Nobody's Angel (9 page)

Juan gestured rudely as he opened the door. “Pardon my French, Ms. Hope, but my cousin grew too big for his
britches long ago. He needs his mama to cut him back down to size.”

Faith bit back a snicker and waved. “Let me know as soon as you have another consignment ready and I'll come get it. I have no wish for you to be parted from Isabel longer than necessary.”

Juan grinned. “When she sees what I have earned on this trip, she will have me in the shop night and day. You have just bought our baby's nursery. She will want a college education next.”

Feeling good again, Faith waved them off but remained firmly planted on her stool, with the counter between her and Adrian. Another customer wandered in, and she called a greeting, ignoring the dark man looming over her. She didn't trust him, or any man.

“The shop closes at five. I will come by for you then,” he stated without question, straightening from his relaxed position against the glass.

“I have to close out the register and deposit my receipts, and I promised to stop in and see Annie,” she argued. “We really have nothing else to say to each other.”

With a lift of his eyebrows, Adrian produced a familiar ring of car keys from his pocket. “You might want to reconsider that. I'll make it five-thirty, then.”

He strode out, taking her car keys with him.

The minute Adrian walked in the door that evening, Faith looked for her keys, but he'd already stuffed them back in his pocket. She considered going after them, but just the thought as her gaze followed the lazy grace of his lean hips caused her mouth to seal shut.

“I've already been to see Annie,” he announced without preamble as he approached the counter. “I took her new charges over to the battered women's shelter. The husband showed up today looking for them, and the woman was finally convinced they'd be safer elsewhere.”

Faith closed her eyes to block out all thought of Adrian's
dangerously male prowl, but his voice still licked up and down her nerves. “Did Annie have to call the police?”

“Joe was already over there. Feeding them doughnuts on a regular basis was a piece of genius. I gather that was your idea?”

She shrugged and closed her record books before reaching under the counter for her purse and jacket. “It always helps to know your neighbors, but Annie is a little wary of policemen.”

“I can understand that reaction.” Adrian reached over the counter and helped her with the jacket.

Faith assumed her miniskirted suit and silk blouse were too dressy for any place he had in mind, but that was the least of her concerns. “The innocent have nothing to fear around cops. You're the one breaking parole.” She shoved her arms into the jacket and pulled away.

“I mean to correct that shortly. I'm eager to turn over a new leaf and become a model citizen again.”

“I'm not renegotiating the contract,” she reminded him as he opened the door and gestured for her to precede him. “It's a standard percentage and a fair price for my expertise. Juan would never have managed those prices on his own. Just because they happened to sell quickly today doesn't mean it will happen again. Every inch of my floor space has to turn a profit. The rent here isn't cheap.”

“I'm not arguing,” he said mildly, taking her key and locking up. “Juan couldn't sell those pieces for any price in Asheville. I suspect he earned in one day what he made all last year.”

Mollified, Faith didn't object as he opened the passenger door.

Uncertain of the polite way of approaching the obvious, she waited until Adrian had taken the driver's seat before asking, “Did you find a job?”

“I got my deposit back on the room.” Without further explanation, he eased the VW into the heavy rush hour traffic outside her shop.

Understanding it took intense concentration to navigate some of these tricky streets with trucks and sport utility vehicles looming large over the tiny beetle, Faith tried not to distract him with idle conversation. But when his direction appeared to be the interstate out of town, she tensed up. “Where are we going?”

Hitting the accelerator and expertly adjusting the stick shift as they rattled from the ramp into roaring traffic, Adrian didn't bother glancing at her. “Charlotte,” he replied curtly.

Faith's eyes widened as she watched her car and her life roar down the highway back to the place she'd left behind. She didn't want to go there again. Not ever.

She eyed the keys dangling from the ignition and the grim man at the wheel and her stomach sank to new lows. She could scarcely believe it—he was kidnapping her.

Cautiously, she reached for her purse.

He shot her a glare. “I liberated your cell phone earlier. You ought to lock up your purse. Prisoners learn interesting things whiling away time in county jails.”

Sitting back, she clasped her hands nervously. She refused to let him terrorize her. He seemed a fairly intelligent man. Perhaps he responded to reason. “I have a job here,” she reminded him. “I don't have time to go to Charlotte.”

“I've wasted four years of my life. You can waste a few days.”

He was serious. She clenched her teeth against panic. She just had to think.

With rush hour traffic roaring all around them, she didn't dare do something rash like jerk on the keys or grab the wheel. At this hour, they wouldn't leave the traffic until they neared the mountains. Fighting fear with rationalization, she figured Adrian Raphael was an educated lawyer, not a professional kidnapper. He wouldn't hurt her, would he?

“I could have you arrested for this.” Dumb, Faith, dumb. Remind him of what he had to lose. Guaranteed to make a desperate man sane.

“I'm living in purgatory anyway. What difference would it
make?” He jerked the VW to the right side, avoiding a lumbering truck cutting too close on the left.

The heavy traffic and narrowness of the aging interstate made her sick on a good day. With growing darkness and terror, her stomach pitched furiously. She closed her eyes and tried not to watch. With her luck, they'd catch a rock slide on the mountain.

“I can't help you,” she insisted. “I gave everything of value to the court. What on earth do you expect me to do when we get there? Wave a magic wand?”

“I've been thinking about that.” Adrian jerked his head in the direction of the backseat. “There's a box of fried chicken back there. Help yourself.”

She reached in the backseat for the box. Maybe food would relieve the distress clawing at her stomach.

“All right, genius, and what has your male-inflated brain thought of that I haven't?”

“Safe deposit boxes.” He reached over and grabbed a biscuit. “Tony had boxes in every bank in town. That's how I knew he was a crook. I just didn't bother investigating, figuring it had nothing to do with me.” He snorted in deprecation at his naiveté.

“I didn't have access to any safe deposit boxes.” Refusing to fall for his pretense of vulnerability, Faith tore into her chicken. They had to stop sometime. She'd call for help then.

“Somebody did,” he insisted. “I told the court about them, but Tony testified he'd shown the contents to the prosecutor, and no one called his bluff. I tried, but the judge ruled it out. Sandra claims she knows nothing about them. Your divorce wasn't final. As his wife, you can go to the banks and ask if he still has active accounts. They may have already turned the contents over to the state, but you can verify that and start the process to recover them. I'll wager six-to-one that at least one of those boxes contains computer disks with his files.”

“This is a wild-goose chase.” Wiping her hands on a napkin, Faith glared at him through the growing dusk. “My clerk isn't scheduled to come in tomorrow, so I'll lose a day's business and endure this horrible trip all the way to Charlotte
because you're obsessed with the impossible. Tony handled everything through a corporation he'd set up, and there were no bank boxes. I should know. I was an officer of the corporation.” She settled back in the seat with a sigh of satisfaction. That had been Tony's big mistake. He'd given his mousy little lovestruck wife authority over his corporation, thinking she would never grasp her power.

Boy, had he been wrong.

Four and a half years earlier

“Marianne? You know when Tony said we were thinking of selling this house, you said you had someone interested in property in the area?” Biting her bottom lip, Faith fought for the carefree tones of a Southern-belle housewife. She'd played the part for years. She could do it. “Is he still looking? We've found a place over in Myers Park we'd like to offer on, and it would be easier if we knew we had this place sold.”

Her fingernails should have left dents in the receiver as she listened to the real estate agent on the other end. On the desk in front of her were neat stacks of canceled checks made out to one Sandra Shaw. In the back of the safe she'd found a picture of a well-endowed strawberry blonde in short shorts. Tony had always lacked imagination.

“Tony's out of town,” she said into the receiver, “but I have authorization through his corporation. You know how lawyers are.” She laughed knowingly while grimacing. She'd never appreciated lawyer jokes before. She still didn't.

She'd thought and planned this for weeks. She'd made inquiries. She'd driven out to the trailer park address listed in the city directory and watched three dusty boys playing on a swing set. The younger two looked like identical twins, but they were too far away to search for a resemblance. She might not know for certain whose kids they were, but she recognized the strawberry blonde from the photo as soon as the woman stepped from the trailer. Mobile home. Double-wide. Paid for through the loan company with the checks from the
safe. The first check dated before Faith's marriage. The last check was dated two weeks ago. Tony had been keeping her all through their marriage.

The woman piled the kids into a luxury utility vehicle, paid for with the next stack of checks. Faith stared after the cloud of dust for a long time while her heart slowly crumbled. She tried holding it together, tried rationalizing away the evidence before her eyes, but even rationality led her straight into a whirlpool of pain.

While she'd been scrimping and saving, working in Tony's office without pay, giving up her hopes of college and a career, this Sandra person had been living in a new trailer and driving new cars and raising babies. The babies Faith had yearned for with every ounce of her being.

She'd never needed the fancy house. She drove an aging Volvo rather than go into debt. And all that money she'd saved, Tony had lavished on this woman who had given him children.

Shaking, too stunned even to cry, Faith drove away from the mobile home and allowed fury to well up in place of pain. She used fury as the glue to hold all the shattered pieces together, fury as the fuel to keep her moving forward.

As she drove back toward Charlotte, she was still reeling, but she'd found her focus. Tony was “out of town” again. She hadn't seen his car at the trailer, but that didn't mean anything. He could have floozies all over the state for all she knew. He'd just told her he wouldn't be home for a week. A week gave her lots of time.

After arranging for Marianne's client to see the house, Faith checked off one more item from her list and picked up the phone for the next. She had learned to be very organized while working for Tony. She would make someone an excellent secretary. With professional courtesy, she called the office of every credit card in her purse and asked for her name to be removed from the account. Then she snipped the cards in half and followed up the calls with a letter and the mutilated cards. She kept copies of everything.

She'd already been to the bank. She'd withdrawn every cent in checking, savings, money market, and certificates of deposit. She'd worked hard for eight years, given up her career to put Tony through law school, given up her education to provide him with the perfect hostess and housekeeper and bookkeeper and decorator and … She had calculated his debt to her at far more than the sum total of their personal assets.

She had never been so blindly furious in her entire life. She hung on to that fury as she called the broker and ordered the sale of their stocks. Later, she would weep for what she had lost and what she could never have, but not now. Now, she would get even.

She'd read about women who had lost everything when their men left them, women thrown on the streets—helpless, uneducated, and unemployable—when their husbands found younger women. Well, she by damn wouldn't be one of them.

Sandra wasn't even a younger woman. Tony had been supporting Sandra before she came along. He'd been supporting Sandra when Faith's grandmother had died, leaving her a small but significant inheritance—the one they'd invested in his law office after Tony's graduation.

She wouldn't consider the ramifications of any of this. It was painfully apparent Tony had married her for her little bit of money and her boarding school manners and her eagerness to please. She suited his image of a wealthy professional's country club wife. The Sandra person was too blowzy, too common, too beneath his dignity. She was only suited for being the mother of his children.