Avenging Angel

“Who’s going to take over the riding lessons here?” Mike asked.

Elle blinked a couple of times. She’d been lost in her thoughts. How to answer? She didn’t want to raise any false hopes—

The answer came from behind Elle. “You are, Mike,” Peg said as she entered the stable.

“But I have to tend the horses,” Mike said, leaning on the broom. “I have to exercise and—”

“Starting tomorrow, you do everything Elle did. We’ve already got Pam and Tracy coming in to help with mucking out stables and exercising. I’ll get the Hoskins boy to do your chores until we can find someone more permanent. Get some sleep tonight, you’re going to have a big day tomorrow.”

With that, she nodded at Mike and left the stable.

“What’s with her?” Mike whispered to Elle. “She didn’t even look at you.”

“She’s got a lot on her mind,” Elle said.

Mike nodded and then grinned. “I wonder if she’ll let me move into your cabin. It’s bigger than mine.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I have to use the outhouse.”

Elle laughed. “You’re moving up in the world, my friend.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks to you and Mr. Alazandro.”

A HALF HOUR LATER, Elle was in her car, trying in vain to get the motor to turn over. The oil light shone red, which meant she’d neglected to add oil the last time she used the car. Great, she was probably willing Mike a car with a cracked head. On the other hand, he was getting a practically new Learn Japanese in Thirty Days tape, which was still stuck in the car’s tape player.

Someone rapped on her window.

She cranked it down to find Pete leaning down, peering in at her.

“Trouble?” he said.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Shrugging, she made a decision. Fate had taken a hand, she wouldn’t drive into town.

Meeting with the judge would be a waste of time, anyway. She could hear his arguments in her head. The dean owes me one, I know I can get you back intograduate school. Your grandfather is caught up in senseless vengeance and neither you nor that nurse of his is helping. Don’t buy into it. Leave the past alone, don’t risk your future, what’s done is done, nothing will bring your dead family back to life. Justice will be done in the end.

If he had any inkling she was flying out with Alazandro tomorrow morning, he’d kill her. Or Alazandro.

“Elle?”

She got out of the car and leaned against the door. After a moment or two, Pete joined her, his body too close for comfort. She contemplated moving and decided it would send the wrong message. Or the right one.

Face it, she found his presence disconcerting. The man exuded confidence from the ends of his short sandy hair to the tips of his worn boots. Add the physique, the eyes, the rugged features, the voice—

When he looked at her, a private spot inside melted.

Life was confusing enough without him. Why did he have to come along now, why did he have to be connected to Alazandro? And why couldn’t she walk away from him without looking back?

“Going to be a beautiful evening,” he said.

Lake Tahoe lay down the sloping property, a glittering jewel this late in the day, a beautiful blue gem caught in the palm of towering trees.

“You seem upset,” Pete added.

“A little.”

“I came out here this evening to deliver some papers to Peg Stiles. She seems upset, too.”

Elle cast him a quick glance. Her gaze landed on his lips and she quickly raised her eyes. He smiled down at her.

Damn him.

She said, “As a matter of fact, I’m annoyed with my adopted father, not Peg. How about you, Pete? Do you have a father? Or a last name? Or a dog? Anything?”

It took him a moment to answer. She could almost feel his thoughts spinning. “Yes to the first two, no to the third. Father alive and kicking in Maui with his fourth wife. My last name is Waters.”

“Peter Waters.” She wasn’t sure she believed him, though why he should lie was a mystery. Maybe he had a record or something. Maybe instead of being a cop in his former life he’d been a felon.

He apparently wasn’t finished prying. “So, what did this adopted father do to upset you?”

“For most my life, showed me nothing but kindness,” Elle said in a burst of truth.

“The cad.”

She laughed softly.

“But lately?”

“Lately he’s been—unreasonable.”

“With you? That’s hard to understand.”

She heard the smile in his voice. “I haven’t always been this easygoing,” she said.

“Now that’s hard to believe.”

“Yeah, right.” In another burst of candor, she added, “I wasn’t an easy child to bring up. I had nightmares. My family had all died in an…accident…and I was left alone. The judge was my father’s best friend. They worked together on the police force. They had set it up to take care of each other’s children if something happened to one of them. But the judge didn’t have any children of his own and a year after he and his wife adopted me, she died, so he got the full burden of trying to take care of a bereft little girl.”

Pete started to speak but didn’t. She was relieved, afraid that if he offered a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, she’d take him up on it. “Anyway, now he just wants me to go back to school and become a professor and make him proud.”

“While your life’s ambition is to work at a resort for Víctor Alazandro.”

“Does that mean I got a go-ahead from Mr. Alazandro’s security people?”