Not Quite an Angel (Harlequin Superromance No. 595) Read online

  “Would you loosen up a little, Hawk?” Bernie’s whisper was exasperated. “You’ve sat there like a stone faced idol without saying a goddamned word since we got here. I’ve had to do all the talking. I thought we were in this together.”

  Adam looked over at his partner, inexplicably annoyed and edgy. “You don’t seem to need any help here, Bern. You’re doing fine on your own.” Adam’s voice was laced with sarcasm. “I’d have a hard time getting a word in, the way you two go on.” Bernie had talked a blue streak, except he hadn’t asked one single leading question. He and Sameh Smith had been yakking non stop for the past ten minutes about gardening, Bernie’s second passion after computers.

  She’d laughed at Bernie’s gardening jokes in that soft, smoky voice that seemed to make every one of Adam’s nerve endings stand at attention. She’d asked Bernie all about Blue Knights as if Adam wasn’t even present, she’d chatted a bit about the work she did for Delilah, and all in all, revealed not one personal detail about herself. She was maybe one of the most appealing, awkward, ingenuous women Adam had ever come across—or the best operative he’d ever met.

  Her slender body seemed at odds with itself. She moved like a teen who’s grown too fast and hasn’t quite learned how to work the machinery. Adam had to remind himself that her driver’s license had stated she was thirty years old. She seemed absurdly young and gauche.

  She’d knocked a pillow off the couch, bent to pick it up and banged her hip on the low table, jogging it and slopping water from a bowl of fresh flowers all over the glass surface. She’d absentmindedly taken a handful of her skirt and mopped up the spill, not missing a beat in her conversation with Bernie about fertilizers. Then she’d sat back down and lifted and lowered, lifted and lowered the wet hem of skirt in an effort to dry it.

  Adam had felt short of breath. He’d had to tear his eyes away from the flash of pale thigh, irritated beyond measure at his body’s reaction to her.

  “Here we are. I forgot to ask if you both take cream and sugar.” She walked slowly into the room, balancing a silver tray and frowning down at it like a child entrusted to serve the grown-ups.

  “Nope, we both drink it— Watch out—” Bernie’s warning was accompanied by a hasty lurch out of his chair in an effort to keep her from falling headlong over a footstool.

  She must have kicked it out of the way at the last possible moment, because it sailed across the room with considerable force and landed near Adam. She had to have played rugby at some point to have put that much steam behind the damned thing.

  Adam stared at it without moving and then, one eyebrow raised, returned his attention to Sameh. She was intent on her task. She managed to set the tray down without doing more than slopping some of the tea out of the pot. She poured, then smiled at Bernie and set his cup on the low table beside his chair, and handed Adam a cup and saucer. A rivulet of hot liquid dribbled off the saucer and down onto his trousers. Adam ignored it.

  Sameh looked down at the stain and then at him, a tiny frown contracting the straight line of her dark eyebrows. Once again, he stared deep into those superb blue eyes, wondering if it was unbelievable guile or true innocence he saw behind the thick lashes.

  “Sorry,” she murmured. She snatched a cotton napkin from the tray, leaned over and blotted clumsily at his pant leg. The action sent bolts of sexual awareness through him. She gave his leg one final pat, turned away and sat down on the sofa, curling her legs beneath her and cradling the cup she’d chosen for herself between her hands. Adam struggled to maintain his composure as white heat coursed through his groin.

  “You lived in L.A. long, Ms. Smith?” Adam kept his face impassive, his tone neutral. It took some doing, because his heart was still beating a little faster than usual, but if Bernie wanted him to participate, he’d at least ask questions that might lead somewhere, instead of playing friends and neighbors.

  She gave him a steady look, and then shook her head. “Hardly any time at all. I haven’t had a chance to really explore the city yet, either. There was rather a lot of catching up to do with Ms. McDonell’s notes.”

  “Where were you from originally?” Adam caught Bernie’s warning glance and ignored it. If this was starting to sound like an interrogation, too damned bad. One of them needed to take control of things.

  “I grew up on an, umm, farm. In the country.”

  “I see. What part of the country?”

  “The western part.” She wasn’t at all flustered, the way he thought she’d be. “What about you, Mr. Hawkins?”

  “New York. You ever been there, Ms. Smith?”

  She shook her head and frowned. “Please, Ms. Smith makes me nervous. Why not just call me Sameh,” she suggested, turning her attention to Bernie. “How about you, Mr. Methot? Have you ever been to New York?”

  “Enough with the Mr. Methot here, too. It’s plain old Bernie, okay?” She nodded, and he went on, “I was in New York on my honeymoon once, for five days that felt like a century.” He held out his fingers one by one. “First day, I got in a fight with a cabdriver. Second day, Frances, that’s my wife, almost got mugged in the park. Third day, I got the flu, had to stay two extra days to the tune of two hundred fifty a night plus call in a doctor who barely spoke any English. He figured Frances was somebody I’d picked up in Times Square. It’s a wonder I’m still married. I think you gotta be born there to appreciate New York.”

  Adam frowned at his partner. He couldn’t believe the way Bernie was responding to this woman. He’d never told Adam this story about visiting New York, and Adam could have sworn he’d heard all Bernie’s stories at least twice.

  Sameh laughed. “Your wife must be an exceptional person to stick with you after that,” she teased. “You have any children, Bernie?”

  Adam recognized the flicker that passed over Bernie’s face a moment before he answered, and something in his own gut reacted in sympathy.

  “Two kids, a girl three and a boy eighteen months. You like kids, Sameh?”

  “Children are miracles,” she said softly, and her voice as well as her eyes seemed to glow. “There’s nothing I like better than children.”

  “You oughta come over and meet my kids, then, and Frances, too. Tomorrow’s Saturday—why not come over and have dinner with us? You busy tomorrow evening?”

  Adam couldn’t believe he’d heard properly. Since Corey was born a year and a half ago, he doubted that Bernie and Frances had invited anyone except himself to dinner.

  Sameh turned the full force of her smile on Bernie, and Adam felt the radiant warmth of it from where he sat. “Oh, I’d be so pleased to come. Thank you for inviting me. I really haven’t met many people here, and I miss being around children. What time is best?”

  “Come early, you can meet the kids before they go to bed. Why don’t you come over in the afternoon? We usually eat early, anyway.” He paused for a long moment, his smile fading and an uncomfortable look settling on his face. “I should warn you that my son, Corey, has cerebral palsy.”

  Sameh reached over and took Bernie’s hand in her own. “That makes him an extra special little boy then, doesn’t it? I look forward to meeting him.”

  Bernie supplied his address, and he and Adam left. There was silence in the car as Adam deftly wound his way through traffic, heading back to the office. He drove even faster than usual. He was both astounded and furious at his partner, and finally he was unable to contain his anger any longer.

  “Good God, I can’t believe you did that back there, Bern,” he burst out, squealing the tires as he rounded a corner. “Asking Smith to your house for dinner is plain dumb when we have no idea who or what she really is. Exposing Frances and the kids to somebody you don’t even know—and you’ve told me Frances is really on edge these days, anyway. And what the hell’s wrong with your eyesight? This is one gorgeous woman. What if your wife gets it into her head there’s something going on between the two of you? Jeez, Bern, what the hell got into you, anyway?”

  Bernie
was singularly unperturbed by Adam’s tirade. “My nose tells me that spending any more time investigating Sameh is a big fat waste of time. She’s no criminal, Hawk. Anything but. She’s sweet and honest and…I don’t know, I just felt real brotherly toward her back there. I vote we give this Temple woman her money back and tell her she’s way off base.”

  Adam shot his partner an incredulous look. Bernie’s nickname in the LAPD had been Wrench, because once he got hold of a case, he never let go until he cracked it. “So how do you explain all this stuff about Smith not having an identity until last April? I thought we agreed that was weirder than hell. And she was pretty damned evasive today when I tried to pin her down, too.”

  Bernie flicked the radio on and settled more comfortably into the leather seat. “You want to investigate her, you go ahead. In fact, you can work on it tomorrow night at dinner, my place, five-thirty. It’ll give you a chance to be around her on a casual basis, maybe practice some of that lethal charm of yours, Hawk. Looks to me like you could use some practice, too. Sameh was pretty underwhelmed by you, far as I could tell. You losing your touch with the females or something?”

  Bernie was dead-on about Sameh’s reaction to him, Adam concluded. She’d taken Bernie’s hand in both her own at the door when she said goodbye. She’d folded those same hands behind her back when she turned to Adam, and there was a peculiar expression on her face, as if she’d assessed him and found him seriously wanting.

  Now why should that even begin to bother him?

  ADAM WAS NO LONGER a guest at the Methot household; he’d long ago become one of the family. When Bernie answered the doorbell that Saturday evening, three-year-old Kate spotted Adam from down the hall and came charging to meet him. “Unca Adam, Unca Adam’s here.”

  Adam bent and caught her in full flight, lifting her high over his head and obliging her with the usual airplane ride before he set her back on her feet. She ran down the hall and into the kitchen. “Mommy, Unca Adam’s here. Corey wants to see him, too. Corey wants plane ride, too.” In a moment she was back, pushing the specially padded stroller that held her baby brother.

  With familiar ease, Adam loosened the straps that held the little boy in the chair and gently lifted him up, just as he had Kate. Corey’s legs were scissored, his back arched, his finely shaped dark head unsteady on his fragile neck. A wordless, high-pitched squeal came from his throat, and his body moved spastically as he did his best to convey his delight at being in Adam’s arms.

  As always, the child’s fragility was terrifying to Adam. He supported the thin baby on his shoulder, oblivious to the drool that trickled down his shirtsleeve. No matter how often he held Corey, the impotent rage and unbearable sorrow he’d felt from the first threatened to overwhelm him, and he had to struggle for control as he gave him a gentle hug and settled him again in his padded chair.

  “How you doing, Tiger? You holding your own with that big sister of yours?” It took immense effort to grin down into the beautiful chocolate brown eyes as he fumbled with the straps and adjusted the pillows. Corey cooed at him, head bobbing as he favored Adam with his sweet, heartbreaking smile.

  “Go on into the living room, I’ll get you a beer,” Bernie said. “The women are holed up in the kitchen doing something to the roast. Fran says we’re going to eat as soon as she feeds the kids.”

  Adam wheeled the stroller into the large, colorful room. Soft music played on the sound system. Sunshine streamed down through a skylight, and couches and chairs covered in poppy-strewn black cotton formed dramatic contrast to the off-white walls and sand-colored broadloom. There were plants everywhere, and Frances’s distinctive paintings, in vivid primary colors, hung on the walls, some framed, some not.

  There were toys underfoot, the colorful plastic shapes constituting a land mine for the wheels of the stroller. Adam bent several times to move building blocks and farm animals out of Corey’s way, talking the whole time to the baby. He was picking up a ball when Sameh came in.

  “Mr. Hawkins, hello again,” she said, handing him a brimming mug of beer. Only a few drops slopped onto the carpet. “Bernie sent you this—he’s carving the roast.”

  Again, the timbre of her voice seemed to reverberate in his soul. He took the mug, thanking her and grazing her fingers deliberately with his own. Her dress was long and loose, printed with what he thought were watermelons against a light green background. When she moved in front of the window, he could see the hazy shape of her long legs and narrow waist through the fabric.

  “My name’s Adam.” He parked Corey conveniently close to the sofa and sat down, taking a long slug of the frothy beer before he looked at her again. “I thought we got on a first-name basis yesterday.”

  She nodded without saying anything and sat down in an armchair a few yards away. With the sunlight streaming down over her, her hair was liquid gold, a halo of brightness around the lovely lines of her face. The lightweight fabric of her dress billowed and then settled around her, contouring her body, outlining long, firm thighs, a flat belly.

  He had a sudden vivid mental image of those legs locked around his waist. Deliberate in his insolence, he measured her breasts with his eyes, her hips with a thought as to how they would adjust to his own. In his mind, he entered her, imagining her heat, the tautness of her around him, and as he caught her startled blue gaze, he knew without doubt that she understood exactly what he was thinking. He held the look, knowing his eyes were filled with sexual speculation.

  A delicate blush rose from her neckline and suffused her face. She slid a little awkwardly off the chair and down onto the floor, close to Corey’s stroller. She unfastened the straps, her fingers clumsy but tender, and then she lifted the baby and cradled him against her, like a shield between her and Adam. She talked in a low, soothing tone to Corey, nonsense words that Adam couldn’t decipher.

  The soothing sounds gradually became a rhythm, and then a song, and after a moment, the stiffness in Corey’s body seemed to ease to an amazing degree, and he relaxed against her, crowing up into her face, trying to bring his little fist in line with her cheek. Sameh buried her face in Corey’s neck, blowing kisses into the soft skin, making the baby chortle with joy, ignoring Adam.

  Kate came running into the room, closely followed by Frances. The little girl ran to Adam and clambered up beside him on the sofa, intent on showing him a new doll.

  Frances planted an affectionate kiss on Adam’s cheek before she also took a seat beside him on the sofa. “Hello, old friend.” She gave him one of her wide smiles. Her fiery hair was drawn back into a long, smooth braid, and her pale freckled skin was flushed from cooking. She wore her usual uniform of faded jeans and bulky sweatshirt. She was even thinner than when Adam had last seen her.

  “Things got a little hairy in the kitchen, as they have a habit of doing when I’m the cook, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to you when you got here. Three things all started burning at once. Fortunately, Sameh lent a hand and we salvaged the gravy, but it was a close call.” The severe lines of strain that had appeared around her eyes and at the sides of her wide mouth after Corey’s birth weren’t as obvious tonight. Her gray eyes slid from Adam to Sameh and her son, and a wistful half smile tilted her mouth.

  “You’ve certainly charmed that young man, Sameh.” Corey lay in Sameh’s arms, as relaxed as Adam had ever seen him. Sameh smiled at Frances, never losing the rhythm of the wordless song Corey obviously loved. The sound of her low voice was mesmerizing, even to Adam.

  “Me, too,” Kate suddenly chirped, scrambling down from Adam’s lap and plunking herself as close to Sameh as she could. “Sing me, too,” she demanded, patting Sameh’s arm.

  “Perhaps Sameh will sing you a little song later at bedtime, Kate,” Frances suggested. “Right now, you two rascals are going to come into the kitchen with me and have some dinner.”

  “She, too,” Kate insisted, twining both chubby arms around Sameh’s neck and refusing to let go. “She, too, have dinner wif us.”
r />   “Stop strangling her, Kate, and maybe she’ll be able to swallow dinner.” Frances rolled her eyes. “This from the kid who still makes strange with her own grandmother. You’ve got the magic touch, Sameh. These kids of mine adore you. You must have had a lot of experience with children.”

  Frances scooped her daughter into her arms, and Sameh rose to her feet, still holding Corey. “I spent a lot of time in the nursery,” she said. “Could I maybe help you feed them?”

  Frances turned to grin at her. “Looks to me like you really don’t have much choice. I have to warn you, this is not a delicate procedure. You’re liable to need a shower afterward.”

  Both women laughed. It had been a while since he’d heard Frances laugh like that, Adam thought as he watched them leave the room. Sameh bumped the corner of a chair awkwardly with her hip and then knocked the doorjamb with an elbow as she followed Frances into the kitchen with Corey in her arms.

  Adam shook his head. The woman’s body must be an absolute road map of bruises. He thought about deciphering that map, and had to take a long, cooling draft of his beer.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DINNER WAS FUN, Sameh found, in spite of the glass of wine she spilled almost as soon as she sat down. Adam was seated to her right, and more than a little splashed on the sleeve of his shirt. When she tried to blot it with her napkin, somehow a lot got on his trousers, as well.

  Unfortunately it was red wine, so there were bound to be stains. She apologized, feeling clumsy and embarrassed, and it was Bernie who slowly put her at ease, relating stories about calamities he’d had himself while eating.

  “Remember the time we were in that fancy restaurant on the Oregon coast, Fran, when I asked for horseradish to go with the prime rib?” Frances nodded and rolled her eyes at the memory. “It was fiery stuff,” Bernie explained, “and it made me sneeze. I grabbed my napkin, let go with a doozy, and didn’t realize I’d scooped my tie up inside the napkin until Fran started laughing. My classy navy blue silk tie was polka-dotted with flecks of horseradish, and the snooty waiter looked at me like I’d just parachuted in from Lower Slobovia.”