Darkangel(57)

Probably I should stop torturing myself. True, it was less than a month until my twenty-second birthday, and the window of opportunity was rapidly closing, but stressing about it wasn’t going to do me — or anyone else — any good. And there was a new candidate coming in the next day, so that was something. Not that I was expecting much. Somehow the thought of kissing a stranger was even less appealing than usual.

Because it won’t be Chris Wilson, my mind whispered at me.

I shut that thought down right away. Truthfully, I didn’t really know what would happen when/if I went down to Phoenix, or, even if we did go, whether I’d have the courage to call him. He’d seemed interested in me, so I didn’t think I’d be impinging. Goddess knows I was interested in him, but that didn’t matter in the long haul. He was off-limits.

That time I did let out a sigh. Telling my brain to shut up and leave me alone, I turned over on my side, closed my eyes, and tried to convince myself that the bed didn’t feel quite as cold and empty as I thought it did.



* * *



None of my failed attempts at finding a consort had been exactly pleasant, but this one was definitely the worst. For one thing, I didn’t have the buffer of Aunt Rachel there to take the edge off, only the dubious comfort of that day’s bodyguards, who pretended to be immersed in a discussion of the upcoming “lighting up the mountain” festivities next weekend, but who I could tell were trying to eavesdrop on everything the new candidate and I were saying to one another.

He’d come loping up the front steps, looking at the house with what I thought was an avaricious gleam in his eye. I knew this because I was peeking through a clear spot in one of the stained-glass panels that flanked the door. All right, maybe I was already predisposed to expect the worst, but his expression was decidedly different from that of the candidates I’d met at Aunt Rachel’s far more modest apartment.

The doorbell rang. I weighed the possibility of pretending I wasn’t home, then decided against it, since I knew one of the bodyguards would just come answer the doorbell if I didn’t. So I grasped the handle and turned it, then opened the door.

Like most of the candidates, he wasn’t bad-looking. A little above average height, short brown hair, brown eyes. I gave a mental shrug. Really, it would be so much easier if I could just look at their eye color, say “nope,” and move on to the next one. But although everyone more or less thought there must be something important about my dreams, they weren’t willing to give them enough weight that they could rule out every candidate who didn’t have green eyes.

Although I’d been dressing a little more nicely these days, mostly because it didn’t seem right for the prima of the McAllisters to be slouching around in jeans with holes in them and pilly sweaters, I hadn’t gone to a lot of effort today. My hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and I wore one of my Jerome sweatshirts over a pair of faded jeans. No, they didn’t have holes in them, but they were starting to get a little threadbare.

I could tell by his disappointed expression that this new candidate wasn’t overly impressed with the McAllisters’ prima.

Good.

“Hi,” I said, and stuck out my hand. “I’m Angela.”

“I know,” he replied. Then he shrugged and extended his own hand. “Griffin Dutton.”

I knew that as well. I also knew that he came from Wickenburg, worked at one of the guest ranches there, and was my fifth or sixth cousin lord knows how many times removed. Back in the twenties one of the McAllister girls had married a rancher in those parts, and Griffin was her great-great-grandson. Or so Aunt Rachel had explained.

After a lackluster hand shake, I said, “The parlor is over here. Do you want me to get you anything first? Water? A Coke?” I didn’t drink soda, but a couple of the bodyguards were caffeine fiends, so I kept it around for them.

“A Coke would be good.”

Fetching it would give me a small reprieve. I pointed to the parlor, which opened on the foyer. “Why don’t you go on in and sit down? I’ll be back in a minute.”

He nodded and headed into the parlor, and I went the other direction to fetch his Coke from the kitchen. I found my cousin Kirby with his head in the fridge, eyeing a pizza box from Grapes.

“Don’t you dare,” I told him. “That’s my dinner tonight.”

Looking over his shoulder, he shot me a grin. He was a few years older than I and had a loft apartment down on Main Street that he shared with his boyfriend. Even ten years ago there probably would’ve been a hell of a ruckus over that, but these days no one even batted an eye. I wished my love life were that uncomplicated.