Faithless Angel Read Free

sprinkled across his fat tummy, he was the only redeeming thing in the entire room, and she almost smiled.
    Instead, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the rain that beat a steady tattoo on the roof, the sound almost deafening, numbing….
    Yes, numb was much better. Easier. Much easier than those few days she’d spent at the hospital, crying and praying and urging Jane to fight for her life. Her words had been wasted, her tears for nothing, her prayers meaningless. Like everything now.
    Those kids need you
.
    Little did Jesse Savage know that those kids were better off without her. What could she possibly offer them?
    A roof over their heads. Food in their stomachs. Someone to care for them
, her conscience answered for an instant before her cynicism kicked in.
    So what? In the end, none of that mattered. It hadn’t mattered that Jane had been like her owndaughter, that Faith had nursed her through nightmares, fed her, clothed her, loved her. It hadn’t mattered a bit. Jane was dead, despite everything.
    Shoving a strand of hair back from her face, she let her fingers linger at her cheek. She could still feel the brush of warm male skin, the sudden heat that had spread through her and thawed her insides for the split second when Jesse Savage had touched her.
    Dangerous. That was what she’d first thought the moment she’d pulled open the front door and seen him standing there, filling the empty space of her porch.
    With an overgrowth of stubble, dark, piercing brown eyes, and even darker hair brushing his collar, he’d looked more than simply dangerous. He’d looked downright deadly. She’d been a fool to open the door to someone like him, especially in this neighborhood, even with the burglar bars she’d installed last year.
    Then again, cautious people died as quickly, as easily as fools did. Everyone died. Dumb and not so dumb. Rich and poor. Young and old. Everyone. No reason, no rhyme.
    As dangerous as he’d looked, he’d also struck her as oddly familiar, as if she’d seen him somewhere before. But where—
    The crash of trash-can lids brought her eyes wide open. She bolted from the couch and rushed to the kitchen, reaching the back door in time to see one large silver trash can, newly purchased just last week, take a tumble off her back steps. At the same time, a grungy teen wearing a tattered pair of jeans and a shabby T-shirt snatched up the other gleaming can.
    Instead of pulling open the door as she used to, and giving the thieving adolescent a piece of hermind, she simply turned away. She shut out the noise and the sight of garbage littering her back steps and headed for the bedroom to change.
    She wouldn’t care.
    The firm vow didn’t bring a smile to her lips, or tears to her eyes. There was no freedom, or even guilt. Nothing except the image of a dark and dangerous and disturbingly familiar stranger, his deep voice echoing,
Those kids need you
….
    And for a fraction of a heartbeat, Faith wanted to believe him. But her beliefs, her faith, were now as dead as her dear, sweet Jane.
    “Take it easy, Emily.”
    The boy’s familiar voice stopped Faith’s hand in midair. She glanced up from the stack of papers she’d been signing, her gaze sweeping from the back door of Faith’s House, which she’d entered only minutes ago, to the closed door that led to the rest of the building. Her attention riveted to the knob and she silently damned herself for not thinking to lock the door when she’d first come inside.
    But she’d never locked her door. She’d never shut it, even when the house had been full of noise and chaos. But she’d never slipped in the back way, either.
    “It isn’t your CD, you pighead,” another voice, this one female, replied. “Bradley told you to keep your slimy paws off my stuff. Now give it back!”
    A loud thud and the door trembled.
    “Hey, watch it,” Ricky grumbled. “That hurt.”
    “Good. Touch my stuff again and I’ll do more than that,