Kiss an Angel(85)

Daisy opened her mouth to respond, but Alex broke in, knowing Daisy was so damned polite she’d answer their questions till she dropped. “Sorry, that’s it.” Wrapping his arm around her, he began leading her away.

It hadn’t taken the media long to get hold of the story of the escaped tiger, and reporters had been showing up ever since the matinee to interview her. At first Sheba had been happy with the publicity. Then she’d heard Daisy comment that the menagerie was cruel and inhumane, and she’d been furious. When Sheba had attempted to interrupt with the interview, Daisy had looked at her with those innocent eyes and said, without a speck of guile, “But, Sheba, the animals hate being in the menagerie. They’re all so unhappy there.”

As he and Daisy made their way to the trailer, he was so glad she was alive and unhurt that he didn’t much mind anything she said. She stumbled, and he realized he was walking too fast. He was always doing that to her. Dragging her along. Pushing her. Making her stumble. What if she’d been hurt today? What if Sinjun had killed her?

He felt a crushing panic as his mind played out gruesome images of Sinjun’s claws ripping into her small, slender body. If anything had happened to her, he would never have forgiven himself. She was too important to him. Too necessary.

Her fragrance drifted up at him, sweet and spicy, with a hint of something else, maybe the scent of goodness. How had she managed to work her way under his skin in such a short time? She wasn’t his type of woman at all, but she’d made him feel emotions he’d never imagined, even as she turned the rules of logic upside down so that black became white and order became chaos. There was nothing rational about her. She made pets out of tigers and recoiled in fear from a small dog. She’d taught him how to laugh. She’d also done something no one else had been able to accomplish since he was a very young child. She had shattered his rigid self-control, and maybe that was why he was beginning to hurt so much.

An image flickered through his mind, at first elusive, but gradually growing clearer. He remembered frigid winter days when he’d been outside too long and come in to thaw. He remembered the pain in his frozen hands as warmth returned to them. The pain of the thaw. Was that what was happening to him? Was he feeling the pain of thawing emotions?

Daisy looked back at the reporters. “They’re going to think I’m rude, Alex. I shouldn’t have left so abruptly.”

“I don’t give a damn what they think.”

“That’s because you have high self-esteem. I, on the other hand, have low—”

“Don’t start.”

Tater, tethered near their trailer, bleated as he saw Daisy. “I have to tell him good night.”

His arms felt empty as she disengaged herself and went over to Tater where she pressed her cheek to his head. He wrapped her up in his trunk, and Alex had to fight the urge to pull her away before the baby elephant crushed her from an excess of feeling. A cat. Maybe he could buy her some kind of house cat. Declawed so she wouldn’t get scratched.

The idea didn’t ease his mind. Knowing Daisy, she was probably afraid of house cats, too.

She finally left Tater behind to followed him into the trailer where she began to take off her costume only to sink down on the end of the bed. “Go ahead and yell at me. I know you’ve been wanting to all day.”

Alex had never seen her look so forlorn. Why did she always have to think the worst of him? Even as his heart urged him to go easy, his mind told him he had to rip right into her and give her a lecture she’d never forget. The circus was full of dangers, and he would do anything to keep her safe.

As he gathered his thoughts, she gazed up at him, and all the troubles of the world were reflected in the violet depths of her eyes. “I couldn’t let you kill him, Alex. I couldn’t.”

His good intentions dissolved. “I know.” He sat next to her on the bed, picking the hay out of her hair and speaking with difficulty. “What you did today was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“And the stupidest. Go ahead and say it.”

“That, too.” He reached out with his index finger and pushed an inky curl back from her cheek. As he gazed into her upturned face, he couldn’t remember ever having seen anything that moved him so deeply. “When I first met you, all I could see was a spoiled little rich girl, silly and pampered, too beautiful for her own good.”

Predictably, she began to shake her head. “I’m not beautiful. My mother—”

“I know. Your mother was a knockout, and you’re paper bag ugly.” He smiled. “Sorry to upset all those cherished illusions of yours, but I don’t see it your way.”

“That’s because you didn’t know her.”

She spoke with such seriousness that he had to suppress another of those urges to laugh that seemed to come over him whenever they were together. “Could your mother have led tiger back into its cage?”

“Maybe not that, but she was very good with men. They’d do anything for her.”

“This man will do anything for you.”

Her eyes grew wider, and he wanted to snatch back his words because they revealed too much. He’d vowed to protect her from her own romantic dreams, but he’d just let her see how much he cared. Knowing Daisy, with her old-fashioned views about marriage, she’d imagine his caring to be love and start building pipe dreams in her head about their future, pipe dreams his own twisted emotional makeup wouldn’t let him fulfill. The only way he could protect her was to let her see what a mean son of a bitch she’d linked herself up with.