Teresa Medeiros - Once An Angel

"Luck was never my strong suit."

"Nor mine," he shot back. "At least not since I met you."

She clasped her hands behind her back. "You didn't actually meet me. You sort of found me. Like a

stray pup or a-"

"Bad apple?"

She looked down at her feet, but not before Justin saw her lips twist with a wry pain. Guilt shot through him. She hadn't helped his temper by reminding him of the night he had found her. The nubile curves of her moon-drenched body still haunted him. A gift from the sea, he had so foolishly called her. A gift from hell, more likely. Poseidon had probably laughed himself off his underwater throne to be rid of her. For a savage moment Justin wished he could recall that night, wished he had thrust apart her silky thighs and ravished her before she'd ever opened her impudent mouth.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Emily asked, alarmed by the open voracity of his gaze.

"Like what?" His dangerous purr folded an aching knot in the pit of her stomach.

She pressed her fist there. "Like I'm a French pastry and you haven't eaten in a month."

"Oh, it's been far longer than a month, my dear." He stalked toward her, backing her up with each silky word. "I wish I had gobbled you up that night on the beach. Because then at least I would have had a moment's peace in the afterglow . . . which is more than I've had since then." He stroked her cheek in

the tenderest of caresses. "Did you know you are an ungrateful, deceitful, rude, ill-tempered, nosy little wench?" His voice shot to a roar, "And those are your good points!"

Emily's rear struck the table. She tilted her chin in wounded dignity. "I'm quite aware of my shortcomings but if it makes you feel better, do continue your assassination of my character."

Growling under his breath, Justin spun on his heel. It didn't take him more than three strides to realize he was pacing without having to hop over stacks of books or snarled blankets. Emily folded her hands in a demure knot.

"My books," he muttered. "What the hell has she done to my books? She's trying to drive me mad. I'll never be able to find anything."

"Why, of course you will. I've organized them ever so nicely."

His accusing gaze impaled her. "I knew where every book was. Before you moved them."

A spirit of perversity seized Emily. She pulled his boyhood journal off the nearest stack and waved it under his nose. "Even this one, Homer?"

Justin snatched it out of her hand and reached around her to jerk open the secret drawer. It slid from its moorings and clattered to the floor, spilling out papers, bottles of ink, several charcoal pencils, a thin pair of gold spectacles, and a yellowing packet tied with string. Muttering under his breath, he squatted and crammed the journal and his symphonies into the cubbyhole.

Emily knelt to gather some papers, prepared to hand them over as a peace offering. She glanced curiously at an official-looking document signed with flourished signatures, but it drifted from her fingers, forgotten, as her gaze fell on the packet of letters. She recognized the bold strokes of Justin's handwriting.

He was still muttering through clenched teeth. "If I'd have wanted an infernal woman pawing through

my belongings, I'd have married one, now, wouldn't I? Why can't you stay out of my things? Better yet, why can't you just stay out of my life?"

His hand closed around the letters, but it was too late.

A tear splashed the envelope, smearing the faded ink. Another pelted his hand like a salty raindrop.

"Oh, Christ, Em, don't go all weepy on me. I get enough of that from Penfeld."

But Emily wasn't looking at him. She was staring at the thick bundle of letters, each one addressed to a Miss Claire Scarborough of 45 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London, and never posted.

She gazed up at him through a mist of tears. He reached for her, but she was already gone, leaving the door swinging in her wake.

It rain melted to a fine mist against Emily's skin, mingling with her tears. The wind tore at her curls and whipped the sea into foaming whitecaps. She hugged her knees to her chest, lulled by the sibilant hiss

of the waves against the shore.

It didn't take Justin long to find her. She looked up to find him silhouetted against a curtain of gray, hatless, his hands clenched into fists, empty and beseeching. Rain misted his hair and caught like crystal beads in the stubble of his beard.

She turned her face to the sea, dashing her tears away. How could she explain it wasn't sadness making her weep, but a fierce joy?

He had never forgotten her, she realized. In all of those long, lonely years he had never once forgotten her. The thick packet of letters bound by a frayed string was proof of that. But why had he never posted them? Why had he robbed a bereft child of the solace his words might have given? She had slipped downstairs each morning at the school when the mail was delivered only to creep back to her attic empty-handed, praying the others girls hadn't seen her. She could only imagine the joy and pride she might have felt had Miss Winters laid one of those crisp brown envelopes in her hands. She would have flown up the stairs then, torn open the letter, and savored every word from the guardian she had never met.

Confusion buffeted her like the wind. If Justin had uttered one word, one contrite syllable, it might have all come tumbling out-the questions, the accusations, the pleas. Instead, he offered her his hand.

Emily took it, relieved to find something of warmth and substance in her shifting world. He pulled her to her feet, and they faced each other for a timeless moment, just a man and a woman alone on a barren stretch of sand. He entwined her fingers in his own and led her up a sandy hill to a broad bluff crowned by a rough-hewn cross.

The wind was stronger there. It whipped Justin's hair to a dark froth and battered the purity of his profile as he freed her hand and faced the sea. Suddenly Emily didn't want to know the truth. With a desperation that shocked her, she longed to press her fingertips to his chiseled lips, to silence his mouth with the ravenous heat of her own.

But when he opened his mouth, only these halting words came out. "I hear music in my head all the time. I always have. For as long as I can remember."

Emily sank down in the shallow grass, her knees weakened by relief. "It must be a gift."

His laugh was short and bitter. "A curse perhaps. My family thought me a freak. I was my father's only son, yet I had no interest in his shipping firm or the blasted social obligations that accompanied his wretched title. He couldn't drag me away from the piano." His voice dropped, became as gray and passionless as the sky. When I was twenty-one he gave me a choice. My music or my inheritance. I chose the music. He tossed me into the streets with nothing but the coat on my back. I ended up at a music hall in a rat-infested rookery playing bawdy tunes for drunken sots who tossed me pennies for

pay. That's where I met Nicky. He took me under his wing and taught me how to survive."

He glanced down at the cross. Emily sucked in a breath, suddenly realizing what she was sitting next to.

"Nicholas?" she said softly. "Is he buried here?"

Justin looked up, blinking almost absently. "We never found anything of Nicholas to bury. My other partner rests here." He reached down and ran a hand over the cross. "The dearest friend I ever had."

Emily couldn't move, couldn't breathe. Emotions she'd thought long suppressed welled up in her throat, rendering speech impossible. She was as helpless as a doll in Justin's hands as he cupped her cheek and gently tilted her face to his. He could have hurled her into the sea, and she wouldn't have been able to

do so much as whimper a protest.

"I'm trying to say I'm sorry for shouting at you, Emily. I was afraid you'd think me a freak, too."

He leaned down and brushed her lips with his own, leaving his indelible taste. Then he jammed his hands into his pockets and started down the hill, his shoulders braced against the wind.

Emily stared blindly out to sea, far out, where the hazy curve of the horizon met the waves. The rough-hewn cross slowly filled her vision. No marble angels for her father. No elaborate script carved in granite-David Scarborough, Beloved Father. Only a simple cross on a windy hill overlooking the sea. A cross, she knew somehow, lovingly carved by Justin's hands.

Tears dimmed her vision as she ran her palm over the sparse grass blanketing her father's grave.

"Oh, Daddy," she whispered. "What am I to do?"

Emily returned to the hut much later. She pushed open the door, expecting to find it deserted in the deepening gloom.

But orange and yellow tongues of flame licked at a handful of brush inside the stove. A pot simmered

on top of it, fragrant with cumin and cloves. Penfeld met her at the door with a towel to dry her hair. Touching his finger to his lips in a plea for silence, he cocked his head toward the table.