Nobody's Angel Read Free

stoneware, a stronger form of the earthenware made since the 1700s in this part of the country. She might love the elegance of the translucent porcelain few Americans created with success, but the sheer joy and practicality of the vivid stoneware appealed to another side of her nature. The ability to create heaven from earth had always fascinated her.
    Carefully, she dusted her one Lucie Rie, an exquisite jade-green bowl balanced impossibly on a slender pedestal. People were beginning to recognize that pottery could be an art form, not just a practical place to put food or flowers. The artists in these hills deserved recognition for their talents, and the prices on the more contemporary works of unknowns were well within the budgets of many of her customers. She displayed them as carefully as the expensive Rie porcelain.
    She lifted her latest acquisition. The cracked glaze known as “crazing” would have been considered a flaw in dinnerware, but as art it added an exotic patina to the Chinese red that would draw every eye in the room. She marveled that a flaw caused by cooling a glaze too rapidly could produce such drama when done deliberately.
    As she finished dusting and unlocked the door to open the shop for business, Faith turned on the display lights and admired the total effect. Artie had helped her with the wiring, but she'd had to hire a professional to choose just the right lights for each setting. She might have an appreciation for art, but she knew she had no talent.
    Still, she was proud of what she'd accomplished in four short years. When doubts crowded the back of her mind, she swept them away by standing here as she was doing now, knowing she was gradually filling the empty well of her life with something good and decent. She might not be in New York City or Miami, making a big splash, but she was introducing the area to fine porcelain and stoneware and providing an outlet for local artists. She was determined to like the person she was turning herself into.
    The overhead chime rang, and Faith swung out of her trance. A visitor arriving just after she opened could mean only one of two things: a convention was in town and she'd have a busy day—or trouble.
    She recognized trouble as soon as Annie walked in the door, her thin face screwed up in her perpetual frown of worry.
    “Faith, do you have a minute?” she whispered, as if the shop were a museum.
    Annie was one of those people Faith couldn't convince that art was for everyone and not just the wealthy. She supposed she understood the mindset. If one spent one's life scraping up coins for groceries, art was a ludicrous waste of time and money. But Faith's love of beauty mourned the bleakness of a life without art.
    “What's the matter, Annie? Surely the roof isn't leaking again. It didn't rain last night, did it?”
    Before Annie could reply, Faith's breath caught in her throat as a lean shadow materialized outside the shop's plate-glass window. Him.
    A pulse pounded at her temple as she tore her gaze from the window and back to the waif of a woman before her. An observer would never know Annie was the director of a shelter for the homeless and not one of its occupants. Faith started nervously at the ringing door chime but concentrated on Annie.
    “We had a woman with three children come in last night,” Annie whispered, darting an anxious glance at the man strolling through the doorway. “I'm sorry, you have customers. Call me when you can, will you?”
    Faith didn't want Annie to leave. She knew the man in black presently perusing the Rie piece was the man from last night. She was already picking up his high intensity vibrations.
    She caught Annie's wrist and steered her toward the counter. “There aren't enough beds?” she asked, keeping her voice low. She liked separating the various parts of her life. A customer didn't need to know of her involvement with the homeless shelter or the bar.
    Annie heaved a massive sigh. “Not enough beds, not