Angels Don't Cry

Two

Ann stood on her front porch, letting the night surround her like a soft, velvet cocoon. She’d been home from the meeting for over an hour, but had only gone inside long enough to dispense with her shoes and stockings. Out here, with the cool breeze from the river gliding along her bare arms and legs, the evening was like a fragrant balm.

Down by the river the crickets and bullfrogs had begun their evening serenade. The leaves rustled overhead, sounding like rain, and the scent of roses and honeysuckle carried on the wind as heady and maddening as a drug. Ann rested her head against a wooden support, blinking back a mist of unfamiliar tears at the memories the summer night whispered to her. Warm, starry evenings, the sliding shimmer of the river, and she and Drew swimming in the moonlight...

Somewhere in the distance a car engine sounded on the highway. Ann waited for it to bypass the turnoff to the farm, but it didn’t. Instead she watched the headlights bouncing down the gravel road toward her. She watched as the beautiful, gleaming car came around the last bend in the lane and stopped at the end of the driveway. She watched as the driver got out of the car and came slowly across the yard toward her.

Only then did she realize she’d been holding her breath. She let it out with an almost painful swoosh.

Drew stopped at the steps, one foot poised on the bottom stair as he met her eyes in the moonlight. The pale, silvery light cast an ethereal glow between them, making the moment seem even more unreal, like a dream. Then a ghost of a smile touched his lips, and Ann’s heart slowly contracted.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. There was a strange catch to her voice that disturbed her. She tried to swallow it away as she continued to hold Drew’s gaze.

“I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the meeting. I wanted to come out here and explain my situation to you.”

“There’s no need. You made it perfectly clear,” Ann said, forcing a calmness into her tone she was far from feeling. “And I’ll try to make mine just as clear. If you’ve come out here to make me an offer, you’re wasting your time.”

His smile twisted wryly. “So I’ve heard.” He paused briefly, climbing up another step or two so that eyes were on an even level. Ann moved back a step. Drew stopped. For a moment he stood there looking at her, his heart pounding at her nearness. She leaned her back against the porch post as she faced him defiantly, but with her bare feet and legs, her hair wisping about her face, she looked touchingly vulnerable and young, so incredibly sweet—and to him, at least, so very unreachable.

Keep it light, he advised himself sternly. She was like a wild, skittish colt. One false move on his part, and she would be gone, lost. “That was quite a cheering section you had back there. I hadn’t realized until tonight you were leading the opposition.”

“I’m not,” she denied. “I mean, I’m not a member of the Historical Society or any other group. But as a council member, I have to listen to the needs and desires of all the citizens, and there are a lot of people around here who don’t want this project going through.”

“But a lot of people do,” he insisted. “And as a council member, you have to be willing to listen to both sides, right?”

“Who says I’m not?” she challenged, lifting her chin a notch. “Riverside’s done a lot of talking in the past few months, and I haven’t liked much of what I’ve heard. What you’re proposing will change the whole complexion of the town, turn it into some sort of riverside resort with a bunch of overpriced homes sitting on so many undersized lots. Crossfield is a small town, Drew. Personally, I’d like to see it stay that way.”

“Everybody’s entitled to his or her opinion,” Drew said without rancor. “All I ask is that I be given a chance to try and change it.”

Ann bristled indignantly. “I doubt you can do that.”

He smiled, his voice intimately low and persuasive. “All I ask is a fair chance.” He emphasized the word fair.

“Is that why you came all the way out here tonight?” Ann asked coolly. “To make sure I wouldn’t sabotage your project on personal bias?”

Drew shrugged. “Partly. And partly because I wanted to see you, talk to you, maybe make it a little easier on both of us when we meet up from now on. And we will be meeting, often. Circumstances have thrown us together, and everyone’s going to be watching us, pouncing on any animosity between us to feed their curiosity.”

“Are you saying you’re worried about gossip?” Ann asked incredulously. “As I recall, you never cared one way or the other what people said or thought.”

“That’s not altogether true,” he objected, his words falling like rose petals on the sultry night air. “I always valued your opinion, Angel.”

No one but Drew had ever been able to make her childish name sound so seductive. The intimacy of it now tore at Ann’s heart. The years faded away and he was once again Drew, her first love, the boy next door who could wrap her around his little finger with just a smile or a touch or the whisper of her name. Regret spilled through her, but it was only a dim reflection of the pain and bitterness and disillusionment she had once suffered because of this man.

She let her eyes meet Drew’s once more as she folded her arms in front of her, forcing herself to remain calm and undaunted beneath the power of his devastating blue gaze. “No one calls me Angel anymore. At least not to my face.”

“Sorry. Old habits, as they say, die hard.” He mounted the rest of the steps, coming to stand beside her so that she was forced to look up at him. “I’d heard you’d changed your name sometime ago.”

From Aiden, of course, Ann thought with a prick of an emotion she did not care to identify.

“In fact, it’s now Dr. Lowell, I believe.”

She heard the light, almost teasing quality in his voice and found herself responding in spite of her resolve. A grudging smile touched her lips. “Since you’re not one of my students, Ann will do.” She paused, then added, almost accusingly, “We’ve certainly heard great things about your career. Vice president, isn’t it?”

Drew gave a low, ironic laugh. “One of several. Empty titles to feed our egos rather than our bank balances.”

His self-deprecating humor somehow managed to cut through the tension. Ann felt her taut muscles slowly begin to relax as she allowed herself to respond to Drew’s smile.

A furtive movement in the garden below captured their attention. Ann could just make out the dark outline of her three-legged cat as he crouched at the edge of a flowerbed, eyes glowing in the darkness. He pounced at some poor, unfortunate creature in the grass, one gray paw whipping out like a hook. With a loud meow of protest, he disappeared into the foliage, stalking.

“One of your infamous strays, no doubt,” Drew teased warmly.

Ann nodded. “I found him out on the highway a few months ago where he had been hit by a car and left to die. Dr. Matlock patched him up as best he could, but there wasn’t anything he could do about his leg. He manages just fine with the three he has left, though,” she remarked proudly. “Watson’s very curious, always prowling around, poking in corners. And he’s smart as a whip.”

“Then why not Sherlock?” Drew asked with an easy laugh. “You always did find heroes in the most unlikely guises.”

The sound of his laughter touched something deep inside her, something she tried to deny but couldn’t. His laughter still had the power to set her stomach quivering, her hands to trembling. It still had the power to break through all the barriers she had so carefully erected. “Not anymore,” she said in a tone that held the faintest trace of resentment. “I gave up looking for heroes a long time ago.”

The momentary break in tension fled at her words. She noted the slight stiffening of his posture that acknowledged the same thought.

“Ang—Ann, I was sorry to hear about your father. And Aiden.” He paused for a moment. “I wanted to talk to you at her service, but there were a lot of people around you...I didn’t want to intrude.”

Her soft green eyes impaled him with a piercing glance. “I was surprised to hear you were there at all.”

He shrugged uneasily, his voice slightly defensive. “A lot of people were, I imagine. It seemed to me the decent thing to do.”

“Yes. As I recall, you were always big on doing the decent thing—at least where Aiden was concerned.”

Ann felt a small prickle of remorse as she watched a brief frown crease Drew’s forehead at her bitter words. Her response had been automatic, prompted by emotions in herself that were all too easy to identify. When someone had first told her that Drew had been at the service, Ann’s heart had almost hit the floor. For a brief terrible moment, even in her grief, she’d felt the threat of an old jealousy. Then there had been the inevitable and almost instantaneous feeling of guilt. Those same two emotions had warred inside her for ten long years.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “That was uncalled for.”

“You’ve every right,” Drew acknowledged. But something flashed in those blue depths, something dark and unfathomable, leaving Ann wondering about the hardened look in his eyes.

Her earlier impression of him had been wrong, she realized suddenly. He had changed. A great deal. Even in the moonlight, she could see the lines around his mouth and eyes were far more deeply etched than she had first judged. It would have been a kindness to call them laugh lines when Ann somehow knew they weren’t. They gave him a visage far more mature than his thirty years.

“That was all a long time ago,” she said softly, reminding herself as well as him. It had been a long time ago. The years had slipped away and taken their youth. They had each lived their lives and time hadn’t stopped for either of them. “Why are you really here, Drew? What do you want from me?”

His eyes raked her face, then looked away. She wondered suddenly and unpleasantly in the silence that followed whether he’d found the changes in her own face as disturbing as she’d found those in his.

What did he expect? she thought bitterly. Ten years wrought changes in everyone. So did pain and disillusionment and anger.

“I want your goodwill, Ann,” he said at last. “No matter what the outcome of the Riverside project turns out to be. This may sound strange to you, but I’d like to establish some sort of—I don’t know—peace between us. I want to put the past to rest once and for all.”

Ann plucked a chandelier of honeysuckle from the trellis beside her and spun the blossom beneath her nose like a tiny pinwheel. She closed her eyes as the thick, haunting scent triggered a thousand memories. Abruptly her eyes opened. “You’re a little late to be asking for my goodwill.”

He fixed her with a long, searching gaze. “It’s been ten years, Ann. I can’t believe you still hate me that much.”

“You flatter yourself. Hate is a powerful emotion. I don’t feel anything for you anymore.”

“Is that why you ran away from me earlier? You ran away from me a long time ago, and you’re doing it still. What are you afraid of?”

She gaped at him in open-mouthed indignation. “I’m certainly not afraid of you!” she snapped in sudden anger.

“Then why did you leave like that?” he asked softly. “Why did you leave without telling me where you were going, without even saying goodbye?”

For a moment she thought he was still talking about her leaving the meeting, but when she realized he was referring to the past, her gaze sliced him with scorn. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that. You, of all people, know exactly why I left, why I had to.”

“You didn’t have to,” Drew argued reasonably, as though the discussion was no more important than idle dinner conversation. “You could have stayed and given me a chance to work something out.”

Her laughter had a bitter, hollow ring to it that had them both blanching. “You got married, remember? You had a child on the way. What could we possibly have `worked out’?”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

She merely stared at him, crushing the honeysuckle blossom tightly in her fist. Abruptly turning away from him, she threw it, lifeless, to the ground.

“It was only one night.” Drew’s voice had grown quietly insistent, as though he meant to have his say whether she wanted to hear him or not. “I made a terrible mistake, but you would never let me explain. You wouldn’t even try to understand.”

Ann whirled around, her cheeks burning with indignation, her eyes glittering like green embers. “What was there to understand, for God’s sake? You betrayed me!”

“And you sure as hell didn’t take long to get over it, did you?” Drew blazed, his temper quick and explosive, as though anger had been simmering all along, just beneath the surface.

Ann stared at him in speechless outrage. That he could presume to know what she had endured! The pain, the loneliness, the sheer hell. She rallied her anger, not bothering to confirm or deny his allegation.

“How dare you say that to me?” Her voice shook with the unleashed emotion of a decade as she clenched her hands into white fists of fury.

“Truth hurts, does it?” Drew taunted cruelly. “I’ve had to face ten long damned years of truth, Angel. You ran away without a word and it took you, what?—all of six months to find a replacement—”

In the strained silence that fell between them the slap resounded like a tree that had been split by lightning. Ann saw the glaring red on the left side of Drew’s face, saw the blue of his eyes darken to a deep and dangerous indigo. She took a faltering step backward.

“Get out of here!” The words were more forceful this time, but she had to turn away, had to put a hand to her lips to quell the trembling.

She felt rather than saw Drew stride angrily down the steps and across the yard. She looked up to see him at his car, his hand poised over the handle. He was looking back at her, but the darkness cloaked his expression.

“Just tell me one thing,” he demanded coldly. “Why is it you could forgive Aiden, but you could never forgive me?”

At the sound of his car door slamming, Ann collapsed weakly onto the porch swing, telling herself it was all over now. She could relax. She was safe here in her little world. She could hear the crickets chirping, could feel the soft, night air against her flushed face as it stirred the wayward tendrils of hair at her nape and temples. Everything was as it should be. She could forget Drew Maitland.

But almost like a warning, his car engine leaped to life, intruding into her private domain. He gunned the motor unnecessarily as he turned the powerful car, and with a sputter of gravel, roared down the narrow lane at a furious clip. His brake lights flashed momentarily as he approached the highway, and then he was gone into the night.

Ann tried to muster up the relief she knew she should be feeling but she was too numb, too dazed. Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment.

Her first instinct on seeing him walk across the yard toward her, even after everything that had happened between them, had been to run down the steps and throw herself into his arms, to cling to the protective shelter she’d once found there.

And what a horribly embarrassing mistake that would have been. The man she’d once loved was gone from her forever. He’d made his choice a long time ago, and she’d had to learn to live with it. At least she thought she had until the moment their eyes had first met after the long years between them...

“Oh, God,” she whispered raggedly, opening her eyes, seeing the comforting surroundings of her porch waver into focus. With trembling hands, she pushed back a tangled wisp of red hair from her forehead.

Why hadn’t she been enough? How many times in the past ten years had she asked herself that question? How many times had she provided herself with the same brutal answer?

Because Aiden had been more. Aiden, her twin sister who had had the same looks as Ann, but with the personality and confidence to use them. Aiden, who had never been afraid to go after what she wanted, and she’d wanted Drew.

Drew had wanted Aiden, too, Ann reminded herself relentlessly. He’d wanted her enough to make love to her. He’d wanted her enough to marry her, to stay married to her even after Aiden had lost the baby. For three long years, he’d stayed with her. And then Aiden had wanted out.

For the next seven years, with both he and Ann free and clear, Drew hadn’t so much as called her. In many ways that was the deepest hurt of all, the hardest to forgive. For years she’d kept her life on hold, wishing and waiting for Drew Maitland to come back to her.

Those long, empty years were like dust in her throat now.

Ann held her hands out in front of her. They were still trembling. She squeezed them together, trying to stop the shaking, trying to block the torrent of memories flooding over her, drowning her, pulling her back to a place she did not want to go....

* * *

“Happy birthday, Angel.”

“Oh, Drew, look! A shooting star. Do you suppose that was meant just for me, so I can have another wish?” Perched on the top rail of the fence, her face lifted to the star-studded sky, Angel felt the slow drift of the river breeze skimming across her skin. Drew stood on the ground facing her, his arms wrapped securely about her waist.

She felt the smooth caress of his hand along her back as he smiled up at her. “Of course. Angels take care of their own, don’t they?”

She bent down suddenly, touching her lips to his. He responded immediately, tightening his arms around her, deepening the kiss with his tongue. Angel let herself enjoy the sensations rippling through her body for a moment longer before she pulled back. Drew sighed heavily as he lay his head against her chest. Her fingers trailed softly through the thick strands of his hair.

“I missed you so.” He breathed the words against her neck as his lips found her rapidly beating pulse. “I was miserable without you.”

She smiled as she kissed his hair. “You can’t live with me and you can’t live without me.”

“Only half that’s true.”

“Which half?” Angel teased lightly.