Charity's Angel (5 page)

Thank God Annie didn't regard conversation as a cure-all. He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes, wishing he could shut out the events of the past twenty-four hours as easily as he could shut out the freeway.

He didn't open his eyes again until he felt the car slow down for an off ramp. Opening his eyes, he realized she hadn't driven him to the station to get his car or to his own home in Pasadena. Instead they were in Glendale, heading for the house Annie shared with her husband.

"I'm really not up for company tonight, Annie." It was an effort to speak. All he wanted was to be alone.

"I'm not takin' you home, Gabriel. You'll just sit there and brood, playin' it over and over in your head, wonderin' what you should have done different."

Since that was exactly what he'd had in mind, Gabe didn't even attempt to deny it.

"Maybe that's what I need to do," he said shortly.

"I ain't havin' it. Next thing you know, you'll be throwin' your badge off some freeway bridge like a character in a Clint Eastwood movie."

Since he'd also considered doing something along those lines, Gabe was reduced to silence. The problem with Annie was that she knew him too damned well.

"Look, I'm not going to be very good company." He made one last effort to dissuade her as she pulled into her driveway.

"Well, and here I was expectin' you to teach me to polka," she said with heavy sarcasm. "You aren't stayin' alone tonight, Gabriel. What a body needs at a time like this is good friends and a medicinal drink or two."

"Going to get me drunk?" He asked, half-smiling in spite of himself.

"It wouldn't hurt."

"Anyone ever tell you you're a pushy broad?" he asked as he pushed open the car door.

"All the time, sugar. All the time."

He followed her up the walkway to the comfortable home she shared with her husband, resigning himself to the fact that Annie was going to have her way. Maybe she was right. Maybe being alone wasn't the best idea tonight. But he doubted anything would make him forget what had happened.

No matter how many good friends were around, or how many shots of whiskey Annie managed to pour down him, nothing could blot out the memory of those seconds when he'd seen the bullet—his bullet-hit Charity. And then the bright, accusing tint of blood spilling onto her dress.

It was going to take more than company and alcohol to make him forget that.

T
he hospital smelted just the same. That odd non-smell that was somehow more antiseptic than a whiff of pure ammonia.

Gabe's fingers tightened over the bouquet of flowers. Now that he was here, he wondered if he was crazy to have come. The last person Charity would want to see was him. He was the reason she was here.

He was determined to apologize—an empty gesture but it had to be made. Maybe he shouldn't have brought flowers. Maybe they were too frivolous. He frowned down at the bouquet of yellow roses. He'd stripped his neighbor's rose bush earlier this morning, wanting the kind of roses that had scent, rather than the hothouse sorts the florist carried. Jay would probably throttle him when he saw the denuded plant but he could worry about that later.

He stepped out of the elevator, pausing to ask directions to Ms. Williams's room. It was really a delaying tactic. He knew where her room was from his last two visits. But those times he'd talked himself out of actually seeing her. This time he intended to go through with it. The least he owed her was an apology and a chance to tell him how much she hated him.

Over a week since the shooting and still no sign of the feeling in her legs. The doctors insisted there was no reason to despair. The spine was a delicate area. It needed time to heal.

Gabe's steps dragged as he walked down the hall to Charity's room. He didn't want to see those big green eyes look at him with cold anger. Didn't want to hear her vent the rage she surely felt toward him. But he owed her that much.

He stopped outside her door, his hand so tight around the tissue-wrapped stems that his fingers ached. Like as not, she was going to throw his flowers back in his face and him out on his butt. Drawing in a deep breath, he knocked on the half-open door.

"Come in." Her voice was just as he remembered it. Soft, with a touch of huskiness. Gabe felt his palms break out in cold sweat. He'd rather have faced a drugged-out junkie with an AK-47 than walk through that door.

Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders and pushed open the door. Charity was propped up in bed, a pale pink bed jacket over her shoulders, her honey-blond hair pulled back with a matching ribbon. She was paler than he remembered, her skin almost translucent. She looked so fragile, so young.

Gabe stopped just inside the room, waiting to see the smile in her eyes change to hatred when she realized who he was.

"Mr. London." The smile reached her mouth, her lips curving. "Come in."

Gabe moved forward, walking carefully, as if the ground might shift under his feet at any moment, which was exactly how he felt. Didn't she remember what had happened?

"Hello." He stopped beside the bed. He was unable to sustain her gaze, and his eyes dropped to the roses.

"Those are beautiful," Charity said after a minute, when he showed ho signs of speaking.

"They're for you." He thrust them out.

Charity took them, bent to breathe in the rich scent. "They're wonderful." When she lifted her head she was still smiling. Gabe didn't respond, only stared at her, as if he wasn't sure what he was doing here. "Would you mind putting them in water for me," she asked. "You could put them in that vase there. I think those flowers have about had it."

Gabe took the roses back from her mechanically. There was a mixed bouquet on the table next to the bed. The flowers were beginning to show their age. He dumped them into the trash and filled the vase in the little bathroom. Bringing it back into the room, he set it on the table and put the roses into it.

"They look perfect. And the scent is wonderful." She turned her head to smile at him. "Thank you, Mr. London."

"Call me Gabe," he said automatically. Shooting someone should surely put them on first-name terms, he thought, wondering if he was dreaming this visit.

Obviously she didn't remember what had happened, didn't realize that he was the one who'd shot her. He felt a wave of relief. He didn't have to see the friendliness turn to hatred, didn't have to hear her tell him that he'd destroyed her life.

"I'm the one who shot you," he said abruptly.

"I know."

Nothing changed in her eyes. She was still smiling at him. Gabe groped for something to hold on to, finally grabbing the rail at the foot of the bed.

"Don't you hate me?"

"No. Why should I?" She seemed genuinely puzzled.

"Why should you? Because it's my fault you're here. / shot you," he said again, in case she hadn't heard.

"But you didn't mean to."

"That's not the point."

"It was an accident," she said, handing him the same words he'd been hearing from Annie and the police psychologist ever since the shooting. "It wasn't your fault. If it was anyone's fault, it was mine for running in front of you like an idiot."

"You were trying to save the other woman's life," Gabe said, stunned to find himself defending her to herself.

"Well, as it turned out, she wasn't the one in the way." Charity shrugged. "It was just bad timing all around."

"And that's it? You don't want to tell me you hate me? You don't want to throw something at me? Yell and scream?"

"I don't think so. Would it make you feel better if I did?" Charity smiled at him mischievously, relieved when his mouth relaxed in a rueful smile.

"I don't know. I was so sure you'd be angry. That you'd hate me. I'm not sure I know what to say. Thank you, I guess."

"You don't have to thank me."

"I wouldn't have blamed you if you'd hated me."

"Well, I don't. If it wasn't for you, that poor old man would have been killed and probably a lot of others, including me. Besides, it's not as if I'm paralyzed for life," she said, hoping he couldn't hear the brittle note in her cheerful words.

"What do the doctors say?" She could hear the strain in his voice.

"Oh, you know how doctors are." Charity shrugged. Her eyes skittered over the length of her legs visible beneath the blankets, fixing on his face instead. Seeing the worry in his eyes, she forced a smile. "They tell me there's no reason why I won't walk again. It's just some bruising, I guess. As soon as it's healed, I'll be tap dancing."

The fear in her eyes brought a sharp pain to Gabe's chest. The fact that she was trying to hide it only made it more heartbreaking. He'd have given his right hand if doing so would have given her back her legs.

"Did you tap dance before?" he asked, forcing a light tone, even as his fingers tightened over the rail at the foot of the bed, the knuckles white with strain.

"No." Charity grinned at him, the expression less forced. "But when I asked the doctor if I'd be able to, he assured me I would."

"Did you tell him you hadn't been able to before?"

"No. I was all set to do my best Groucho and say "That's funny. I couldn't before.'" Her Groucho voice was moderately dreadful but Gabe couldn't suppress a grin.

"Why didn't you?"

"He looked so serious." She sighed regretfully. "I just didn't have the heart to tell him I'd been joking."

"Probably would have done him some good to lighten up a bit," Gabe suggested.

"Probably, but I figured as long as I was stuck in this place, it wouldn't be a good idea to annoy the staff. They might do something really hideous, like bring me more than three meals a day."

"Food's that bad, huh?"

"Worse than bad." Charity shuddered, seeing the smile on his mouth slowly creep into his eyes. "It's so bland, it's deadly. After a few days of this stuff, I'd just about kill for a pizza."

Gabe's smile became a chuckle. Charity relaxed back against the pillows, taking pleasure in seeing some of the tension ease from his features.

When he'd first walked in, he'd looked like a man on his way to a firing squad. White lines of tension had bracketed his mouth and his eyes had held a look of despair that had made her heart go out to him. Now he was beginning to look like the man she remembered, the one with the easy smile that had lingered in her thoughts more than it should have.

It was odd that the nervousness she'd always felt when he came into the store seemed to have faded. What they'd gone through together had created a connection between them that left no room for nerves.

In those terrible, tense hours of waiting, listening to each attempt at negotiation fail, wondering if she was about to die, Charity had held fast to the knowledge that Gabe was there. It didn't matter that their only contact was a brief meeting of their eyes when she checked the wounded man's bandage. It didn't matter that there was little he could do. Just knowing he was there had given her something to cling to when she felt her self-control slipping away.

She'd known even then that it wasn't Gabe's badge that convinced her everything would be all right. It was Gabe himself. There was a quiet strength about him that had reassured her.

"Mr. Kocek, the man who was shot first, is going to be all right."

"I heard. That's good."

Charity's eyes searched his face, seeing"the lines of strain that hadn't been there before the shooting, the tightness around his mouth. He didn't look as if he'd done much smiling lately.

"They told me that the others—the two you..." The words trailed off as she groped for the right words.

"The ones I shot?" Gabe finished for her. "They died."

"Yes." She wished she hadn't said anything. The look in his eyes was painful to see.

"Yeah, I was batting a thousand that day."

She saw his knuckles whiten where he gripped the low rail at the foot of her bed. She looked away, smoothing her hand over the covers beside her as if it was important to remove every wrinkle.

"You know, if you hadn't... done what you did, a lot more people would have died."

"Maybe." Gabe shrugged. "It's a little hard to feel good when two men are lying in the morgue and you're here, like this." He gestured to her legs.

"You did the right thing," she said, her soft voice firm. "You didn't see them the way I did. They would have shot that poor old man. And it wouldn't have stopped there."

"That's what I tell myself." Gabe's mouth twisted ruefully. "Sometimes I almost believe it."

"You should believe it all the time."

Gabe only shrugged again, but the lines that bracketed his mouth were less deep, his eyes a little less bleak. Inside he was marveling at her generosity of spirit. She was lying in a hospital bed—where he'd put her—without the use of her legs, and yet she was concerned that he not feel guilty.

She should have hated him. Instead, she was trying to make him feel better. It didn't ease his gut-deep guilt. Nothing could. But he felt his interest in her deepen.

They talked, more easily than either of them would have expected. Gabe had spent some time in the hospital when he had his appendix removed, and they compared notes, coming to the conclusion that hospitals had their good points but the food definitely wasn't one of them. Neither could explain why the nurses woke you to take a sleeping pill.

Gabe's description of the lengths to which he'd gone to try and get a full night's sleep made Charity laugh, something she hadn't done much of the past few days.

He didn't stay long. Charity murmured a protest when he said it was time he left. In between bouts of sleep, the days had been longer than she would have thought possible.

"I don't want to tire you,'' he said.

"I'm not tired." But a yawn punctuated the sentence. Seeing Gabe's smile, she grimaced. "All I do is sleep," she muttered crossly.

"Probably the best thing for you."

"Now you sound like my doctor. You don't have a medical degree tucked in your pocket, do you?"

"You've guessed my secret." His smile faded, his eyes searching her face. "I'd like to come again, if you wouldn't mind."

"Are you kidding? I've considered begging strangers in the hall to come and talk to me. My brother and sister come in every evening but that still leaves a lot of hours to be filled."

"What about your parents?"

"Mom and Dad are off somewhere in the African bush doing whatever one does in the African bush. They don't even know I'm in here. Which is just as well. Mom would want to dose me with some of her foul-tasting herbs and Dad would be cross-examining the doctors."

"They sound great." It wasn't hard to read through her complaints to the very real affection she felt for her parents.

"They are," she admitted, wishing suddenly that Seth and Josie Williams would walk into the room. They'd be driving her crazy inside of an hour, but there was a certain comfort in their eccentricities.

She yawned again and Gabe stood up. This time she didn't protest when he said he had to leave. No doubt he had better things to do than entertain her.

"Thank you for the flowers."

"Thank my neighbor. I stripped his rose bushes before coming over here." Gabe shrugged. "He's probably waiting for me with a shotgun. I'll have to bribe him by promising to help him haul in a load of manure next spring."

"You can assure him that they were greatly appreciated," Charity told him, reaching out to touch one soft blossom.

"That'll console him." He hesitated, pushing his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his smile fading. "Are you sure it's all right if I come again?"