Nobody's Angel Read Free Page A

enough privacy, not enough clothes. The baby is still in diapers.” She hesitated, cast a glance at the customer, and continued hurriedly. “I think she belongs in the battered women's shelter, but she hasn't said a thing, and I can't make her go.Faith, the kids are all
girls.
You know how many men we have in there. If only we could afford—”
    Faith patted her hand. “I know, we need another building. Let me see what we can do about the beds and clothes first. The building fund will have to wait a little longer.”
    “Bless you,” Annie said with obvious relief. Darting a glance at the lean, dark man now gazing at a consignment of contemporary Navajo pottery Faith had taken as an experiment, Annie hurried away.
    The rush of cool fall breeze as the door opened and closed was all that stirred the palpable tension left behind after Annie's departure.
    Faith reached for her telephone.
    “Don't.” He stretched over the counter and closed his fingers over her own, holding the receiver pinned in its cradle. She hadn't heard him move.
    Shaking, she clenched the hard plastic and dared to look up.
    The impact of deep brown eyes framed in heavy black lashes nearly undid her. The physical contact of their hands was no longer tolerable as she floundered under the intensity of his stare. She jerked her hand from beneath his and awkwardly balled it into a fist.
    “You.” She spoke first, breaking the stretching silence. “How did you find me?”
    “Artie has a major crush on you,” he said dryly, returning his hands to the pockets of his trousers. They hung loosely on his narrow hips, as if designed for a better-fed man.
    “Artie is twenty-three and has a crush on any woman who refuses him.” She spoke neutrally, grateful for the barrier of the counter as she tried to probe the stranger's vague familiarity. With Cherokee-straight black hair, naturally tan skin, and a lean physique accentuated by muscle rolling tautly beneath black cotton shirtsleeves, he didn't look like anyone she should know. Taut creases cut either side of his unsmiling mouth, and a sharp beak of a nose emphasized his uncompromising appearance. He held himself with an air of authority that terrified her.
    He said nothing, only stared as if he could see beneath her skin. Nervously, Faith brushed her loose hair back from her face and wished she'd put a barrette in it. “Artie shouldn't have told you where to find me.”
    “He had a lot of beers, and I'm told I have a persuasive tongue.”
    Oh, yeah, that he did, but it was his voice rather than his words that stroked and wrapped around her like loving fingers. He would put a preacher to shame with a voice like that. Put him in a pin-striped suit and silk shirt and tie and stick him before a courtroom—
    Faith gasped and stepped back, eyes widening. “You!” she exclaimed for the second time, for a different reason.
    “We've established that.” He bent his head slightly in acknowledgment. Sunlight shot a gleam off the silver of his earring. He still didn't smile.
    She'd seen him with an expensively styled haircut, in a tailored suit, with a gold watch on his wrist. He'd looked like a pirate—a corporate one.
    Ridiculous. She shut her eyes against the image. She hadn't known him as any more than a shadow of Tony back then. “What do you want?” she demanded.
    “Your husband's books.”
    She heard the grating harshness behind his innocuous words. “He's dead,” she reminded him. “I thought they'd locked you away.”
    “Time off for good behavior.” The voice dripped satire. “Not difficult to do in a minimum security prison. And since I'm not married and couldn't be granted conjugal visits, I had lots of incentive.”
    Faith's eyes shot open as soon as the vision of this man, naked, having sex, appeared in her overactive imagination. She hadn't thought about sex in years, had given it up for Lent and forgotten to pick it up again. This man exuded a sexual aura that hummed through all her