Charity's Angel (11 page)

"I think you're supposed to use a bowl," he suggested, his eyes settling on the counter where milk and egg had mixed with the flour.

"No. Really?" Charity widened her eyes in shock.

"Well, I'm not sure, but it seems to me that it might be a little easier." Gabe stood up and Charity jerked her eyes away from him. She wished he'd go and put a robe on. And she wished he'd stay just as he was.

She cleared her throat, banishing thoughts of cool sheets and Gabe's lean body stretched out next to her. "I guess I'll have to keep that in mind," she said, keeping her tone light.

"You look like an extra in a haunted house movie," he said, after studying her for a moment.

"Do I?" She brought her hand up to her face, drawing it away covered in flour. Her clothes were also dusted with white powder.

"You know, maybe it's a little late to mention this, but I don't think I own a muffin pan.".

Charity raised her head to look at him. "You mean, even if I hadn't made this mess, there wouldn't have been anything to bake the muffins in?"

"I think I've got a loaf pan," he offered with an apologetic shrug.

"A loaf of muffins?"

"Well, a loaf is better than none," he said seriously. The tuck that appeared in his cheek matched the laughter in his eyes.

Charity returned his smile. A few minutes ago she'd felt as if she might never have anything to smile about again. But Gabe had made it impossible for her to hold on to her depression. He'd buoyed her up again, given her the determination to keep fighting.

"Thank you, Gabe."

"For what?" He'd been dusting flour from his hands, and her quiet words brought his questioning eyes to hers. "For not having a muffin pan?"

"No. For making me laugh. For giving me a place to stay. For.. .being there." She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. Her eyes dropped away from his, suddenly afraid that she was starting to sound maudlin.

There was a moment of silence and then Gabe reached out and stroked his fingers over her cheek. "You don't owe me any thanks, Charity. Believe me. But if you want to thank me, just don't quit fighting."

"I won't."

Charity looked up into his eyes, feeling the light touch all through her body. If he kept looking at her like that, she'd probably promise to drag herself over hot coals. Gabe drew his hand away and Charity lowered her eyes, afraid of what he might see if she continued to look at him. ,

It was just the circumstances, she reminded herself. She certainly wasn't doing anything stupid... like falling in love with Gabriel London.

❧

"Dont misunderstand me, I have nothing against fashion." Jay reached for a second piece of pizza.

"You just think anyone involved in it is an airhead and a parasite," Diane ground out, her eyes spitting fire.

"I didn't say that." His tone was perfectly polite but somehow managed to convey his opinion—his low opinion—quite well.

"Have another glass of wine, Diane?" That was Charity, doing her best to pour oil—or in this case, a cheap Chianti—on troubled waters.

"Thank you." Diane barely glanced at her sister as she bit into a slice of pizza with a fervor that made Charity suspect she'd rather be biting into Jay Baldwin.

Seeking help, Charity met Gabe's eyes, but he looked more wickedly amused than concerned. She had to admit that there was a certain humor in the situation. She'd never seen anyone whose mere presence could annoy her sister so.

Maybe it was the fact that Jay was so blatantly immune to Diane's beauty. Not that Diane was overly vain, but her face and body had been turning heads since puberty. Charity suspected that it piqued her a bit to find Jay so indifferent.

Whatever the reason, the two of them were like oil and water or, more accurately, like the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat. If they were left in a room alone, Charity wouldn't have been surprised to come back and find they'd torn each other to pieces. It seemed only the presence of witnesses that kept them from each other's throats.

"Fashion is a very important part of society," Diane said to no one in particular. "You can tell a lot about someone by the way they dress."

"It seems to me to be rather shallow to judge people by the clothes on their backs," Jay said, speaking apparently to his glass of wine.

'' Well, not all of us are gifted with the ability to read people's minds," Diane said with awful sarcasm. "Some of us have to rely on external clues."

Jay's eyes skimmed over her emerald-green silk top and the chunky earrings that would have looked too heavy on anyone else but managed to look exotic and interesting on Diane. He took note of her carefully tousled hair and perfectly manicured nails. A quick sweeping glance and then he returned his attention to the half-eaten pizza.

"With some people, the external is all there is."

There was a moment of taut silence. Diane sat back in her chair. Her mouth opened and then shut as she sought the words to express the anger that turned her eyes emerald green.

"Have you heard from Brian?" Charity asked, thrusting herself verbally between the two combatants.

"What do you think of the Dodgers this year?" Gabe spoke simultaneously.

For the rest of the meal, Jay and Diane spoke to each other only when absolutely necessary and then with scrupulous politeness.

"I don't know what it is with those two," Charity said as the door closed behind her sister. Jay had left soon after the pizza was finished. He had to be at the office early. Diane had lingered, playing a desultory game of checkers with her sister.

"Hate at first sight," Gabe suggested, coming back into the living room and sinking onto the sofa. "Instant incompatibility."

"It must be. Diane thinks Jay is an uptight prig." She set the checkers in their box, folding up the game board to go on top of them.

"Jay thinks she's a complete airhead, so I'd guess they're about even."

"It's strange. I think Jay is the first man I've ever seen who didn't fall for Diane the minute he saw her."

"She's a beautiful woman," Gabe agreed.

"Yes, she is." Charity slid the lid on the box of checkers with a snap.

Gabe picked up a magazine and opened it. Charity wheeled her chair over to a low cupboard and slid the checkers box back into place.

Of course he thought Diane was beautiful. She was beautiful. She clicked the cupboard door shut, resisting the urge to slam it. She was glad he liked Diane. Glad Diane liked him. Think how uncomfortable it would have been if Diane were at odds with him as she was with Jay.

And if Gabe wanted to date her sister? The thought brought a sharp stab of pain to her chest that she promptly dismissed as too much rich food. That would be just fine, too. And all she'd need was someplace to celebrate while Gabe and Diane were out together. Someplace like a haunted crypt or maybe a nice, dank root cellar.

Not that she'd be jealous or anything. After all, it would be foolish to be jealous of her sister dating her friend. And that's all Gabe was to her. Just a friend.

Now if only she could convince her heart of that.

I
n the week following the flour fiasco and Jay and Diane's near fistfight over the pizza, Charity approached her physical therapy sessions with new determination. It was a battle she had to win.

There was a new closeness in her relationship with Gabe. He'd seen her without the cheerful facade she kept firmly in place for the rest of the world. Charity had faced her despair and realized that admitting to fear wasn't the same as giving in to it.

The physical therapist came by three days a week, putting Charity's legs through a series of exercises designed to keep the muscles from atrophying from lack of use. Diane drove from her studio in Beverly Hills three days a week to help her sister go through a simpler series of exercises.

Charity felt guilty about taking Diane away from her work, but need outweighed guilt. With every day that passed without any movement in her legs, the knot in her stomach grew just a bit larger, a bit harder to ignore. All the reassurance in the world that her body just needed time to heal, wasn't enough to drive away the fears that sometimes kept her awake at night.

During the day she could keep her fears at bay. She tried to keep busy, doing what housework she could, reading, watching television, teaching herself to knit. She couldn't have said just what she was making, but anything that filled her time and occupied her mind was something to be treasured.

It wasn't during the day that her fears threatened to overwhelm her. It was in the hours just before dawn when she'd wake up and there was nothing there to distract her. Hovering in the darkness between night and day, her fears had full rein.

Staring at a darkened ceiling, she tried to imagine spending the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She told herself briskly that many people managed to live happy, fulfilled lives with handicaps much greater than a simple loss of mobility.

She'd read articles about people who refused to let a handicap destroy their lives. It was so much a matter of attitude. You had to make up your mind that life was to be lived, no matter what.

But all the pep talks in the world couldn't drive away the fear that gnawed at her. She clung to her doctor's assurances that there was no reason she wouldn't walk again, but even those began to sound hollow at four o'clock in the morning.

More than once she reached for the little brass bell Gabe had placed by her bed. If she rang it, he'd come in and chase the fears away. Just having him near would force them into perspective. But she never picked up the bell.

Her emotions were already too wrapped up in Gabriel London. A few weeks ago he'd been nothing more than an attractive man who occasionally shopped in the jewelry store where she worked. In a short space of time, he'd rescued her from gunmen, brightened her otherwise tedious stay in the hospital and become her roommate and her friend. Now she was very much afraid that he might become something more.

She already depended on him too much—for companionship and support. She couldn't ask him to chase away her night fears, though she didn't doubt that he'd do it without complaint.

So she lay awake, battling the doubts and fears alone, determined that they wouldn't beat her. So far she was winning the fight.

❧

Charity looked up as a shadow blocked the sun. She'd been sitting by the pool, staring at the cool blue water. Diane had called to say that her car was giving her problems and she didn't dare make the trip from Beverly Hills to Pasadena.

Charity had assured her that she could skip their session for today. The therapist would be by tomorrow. A small voice suggested that the exercise sessions didn't seem to be doing any good, anyway— what difference did it make if she skipped one? But she suppressed the negative thought.

At least the therapy sessions made her feel as if she was doing something. They gave her something concrete to do toward her recovery. And she was determined to make a recovery.

"Ready for a swim?"

Gabe moved so that he was standing in front of her. Before, he'd been nothing more than a silhouette against the sun. Without the sun in her eyes, Charity had a full view of him.

He was wearing nothing but a pair of black swim trunks—nothing exotic—just perfecdy ordinary swim trunks. She swallowed hard. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen him without a shirt before. Or for that matter, without his pants. The morning she'd coated the kitchen with flour, he'd been wearing only briefs, which certainly hadn't concealed any more than the trunks did.

But that morning she'd been more than a little distraught, and though she'd noticed his lack of clothing, it hadn't had the impact it was having now.

She swallowed again, her eyes traveling over muscled shoulders and chest, following the dusting of curling hair that arrowed across his stomach to disappear into the top of his trunks. Her eyes skittered over that all-too-tantalizing garment to trail down a pair of long, muscled legs, ending at bare feet planted solidly on the concrete that surrounded the pool.

She kept her eyes on those feet. It was safer than looking anywhere else.

"Charity? Did you fall asleep on me?"

Asleep? Not likely. Not with her pulse-doing double-time. She blinked and slowly raised her eyes to his face. He was giving her a quizzical look, his brows raised in question.

"I'm not asleep." She cleared her throat, trying to look as if she weren't wondering what it would feel like to run her fingers through the hair on his chest.

"Good. I thought I'd lost you for a minute there."

"Sorry, I guess my mind wandered off. What did you say?"

"I asked if you were ready for a swim."

"A swim?" She looked from him to the pool and then back at him. "You mean, you and me? In the pool?"

"That's where people generally swim. I know Diane can't make it today, and I don't have anything else to do this afternoon."

Charity was already shaking her head. "I don't think so." It was one thing to let the therapist or Diane help her. It was something else altogether to think of getting into the water with Gabe.

"Come on. I'm a good swimmer." He crouched down in front of her, his smile coaxing."You can trust me."

"I do trust you."

"Then what's the problem?"

"You must have something you'd rather do. You don't want to waste your time watching me flounder around."

"I told you, I don't have anything else to do. Come on, you don't want to miss a session, do you? The weather is perfect for swimming. It's over ninety. Think how good the water would fed."

Charity hesitated, looking from his coaxing smile to the water lapping quietly in the pool. It was true, the water would feel wonderful. And the pool was the only place where she felt almost normal. The buoyancy of the water helped to compensate for her useless legs, giving her a temporary illusion of normalcy.

"You don't know any of the exercises," she said.

"You can show me what to do."

She hesitated. It was true that the thought of getting into the cool water was tempting. But she wasn't at all sure she was prepared to have Gabe's hands on her. She never gave a thought to the fact that Diane or the therapist was touching her, but she couldn't imagine being so indifferent to Gabe's touch.

"Come on." Gabe sat back on his heels in front of her, his smile reassuring. "I'll take good care of you. You couldn't be in safer hands."

"Really?" She felt herself weakening under the combined temptation of the pool and his eyes.

"Sure. I was a lifeguard one summer in Santa Monica."

"Did you ever get in the water, or did you just sit up there in your little tower ogling all the girls in their bikinis?"

"I was devoted to my job," he said self-righteously. "The bikinis were merely a side benefit."

"Right." Charity's expression conveyed her doubts about this noble claim.

"Are you going to get in the pool or just sit there casting aspersions on my character?"

Charity hesitated, but she knew what the end result was going to be. She was acting like an idiot. Gabe was nothing but a friend. It made no difference whether it was him helping her with her exercises or Diane. Okay, so Diane didn't have all those sexy muscles and Diane didn't put butterflies in her stomach. But those were minor details.

So Gabe was an attractive man. That didn't mean anything.

Nothing except that he made her heart beat too fast and her palms feel damp.

"Is it that hard to make a decision?" he asked, sounding vaguely hurt.

"No. No, of course not. I really appreciate the offer. If you're sure you don't mind."

"I don't mind."

A few minutes later Charity was chest-deep in the pool. Water wings helped keep her afloat. The first time she'd gotten in the pool, she'd been terrified. She'd felt completely helpless outside the hated security of the wheelchair.

It hadn't taken long for her to come to appreciate the benefits of working in the pool. With the water supporting her, it was almost possible to forget that her legs didn't work.

For all that he'd used humor to coax her into the pool, Gabe was completely serious when it came to the simple exercises she usually did in the water.

Charity had been nervous about having him touch her, but it wasn't long before she genuinely forgot whose hands were guiding and supporting her. There was nothing personal or sexual in his touch, nothing to hint that he even saw her as female.

In fact his attitude was so impersonal Charity wondered if she should be insulted.

But once the official reason for spending a hot afternoon in the water had been satisfied, Gabe's serious demeanor vanished.

"You know, if I'd known you guys were having this much fun out here, I'd have made it a point to get more afternoons off."

He let Charity float free, the water wings supporting her weight. He stretched out on his back, closing his eyes against the sun that poured down out of a cloudless sky.

"You're lucky to have a pool like this," Charity said, tilting her face to the sun. "There's a pool at my apartment building but it's small. When the weather is like this, everyone crowds into it."

"My grandparents put this pool in because they wanted my mother to be an Olympic swimmer."

"And was she?" Charity was suddenly aware of how little she knew about him.

"No. She never made it that far."

"Were her parents disappointed?"

"Not to the point of disowning her. After I was born, they had hopes for me."

"Did you compete?"

"In school. But I never had the kind of drive it takes to go for the Olympics. You've got to want it more than anything else."

"And you wanted to be a police officer."

"Well, first I wanted to be a fireman. That was when I was five. Then I wa6 going to be a cowboy. When I was about twelve, I was going to be the next Hank Aaron."

"So when did you decide to be a cop?"

"About the time I got out of college and realized that there were limited choices for someone with a degree in history."

"You could have gone into teaching."

"I thought about it but I never saw myself standing in a classroom, trying to drum history into a bunch of kids who'd rather be anywhere else."

"So what made you decide to be a cop?" Charity persisted.

"Would you believe an ad on television? I was trying to figure out what the hell to do with a history degree and the rest of my life, and I saw this ad about the joys of being a security guard. But I decided to go them one better and entered the academy."

"You must like it, to have stayed with it for twelve years."

"It has its moments," he said slowly.

"You sound doubtful." Charity shot him a quick look.

"I don't think like is exactly the word I'd use," he said. "It can be incredibly fulfilling and incredibly frustrating, all at the same time. It's great when you help someone or arrest someone who's hurt other people. But often as not, they're back on the street in a matter of weeks, sometimes in a matter of hours. It tends to shake your faith in the system."

"You sound a little burned out."

"Sometimes," he admitted, hearing the weariness in his voice.

"What about your parents? Where are they?" Seeing Gabe's eyes were closed, Charity let her eyes linger on him, enjoying the sight of his relaxed body. He might have been asleep but for the occasional movement of his hands through the water, keeping him afloat.

"Mom died eight years ago and Dad moved to Wyoming. He's raising horses."

"Sounds nice."

"He's been after me to join him."

"Are you going to?"

"I don't know." Gabe was surprised to hear his own words. He'd convinced himself that the idea of moving to Wyoming to join his dad was nothing more than a premature mid-life crisis. Shaking his head, he changed the subject.

"What about you? What do you plan to do when you grow up?" He shot her a quick grin.

"I don't know. I guess I'm not all that ambitious. I liked working at the jewelry store. Mr. Hoffman visited me in the hospital and told me I can come back whenever I want."

"Will you?"

"I don't know." She sighed. "I just never had a driving ambition to be anything in particular. Diane always knew she wanted to design clothes. Becoming a model was just a way to earn money and get the connections she needed. And Brian is such a brain that he's managed to work in two or three life goals already. Sometimes it makes me tired just to think about it."

"And what do you want?"

"Besides being able to walk again?" She lifted her shoulders. "Not much. A home. Someone special in my life. Maybe a child." She shrugged again, her smile self-deprecating. "Nothing all that exciting, I'm afraid."

"Excitement isn't all it's cracked up to be. I think what you want is pretty much what everyone wants. It's just that these days we all make it so much more complicated than it has to be."

Conversation slowed after that. With the hot sun beating down and the gentle motion of the water lulling them, talk seemed too much of an effort. A jet flew over, so high it was little more than a shadow against the bright blue of the sky.

Charity watched it, wondering where it was headed. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be on that plane, going somewhere far away, leaving all her troubles behind. Her mouth twisted. That was funny—trying to run away from paralysis.

But she didn't feel particularly amused. She felt her relaxed mood draining away, threatening to turn into depression. But not today. Not right now. She wasn't going to think about her unresponsive legs or the possibility that she might not walk again.

Gabe gave a startled gasp as a miniature tidal wave of cold water splashed onto his sun-warmed stomach. Folding up like a pocket knife, he went under but only for a second.

He surfaced instantly, tossing his hair back from his face, his eyes seeking the source of the pool's sudden turbulence. Charity looked back at him, her green eyes wide and innocent, but he wasn't fooled.

"You tried to drown me."

"
Moi
? I wouldn't do anything like that."

"Then where did that wave come from?"

"Perhaps an asteroid fell in the pool?" Charity suggested.

"Doesn't seem likely." He paddled forward until he could stand on the bottom. Charity used her arms to ease herself backward in the water.

"How about an earthquake? They can slosh the water right out of a pool."

"Odd that the water only seemed to slosh over me." He advanced and she retreated.

"Maybe it was a very small earthquake. Localized." She bit her lip to hold back a smile.

"With an epicenter right under my pool?" Gabe thought he'd never seen her look more beautiful than she did right now, her eyes sparkling with mischief, her face lightly flushed with sun.

"Maybe you have a fault line under your pool," she offered. "Southern California is riddled with them. Maybe there's a branch of the San Andreas fault right under us now."

"Maybe. Or maybe it wasn't an earthquake at all." He stopped in front of her, scowling fiercely. But his eyes were laughing, and the tuck in one cheek told her he was trying not to smile.

"Well, if it wasn't an earthquake and it wasn't an asteroid, what do you think it might have been?"