Angelique Rising (7 page)

             
"Oh no," she said switching to English when she caught the unnervingly suspicious look on Wyatt's face, "I've never actually had French food, I was curious--"

             
But the waiter had trotted off.

             
"How could you know so much about French food if you've never had any?" Wyatt asked in mannered patience, trying not to smile, knowing she would avoid the question.

             
"I read a lot." It was her standard (and rather artless) answer.

             
"Looks like we might need to work on some honesty lessons for you, Angelique," Wyatt castigated her, his mouth curved in merriment. Whatever she was hiding, he knew it was big.

             
"Crap,"
she snorted.

             
Wyatt had seen him too. Ira Silverberg had entered the restaurant and was making a beeline for them.

             
"Low class sod, that didn't take long," Wyatt grumbled. "He probably has informants in all the good restaurants reporting to him who's meeting who. And the minute that informant described you, Ira knew --probably the hair. He's shitting the proverbial brick right now thinking you're working for me."

             
"Onnzhelleeek,"
an athletic, rousty middle-aged man said in a fruity voice but with ice injected in every syllable.

             
"Ira," she responded reticently, the tablecloth capturing her undivided attention.

             
"And Wyatt," he leered with a cool self-possessed manner carefully in place, "how nice. I've been meaning to call you, Angelique."

             
"Don't bother," Wyatt challenged in clear warning.

             
"Whatever he's paying you, I'll double," Silverberg hissed in a belligerent voice of utter rancor.

             
"A smile like hers, you should quadruple at least," a smooth voice snickered behind him.

             
They all turned.

             
I see Silverberg isn't the only one with spies in the restaurants
Wyatt mused to himself as Uncle Mal stepped around Silverberg and with the practice of untold conquests took Angelique's hand to his lips.

             
"I'm Malcolm Cochran," he crooned to her in introduction, "Wyatt's uncle, my dear lady. And you without doubt are our soaring songbird of last night. Such a pleasure to meet you."

             
Wyatt waited for Angelique to melt --they always did-- but she didn't. Instead she withdrew her hand a bit sooner than politeness allowed and looked to Wyatt for actual rescue. That made no sense, women were always infatuated by Uncle Mal, no woman wanted to be rescued from him, not at first anyway. Malcolm caught it too and his brow furrowed.

             
Wyatt wished he could tell what Angelique was thinking.

             
What Angelique was thinking was
how did he get through?

             
Angelique was not "clueless" or if she was it was by choice, or as far as she was concerned, necessity. As Angelique had hit puberty she'd become aware of the effect she had on people. It was a dubious virtue. At first it had been just embarrassing, then however it had grown, become irritating, distracting, and finally crippling. Or at least debilitating. Angelique had found she could not go out in public comfortably and she
had
to go out in public, she was a runaway. So Angelique had built a wall around herself. The gawks, the stares, all of it could for the most part no longer get in sufficiently to bother her. This may or may not have been a good idea. Many social cues she should have picked up on she missed, leaving people who knew her to think of her as a brilliant talented scatterbrain, or, in Wyatt's case,
clueless.

             
Malcolm however,
had
gotten through and what had gotten through frightened her. It was hungry, predatory, in total contradiction to Malcolm's urbane appearance of quiet culture. For some reason she looked to Wyatt for help. Not even realizing it Wyatt put his hand over hers in comfort and she felt it --a kind of strength flowing into her. Her wall was back up, Malcolm was shut out. But Wyatt, she realized, seemed to be
in
though in a strange way she had never felt before.

             
Incredibly, it felt good.

             
And that something in the heavens above didn't just smile.

             
It
sang
.

             
"Pretty lady," Malcolm nodded to her by way of bemused departure, propelling Ira Silverberg firmly away before him.

             
"I
will
be calling you, Angelique," Silverberg ignited in angry bravado as he left.

             
"That was your uncle?" Angelique shivered, unsettled. "The one who owns the Performance Center? I've never seen him there."

             
"He mostly visits the operatic, theatre sections. His favorite show is
Phantom of the Opera.
Sometimes I think he pretends he's the Phantom."

             
"The Phantom was a deformed monster," she giggled.

             
"Yeah, but he got to wear
groovy
black capes and he called all the shots. You're not in the operatic or theatre sections?"

             
"No, I'm in the recording studios and the aerial rooms. Lately the dance studios, we're getting ready for a Las Vegas performance in a couple of weeks. I've never been."

             
He didn't like the idea of her going to Las Vegas.

             
"What exactly kind of performance will you be giving?" he asked, concerned.

             
"You think I'm going to take my
clothes
off?" she laughed, then she remembered something and swallowed nervously. "Speaking of my clothes off, who was it who removed my costume last night?"

             
"Me."

             
Her face fell not because she was shocked but because she didn't exactly mind the thought of Wyatt T. Cochran taking off her clothes. She changed topic immediately.

             
"I'm just going to sing and dance a little. I'm really going so I can sit a poker game."

             
"You're too young."

             
"It's a private poker game."

             
"You're still too young."

             
"With a one hundred thousand dollar buy-in. Anthony says exceptions are happily made for people with that kind of money."

             
"You can't afford to have water in your fridge and you have one hundred thousand dollars?"

             
"Well no, but Anthony has. He's staking me."

             
Wyatt sat back in his chair and rolled his eyes but not before she saw they were twinkling with humor.

             
"Let me guess. Another of your little
talents
."

             
"That
,
"
she corrected him tautly resenting his accusation in a rather perverse way, "would be cheating. I play on
skill
.
"
She didn't mention how she'd acquired that skill.

             
"What do you get out of it?" he asked surprised that he'd heard that indefinable note of something that, however improbable, sounded like truth.

             
"Half the winnings. Sort of. I'll give it to the Performance Center, to my account. Because I'm an employee there, if I put in at least one hundred thousand dollars, they'll match it in aerial and recording studio time."

             
"Why would you need recording time?"

             
"I have a web site. I sell my songs. Would you mind if I offered our duet for sale?"

             
"It's recorded?"

             
"Of course, I record all my performances so I can sell the recordings on the web site."

             
"Judging from the state of your refrigerator, I'm guessing this web site isn't exactly--"

             
"You're being a shit again, Wyatt. And you were doing so well."

             
"Was I? Well then, sell the song. I'll even buy a copy, my mother was overjoyed with it. She'll be stratospheric to learn it's recorded. What are you doing tomorrow?"

             
"Hang gliding. That's my sport. The one I met Ira in. He does it too."

             
"What?"

             
"I fly, Wyatt, it's my oxygen. Wanna come? I can fix my kite tandem, take you up with me," she mocked, daring him.

             
Gauntlet, again, thrown. Angelique would be learning the hard way
never
to do that with Wyatt.

             
"It would be my pleasure," he countered, thoroughly entertained.

             
She'd just asked Wyatt T. Cochran out on a date.

             
And Angelique Reising had never been on a date. But she'd heard.

             
Crap oh crap
she thought.

*****

              For the next two weeks they dated. He took her to dinners and a movie, learning that he could never anticipate what she would look like appearance wise. She was always beautiful but her clothes ran hot and cold; sometimes she appeared in the most expensive haute couture fabulous-on-her-clothing imaginable, other times her clothes decreed
seventy-five-per-cent-off-this-bin-only.
After the hang gliding (Wyatt had done marvelously, she was secretly thrilled with that) she took him to a drag queen fashion show hosted by Anthony. Wyatt enjoyed himself immensely for the simple reason that Angelique sang at the show, which ended up explaining her rather eclectic wardrobe. Afterwards Anthony handed her a pale aquamarine blouse of outstanding quality obviously designed by him in his designer business, by way of thanks. She lit up like a Christmas tree.

             
"I love your stuff, Anthony," she gushed causing everyone within earshot to inhale sharply to which she, of course, was oblivious. Angelique's social deficits maddened and intrigued Wyatt. His investigator had discovered that she was on a full scholarship to the university having scored a perfect score on her SAT test, at the same time she'd confessed she hadn't gone to school since she was eleven. "I read a lot" had been her somewhat barmy explanation for that one too. Soon she didn't even bother with concocted machinated explanations (a/k/a convincing lies) with Wyatt anymore, as she learned they only resulted in his scorching glare.

             
Angelique, Wyatt discovered, didn't know how to operate a smart phone, but she spoke fluent Latin. She didn't know how to drive a car and had no license, but she wrote and recorded glorious symphonies, then sold them on her website for a dollar. Sometimes her unbalanced and unpredictable gaps and talents were astounding, sometimes they were infuriating, sometimes annoying, but always they were jolting. Basically, he saw, Angelique solved problems by not recognizing they existed.

             
"No one ever taught me how to drive," she sniffed at him grumpily one afternoon.

             
"I'll teach you," he said, his lips parting into a smile.

             
"Don't be silly, one of us would end up in a body bag."

             
Wyatt's assistant, Johnson, who was driving them in Wyatt's car, cleared his throat loudly.

             
Johnson taught Angelique how to drive, but being more than a bit obsessively pedantic, took it upon himself to do more. Johnson was Wyatt's assistant but his true specialty was security and he took one look at Angelique and saw trouble. He also saw the woman who'd somehow pulled off the miracle that had saved his son's life (an incident sensibly never mentioned between them) and so he took Angelique to a Defensive Driving Course also known as five thousand dollars worth of anti-terrorist driving school. (She didn't get charged. Johnson had friends, lots of friends.) She practiced a bootlegger turn twenty times (pure Dukes of Hazard). She learned a J turn, how to properly jump a curb (thirty to thirty-five degree angle, no more than thirty-five miles per hour) and how to knock a vehicle off the road whether it was in front of her, behind her, or at her side (pure James Bond). She crashed a lot of old clunkers on the course and loved every riotous moment. Johnson prayed she'd never have to use any of it. She got her driver's license and her photo looked great but they spelled her name wrong.