Brooding Angel Read online

“Melody,” Clancy interjected irritably. Why couldn’t he remember a simple name? And why couldn’t she complete a simple action? Why couldn’t she lift her leg when she wanted to? Frustration tore at her.

  “Melody,” Mitch repeated, because she wanted him to. It sounded like the name of a social director on a cruise ship. “Did Melody have any new exercises for you?”

  “Why should she? The old ones haven’t had any results yet.” What was the point of telling him that Melody and a male therapist had taken her out of bed? That they had held her between them and tried to get her to put just the slightest bit of weight on her legs, only to have her crumple against them?

  He accepted her raised voice with a patience that was maddening to her. “The doctor told you that in some cases these things take time.” He’d gotten that much out of her during his last visit. And he had spoken to the doctor himself the day after he had first come to see her. Mitch had identified himself as the patrolman who had been involved. Kleinschen had told him what he wanted to know and had applauded his concern. Mitch felt like a fraud.

  All Clancy had was her anger, and it clawed at her like a tiger wanting to be freed from its cage. Eyes flashing, she looked at Mitch.

  “What the hell is he supposed to say to me? ‘Sorry, but you’re going to be a cripple for the rest of your life’?”

  She stopped herself before the next words tumbled out in a sob, the sob she’d been struggling to hold back all day. She was sick of being brave, sick of pretending.

  Mitch heard the crack in her voice. Something deep within him wanted to hold her, to find a way to comfort her, to break through all this and make it right. But he couldn’t hold her, couldn’t rekindle what had once been. All he had was his dogged determination, and that was what he decided to work with.

  “If that were the case and he was being honest, he’d phrase it better, but yeah, that’s what he’d say.” She looked at him in surprise. “My guess is that he’s not saying it because there is a chance that you’re going to walk again.” The conviction in his voice made his statement all the stronger. “A good chance.” His eyes swept over her inert form. “As long as you don’t stay in this damn bed feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Her mouth curved cynically. “Don’t take away my only fun, Mitch.” Sarcasm dripped from every syllable. “That’s all I’ve got left.”

  She was trying to push him away, whether she knew it or not. And he’d go. But only after he’d set things right. “No, there’s plenty you can do.”

  She looked away from him and addressed the wall. “Somehow, practicing the latest dance steps just doesn’t seem to be a viable option.”

  She was bent on drowning in self-pity. And he was just as bent on saving her. “Why don’t you rechannel all that anger into your legs?”

  As if she wouldn’t if she could. She raised her hands, palms up, in an exaggerated shrug. “Sorry, the connection seems to be broken.”

  Mitch leaned over the bed and pressed the button with a little picture of a head on it. The mattress section beneath Clancy’s head began to rise, bringing her into a sitting position.

  “Out of order,” he corrected, “not broken. There’s a difference.” His eyes held hers. It was a contest of wills. Neither looked away. “And even if you never walk again, you’re only a ‘cripple’ if you cripple your spirit, Clancy. If you cripple your soul. Nobody else can do that to you but you.”

  She might have believed that once, before she’d had to lie here and face a formless future. “That’s a bunch of garbage.”

  It almost amused him that she had answered him the way he might have responded to her. What he was doing now was digging into Clancy’s bag of tricks. It amazed him how much he remembered about her, how much seemed to be indelibly inscribed in his mind.

  “Okay, let’s switch positions for a minute.” He drew closer, momentarily abandoning the bed and its controls. “Suppose it were me in that bed and you standing here.” He nodded toward the floor. “What would you say?”

  Stunned, Clancy didn’t know how to respond.

  He saw the emotions at play on her face. Mitch knew she was torn. He wasn’t about to let her off the hook. “What would you say?” he repeated.

  Clancy looked down at the bedclothes. “That I was sorry.” Her words were barely audible. “Very, very sorry.”

  Mitch studied her in silence for a moment, waiting. “And that’s it? You’d just run off, leaving me here at the bottom of an emotional black hole?” Clancy refused to look up. Mitch’s voice lowered until it was almost a growl. “Well, would you?”

  Her chin shot up as she glared at him. “That would be different.”

  An inch at a time, he told himself. An inch at a time. The other Clancy was in there somewhere. He just had to draw her out.

  “Why?” he prodded, taking her hand. “Why would that be different? Because you knew something I didn’t?”

  He was badgering her. She wished he’d just leave her alone. He was asking her to revert back to type and she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. All her hope, all her enthusiasm had been sucked out of her. The very last shreds she used when her friends were around. But Mitch wasn’t a friend. He’d ceased to be that when he’d walked out on her, on what they could have had.

  “No.”

  It was the answer he wanted. “Or maybe because you thought that somehow I could walk again if I tried hard enough.” Resistance rose up in her eyes as if it had a life of its own. “Hey, news flash. Your life didn’t end with that accident.”

  What gave him the right to talk to her this way? Mitch had no idea what it was like. “Seems that way to me.”

  He moved around the perimeter of the bed so that she was forced to look at him. “You’ve just been thrown a challenge.” He saw the retort rising to her lips and countered it before she had a chance to say anything. “A hell of a challenge, but what’s your alternative? Folding up and dying?”

  It was exactly what she wanted to do. It would have been easier than torturing herself this way.

  Clancy looked up at him. “Since you’ve turned the tables, what would you do, in my position?”

  By the look on her face, she thought she had him, he guessed. Well, she was wrong. But then, he reminded himself that she had never gotten a chance to really know him. He hadn’t let her.

  “I’d fight.” Mitch thought of all the obstacles in his life he’d had to overcome. “I always have.”

  There was something there in his tone that begged to be explored. But Clancy was too tired. “Maybe I’m not as brave as you.”

  He wasn’t about to debate that with her. When they’d been together, she’d struck him as someone with a great deal of spirit, of inner fortitude. “Yes, you are, Clancy. You’re every damn bit as brave as I am.” He thought of what he had walked out on, what she had been willing to work on. “Maybe more.”

  He was being an irritating pain. Wasn’t she already suffering enough? “Why are you doing this?”

  There was a small, nagging voice that asked him the same thing every time he drove toward the hospital. A nagging voice he’d chosen to ignore even when it felt as if it was foreshadowing something. He was doing it because he had to. Because he owed her. He took it no further than that.

  “How many times are you going to ask me that? Just accept the fact that I’m here. Things happen.” He looked at her pointedly, remembering other times. “Not always for a reason.”

  How well she knew that. But Mitch wasn’t led around by whimsy. Everything he did was deliberate and thought out. His leaving her had been clearly thought out. She had no idea why he had gone then, but she thought she knew his reasons for being here now.

  “If you’re doing this out of some sort of desire for penance, to atone for what you think you did to me, forget it.” She waved her hand at him in dismissal. “I absolve you. Go home and leave me alone.” Holding on to her leg, she attempted to create enough momentum to turn.

  He laid a hand gently on her arm and
stopped her. Clancy raised her eyes to his. “I brought you something.” For the first time she noticed that he was holding a well-creased paper bag. But she didn’t want him to bring her anything.

  “Can’t you hear?” Clancy shouted at him. “I said go home.”

  “I hear, Clancy,” he answered quietly. “I hear a lot better than you think.” And what he heard was a cry for help.

  She sighed and fell back against her pillow. He wasn’t leaving until he was ready to go. He was nothing if not stubborn.

  Mitch took out two well-thumbed books and glanced at them critically. “They’re a little worn.”

  He and McAffee had been called in to investigate a botched robbery at a used-book store just outside of Hollywood. As he had asked the owner questions, Mitch had noticed the two books propped up side by side on a display table. He’d bought them for Clancy just before he and McAffee left the shop.

  “Thought it might do you some good to read them and see how other people handled their setbacks.” He tossed the two paperbacks onto her table as if he hadn’t carefully pored over each one before purchasing them.

  A tiny space within her, somewhere far back in a corner, was touched that he’d taken the trouble. Clancy rebelled against the feeling. She didn’t want to be grateful to him. She didn’t want to get involved with anyone, least of all him.

  Clancy picked up the books and turned them around to look at the titles. They had obviously been passed around a great deal before reaching her. Had they been his? She couldn’t imagine Mitch reading books like this. One was a biography on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the other the autobiography of Helen Keller. Surprised at the choice, Clancy raised her eyes to his.

  He saw the unspoken question. “Just thought you might want to consider what two cripples could accomplish.”

  Clancy felt embarrassed and ashamed as the word echoed back to her. Her temper flared, coloring her cheeks. How dare he? “You’ve got no right to preach at me.”

  He leaned over the bed until he blotted out everything else around him. Understated power emanated from him. “I’ll do anything I can to get you angry.”

  He knew his answer surprised her. But he considered anger to be a good sign. It was certainly preferable to apathy. Apathy sucked out your soul and left you for dead. That wasn’t going to happen to Clancy, not because of something he had done. Not if there was anything he could do to stop it.

  Clancy slid the books to the far end of the small table. “I’ll read them later.”

  It wasn’t a promise. She was just saying it to put him off. He could see right through her. “See that you do.”

  With that out of the way, he got down to his real purpose for coming here each day. “Okay, let’s get to it.”

  She dropped her arms down on either side of her, as if that would somehow glue the blanket in place. “Mitch, it’s useless.”

  Nothing she said was going to change his mind. “Clancy, I’m the one who knows about useless. I’ll tell you when it’s useless.”

  She muttered something unintelligible under her breath, which he chose to ignore as he pushed the covers back. Her best friend, Cynthia, had brought her pajamas and toiletries from her apartment in hopes that the familiar objects would make her feel better. They had, just a fraction.

  Clancy was clad in a pair of pink pajamas that were very much in keeping with the woman he had known. They were short, soft and flirty, just as she had once been. He tried very hard not to remember.

  His eyes on her face, Mitch slowly, methodically, began to work the muscles of her right leg. As soon as a physical therapist had been assigned to her, Mitch had grilled Clancy on the woman’s methods. Overriding Clancy’s protests, he had emulated the exercises. He reasoned that if two sessions a day were good, three would be better.

  If he was going to help her regain mobility, he intended to go about it wholeheartedly.

  Mitch’s eyes remained on her face as he watched for any subtle signs. He purposely worked the muscles hard, hoping for a reaction. But there was none. Mitch shared some of Clancy’s frustration, though there was no way he would have ever let her know. The key to triumphing over her condition was patience.

  He’d known it wasn’t going to be easy when he’d gotten involved.

  Clancy watched Mitch’s strong hands as he slowly worked the muscles up and down her deadened limb. A vague memory stirred. Once, she had loved the feel of his hands, the warmth of his touch. Now, Mitch might as well have been stroking the metal table or the frame of the bed. She felt nothing.

  And she wanted to feel so desperately!

  He sensed the despair building within her, saw it mounting in her eyes. Conversation didn’t come easily to him, but he knew he had to fill the air with something. If he didn’t, he was afraid she would begin to cry.

  Slowly, he began lifting her leg and pushing it toward her torso. “So when are they releasing you?”

  Yesterday, after the therapist had left, a social-services director had come to her, armed with all sorts of forms, brochures and cheerful advice. Clancy had absorbed only half of it, shoving most of the documents into her nightstand. She didn’t want to hear about any more “helpful” agencies. She didn’t want any more people intruding into her life.

  “Tomorrow.”

  This was news. “Who’s taking you home?”

  Cynthia had walked in just as the social-services director was leaving. She’d been quick to volunteer to remain with her for the first few days. “Cynthia. She said she’d stay the week with me.”

  That was good. She couldn’t manage on her own—at least, not at first. And by the time she could, he promised himself, she’d be walking. “And after that?”

  She shrugged, watching his fingers. He hadn’t stopped massaging once while they talked. Why couldn’t she feel anything?

  “Her husband doesn’t want her away from home any longer than that.” She couldn’t bring herself to think more than a few days ahead. The future was far too frightening to contemplate. “The hospital insisted on sending over a visiting nurse and a therapist.”

  That much he had already ascertained on his own. He knew that Clancy wasn’t independently wealthy, although her parents were well-to-do, and insurance would cover only so much. Both the nurse and the therapist would stop by only for short visits two or three times a week. That left a great deal of time unaccounted for.

  He shifted to the other leg. “And the rest of the time?”

  Her eyes fixed on a minute fissure just above the built-in shelf along the wall. “I’ll manage.”

  Once he would have agreed; now he wanted details. She was too despondent to take care of things on her own. “Did you call your parents?”

  She had done that the second day, when she was certain she could talk to them without breaking down. “I told them the wedding was off.”

  That was only a footnote. “And?”

  Her mouth hardened. “And nothing. I told them that I would be in touch, that I had to work things out for myself.” In a way, she supposed it had been the truth. There was just more to work out than she had told her parents.

  He was closemouthed by nature. But she had never been like that. “You didn’t tell them about the accident?”

  Her eyes narrowed at the question. “No.”

  It didn’t make sense to him. She needed help. She needed someone to stay with her. “Why?”

  Clancy could visualize the way her parents would have reacted to the news. “If I told them, they’d be on the next plane to California. I didn’t want to interrupt their lives.”

  He knew she was close to her parents. The stories she told him had almost made him long for the kind of family life she had had. If he were given to longing. “Why don’t you give them that choice?”

  She shook her head, her voice softening a little. “There is no choice. I’m their only child, and although I love them dearly, it took me a long time before I got them to finally agree that I could stand on my own two feet.”
/>   For the first time since he had saved her from the wreck, Mitch saw her mouth curve in the semblance of a real smile. “They had me late in life and always felt that they had thirty-five years up on me. Thirty-five years worth of experience that they wanted to give me rather than to let me acquire on my own.”

  She looked at him, wondering if he could understand what it was like to be smothered and to still love the people who were doing it, because they were doing it for what they felt were the right reasons.

  “If I told them about the accident, I’d lose all the headway I’ve made. They’d absorb me, take me back with them to India, and I’d be a permanent part of their lives again. I’d be an appendage.”

  She didn’t add the word useless, but he heard it in her voice. Mitch nodded. So there was still a spark of independence the accident hadn’t extinguished. They weren’t totally in the dark here.

  It gave him something to work with.

  “Do you have enough money for a nurse?” It was a crass question, but there was no room for niceties in this situation. He wasn’t trying to get on her good side. He was only trying to restore what had once been.

  Her face clouded again. “That’s not your concern. None of this is your concern.”

  God, she wished she could just pull her leg away from him. But she couldn’t. The command was born and died within the confines of her mind.

  Frustrated, Clancy grabbed the edge of the blanket, intending to throw it over her legs. Mitch caught her wrist and gently extracted the blanket from her. He left her legs uncovered as he moved back to the first one.

  Pushing the pink material up on her thigh, Mitch began the process all over again. Slowly, he began to raise and lower her leg, kneading the dormant muscles to keep them from becoming atrophic. She’d answered his question with her reaction.

  “I hear that a lot.” He saw the question rise in her eyes. “Cops get told to mind their own business all the time.”

  “So you don’t plan to?” Did he intend to continuously invade her life?

  He shook his head. “Not any time soon.”

  She blew out a breath. He wouldn’t listen to her when she told him to leave, wouldn’t let her alone. Everything was out of her control.