Do Not Disturb (16 page)

She'd be relieved as all get out if he still wasn't lying
flat on the sand, his heart beating like that kettledrum beneath her palm. She shoved her other hand under her sweatshirt and laid it against her own heart, to see what a beat
should
feel like.

Like a kettledrum.
Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam.

His breath continued to rush against her cheek, fast breaths that mirrored her own. She was a bit panicked now, yeah, but they'd been just as speedy when Cooper had been kissing her, touching her.

She slowly sat up, leaving her hand against his chest. “How do you feel now?”

“Less anxious. But about the same.”

Her eyes narrowed. His color was good. He was talking just fine. “The doctor says you're cured?”

“
Cured
isn't the word, I don't think.” He inhaled a slow, careful breath. “But there wasn't anything obviously wrong when I was in his office last month.”

Angel had a fiftyish, casual gym friend whose husband had had a heart attack the year before. It was amazing the kind of things you'd tell a near stranger on the neighboring Stairmaster. Something about the mingled sweat drops on the floor, maybe.

Remembering some of their conversations gave Angel an idea.

She stroked his chest again. “How are you now?”

“Maybe a little better.”

Casually, she slid her palm downward. The heel of her hand brushed the waistband of his jeans and his belly muscles twitched.

“Jesus, Angel.” He grabbed her wrist.

“Sorry.” She gently pulled from his grasp and returned her hand to its place over his heart. Oh yeah.
Just an almost-sexual touch and the beat had sped up again.

“I think I know what's wrong.” Angel took his closest hand in her free one and slid it under her sweatshirt.

She pressed his palm between her bare breasts, and then, holding it there, bent over to kiss Cooper gently, slowly, and very deliberately. She kissed through his momentary resistance and then let him really have it. Still gently, but wet and thorough. Plenty of tongue.

When she straightened, they were both panting.

“Breathless?” she asked. “I am.”

His eyes widened, his heartbeat still pounding against her palm.

“Feel my heart?” Under her shirt, she pressed her hand against the top of his. “I think it's going faster, even harder than yours.”

“You're not serious….”

“Serious as a heart attack.” Angel smiled a little, then slid her hand from his chest to cup his cheek. “It's arousal, my friend. Lust. Desire. Nothing more dangerous than that.”

Cooper gawked at her, as an embarrassed flush rushed over his face.

Her gym buddy's husband had been terrified to make love. Every time he got hot and bothered, his natural physical responses had scared him silly. He'd been convinced they would bring on a second heart attack. It was a very common problem, her friend had said, but it had taken her husband months to get past his anxiety.

“You haven't had sex recently, right? Not since the heart attack.”

The color deepened on his face. “I don't want to talk about it.” In one quick move he slid his hand from her skin and sat up.

She looked at his rigidly set profile and wished she could make this easier for him. Curling her fingers into a fist, she lightly punched his shoulder. “Hey, would it make you feel any better if I admit that my sheets have been pretty cool recently too?”

When he still didn't answer, she tried to think of exactly how long he'd been missing from San Francisco. Ten months, maybe more?

“For goodness' sake,” she said, still trying to work him past his obvious chagrin. “I was willing to save your life. Share my spit with you doing CPR. Can't we talk?”

He sent her a sidelong look. “You were sharing spit with me
before
I fell onto the sand, clutching my heart.”

“I know! You owe me something for that. I thought I'd killed you with my kiss!” She punched him again. “For goodness' sake. This is me, Angel, the woman you're most likely never to see again. We can get past this, can't we?”

Though it was obvious
he
was the one who wanted to be left alone now, she couldn't walk away. This shouldn't be their last memory of each other—Cooper feeling embarrassed and Angel feeling…whatever it was.

“Fine.” He turned his head, pinned her with his gaze that was darker and deeper thanks to the now-dusk. “You're right. I haven't had sex since the heart attacks and surgery. I haven't had sex in twenty months, sixteen days, and, oh, approximately three hours and forty-one minutes.”

It was nearly night, but Cooper could see Angel's eyes round. “Three hours and forty-one minutes?” she echoed. “You know it down to the minute?”

He put on a show of looking at his watch. “And fifty seconds.”

She shook her head. “You made that part up.”

“I made that part up,” he agreed.

“Why?”

“To
shut
you up.”

He heard her huffy sigh, and under other circumstances he'd have laughed. But hell, how humiliating was this? God, he just wanted to sit here all alone and feel like an ass in peace.

“So, um…” she ventured after half a breath of quiet. “How long ago was your surgery?”

He jerked a shoulder. “Twelve months, nearly thirteen.”

She went silent. Only temporarily. “But you said twenty—”

“Damn it, can't you let anything go?” he snapped. “I had a big case before that. I didn't have a free moment for wining and dining.” And screwing. At the time, the dry spell hadn't bothered him. When he'd made it to bed, if he'd made it to bed, he'd been desperate for sleep.

“Okay, okay,” Angel said. “I'm sorry if I've embarrassed you.”

“Yeah, well I'm sorry that I put you through that…that…” Words failed him, so he jerked his shoulder again. “Now that we've exchanged apologies, go away.”

“You're angry.”

At God, at the world, at the way his body had betrayed him a year ago, at himself for being so stupid as to abuse it in the first place. At how foolish he must have looked to Angel a few minutes ago, stretched out on the sand.

“Not at you. Now please, go away.”

She only shook her head again, damn her, sending a waft of perfume his way. Hell, why was she here to plague him now? If fate wanted to throw them together, then why not years ago? Why not at Stinko's or Doc's? He could picture it, he could picture coming up behind Angel in line at some San Francisco fast-food joint. That perfume of hers would have instantly snagged his attention, and then he would have noted all that floaty hair and her slender, curvy body.

Maybe he would have struck up a conversation, if he wasn't in a hurry or preoccupied by a case, that is. Maybe he would have parlayed talk into a date for
drinks. Then later that week he would have been standing at some bar or other and Angel would have walked in, wearing a pair of those high heels she favored and a smile just for him. What might have happened then?

Of course, it could have gone a different way. He might have hurried up to that line in his usual rush, his brain racing through the details of his next court appearance. Her perfume would have diverted him long enough to give her the once-over, to silently whistle at another of nature's miraculous spins on femininity, but then her turn would have come at the counter, and then his. His focus would have jumped back to work. And in the few minutes it took to order lunch, she would have been gone from his life.

Leaving him never to know the enticing combination that she was—the tough cookie with a marshmallow filling, an angel with devilish sex appeal. But the way he'd lived before—fast, furious, like his life would never end—he might not have taken the time to appreciate her.

Relaxing a little, he turned toward Angel and reached out. “I'm glad I met you,” he said, wrapping his forefinger with a lock of her hair.

For a long moment, he thought he'd managed to shut her up at last. “Knock me over with a feather,” she said faintly.

He gave a playful tug to her curl, then set her free. The stars were beginning to punch through the dimming sky and he lifted his face to them, opening his mind to the calming beauty of the night, thinking of
those books on holistic healing Judd kept shoving at him. Cooper wasn't too great at meditation, but he kept working at it. Focusing on slowing his breathing, he tried to iron out the last of his mental knots: his lust for Angel, his anxiety about his heart, the humiliation of his pseudo-attack.

Maybe it was working. He synced his breathing to the steady
shush
of the waves and tried detaching from himself, from himself as a man, to see his existence as part of the natural world, the natural order. Birth, life, death.

“So, how long were you planning on going without sex?”

Angel's question yanked him right out of his brief state of serenity. “
What?
” God, she was the most irritating woman.

“Sorry, but I guess it's the reporter in me,” she said, sounding not the least bit contrite. “I was sitting here wondering how long you planned to be celibate. Surely not the rest of your life.”

Terrific. While he'd been making himself one with the universe, nearly achieving all that kung fu, Little Grasshopper shit, she'd been speculating on his sexual future. The knots retwisted with a vengeance.

“Couldn't we just drop the subject?” he asked through his teeth. The fact was, the “rest of his life” wasn't going to be very long. Like Cooper, his father had had an early heart attack. Like Cooper, he'd come home from the hospital, done the whole healthy lifestyle bit, then died from his second attack within a year.

Myocardial infarction #2 had already hit Cooper. He
figured that even now he was breathing on borrowed time.

“I'm just curious,” Angel went on, “about how your mind works. A man's mind. I read this article in
U.S. News & World Report
on the near-supreme priority men put on sex. It astonished me. So I'm asking, how long do you suppose before your interest in sex overcomes your concerns about your heart? And if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, would sex be on your ‘To Do' list tonight?”

If she talked about sex for two more seconds he was going to drown himself, that's how his mind worked. For God's sake, since the instant she'd slid her thigh against his in the church, sex had made itself a pain-in-the-ass priority for him. But hell yes, he'd reined in his libido, as irrational as that might sound to people who'd never felt the crushing press of an African elephant on their chest while the Grim Reaper's scythe was slicing into their arm.

He'd reined in his libido, because just thinking about sex with Angel set his heart thumping so damn hard that he was afraid it would provoke—

But it didn't.

It hadn't.

Just moments ago, Angel had placed his hand over the smooth warm skin of her heart and proven that the lusty, pounding rhythm of his was the normal, natural reaction of a man to a woman. Of a woman to a man.

Oh, another heart attack was going to kill him soon enough, he was convinced of that.
But having sex wasn't the certain trigger he'd feared
.

“Good God.” He grinned, stunned, then exhilarated
by the turn of his thoughts. Grabbing Angel's shoulders, he planted a hard, smacking kiss on her mouth.

Then he held her away, laughing out loud. “I've been an idiot!” He could admit it now, so he shouted the fact to the ocean, the stars, to the darkness that seemed to be lifting from his soul.

Jumping to his feet, he laughed again. “And I've wasted so much time. So much goddamn time.”

Angel didn't resist when he swooped her off the sand and swung her around. “You are the smartest and sexiest woman in the world, did you know that?”

Her feet touched down and he bent to kiss her, but she held him off with her hand. “Wait, wait, wait. What the heck has gotten into you?”

He touched his forehead to hers and lowered his voice. “Lust, baby, and I'm not fighting it anymore.”

“
What?
”

Not wanting to fritter away another second, he started pulling her toward the tunnel. “I'm taking you to bed.”

Her feet dug into the sand. “I'm not sleepy.”

“And I'm not Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, or Sneezy.
We
're going to bed.”

“Then the jury's still out on Dopey,” she muttered, still resisting his forward movement. “We are
not
going to bed.”

God, what a woman she was, he thought, letting her protest go in one ear and out the other. He caught her free hand and tried to get her going in the right direction. “Angel, it'll be fun. Great. I promise to blow your mind.”

“First off, we're going to have to work on bolstering
that ego of yours.” She yanked her hands from his. “And second, have you forgotten I'm going back to the city day after tomorrow?”

He grinned, because nothing could get him down at this moment, not with carnal anticipation fizzing through his blood like carbonation. “So? Surely a strong woman like you can take what she wants without worrying about the future.”

“I believe I should point out it's what
you
want, right?”

He moved so fast she didn't have time to dodge him. In a breath, he'd snaked his hands beneath her baggy white sweatshirt to cup her bare breasts. “I can prove you want it too.” His voice went hoarse at the feel of her warm, smooth skin against his palms, at the undeniable, heavy thrum of her heartbeat.

“Cooper.” Her breath caught as he brushed her nipples with his thumbs. “Cooper, we're not going to see each other again.”

That's why no one could get hurt. They'd leave each other, a pleasant memory. A man waiting to die couldn't ask for more. Wouldn't risk it.

“Angel…” He couldn't keep touching her and keep his sanity too. Sliding his hands to her waist, he pulled her against him. “Wasn't it you who complained about sex changing things? That you could never pick up right where you'd left off? This will solve that problem. From the outset we know it's just two nights.”

“
Two
nights?”

“Caught that, did you?” Why couldn't he have the hots for some bimbo-type blonde who couldn't count?
He cleared his throat. “I was staying over in Carmel tomorrow night to…to keep clear of temptation.”

“Cooper…” Her voice filled with doubt.

He was as close as he'd ever been to begging. “Angel, Angel, Angel. You're killing me, baby.”

“Yeah, well, it's becoming an interesting habit of mine.”

Oh, he had to capture her chin and kiss the sassy remark from her pretty mouth. She resisted at first, but then she leaned against him. “Say yes,” he murmured into her ear.

She closed her eyes. “Cooper…” Her doubt wiggled on the end of his name like a fish about to free itself from the line.

“Say yes.” Certain her resistance was waning, he bent his head to kiss the top of hers.

It suddenly jerked up, cracking him hard on the chin. “One night,” she said, ignoring his yelp.

He gingerly touched his jaw. “Huh?”

She broke away from him to stand a few feet off. It was full dark now, and the starlight gleamed against her hair. Starlight on moonbeams. He stared at her, his smarting chin forgotten, as he was struck once again by her otherworldly, fairy prettiness. Standing there in her white sweatshirt and her faded jeans, she might have slid down to earth on the tail of a comet.

“One night. Tomorrow night. The last night.”

He was so caught up in the magic of her looks that he didn't immediately absorb her words. And once he had, she was gone. Poof.

Maybe she
was
magic.

Magic enough, anyway, that by the time he followed her back to the retreat he wanted her badly enough to beg. Problem was, there was little a man could do when silence was the rule. He knocked on her cottage door, but she didn't answer. He wrote her a note that made so many sexual promises he could hardly walk when he was finished. But damn, the heavy weather stripping he'd so ably installed in a recent fit of boredom didn't allow a sheet of paper, even one that had to be melting from its heated words, to slip under the door.

He thought about going out, going somewhere and picking up a woman who was willing instead of maddening. But he couldn't.

Not this first time, anyway, he assured himself hastily.

One night. Tomorrow night. The last night.

It would have to be enough.

 

The next morning, Angel drove toward San Luis Obispo, agonizing over the promise she'd made on the beach the night before. Stephen Whitney had been born in the coastal city south of Big Sur, but her real reason for getting in her car was to put distance between Cooper and herself.

She needed space in order to reconsider her agreement to go to bed with him. It wasn't an easy answer to settle on, and unfortunately, this time her usual aid in decision making—What Would Woodward Do?—didn't apply too well.

If only she'd kept her head about her last night! But
he'd been so relieved when he'd realized his heart was fine. His hands had been so seductive, sliding over her skin. His patent delight at the idea of going to bed with her had been somewhat appealing.

Who was she kidding?

His delight had made her hot.

And it had made her happy.

That's
when she should have said no.

Instead, she'd said yes, to tonight, to one night, because even a mushy woman couldn't make something out of a one night stand. Yet she couldn't help worrying….

Oh, deal, Angel!
she thought, disgusted with herself. It was just sex! While it had never lived up to its exuberant press, in her previous experience nothing but bodies had ever been tangled up by the event either. This went here, the man went there, she was either mildly aroused or mildly amused, then she waited it out and hoped he'd go home soon.

It wasn't likely to be all that different—better—with Cooper. Why not skip the whole thing and…and then disappoint him?

Right back on the pokey horns of the dilemma, Angel spotted an open-air mall up ahead. Deciding an extra-tall latte and a few swipes of the ol' credit card were just the things to give her mind a rest, she switched on her turn signal and crossed the freeway lanes in the direction of the Seascape Shopping Center.