The Angel

“It’s Thursday morning.”

“I took the morning off. Your mother said you were going to be gone the whole summer. I thought I should see what was going on with my son.”

“I’m your son again?”

“Michael, I thought we put that behind us,” his father said in his most ingratiating voice. Michael liked the yelling better than the sucking up. At least the anger seemed genuine. His father’s friendly voice only meant he wanted something. Answers obviously. And Michael wasn’t about to give him any.

Yeah, I’m totally over that whole you wailing on me and Mom thing. We’re best buds again, Dad, Michael thought but didn’t say out loud. His father could turn anything against him, so Michael wore his silence as a shield.

His father’s eyes turned cold and menacing.

“Young man, tell me what you’re doing this summer, or I’ll make very sure whatever it is doesn’t happen.”

“I’m staying with some friends this summer. That’s all.”

Michael’s father stared at him without speaking. Bad sign. His dad talked. Constantly talked. He spouted off about sports teams, about the assholes at work, about the president, the job market, the world’s problems that would go away if everyone were just more like him.

“Didn’t know you had any friends, Michael,” his father said with cold suspicion.

Michael clenched his jaw and didn’t answer.

“What friends are these?” his father asked in a neutral tone Michael didn’t trust for one second.

Pulling his knees even tighter to his chest, Michael concentrated on the cold concrete underneath him. He always played this game when his father was angry. Michael would disappear, pull into himself, let his body become a hard outer shell that protected that part of him only Nora and Father S understood.

“Answer me, Michael.”

At times like these Michael wished he could talk like Nora did, wished he could say everything he thought. What he wanted to say right now was, You asshole.

“You as—” Michael began, but stopped when a shiny silver car, a Rolls Royce maybe, turned the corner of his street.

“What the hell?” his father asked, his angry dark eyes narrowing at the car.

Michael stood up, grabbed his duffel bag and head toward the car.

“Michael, get back here,” his father yelled after him. Whoever was driving the Rolls Royce slowed in front of Michael’s house, and the door opened for him. Michael threw himself and his duffel bag into the backseat and the car started off again. Glancing out the window, Michael saw his father glaring at him with unstrained fury. There’d be hell to pay when he came back at the end of the summer. But at least now he was free.

Suddenly Michael realized he wasn’t alone in the back of the lavish car. First he saw riding boots, black riding boots, and dark gray trousers. The trousers belonged to a rather old-fashioned but dashing-looking suit worn by a crazy-good-looking dark-haired man who studied him with a little smile on his sculpted lips. Michael had no idea who the man was, but he had no doubt in his mind that he sat in the presence of a dominant friend of Nora’s, and probably a very important one.

Michael hazarded a timid, “Hello, sir.”

“Bonjour, Michael,” the man said with a French accent, pronouncing his name like Michelle. French? So this was Kingsley, Father S’s necessary evil. The man looked Michael up and down once more before reclining back and throwing his riding boots on the seat opposite him and crossing them at the ankles. “MonDieu, chérie does have good taste in her pets, doesn’t she?”

“Pets?” Michael repeated, in some distress.

The man leaned forward and Michael nervously studied his handsome face—the dark umber eyes, strong European nose, the sensual tilt to his mouth.

“Tell me, Michael, have you ever had sex in the back of a Rolls Royce?”

Nora arched her back and tilted her hips high. Finally she found the right angle of penetration. Admittedly, it had been her idea for she and Griffin to fuck on top of her Aston Martin, but once he tunneled inside her, she realized that car hoods and sex didn’t always mix. Not that Griffin seemed to mind. While she lay on her stomach across the car hood, her hands tied behind her neck, Griffin thrust blithely into her. Once she raised her hips, he slipped his hand under her and found her clitoris. Now equally blithe, Nora turned her head to the side and smiled.

“When did you get a Ducati?” Nora asked, noticing for the first time the motorcycle sitting in the corner of Griffin’s garage stocked with Ferraris, Porsches and one hardcore Shelby Mustang.

“I’m fucking you and you’re asking me about my motorcycle?” Griffin gasped through gritted teeth.

“Sorry, sir,” she said without any actual contrition. “A Ducati is the reason Søren and I are together.”

“Dammit, I hate that he has one too.”

“I don’t …”

Nora closed her eyes as a memory floated up out of the mists of the past.

“Eleanor Louise Schreiber! Get out of bed this instant,” her mother shouted at her. Nora remembered throwing the covers over her head in her determination that this would be the day she broke her mother’s spirit. This would be the day she would defeat the tyranny of organized religion. She’d skip Mass today and never, ever, go back.

“I’m a Buddhist,” she shouted back from under the sheets.

“Eleanor, get out of bed this instant and get ready for Mass.”

Nora remembered hearing real anger in her mother’s tone. Good. Anger made her erratic. She’d either kill her or storm out. Either way, it meant no church today. If Eleanor could just fight her way out of Mass, she’d be free … unchained, unfettered, unbound by the Catholic Church forever.

“I’m an atheist.” She flipped over onto her stomach. “I’ll incinerate the second I walk into church. It’s for everyone’s good that I stay away from that place.”

Her mother had growled under her breath. So that’s where Nora got that habit from?

“Eleanor,” her mother said, sighing. Damn. Sighing wasn’t good. Sighing meant her mother was going to try to either reason with her or bribe her.

“What?”

“Father Greg is retiring soon. Today is the day the new priest is starting at Sacred Heart. If the new priest hires someone else to do the church’s books, you don’t get free tuition to St. Xavier anymore.”

“Don’t care. Send me to public school. No more uniforms.”

Nora remembered the sharp breath her mother took. That her mother hadn’t just beat the shit out of her yet was one of life’s great mysteries.

“Eleanor,” her mother began, her voice dripping with saccharine. “Mary Rose told me the new priest is supposed to be very handsome.”

Rolling her eyes, Nora had flipped back over and glared at her mother.

“Mom, he’s a priest. That’s gross.”

But her mother continued.

“And he rides a motorcycle.”

That got her attention.

“What kind? Not some no-thrust piece of crap from Japan, is it?” Her father hadn’t taught her much but he had taught her cars and motorcycles.