Alex and the Angel
Dixie Browning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

One

He felt old. Old, dammit, old! Where had it all gone—the dreams, the raw, idealistic ambition, the joyous excitement of being a rutting male animal in his prime? The trouble was, a man’s prime was over almost before he realized he was in it. After that, it was all downhill.

By the time he left the office, Alex Hightower was hot and tired. Thinking of the woman he’d be seeing in a couple of hours, he tried to drum up a moderate degree of lust. He was only thirty-eight, for God’s sake—there had to be a viable hormone somewhere in his six-foot-two, one-hundred-seventy-three-pound carcass!

Think lust, man. Think long, silken limbs, sweet, pouting lips, soft, full breasts. Think tangled sheets, twisting bodies, explosions of passion that leave a man weak and trembling and hungry for a return engagement.

“Think sex, dammit,” he muttered, pulling into his driveway. “Forget the damned furniture market!”

He let himself in the front door of the whitewashed brick house he shared with his fourteen-year-old daughter, Sandy, his thoughts focused on a cool shower, a tall drink, and a good excuse that would get him out of his dinner date. He was on his way to securing the first of those when he heard his daughter on the phone.

“—said I couldn’t, but he always changes his mind. Oh, sure, I mean, just because Daddy is straight out of the Crustacean period, that doesn’t mean—what? Okay. Huh? Oh, sure, don’t worry, I can twist him around my little finger.”

Feeling an ache in his midsection that was one part irritation, one part indigestion, and three parts love, he passed the half-open door of his daughter’s bedroom without calling out a greeting.

Fifteen minutes under a pounding shower did little to ease his tension, nor did the drink he sipped as he got dressed to go out again. Morosely Alex adjusted his gray-striped tie in front of his bureau mirror, wondering if somewhere among the more obscure laws of nature there was one that decreed that fourteen-going-on-twenty-five-year-old daughters and thirty-eight-going-on-a-hundred-year-old fathers couldn’t speak the same language.

No wonder he couldn’t drum up the strength to do something about his dismal social life. Being a single father sapped all his energies.

“No,” he’d said just that morning to her request—more like a demand—to be allowed to go to some camp-out, rock concert affair.

“But Daddy, everyone in the whole wide world is going,” Sandy had wailed. “I’ll be laughed out of school if I’m the only one whose parent won’t let her go—and besides, I promised!”

“And I said no. No is a complete sentence, Alexandra. It requires neither modifiers nor explanations.”

“Oh, God, I hate you!” she’d cried, rushing from the breakfast table in tears. Which was a more or less natural state these days.

After that had come the earring thing. Alex would be the first to admit he knew very little about the female of the species—which was quite an admission from a man who’d been sought after by women from the time he turned fifteen. He did know, however, that girls of fourteen had no business wearing half a pound of hardware dangling from one ear. It wasn’t even balanced, for Pete’s sake!

“But Daddy, everybody does it! I’ll look naked without my jewelry!”

“A fourteen-year-old girl—”

“Fourteen and a half, which is practically fifteen, and that’s almost sixteen, which is old enough to drive and get married and do almost everything! I know three girls my age who’re already pregnant!”

He’d aged ten years right then.

“Just because you’re too old to remember what it’s like to have any fun, that’s no reason why I have to live like a five-year-old in a convent.”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think they accept five-year-olds in convents, Sandy. Now, go wash your face.” She’d been experimenting with makeup lately. “Quickly, please—I’m already late for an appointment.”

He’d inspected her face, refrained from further comment on her earrings, one of which was a stud that didn’t bear close examination, the other a barbaric arrangement of jangling spare parts that grazed her bony little shoulder.

Was he being too judgmental? She accused him of it on the average of three times a week, but at least she’d stopped calling him a WASP. Now she called him a DWEM, something she’d picked up at school. It meant Dead White European Male. Which was hardly reassuring. Especially the dead part.

From the mirror, Alex’s gaze fell to the silver-framed photograph of Sandy on her eleventh birthday. They shared the pale blond hair and the clear gray eyes, but there the resemblance ended. Sandy had inherited Dina’s oval face and flawless features instead of his own bony, angular face, his high-bridged nose and aggressive jaw. Thank God. While he’d never had any problem finding women, he had never deluded himself that his looks were the great attraction. Money was a powerful aphrodisiac.

Devil take it, he was running late again! Mrs. Halsey had been late getting here, and then he’d had the usual dustup with Sandy over having a baby-sitter in for the evening whenever he went out. She’d flounced off to her room and turned up what she referred to as her music until he could practically see the prisms on the chandelier in the dining room below jumping off their hooks.

Before heading downstairs, Alex rapped on his daughter’s door. “Sandy? I’ll be in before midnight.” Time for drinks, dinner, a dance or two, the drive back and perhaps a nightcap if he didn’t linger over it. “If you need anything, I’ll be at the club.” Long pause. “With Carol.” Silence. If one could call the death throes of a flock of electric guitars plus the collision of two freight trains silence. She knew better than to assault her ears that way, but neither he nor the doctor could convince her. “Sandy? I’ll see you in the morning, sweetheart. And by the way...the word is cretaceous, not crustacean.”

With a defeated sigh, he descended the elegant curving staircase, glanced into the study, where Mrs. Halsey was engrossed in watching a lineup of bare-chested male cover models on TV. She didn’t even look his way. Shrugging, he set off for his dinner date.

Maybe he should ask Carol to have a little talk with Sandy. Maybe she could get through. It might be worth a try.

But was it worth the risk?

Carol English was everything any man could want in a woman. Attractive, intelligent, well-bred, refined. She’d gone to an all-female academy, graduated from an all-female college. Hell, she was female herself. Which meant that at least she spoke the language. So why not give it a shot? Things could hardly get worse than they were now. His daughter was on the verge of disowning him. She kept dropping hints about this group of social do-gooders somewhere or other who encouraged children to divorce their parents.

On the other hand, he’d been suspecting for some time that Carol saw herself as the next Mrs. Alex Hightower, III. He wasn’t quite ready to commit himself to that. He’d sent Sandy out shopping with her a couple of times, but if he let things go much further than that, he just might find himself on a steep and slippery slope. He’d be the first to admit that he needed help. He would even admit that his life had been flat for so long that even trouble was a relief...of sorts.

No, it wasn’t. Not when that trouble involved his daughter. No way on earth would he ever see her hurt, not as long as he was above ground and breathing.

But marriage?

On the other hand, why not? They were compatible enough, he and Carol. It wouldn’t be like taking a chance with a stranger. He missed having sex on a more or less regular basis. Thirty laps around the pool could only go so far to make up for it. He also missed the companionship of being married, not that Dina had ever been much of a companion.

Or all that exciting a sexual partner, come to that, but then, he was older now. More settled. Ready to accept the fact that there wasn’t a whole lot of joy in everyday life for the average man.

So why not give it a shot? It would be good for Sandy, having a woman in the house besides Mrs. Gilly, the housekeeper, who was more of an institution than a help. He’d known Carol since kindergarten. They had grown up in the same set, belonged to the same clubs, rebelled briefly at about the same time against the establishment before they’d inevitably become a part of it.

Negotiating late traffic on University Drive with unconscious skill, Alex decided he wasn’t quite ready yet to give in. Not for the sex or the companionship, both of which he could probably have had anyway, if he’d insisted. Not even for Sandy’s sake. Sooner or later, Sandy had to grow up.

Besides, Carol reminded him too much of Dina. His ex-wife. His unlamented ex-wife, now married to some third-rate title in one of those tiny European principalities known for its skiing, its gambling and the whimsical uniforms of its palace guards.

A Trans Am roared past in the right-hand lane, barely making the light. While the Jag purred quietly, waiting for green, Alex thought back again to his college days. Back in those days he’d been bubbling over with the sheer joy of rebelling. Of kicking over the traces. Full of piss and vinegar, as Gus’s mother used to say.

Good old Gus. Gus Wydowski. They’d been an invincible team back in the old days—Alex, Gus and Kurt Stryker. High, Wyde and Handsome, they’d been called by some. Tall, dark and handsome by others.

Alex, last of a long line of textile and furniture barons, and an only child, had been spoiled rotten, to the point where he’d even managed to get kicked out of the school endowed by his grandfather, which was no small achievement. His first few weeks in public school had been sheer hell, until a tough kid named Gus Wydowski, son of a diesel mechanic, had come to his defense and taught him a thing or two about fighting. Including the dangers of tucking his thumbs inside his fists before he busted some jerk on the jaw.

Taught him to play high-passing, hard-hitting, tough-as-nails football, too. Both him and Kurt. In high school, they’d been the invincible three. Gus had gone on to earn a college scholarship, and because both Gus and Kurt had enrolled at N.C. State, Alex had broken ranks with three generations of Duke alumni and followed them there.

The old trio. God, how many years had it been? He wished he could put in a call for Gus’s tough common sense and Kurt’s overgrown sense of responsibility to help him out of the fix he was in right now, but he doubted if either one of them could offer much advice to a man who was being slowly bent out of shape by his own adolescent daughter.

Pulling into the parking lot of Carol’s plush garden apartment complex, he lingered a minute before locking the car, remembering the other part of the old threesome.

The tagalong. The pest. The kid sister from hell.

Now there was a trunk full of trouble, he mused. When it came to trouble, Sandy was a nonstarter compared to Angeline Wydowski. A redheaded, freckle-faced peanut, her folks had called her Angel, but everyone else who knew her called her Devil. With just cause!

“H’lo, darling.” The door opened silently, and Carol, looking cool and elegant in a three-piece beige silk outfit, leaned forward and brushed a kiss half an inch from his left cheek.

Alex breathed in the familiar scent of hair spray and Chanel. Like the woman, herself, her scent was classic, nonthreatening. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Baby-sitter got hung up in traffic.”

“Oh, Lex, when are you going to get smart and send that poor child off to boarding school? It would be the making of her, I assure you.” Carol stepped back to collect her tiny purse, handed Alex her key and waited while he locked her door. “After all, I’m a product of boarding school, and I turned out reasonably well, didn’t I?”

She waited for the requisite compliment, which Alex produced with practiced ease. Attractive, intelligent, he reminded himself—well-bred, refined.

And boring. Unfortunately, Carol was about as exciting as stale croissants.

* * *

It was three days later when Alex hurried out of his office. If his mind hadn’t been racing six blocks ahead, and at the same time trying to come up with a reasonable excuse to lock his daughter away in a safe place for roughly the next forty years, he probably wouldn’t have tripped over the pair of size-five combat boots.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry as—”

“Watch it, Hightower!”

“Do I know you?” The woman had been kneeling—actually, she’d been crawling out from under the massive magnolia that overhung the walkway, feet first. Feet and butt first. Feet and coverall-clad, shapely, sweetly rounded butt first.

“Devil?” he said, disbelievingly. “Devil Wydowski? Great Scott, I was thinking about you just the other day, wondering where Gus was now.”

Reluctantly Angeline rose to her full five feet two inches, dusted the knees of her coveralls—not even her designer jeans! Wouldn’t you just know she would be hot and sweaty and wearing her oldest pair of coveralls the day she finally, actually, came face-to-face with the man who had broken her heart nearly twenty years ago?

“Root bound,” she growled, her thin skin glowing like a stoplight.

“He’s bound for where?”

“Not Gus, the magnolia.” God, he was gorgeous! He didn’t possess a single perfect feature—unless it was those dark, clear gray eyes that could look right through a woman’s skin and see the lust in her heart.

“Angel, I—”

A car slid into a no-parking zone a few yards away, behind a van with a sign that said Perkins Landscaping & Nursery. The passenger side door swung open, a glowering teenager wearing too much eyeshadow and a miniskirt that was barely decent lurched out, and the car pulled away.

Alex swore silently, angry at being put on the defensive again. He’d been on his way to collect her, with every intention of collaring someone in authority and demanding to know how the counselors in what was supposed to be the best school in town dealt with adolescent females who didn’t want to be dealt with.

“Sandy, I was on my way to pick you up, if you’d just—”

“Just been patient. Yeah, yeah, I know. I was patient until I got sick to my stomach, okay? So when Mrs. Toad said she’d drop me off at your office, I figured I’d save you the trouble.”

“Mrs. Todd,” he corrected automatically. “You know I never mind—ah, what’s the use? Angel, this is my daughter, Alexandra. Sandy, Miss Wydowski. You’ve heard me speak of Gus Wydowski?”

“Nope.”

“It’s Perkins now,” Angel said coolly, as if daring him to make something of it.

“Oh. The van?”

“Mine.”

So she was married now. Little Angel-Devil Wydowski. What kind of man would take on that challenge, he wondered in slightly distracted amusement. One glance at her small, square hands revealed nothing more than a layer of dirt and a nice set of calluses. No rings. Evidently gardeners didn’t wear jewelry while they worked.

“You haven’t changed,” he murmured, feeling the need to say something. She hadn’t, not really. While her hair might have darkened somewhat from the flaming orange he remembered, her wide open smile hadn’t changed a bit. It was almost impossible not to smile back, and the last thing Alex felt like doing at the moment was smiling.

Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt like smiling. Another thing that seemed to have withered with age was his sense of humor.

“Pleasetameecha,” Sandy said, looking curiously from the woman in the pool-table green coveralls to her father and back again. Sandy towered a good eight lanky inches above the diminutive redhead, Alex a full foot. Watching the color fluctuate in Angel’s thin skin, Alex felt for no reason at all as if the sun had suddenly come out after a season of rain.

“Yeah. Me, too.” Angel upped the wattage of her smile, extended her hand, grimaced and withdrew it. After wiping it on the seat of her pants, she tried again. “Real neat earring. Did you get it at that new place in Chapel Hill?”

“On Franklin Street? Yeah, it’s cool, isn’t it?”

Alex looked from one to the other as they exchanged information about where to find the coolest, the baddest, and the cheapest good stuff, totally mystified by the inner workings of the female mind.

But then, what else was new?

* * *

Angel had just locked up for the night and was looking forward to a long, hot soak, an entire kielbasa pizza with polski wyrobs, onions and feta cheese, all to herself, plus the first of the new books that had come in the mail just that day.

Plain brown wrapper stuff.

Her favorite reading.

Romances.

At thirty-four, Angel had endured a few too many snide looks from size-zilch bookstore clerks half her age, who were barely literate enough to punch the buttons on a cash register, whenever she plopped down her stack of favorite authors on the counter. One look at her utilitarian-style body, her unmanageable hair and her generic-type face, and they figured her only shot at romance had to come from between the covers of a book.

It was nobody’s business that she had been in lust twice and actually married for almost a year, all of which had nothing to do with the fact that she’d been in love practically all her life with that blasted Prince Charming her brother had taken up with the year she’d turned thirteen.

Thirteen-year-old girls don’t fall in love?

Ha! This one had.

Not that she’d ever told him. Him or anyone else. But what was even worse than watching him from a distance over the years as he married that stuck-up twit with the finishing school accent and slowly turned into a stuffed shirt, was the fact that throughout the entire course of her own less than illustrious love life, she had never quite managed to get over the jerk.

She knew about his divorce. Not the reason, but the fact that it had happened. She knew about his daughter, and the fact that he had complete custody of her. Around these parts, when a legend like Alex Hightower III even changed barbers, it was fodder for the gossips.

She also knew he’d gradually dropped all his old buddies. Gus hadn’t heard from him in ages. Not that she’d come right out and asked—she had too much pride for that—but there were ways of finding out these things.

It was disgusting. It was a blooming disgrace, the way that man affected her metabolism! And it wasn’t his precious pedigree she’d fallen for, either. Both the Reillys, her mother’s people, and the Wydowskis went all the way back to Adam and Eve. How much farther could a Hightower go?

Nor was it his money. She’d been stiffed by too many in his tax bracket, both waitressing her way through school and more recently, in the landscaping business.

She just wished she could figure it out. Wished even more that she could come up with a cure. Over the years since she’d first been bitten by the Alex-bug, during several minor crushes, including a brief affair with another member of the country club set, who had relieved her of her virginity and then had the gall to laugh when she’d naively expected a commitment from him—even throughout her brief marriage to Cal Perkins—Angel had never quite managed to forget Alex Hightower.

She knew very well—she had always known—that she was beer and he was champagne, and beer suited her just fine, it really did. It was just that she had this crazy addiction. No matter how long she went without a fix, she could never forget what it was she’d been addicted to.

She should have moved to California. Or maybe Australia. Living in the same town, she’d been forced to watch from the sidelines as the years passed. As her own brief marriage to a man who was too handsome to be true—quite literally—had crashed and burned. Watched from a distance, once she’d pushed her own pain into the background, as all the old joy, all the old sweet, wholesome sexiness that had been so much a part of the Alex Hightower she had once known, had slowly withered away.

Oh, yes, she’d seen him, all right. Only he hadn’t seen her for the landscape, which she was usually a part of. At least she had been ever since Cal, her too-good-to-be-true husband, had run off with a bar waitress and wrapped his pickup truck around a scalybark hickory south of town.

Which was when she’d become owner, along with the bank, of a small, marginally successful landscape nursery north of town.

Somehow the business survived her early incompetence. Friends had helped. Gus had helped. He’d fenced in the whole area, put in an alarm system, which she usually forgot to set, modernized her tiny office, and then he’d taken a crew and headed for the coast, where he had a contract to build three cottages, leaving her to sink or swim on her own.

Having been born with neither a life raft nor a silver spoon anywhere on her person, Angel had known what she had to do, and she’d set about doing it. The area north of town, where her place was located, was in the process of being rezoned and developed. Less than a month after his father had died, Cal had started talking about selling out the family business and moving to California.

They had never gotten around to it, which was probably a good thing, because after Cal was killed, Angel had desperately needed something solid to hang on to. Even now, seldom a month went past without an inquiry from some real estate agent or developer.

It wasn’t the changing zoning that was the threat. Small farms like hers were grandfathered in. But all the developing that was going on, that was another matter. Actually, it was both good and bad. Good business. Bad taxes.

Which made it only sensible that she refocus her meager advertising budget and go after business in the more affluent sections of town, one of which just happened to be the Hope Valley, Forest Hills area.

Was it her fault if that also happened to be the area where Alex’s home and office were located? Was it her fault that occasionally she happened to catch a glimpse of him driving by in that well-bred car of his that probably cost more than she grossed in a year?

Actually, it really wasn’t her fault. She’d been advised by someone at the bank, acting strictly in an unofficial capacity, that if she wanted to succeed in business, she had to follow the money. And the money was definitely not in her particular neighborhood. At least not enough of it to pay her ever-increasing property taxes.

Which was why, over the years she’d been treated to several glimpses of Alex on horseback, where the bridle trail meandered close to one of the streets she used regularly as a shortcut. Angel’s knowledge of riding was strictly limited. She did know, however, that on that big gray monster of a horse, Alex looked nothing at all like the grizzled cowboys she’d seen on “Lonesome Dove.” For one thing, she couldn’t picture any one of them wearing shining armor and carrying a lance. Alex easily filled the bill.

But then, he always had.

Even in tennis shorts. Back when she’d first met him, she sometimes tagged along to watch him play just so she could admire his legs and his trim behind, which she would have died if anyone had ever caught her doing.

It hadn’t taken much in those days to fuel months of daydreams.

Unfortunately, it still didn’t. Talk about a case of arrested development!

“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.”

“Fine with me,” he said mildly. Last week it was the record shop at the mall. The week before that, she was planning to look for a job at a riding stable. At least she’d given up on the airline thing. “By the way, I won’t be in for dinner tonight, but I won’t be out late, either, if you want to talk after you finish your homework.”

She looked hurt. He didn’t want to see it. “If I want to talk, I’ll call Angel. At least she treats me like an adult, which is more than I can say about some people.”

Pond scum. That about said it all.

* * *

Before they even ordered dinner, Alex knew the evening was going to be a bummer. Carol had made several pointed remarks about friends whose daughters went off to school and how well it turned out for all concerned.

“I’d be the first to admit I lose patience sometimes—whoever said raising a daughter alone was easy, obviously never had tried it—but I’d miss her too much, Carol. She’s all I’ve got left.” He attempted a smile, but it failed for lack of conviction. “I guess it comes of being an only child of an only child. We only children have special obligations. We have to be there for each other, whether or not it’s always convenient.”

“Nonsense! Darling, Sandy has plenty of friends. No girl her age wants a father always hanging around, cramping her style.”

“Maybe her style needs a bit of cramping.”

“And maybe she just needs to be with kids her own age. It’s not as though you’re some doddering old relict, gathering his family around him for support in his waning years. You’re young, healthy, virile—and certainly more than able to take on additional responsibility.”

“Additional responsibility?”

“You could even have a second family.”

“Not if I want to stay sane.”

“That’s what boarding schools are for. Did it ever occur to you, darling, that Sandy would adore having a baby sister or brother? It would give her something to do with her evenings besides hanging around boys.”

A waiter appeared at his side, and Alex ordered the broiled chicken for Carol and braised calf’s liver for himself. Maybe he needed more iron in his diet. God knows, he needed something he wasn’t get-ting.

“Things are different now than when we were kids, Carol. These days, girls Sandy’s age are exposed to a lot of new dangers. I want her to know—especially after Dina—” He shrugged. “At any rate, she needs to know she comes first with me. I’m not sure taking on a second family would be the thing to do.”

“Oh, but the experts all say—”

“Any dozen experts will say at least a dozen different things. Experts are like statistics. You can always find a few to back most any crackbrained theory you want to propose. The trouble comes when you put theory to the test and find out it’s full of holes. I guess I’ll just have to blunder along the best way I can and hope for the best.” Leaning back, he crossed his arms casually over his chest, hoping she would take the hint.

Subject closed.

“Now...shall I order us another bottle of wine?”

* * *

Later that evening, Alex told himself that he owed Angel a call. Owed her an apology, too, only he wasn’t entirely sure which offense to apologize for first. Cutting off her attempt to help with Sandy, or lusting after her delectable little body.

The truth was, he suspected it was more than her body he lusted after. She made him smile. She made him want to laugh. She made him feel young again.

Which was why he decided not to call her. Not to expose himself to danger. He had enough to deal with without waking any sleeping dragons.

Three

Having recently studied every new line, every slightest hint of aging on Alex’s face, Angel now examined her brother with the same squinty-eyed concentration. “Ah-ha! Six more gray hairs,” she pronounced with grim satisfaction. Why was it that men improved with age, while women only aged?

While he would never be called classically handsome, with his wicked blue eyes and his full black beard, Gus looked like the pirate hero on the cover of one of her new paperback romances. He had aged remarkably well.

So had Alex, dammit.

There was a lot to be said for aristocratic bone structure, she concluded dismally. So far as the naked eye could discern, she didn’t even possess any bone structure.

“What happened, did you fall on your head?” She indicated a scar that snaked into the edge of his unruly hair, diagonally up from the one she happened to know was hidden by his beard.

“Two-by-four. Guy didn’t signal his turn in time. Hey, Angel, what’s with the blinking lights? Does that happen often?”

“No more than once or twice a week. Want a bagel with your coffee?”

“Hmm. I should’ve checked out the wiring last time I was here. A bagel? Yeah, sure, hon. Remind me to get my meter out of the truck when I bring in my bag, will you?”

Angel poured coffee, set out a crock of cheese and a half-dozen fresh bagels. She’d been working like a Trojan all day. Gus had pulled in just before dark, looking gaunt and tired, but when she’d offered to cook him a meal, he’d said he wasn’t hungry.

The day Gus Wydowski wasn’t hungry was the day they laid him out in the front parlor with a lily in his fist. Something was bothering him, and it was her duty as his only relative east of the Mississippi to drag it out of him.

She decided on the indirect route. She wasn’t very good at it, but one didn’t butt heads with Gus Wydowski and come out the winner. “Guess who I saw twice last week?” she mentioned casually as she slathered cheese on half a bagel and handed it across the table. “Hightower. And I met his daughter, too, and she’s something else. Blond, gray eyed, tall—she looks like Dina, but she’s a lot more interesting, even at fourteen.”

Gus had been in love with Dina. They’d never spoken of it, and Angel didn’t think Alex had ever guessed, but she’d known practically from the first. If she hadn’t already hated the woman for stealing Alex, she would have hated her for that. Dina ex-Hightower was a gold-plated bitch, even if she was a countess or duchess or whatever in some two-bit kingdom nobody’d ever heard of.

Poor Gus, he’d stood up with Alex at the wedding, and then headed for the hills, seven months short of graduation. He never had gone back for his degree.

“Great. So how’s Alex?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued. “You know, I’ve got a job lined up at the beach, kid. Probably take until November to get it under cover. Why not take a break and come on down for a week or so?”

“Aren’t you even curious?”

Gus reached for another bagel, smeared it with cheese and then got up and rummaged around in her refrigerator for something sweet to spread on top of that. “Curious?”

“About Alex. How he’s doing and all. You two haven’t seen each other in years, and you used to be close as two nuts in a hull. Make that three, counting Kurt.”

“So? I’ve been busy. Have you got any lime marmalade?”

She took a jar out of the pantry, opened it and handed it over. “Your teeth are going to rot out. You know, if Alex were my best friend, and I hadn’t seen him in—”

“All right, already! Lay off, will you?”

“Dina’s history, Gus. I doubt if Sandy even remembers much about her. Sandy’s their daughter, did I tell you? She’s about the same age now that I was when—”

“Yeah, I know. The same age you were when you embarrassed the hell out of me by coming on to Alex.”

Angel slammed her cheesy knife down onto the yellow enameled table. “I did not! I never in my life came on to any man—at least, not to Alex!”

Gus grinned, and even his sister was forced to admit that the years had not diminished his old appeal. He and Alex were as different as day and night—yet no woman alive could fail to appreciate either one of them. Singly or together, they were enough to drive a woman up a wall.

Gus piled on marmalade with the skill and precision of a master craftsman. “So...you’ve still got a thing for old Lex, huh?”

“Sure, like I still have a thing for poison ivy.”

“Why not just scratch and be done with it?”

“What, the poison ivy?”

“No, witchlette—Alex. He’s free. You’re free. Why not give it a go? The worst that could happen would be that he’d turn you down and you could finally mark him off your wish list.”

“You mean the best that could happen! The worst would be if he took one look and started laughing like a hyena.” Angel flung herself up from the table and stalked over to the kitchen sink just as the lights blinked again. “Fine brother you turned out to be,” she grumbled. “For your information, Alex’s seeing this woman named Carol Something-or-other. You probably knew her—she’s part of that country club set. Anyway, poor Sandy’s scared out of her gourd he’s going to marry her. She says this Carol person keeps sending her information about boarding schools and dropping heavy hints about how much fun it is to live in a dorm with girls her own age and date boys from all the best prep schools.”

“For a kid you just met, you two sure got down to cases in a hurry.”

Angel shrugged. “So we happened to hit it off. Maybe because Sandy knows I’m no threat to her in that respect. She did say, though, that the day Alex marries this Carol person is the day she’s out of there.” She ran a sink full of sudsy water and plopped in her breakfast dishes, her lunch dishes, and the accumulation from last night’s snacks. “I don’t think she’s planning on moving into the palace with Dina, either. There’s this boy she knows who drives a Vette? From her description, my guess is he’s a perfect candidate for your old 3-H Club.”

Gus grinned, his teeth startlingly white in his dark, bearded face. “Oh-oh. Maybe I’d better give Hightower a call and offer him a little moral support.”

“I think you should. Gus...what’s worrying you?” So much for the subtle approach.

He slanted her a wary look. “Nothing’s worrying me, kid. I’ve got more business than I can handle, but I can handle that.”

Angel knew a stone wall when she ran into one. He’d tell her in his own sweet time. If he told her at all. Gus was a very private man. “You’re not fooling me, you know. You’ve got that squinty look around your eyes you used to get when you were worried about a game or a test or Daddy’s finding out you’d been drinking.”

His eyes were the same color as her own, only hers were several shades darker. “Just remember, I’m always here if you want to talk.”

Passing by on his way to the telephone, Gus grabbed her in a bear hug, lifting her off the floor. “Know something, witchlette? You turned out pretty good for a smart-mouthed kid who took to trouble like a duck takes to water.”

* * *

Alex had just finished filling Sandy in on Gus Wydowski when the door chimes sounded. He’d been advised by his CEO, who had two kids in college and another one in high school, that treating them as adults sometimes produced surprising results. He figured it was worth a try.

Expecting Gus, he swung open the door and found Carol. She was holding out a bouquet of pink roses in one hand and a bottle of his favorite wine in the other.

“Surprise,” she crowed softly, leaning forward to kiss the air beside his cheek. “Well, aren’t you going to invite me in, darling?”

“Sure, come on in. Uh—did I slip up and forget something?” Alex closed the front door, mentally flipping through his engagement calendar. It was going on eight, and he could have sworn they hadn’t made a date for tonight, but he’d had a lot on his mind lately.

“I’ve been in Raleigh all day—did I tell you I’m sitting for my portrait? That’s where the roses came from—I’m holding them in my pose, wearing white silk brocade with Mother’s sable cape over one shoulder. Anyway, I thought as long as I was passing so close, I’d stop in and see if you wanted to go to the club dance next weekend. Oh, hi, Sandy. Are we all finished with our homework?”

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