a blend she ordered specially, the one small indulgence she allowed herself on her tight budget. She hoped Gage liked it.

He was sitting in the rocker with his eyes closed, the empty highball gla.s.s in his hand. As soon as she stepped into the room, even though she tried to be quiet, his eyes snapped open. He didn't move, just watched her set the tray on the coffee table and settle herself on the couch.

He didn't want to move, she realized. He must have found a good position. Leaning over, she took the gla.s.s from his hand. "More?"

"No, thanks. That was plenty."

"Coffee, then?"

"Please."

She leaned over again to pa.s.s the mug to him, so he didn't have to reach.

"You're a kind woman, Emma Conard," he said, surprising her.

She glanced up from her own mug and found he had once again closed his eyes. "Not really. It's just that I know what it's like to hurt, and what it's like to find the one position on earth where it almost doesn't hurt. There were a couple of times when I might have killed a nurse if I'd had a gun."

A short, husky laugh escaped him. "I know all about that."

"I thought you might. Would you care for a cookie?"

What he really wanted, she thought a few minutes later, was to sleep. His eyes kept closing when the conversation lagged, and his head rested against the back of the rocker. Well, this was ridiculous, Emma decided. Rising, she told Gage she would be back in a few minutes. Only she didn't come back. Instead, she went to her bedroom at the back of the house and changed into jeans, warm socks and a favorite green sweats.h.i.+rt. She took her time brus.h.i.+ng her stubborn hair into a relatively neat ponytail, scrubbing off the makeup she hated to wear and applied only for special occasions. And when at last she crept back to the living room, she found Gage sleeping soundly in the rocker.

Satisfied, she went to the kitchen and started preparing a considerably larger meal than she would have cooked for herself alone. It distracted her from the deepening winter night and the persistent uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched. That something terrible was about to happen.

When Gage awoke, it was to the golden glow of lamplight and the mouth-watering aroma of baking chicken. For an instant he wondered where he was, but then he remembered Emma Conard telling him she would be back in a minute. Judging by the enticing smells wafting his way, he'd been asleep for some time. Turning his head a little, he saw her. Looking all of eighteen, she was curled up in a corner of the couch, her feet tucked beneath her. Absently, she played with a corkscrew of her red hair while she read a paperback book.

He watched her turn a page and wondered why she had let him sleep like this and why she seemed to be so unperturbed by his rudeness. He must have been snoozing for a couple of hours. Most hostesses surely would have found some way to wake him. He certainly wouldn't have blamed anyone for shaking him awake and sending him on his way.

Now that he was awake, though, he should say something, apologize, take his leave. Instead, comfortable in the rocker as he was seldom comfortable, he sat perfectly still and watched her read.

That hair of hers was beautiful, he thought, and wished again that he could see it unbound. Her skin was creamy, like living satin, and he imagined that if he touched it, she would feel warm and smooth. Her mouth was generous, the kind of mouth that made men fantasize a million and one things, all of them erotic. Why didn't she date? Had she been mistreated by some boyfriend?

Suddenly, as if she felt his gaze on her, Emma looked up. When she saw he was awake, she smiled.

"Good nap?" she asked.

"You should have tossed me out, Miss Emma. That was incredibly rude of me."

She shook her head. "You needed it, and I didn't mind at all. Dinner will be ready in another half hour. If you don't want to move, I can bring you a tray in here."

d.a.m.n it, he couldn't believe this. The woman didn't even know him. Why should she go to so much trouble?

He was a hard man, she thought, and he didn't know what to make of her. So she told him. "Look, Mr. Dalton, you've been kind enough to escort me home on two occasions. Apart from that, you're a neighbor. You needed to sleep, you obviously found the rocker comfortable enough to sleep in, and I'd have to be some kind of twisted, heartless beast to wake you up and throw you out. Besides, I lived with a great deal of pain after my-after my accident years ago, and I know how difficult it can be to get any sleep at all. As for dinner, I was going to cook anyway, and it didn't take one bit of additional effort to throw an extra potato into the oven." She suddenly smiled with exaggerated sweetness. "Can you handle that?"

"Do I have any choice?"

She studied him a moment, doubtfully, and then realized he was teasing. Her smile broadened. "I guess I didn't give you one."

"And I'm glad you didn't." He allowed a smile to show. "I appreciate it, Miss Emma. I really do. And I think I'm going to get one of these rockers for myself. I had no idea how comfortable one would be."

She nodded. "They don't look all that great, but my father was partial to it because of his back. You didn't hurt yourself when you caught me, did you?"

The last words came out in a rush, telling him just how much she had worried about that.

"No. It's an old injury, and nothing that I don't feel a dozen times a day. Don't worry about it."

He must have been a truly charming man before he was hurt, Emma thought a short while later as she thickened the gravy. Flashes of that charm still broke through the abrupt, harsh, dark envelope that pain had wrapped around him. And he must have been sinfully handsome before his injury. The vestiges of it were still there in his bone structure, in the chiseled line of his jaw. The premature gray of his hair, a silvery color, merely added an additional dash of mystery to him.

Turning from the stove to add some more water to the thickener she was using in the gravy, Emma glanced toward the kitchen window. And screamed.

Chapter 3.

When he heard the scream and a crash, Gage hit the floor running. Automatically, his hand dived beneath his suit jacket, searching for the gun he used to always carry, and when he found nothing, he swore fiercely. No gun. No weapon at all, except himself. These days, that was no bargain.

Before the sound of Emma's scream had fully died, he kicked open the kitchen door and peered around the doorjamb to a.s.sess the situation.

Emma stood alone, pressed back against the counter, her terrified gaze leaping from the door he had just kicked open to the windows beyond which the world had turned dark. At her feet lay a mess of white paste and shattered ceramic.

"Emma?" Seeing no one else, Gage eased into the room. "Emma, what happened?"

Her eyes were huge as they sought him. She shuddered once, wildly, and then wrapped her arms around herself. "Someone was staring in the window."

Gage reached the door in two long strides and threw it open. Standing on the back stoop, he scanned the driveway, what he could see of the street and the snow beneath the kitchen windows.

"Do you see anything?"

Emma stood behind him in the open door, and he spared her a glance. "Not much. Have you got a flashlight?"

"I'll get it." To see over the cafe curtains into the kitchen while standing on the ground, a man would have to be better than eight feet tall, Gage figured. Either that, or he'd need a ladder, and it was moot anyway, because the snow below the windows was undisturbed-except for some snow that had fallen off the roof...

He snapped his head up and peered at the roof, just as Emma returned.

"Here," she said, and gave him the light.

The snow was disturbed along the eaves, Gage saw. Taking the flashlight, he descended the steps and backed his way across the driveway while s.h.i.+ning the light at the roof over the kitchen. The snow was stirred up, but cats could have done that, and surely, if a man had been up there, he and Emma would have heard him scramble away to safety.

The Conard house had two stories, but the second story had been a late addition, Gage judged, and had been erected over only part of the house. The kitchen roof was at the single story level, not as steep as the peaked gables of the second floor, and easy for a man to get onto. Still, a fast dash across the roof would have made enough noise to tell the tale.

"Gage?"

Emma was waiting in the doorway, Gage saw, s.h.i.+vering from the cold and frowning. He limped back toward her. "Nothing," he said. "Whoever it was is gone now. What exactly did you see?"

He closed the door behind himself, shutting out the night. "It all happened so fast- Oh! The gravy!" She turned quickly to the stove and reached for the wire whisk. Another half minute and it would have been scorched.

"Did you recognize the face?" Gage asked.

"No." She turned off the gas under the gravy. "Dinner is just about ready."

Gage was habitually short on patience these days. Constant pain did devastating things to a man's temper. "Emma, will you just look at me and answer my questions?"

She spun around to face him, anger bringing color to her cheeks. "I am answering you, Mr. Dalton! I am also trying to keep dinner from being ruined. Furthermore, I don't believe I gave you permission to address me so familiarly!"

"Familiarly? You don't know the meaning of the word. Honey would be familiar! d.a.m.n it, woman-"

"And don't you swear at me, either!"

The pain was building up again, thanks to his careless dash from the living room. A hot poker was jamming into his lower back and sending rivers of burning lava down his left leg. He wanted to ignore it. He tried to ignore it, hating the weakness, but accepting the agony as his due. He couldn't ignore it, however, when fiery talons gripped his thigh and dug in deeply. He drew a sharp breath and squeezed his eyes shut. He would be d.a.m.ned if he would let this woman see how much he was hurting.

But Emma saw. Suddenly she was beside him, slipping her arm around him, talking in the sweetest, gentlest voice, a voice that made him think of cool spring water bubbling over mossy rocks. He clung to the soothing sound as if it were a lifeline thrown down into h.e.l.l.

"Let's get you back in the rocker," she said, gently urging him toward the living room. "You were comfortable there-oh, I just know you hurt yourself when you caught me. You should just have let me fall!"

"No." He scowled fiercely down at her, but it was a wasted effort, because all he could see was the top of her head. "I didn't hurt myself. I'm just having a bad day. Will you stop mothering me?"

The next thing he knew, he was back in the Kennedy rocker with two fingers of Scotch in his highball gla.s.s.

"I'll be right back with a tray," Emma said briskly. "Then you can question me to your heart's content while we eat."

It was just a bad day. Though he was never entirely free of pain, most of the time, with the aid of aspirin, he could ignore it. Periodically, though, his damaged nerves howled and all but crippled him. Usually he walked himself into exhaustion, but tonight he tossed off the Scotch Emma had poured. d.a.m.n, the woman was a human bulldozer. And it galled him that she was seeing him this way. When this spell pa.s.sed off in a few days or a week, n.o.body would be able to tell that he hurt. It was only when it got this bad that he couldn't always hide it.

Emma opened up a pair of TV tables, setting one before Gage so he wouldn't have to move more than his hands to dine. He watched her over the rim of his gla.s.s, noting the way her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s swayed when she moved, liking the way the lamplight caught the gold highlights in her hair. She was, he thought, a striking woman. Neither pretty nor beautiful, she would always be memorable.

For the first time in many, many months, he wanted to touch a woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s and bury his flesh deep in hers. He wanted to feel a woman's cool, smooth palms on his back and b.u.t.tocks, wanted to feel the sting of her nails as she tried to get closer and closer. He wanted her twisting and writhing and sweaty and hungry beneath him. All female animal.

d.a.m.n!

He looked away as Emma bent toward him to set a heaping plate of chicken, potatoes and asparagus before him. Not now. Not now. Not ever. Giving himself a giant mental yank, he turned his attention back to the Peeping Tom.

"Just what exactly did you see out that window?" he demanded.

Emma bristled a little, but she understood his irritation. She was trying to avoid the subject. She really didn't want to think about it, but whether she wanted to or not, she knew perfectly well that, come midnight, she would be lying in her bed remembering it. Forcing herself to remain outwardly calm, she offered him the gravy boat and smiled when he scowled at it but took it anyway.

"I saw a face," she said. "A face. I didn't recognize it, but it was distorted somehow. I wonder if the person might have been wearing a stocking? No, it didn't look like that. It wasn't a squas.h.i.+ng kind of distortion. No, it was ... pulled somehow."

"Pulled?" He simply stared at her, trying to follow her line of thought.

"Well, that isn't a very good word, but I don't know how else... Yes! That's it. It looked distorted, as if it were on the other side of a fish-eye lens! Like looking through a peephole in a door. I don't think I would recognize my closest friend through one of those things."

Gage set down the gravy boat and slipped his hand into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket to pull out a pen and small pad. He scribbled down a few key words. "What about colors? Hair, eyes, anything."

"What about eating your dinner before it turns stone cold? I think maybe there was dark hair, but it could have been a stocking cap. I don't know. It was all so fast..."

She sounded so calm about the thing that he wanted to shake her. She had been the one who had screamed, after all, and brought him tearing into the kitchen as if he was still able to deal with such situations. And now she sat here acting as if she were the queen serving tea, and he was an importunate subject. Yes, he wanted to shake her.

That was when he noticed that her hands were trembling.

Something tight and angry in him relaxed as he realized that Emma Conard was all bluff. Mirrors and smoke. And she was so d.a.m.n good at it that she must have had a lot of practice at hiding her fear.

Why? Fear of what? Intrigued, Gage settled back in the rocker, tucked his notebook away and picked up his fork. First he had to deal with the Peeping Tom. Then he would look into the mystery of Emmaline Conard.

"This is really good," he told her after he had tasted everything. "Was the face in the window upside-down?"

"Thank you. No. Right side up. Why?"

"Kind of hard to hang down from the eaves and look into the window right side up."

"Oh!" She looked up from her own plate and watched him slice another mouthful of chicken. She wondered if any other man in the county would have used a knife and fork on chicken. Probably not. Around here, chicken was finger food. "Well, it was definitely right side up. I just a.s.sumed someone was standing out there."

"He'd have had to be eight feet tall or able to fly, and considering there aren't any footprints under the window, he must have been flying."

Emma's hand tightened on her linen napkin. "Are you being sarcastic?"

"Not at all. I'm serious. When I didn't see any disturbance in the snow beneath the windows, I a.s.sumed the peeper must have been hanging over the edge of the roof, but then he would have had to be upside-down, and you're sure he wasn't. Of course, maybe he was wearing a mask upside down. That would definitely explain that part of it. Now we only need to figure out why you didn't hear anybody on the roof. Unless you did?"

Emma shook her head. "No. Not a thing." Inwardly she quailed. This was awful. Who would have done such a thing, and why? She thought she knew everyone in Conard County so well that if any of them had a propensity for this sort of thing, she would know. And that was utterly ridiculous, wasn't it? n.o.body ever knew his neighbors well enough to be sure of something like that.

Gage had been watching her more closely than she knew, and he read far more in the slight flickers in her face than she would have dreamed. At that moment he changed tack. "I'm sure," he said, "it was just a kid playing a prank. Who did you scold at the library in the last few days?"

Emma's relief was palpable, so palpable that it told Gage just how much fear she had been hiding. That, too, was another mystery to add to his list of mysteries about this woman. Why had she reacted so strongly to that photo of the dagger last night? Why did she find it necessary to hide her fear about the Peeping Tom?

"I'm going to call the department," he told her when he finished eating. "A deputy will keep an eye on your house tonight."