Kiss an Angel (11 page)

He didn't like the fact that other men knew more about her sexual appetites than he did. But he also knew it was too soon. He couldn't touch her until he was sure she understood the way things were going to be between them. And by that time, there was a very good chance she would have packed up her suitcase and left.

He took her arm and steered her toward the trailer. For a moment she resisted, and then she gave in.

"I'm really starting to hate you," she said dully. "You know that, don't you?"

He was surprised that her words hurt, especially since this was exactly the way he wanted it. She wasn't cut out for such a hard life, and he had no desire to torture her by drawing this out endlessly. Let her realize right now that she couldn't cut it here.

"That's probably for the best."

"Up until this very moment, I've never hated any other human being. Not even Amelia or my father, and both of them have given me plenty of cause. But you don't care how I feel about you, do you?"

"No."

"I don't think I've ever met anyone so cold."

"I'm sure you haven't."
Cold, Alex. You're so cold
. He'd heard it from women before. Good women,

with kind hearts. Competent, intelligent women who'd deserved something better than a man whose emotional makeup had been deformed long before they'd met him.

When he was younger, he'd thought that a family of his own might heal that lonesome, wounded place inside him. But all he'd done in his quest for a lasting human connection was hurt those good-hearted women and prove to himself that some people's capacity to love was stolen from them before it ever had a chance to develop.

They had arrived at the trailer. He reached around her to open the door, then followed her inside. "I'm going to take a shower. I'll help you clean up when I get out."

She stopped him before he reached the bathroom door. "Couldn't you have pretended to be just a little

bit happy tonight?"

"I am what I am, Daisy. I don't play games with anyone. Ever."

"They were trying to do something nice. Would it have hurt you so much to go along with it?"

How could he explain it to her so she'd understand? "You grew up soft, Daisy, but I grew up rough. Rougher than you can imagine. When you grow up like I did, you learn that you have to find something to hold on to that'll always be there for you, something that keeps you from turning into an animal. For me, it was my pride. I don't give that up. Not ever.''

"You can't build your life around something like that. Pride isn't as important as a lot of other things."

"Like what?"

"Like . .." She hesitated, as if she knew he wouldn't like whatever she was about to say. "Like caring

and compassion. Like love."

He felt old and tired. "Love doesn't exist for me."

"It exists for everyone."

"Not for me. Don't try to romanticize me, Daisy. It'd only be a waste of time.

I've learned to live by my own code. I try to be honest, and I try to be fair.

That's the only reason I'm overlooking your stunt with the cake. I know this is a hard adjustment for you, and I guess you're doing the best you can. But don't confuse fairness with sentiment. I'm not sentimental. All those soft emotions might work for other people, but they don't work for me."

"I don't like this," she whispered. "I don't like any of it."

As he spoke, he couldn't remember ever hearing his own voice sound so sad.

"You've fallen in with the devil, sweetheart. The sooner you accept that, the better off you'll be."

He went into the bathroom, shut the door, and closed his eyes, trying to block out the play of emotions he'd just witnessed on her face. He'd seen it all: wariness, an almost childlike innocence, and a dreadful kind of hope that maybe he wasn't really as bad as he seemed.

Poor little feather head.

6

"Go away."

"Last warning, angel face. We're pulling out in three minutes."

She squeezed her eyes open just far enough to focus on the clock by the couch and realize it was five in the morning. She didn't go anywhere at five in the morning, so she snuggled deeper into her pillow, and moments later, she drifted back to sleep. The next thing she knew, he was picking her up.

"Stop it!" she croaked. "What are you doing?"

Without a word, he carried her outside into the chilly morning air, tossed her into the cab of the truck, and slammed the door. The chill of the vinyl upholstery against her bare legs brought her instantly awake and reminded her that she wore only his gray T-shirt and a pair of ice blue bikini underpants. He climbed in the other side, and moments later, they pulled away from the abandoned lot.

"How could you do this? It's only five o'clock! Nobody gets up this early!"

"We do. We're moving into North Carolina today."

He looked disgustingly awake. He was clean-shaven, dressed in a pair of jeans and a wine red knit shirt. His eyes trickled down to her bare legs. "Next time maybe you'll get up when I tell you."

"I'm not dressed! You have to let me get my clothes. And I need makeup. My hair—I have to brush my teeth!"

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a flattened pack of Dentyne.

She snatched it from him, and as she took out a piece and put it in her mouth, last night's events replayed in her mind. She searched his face for some sign of remorse but saw none. She was too tired and depressed to pick another quarrel, but if she just let it go, everything would still be on his terms.

"It's going to be hard for me to fit in here after what happened last night."

"You're going to have a hard time fitting in no matter what."

"I'm your wife," she said quietly, "and you're not the only one who has pride.

You publicly embarrassed me last night, and I didn't deserve it."

He said nothing, and if it hadn't been for the slight tightening at the corners of his mouth, she might have believed he hadn't heard her.

She removed the gum from her mouth and folded it in the wrapper. "Please pull off the road so I can get my things from the trailer."

"You had your chance, and you blew it."

"I wasn't awake."

"I warned you."

"You're like a robot. You don't have any human feelings at all, do you?" She tugged on the bottom of

the T-shirt, which kept hitching up.

His gaze settled in her lap. "Oh, I've got human feelings. But maybe not the ones you want to hear about right now."

She busied herself trying to adjust the T-shirt. "I want my clothes."

"I woke you in plenty of time to get dressed."

"I mean it, Alex. This isn't funny. I'm practically naked."

"You don't have to tell me that."

Maybe if she'd had more sleep, she wouldn't have felt so snappish. ''Am I turning you on?'

"Yep."

She hadn't expected that. She thought he'd give her one of his put-downs.

Recovering from her surprise, she glared at him. "Well, that's too bad because I'm not interested. In case you haven't heard, the brain is the most important sexual organ, and my brain isn't interested in having anything to do with you."

"Your brain?"

"I do have one."

"I never said you didn't."

"Your tone inplied it. I'm not stupid, Alex. My education may have been unorthodox, but it was amazingly comprehensive."

"Your father doesn't seem to agree."

"I know. He likes telling everyone I'm badly educated because mother used to take me out of school so much. But if she was going on an interesting trip, she believed I'd benefit if I went along. Sometimes a few months would pass before she'd remember to send me back. Even then, she didn't always return me to the same school she'd taken me out of, but she still made sure I was learning."

"How did she do that?"

"She'd ask whoever she was visiting or entertaining to spend some time with me and teach me a little of what they knew."

"I thought your mother hung out with rock stars."

"I did learn a lot about hallucinogenics."

"I'll bet."

"But she spent time with a lot of other people, too. Princess Margaret taught me most of what I know about the history of the British royal family."

He stared at her "Are you serious?"

"Dead serious. And she wasn't the only one. I was raised around some of the most famous people in the world." Only the fact that she didn't want him to think she was bragging kept her from mentioning the rather spectacular scores she'd received on her SATs. "So I'd appreciate it if you'd stop making your little digs about my intelligence. Anytime you want to discuss Plato, I'm game."

"I've read Plato," he said, with a gratifying degree of defensiveness.

"In Greek?"

After that, they rode in silence until Daisy eventually dozed off. In her sleep, she searched for a comfortable pillow and found it on Alex's shoulder.

A stray lock of her hair flipped up in the breeze and grazed his lips. He let it play there for a while, brushing across his mouth and jaw. She smelled sweet and expensive, like wild-flowers growing in the middle of a jewelry store.

She was right about last night. He'd acted like an ass. But the whole thing had taken him by surprise,

and he didn't want any kind of public celebration of something he was trying his best to minimize. If he wasn't careful, she'd get it into her head to take this marriage seriously.

He didn't think he'd ever met a woman who was so much his opposite. She'd said he was like a robot, without any human feelings at all, but she was wrong.

He had feelings, all right. Just not the ones she thought were important, the ones experience had taught him he was incapable of having.

Even though he told himself to keep his eyes on the road, he couldn't resist looking down at the small, slender body snuggled so warmly against him. She'd tucked one leg under the other, displaying the soft curve of her inner thigh, and his old T-shirt had lost the battle to keep her covered. His gaze fell on the meager strip of ice blue lace that passed between her legs. As the heat gathered in his groin, he looked away, angered by his self-inflicted torture. God, she was beautiful.

She was also silly and spoiled, vain beyond belief. He'd never seen a woman who could spend so much time looking into a mirror. But despite her faults, he had to admit that she wasn't quite the selfish, self-centered socialite he'd originally thought her to be. There was a sweetness about her that was as unexpected as it was disturbing because it made her so much more vulnerable than he wanted her to be.

As Daisy came out of the truck-stop rest room where she'd managed to bum a cigarette from a female driver, she saw that Alex was flirting with another waitress. Even though he'd made it plain that he had no intention of committing himself to their marriage, the sight depressed her.

As she watched him nod at something the waitress said, she realized she had a perfectly good excuse to turn her back on the vows she'd taken. Between the awful scene with the wedding cake and what he'd said afterward, he'd made himself quite clear. He had no intention of upholding his vows, so why should she?

Because she had to.
Her conscience wouldn't let her escape.

She garnered her courage and, plastering a smile on her face, headed toward the orange vinyl booth. Neither the waitress nor Alex paid any attention to her as she slid into her seat. A name tag shaped like a teapot identified this particular woman as Tracy. She was overly made up but still undeniably attractive. And Alex was Mr. Charm, complete with a lazy grin and wandering eyes.

He finally pretended to notice her presence. "Back already, Sis?"

Sis!

He smiled, the glint of challenge in his eyes. ''Tracy and I have been getting to know each other."

"I'm trying to talk your brother into hanging around for a while," Tracy said.

"My shift ends in an hour."

Daisy knew if she didn't put a stop to this sort of thing right away, he'd think he could get away with it

for the next six months. She reached over and patted the waitress's hand where she'd rested it on the

edge of the table.

"You sweet, sweet girl. He's been so self-conscious around women since his medical problem was diagnosed. But I keep telling him—with the wonders of antibiotics, those pesky little sexually transmitted diseases are hardly a problem for anybody anymore."

Tracy's smile faltered. She stared at Daisy, then at Alex, and her tanned skin seemed to take on a faintly gray hue. "My boss gets mad if I talk to the customers too long. See ya." She hurried away from the table.

Alex's coffee cup clattered onto his saucer.

Daisy met his gaze dead on. "Don't mess with me, Alex. We took vows."

"I don't frigging believe this."

"You're a circumstanced man. And circumstanced men don't flirt with waitresses. Please try to remember that."

He yelled at her all the way back to the truck, throwing out words such as

"immature," "grasping," and "conniving." Only after they were under way, did he finally give it a rest.

They had traveled in silence for less than a mile when she heard something that sounded very much like a chuckle, but when she looked over at him, she saw the same stern face and unsmiling mouth she'd seen from the beginning. Since she knew Alex Markov's dark Russian soul didn't possess more than a shred of a sense of humor, she decided she was mistaken.

* * *

By late afternoon, she was bleary with fatigue. Only by pressing herself to the limit had she been able to finish cleaning the trailer, shower, fix herself something to eat, and still make it to the red wagon on time to take over at the ticket window. The job would have lasted even longer if Alex hadn't cleaned up the wedding cake last night. Since she was the one who'd thrown it, his help had been unexpected.

It was Saturday, and she understood from overhearing brief snatches of conversation that the workmen were looking forward to getting their pay envelopes that night. Alex had told her that some of the workmen who handled the canvas and moved the equipment were alcoholics and drug addicts, since the circus's low wages and poor working conditions didn't attract the most stable employees. A few had been with the circus for years, simply because they didn't have anywhere else to go. Others were adventurers attracted by the romance of the circus, but they generally didn't last long.