Kiss an Angel(62)

Heather slammed her mouth shut. At the same time, she stumbled toward the door and fled.

Several long seconds ticked by before Alex slumped down on the couch. “I blew it, didn’t I?”

Daisy regarded him with something like pity. “For a smart man, you certainly don’t have much sense.”





12




Alex stared at the door through which Heather had just disappeared, then looked back at his wife. “That was the lousiest performance I’ve ever seen. Did you really say, ‘I’m going to fight you for him’?”

“She believed me, and that’s all that counted. After what you said, she needed to have someone treat her like an adult.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her, but what was I supposed to do? She’s not an adult; she’s a kid.”

“She gave you her heart, Alex, and you told her it didn’t mean anything.”

“It wasn’t only her heart she was offering. Just before you came in, she let me know that her body was part of the package.”

“She’s feeling desperate. If you’d taken her up on it, she’d have been scared to death.”

He shuddered. “Sixteen-year-olds aren’t on my list of favorite perversions.”

“What is?” She immediately bit her lip. When was she going to start thinking before she spoke?

He gave her a maddening smile that made goose bumps break out on her skin. “It’ll be more fun for you to find that out for yourself.”

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

“Why don’t you just wait and see.”

She studied him. “Does it have anything to do with—no, of course not.”

“Are you worrying about those whips again?”

“Not really,” she lied.

“Good. Because you don’t have anything to be concerned about.” He paused. “If I do it exactly right, it hardly hurts at all.”

Her eyes widened. “Will you stop it!”

“What?”

His innocent expression didn’t fool her one bit “Stop planting all these seeds of suspicion in my mind.”

“I haven’t done a thing. You’ve put the suspicions there all by yourself.”

“Only because you keep playing games with me. You’ve baited me about this from the beginning, and I don’t like it. Just answer one simple question. Yes or no? Have you ever whipped a woman?”

“Yes or no?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

“No qualifiers?”

“None.”

“All right, then. Yes, I have definitely whipped a woman.”

She swallowed and said weakly, “I take that back about the qualifiers.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, but you lost your chance.” With a grin, he sat down behind his desk. “I have work to do, so maybe you’d better tell me what you wanted to see me about.”

Several seconds passed before she could gather her wits enough to remember what had brought her here in the first place. “It’s Glenna.”

“What about her?”

“She’s a large animal and that cage is too small for her. We need a new one.”

“Just like that? You want us to buy a new gorilla cage?”

“It’s inhumane keeping her so closely confined. She’s really sad, Alex. She has these wonderful soft fingers and she pushes them out through the bars as if she’s starved for contact with another living being. And that’s not the only problem. All the cages are so old that I’m not even sure they’re safe. The lock on the leopard cage is being held together with wire.”

He picked up a pencil and absentmindedly tapped the eraser on the battered desktop. “I agree with you. I hate that damned menagerie—it’s barbaric—but cages are expensive, and Sheba’s still thinking about selling off the animals. You’ll just have to do your best.” He spotted something out the window, and his chair creaked as he leaned back to get a better view. “Well, will you look at that. It seems you have a visitor.”

She looked outside and saw a baby elephant standing untethered in front of the red wagon. “It’s Tater.”

As she watched, he lifted his trunk and bellowed, looking for all the world like a tragic hero calling out for his lost love. “What’s he doing over here?”

“Trying to find you, I imagine.” He smiled. “Elephants form strong family ties, and Tater seems to have bonded with you.”

“He’s a little large to be a pet.”

“I’m glad you feel that way because he’s not sleeping in our bed, Daisy, no matter how much you beg me.”

She laughed. At the same time she refrained from telling him that she wasn’t certain she’d be sleeping there, either. Too much still needed to be settled between them.



As Sheba approached Alex, she was having the grandmother of bad days. Just that morning Brady had told her that Daisy wasn’t pregnant. The idea of that woman bearing Markov babies was so abhorrent she should have been relieved, but instead, something ugly had pooled in the pit of her stomach. If Alex hadn’t married Daisy because she was pregnant, then he must have done it out of choice. He must have done it because he loved her.