Angels Don't Cry. Amanda Stevens

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СКАЧАТЬ let her eyes meet Drew’s once more as she folded her arms in front of her, forcing herself to remain calm and undaunted beneath the power of his devastating blue gaze. “No one calls me Angel anymore. At least not to my face.”

      “Sorry. Old habits, as they say, die hard.” He mounted the rest of the steps, coming to stand beside her so that she was forced to look up at him. “I’d heard you’d changed your name sometime ago.”

      From Aiden, of course, Ann thought with a prick of an emotion she did not care to identify.

      “In fact, it’s now Dr. Lowell, I believe.”

      She heard the light, almost teasing quality in his voice and found herself responding in spite of her resolve. A grudging smile touched her lips. “Since you’re not one of my students, Ann will do.” She paused, then added, almost accusingly, “We’ve certainly heard great things about your career. Vice president, isn’t it?”

      Drew gave a low, ironic laugh. “One of several. Empty titles to feed our egos rather than our bank balances.”

      His self-deprecating humor somehow managed to cut through the tension. Ann felt her taut muscles slowly begin to relax as she allowed herself to respond to Drew’s smile.

      A furtive movement in the garden below captured their attention. Ann could just make out the dark outline of her three-legged cat as he crouched at the edge of a flowerbed, eyes glowing in the darkness. He pounced at some poor, unfortunate creature in the grass, one gray paw whipping out like a hook. With a loud meow of protest, he disappeared into the foliage, stalking.

      “One of your infamous strays, no doubt,” Drew teased warmly.

      Ann nodded. “I found him out on the highway a few months ago where he had been hit by a car and left to die. Dr. Matlock patched him up as best he could, but there wasn’t anything he could do about his leg. He manages just fine with the three he has left, though,” she remarked proudly. “Watson’s very curious, always prowling around, poking in corners. And he’s smart as a whip.”

      “Then why not Sherlock?” Drew asked with an easy laugh. “You always did find heroes in the most unlikely guises.”

      The sound of his laughter touched something deep inside her, something she tried to deny but couldn’t. His laughter still had the power to set her stomach quivering, her hands to trembling. It still had the power to break through all the barriers she had so carefully erected. “Not anymore,” she said in a tone that held the faintest trace of resentment. “I gave up looking for heroes a long time ago.”

      The momentary break in tension fled at her words. She noted the slight stiffening of his posture that acknowledged the same thought.

      “Ang—Ann, I was sorry to hear about your father. And Aiden.” He paused for a moment. “I wanted to talk to you at her service, but there were a lot of people around you...I didn’t want to intrude.”

      Her soft green eyes impaled him with a piercing glance. “I was surprised to hear you were there at all.”

      He shrugged uneasily, his voice slightly defensive. “A lot of people were, I imagine. It seemed to me the decent thing to do.”

      “Yes. As I recall, you were always big on doing the decent thing—at least where Aiden was concerned.”

      Ann felt a small prickle of remorse as she watched a brief frown crease Drew’s forehead at her bitter words. Her response had been automatic, prompted by emotions in herself that were all too easy to identify. When someone had first told her that Drew had been at the service, Ann’s heart had almost hit the floor. For a brief terrible moment, even in her grief, she’d felt the threat of an old jealousy. Then there had been the inevitable and almost instantaneous feeling of guilt. Those same two emotions had warred inside her for ten long years.

      “Look, I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “That was uncalled for.”

      “You’ve every right,” Drew acknowledged. But something flashed in those blue depths, something dark and unfathomable, leaving Ann wondering about the hardened look in his eyes.

      Her earlier impression of him had been wrong, she realized suddenly. He had changed. A great deal. Even in the moonlight, she could see the lines around his mouth and eyes were far more deeply etched than she had first judged. It would have been a kindness to call them laugh lines when Ann somehow knew they weren’t. They gave him a visage far more mature than his thirty years.

      “That was all a long time ago,” she said softly, reminding herself as well as him. It had been a long time ago. The years had slipped away and taken their youth. They had each lived their lives and time hadn’t stopped for either of them. “Why are you really here, Drew? What do you want from me?”

      His eyes raked her face, then looked away. She wondered suddenly and unpleasantly in the silence that followed whether he’d found the changes in her own face as disturbing as she’d found those in his.

      What did he expect? she thought bitterly. Ten years wrought changes in everyone. So did pain and disillusionment and anger.

      “I want your goodwill, Ann,” he said at last. “No matter what the outcome of the Riverside project turns out to be. This may sound strange to you, but I’d like to establish some sort of—I don’t know—peace between us. I want to put the past to rest once and for all.”

      Ann plucked a chandelier of honeysuckle from the trellis beside her and spun the blossom beneath her nose like a tiny pinwheel. She closed her eyes as the thick, haunting scent triggered a thousand memories. Abruptly her eyes opened. “You’re a little late to be asking for my goodwill.”

      He fixed her with a long, searching gaze. “It’s been ten years, Ann. I can’t believe you still hate me that much.”

      “You flatter yourself. Hate is a powerful emotion. I don’t feel anything for you anymore.”

      “Is that why you ran away from me earlier? You ran away from me a long time ago, and you’re doing it still. What are you afraid of?”

      She gaped at him in open-mouthed indignation. “I’m certainly not afraid of you!” she snapped in sudden anger.

      “Then why did you leave like that?” he asked softly. “Why did you leave without telling me where you were going, without even saying goodbye?”

      For a moment she thought he was still talking about her leaving the meeting, but when she realized he was referring to the past, her gaze sliced him with scorn. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that. You, of all people, know exactly why I left, why I had to.”

      “You didn’t have to,” Drew argued reasonably, as though the discussion was no more important than idle dinner conversation. “You could have stayed and given me a chance to work something out.”

      Her laughter had a bitter, hollow ring to it that had them both blanching. “You got married, remember? You had a child on the way. What could we possibly have `worked out’?”

      “I never meant to hurt you.”

      She merely stared at him, crushing the honeysuckle blossom tightly in her fist. Abruptly turning away from him, she threw it, lifeless, to the ground.

      “It was only one night.” СКАЧАТЬ