Kissed by an Angel/The Power of Love/Soulmates Read online

  “I’m the tour guide,” he said. Leaning toward Philip, he warned, “Stay close. Some of these rooms are haunted.”

  Philip looked around quickly, then glanced up at Ivy.

  “He’s just kidding.”

  “I’m not,” said Gregory. “Some very unhappy people have lived here.”

  Philip glanced up at Ivy again. She shook her head.

  On the outside the house was a stately white clapboard home with heavy black shutters. Wings had been added to each side of the main structure. Ivy would have liked to live in one of the smaller wings with their deep sloping roofs and dormer windows.

  In the main part of the house, some of the high-ceilinged rooms seemed as large as apartments that they had once lived in. The house’s wide center hall and sweeping stair separated the living room, library, and solarium from the dining room, kitchen, and family room. Beyond the family room was a gallery leading to the west wing with Andrew’s office.

  Since her mother and Andrew were talking in the office, the downstairs tour stopped at the gallery, in front of three portraits: Adam Baines, the one who had invested in all the mines, looking stern in his World War I uniform; Judge Andy Baines, in his judicial robes; and Andrew, dressed in his colorful academic gown. Next to Andrew there was a blank spot on the wall.

  “Makes you wonder who’s going to hang there,” Gregory remarked dryly. He smiled, but his gray, hooded eyes had a haunted look. For a moment Ivy felt sorry for him. As Andrew’s only son, he must have felt a lot of pressure to do well.

  “You will,” she said softly.

  Gregory looked in her eyes, then laughed. His laughter was touched with bitterness.

  “Come upstairs,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to the back stairway that ran up to his room. Philip tagged along silently.

  Gregory’s room was large and had only one thing in common with other guys’ rooms—an archaeological layer of discarded underwear and socks. Beneath that, it showed money and taste: dark leather chairs and glass tables, a desk and computer, and a large entertainment center. Covering the walls were museum prints with striking geometric shapes. In the center of it all was a king-size waterbed.

  “Try it,” Gregory urged.

  Ivy leaned down and jiggled it tentatively with her hand.

  He laughed at her. “What are you afraid of? Come on, Phil”—no one calls him Phil, Ivy thought—“show your sister how. Climb on top and give it a good roll around.”

  “I don’t want to,” said Philip.

  “Sure you do.” Gregory was smiling, but his tone of voice threatened.

  “Nope,” said Philip.

  “It’s a lot of fun.” Gregory grasped Philip’s shoulders and pushed him back forcefully toward the bed.

  Philip resisted, then tripped and fell onto it. He sprang off just as quickly. “I hate it!” he cried.

  Gregory’s mouth hardened into a line.

  Ivy then sat down on the bed. “It is fun,” she said. She bounced slowly up and down. “Try it with me, Philip.” But he had moved out into the hallway.

  “Lie back on it, Ivy,” Gregory urged her, his voice low and silky.

  When she did, he lay down close to her.

  “We really should get to our unpacking,” Ivy said, sitting up quickly.

  They crossed through a low-roofed passage that was just above the gallery and into the section of the main house where Philip and she had their bedrooms.

  Her door was closed and when she opened it, Philip rushed through to Ella, who was stretched out luxuriously on Ivy’s bed. Oh no, Ivy groaned silently as she glanced around the elaborately decorated room. She had feared the worst when her mother said she was in for a big surprise. What she saw was lots of lace, white wood trimmed with gold, and a canopy bed. “Princess furniture,” she muttered aloud.

  Gregory grinned.

  “At least Ella looks at home. She’s always thought of herself as a queen. Do you like cats, Gregory?”

  “Sure,” he said, sitting on the bed next to Ella. Ella promptly got up and walked to the other end of the bed.

  Gregory looked annoyed.

  “That’s a queen for you,” Ivy said lightly. “Well, thanks for the tour. I’ve got a lot to unpack.”

  But Gregory lounged back on her bed. “This was my room when I was a kid.”

  “Oh?”

  Ivy lifted an armload of clothes from a garment bag and pulled open a door to what she thought was a closet. Instead she faced a set of steps.

  “That was my secret stairway,” Gregory said.

  Ivy peered up into the darkness.

  “I used to hide up in the attic when my mother and father fought. Which was every day,” Gregory added. “Did you ever meet my mother? You must have; she was always getting done over.”

  “At the beauty shop? Yes,” Ivy replied, opening the door to a closet.

  “Wonderful woman, isn’t she?” His words were heavy with sarcasm. “Loves everyone. Never thinks of herself.”

  “I was young when I met her,” Ivy said tactfully.

  “I was young, too.”

  “Gregory … I’ve been wanting to say this. I know it must be hard for you, watching my mother move into your mother’s room, having Philip and me take over space that was once yours. I don’t blame you for—”

  “For being glad that you’re here?” he interrupted. “I am. I’m counting on you and Philip to keep the old man on his best behavior. He knows others are watching him and his new family. Now he’s got to be the good and loving papa. Let me help you with that.”

  Ivy had picked up her box of angels. “No, really, Gregory, I can handle this myself.”

  He reached in his pocket for a penknife and slit the tape on the carton. “What’s in it?”

  “Ivy’s angels,” said Philip.

  “The boy speaks!”

  Philip pressed his lips together.

  “Soon enough, you won’t be able to shut him up,” Ivy said Then she opened the box and began to take out her carefully wrapped statues.

  Tony came out first. Then an angel carved out of soft gray stone. Then her favorite, her water angel, a fragile porcelain figure painted in a swirl of blue-green.

  Gregory watched as she unwrapped fifteen statues and set them on a shelf. His eyes were bright with amusement. “You don’t take this stuff seriously, do you?”

  “What do you mean by seriously?” she asked.

  “You don’t really believe in angels.”

  “I do,” said Ivy.

  He picked up the water angel and made her zoom around the room.

  “Put her down!” Philip cried. “She’s Ivy’s favorite.”

  Gregory landed her facedown on a pillow.

  “You’re mean!”

  “He’s just playing, Philip,” Ivy said, and calmly retrieved the angel.

  Gregory lay back on the bed. “Do you pray to them?” he asked.

  “Yes. To the angels, not the statues,” she explained.

  “And what wonderful things have these angels done for you? Have they captured Tristan’s heart?”

  Ivy glanced at him with surprise. “No. But then, I didn’t pray for that.”

  Gregory laughed softly.

  “Do you know Tristan?” Philip asked.

  “Since first grade,” Gregory replied, then lazily extended an arm toward the cat. Ella rolled away from him.

  “He was the good kid on my Little League team,” Gregory said, pulling himself up so he could reach Ella. She rose at the same time and walked to the other end of the bed. “He was the good kid on every team,” Gregory said. He reached again for Ella.

  The cat hissed. Ivy saw the color rising in Gregory’s cheeks.

  “Don’t take it personally, Gregory,” Ivy said. “Just let Ella be for a while. Cats often play hard to get.”

  “Like some girls I know,” he remarked. “Come here, girl.” He thrust his hand toward her. The cat raised a quick black paw, claws extended.

  “Le
t her come to you,” Ivy warned.

  But Gregory took the cat by the scruff of the neck and pulled her upward.

  “Don’t!” Ivy cried.

  He pushed his other hand up under her belly. Ella bit him hard on the wrist.

  “Shoot!” He threw Ella across the room.

  Philip ran for the cat. The cat ran to Ivy. She scooped her up in her arms. Ella’s tail switched back and forth; she was angry rather than hurt. Gregory watched her, the color still high in his cheeks.

  “Ella’s a street kitten,” Ivy told him, fighting to keep her own temper. “When I found her, she was a little bit of fur backed against a brick wall, holding her own against a big, torn-up torn. I tried to tell you. You can’t come on to her that way. She doesn’t trust people easily.”

  “Maybe you should teach her to,” Gregory said. “You trust me, don’t you?” He gave her one of his crooked, questioning smiles.

  Ivy put down Ella. The cat sat under the chair and glowered at Gregory. At the sound of footsteps in the hall, she scooted under the bed.

  Andrew stood in the doorway. “How’s everything?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Ivy lied.

  “It stinks,” said Philip.

  Andrew blinked, then nodded graciously. “Well, then,” he said, “we’ll have to try to make things better. Do you think we can?”

  Philip just stared at him.

  Andrew turned to Ivy. “Did you happen to open that door yet?” Ivy followed his glance to Gregory’s secret steps. “The light for the upstairs is on the left side,” he told her.

  Apparently he wanted her to investigate. Ivy opened the door and turned on the light. Philip, growing curious, slipped under her arm and scooted up the steps.

  “Wow!” he shouted from above them. “Wow!”

  Ivy glanced at Andrew. At the sound of Philip’s excited voice, his face flushed with pleasure. Gregory stared intently out the window.

  “Ivy, come see!”

  Ivy hurried up the steps. She expected to see Nintendo, or Power Rangers, or maybe a life-size Don Mattingly. Instead she discovered a baby grand piano, a CD and tape player, and two cabinets filled with her musical scores. An album cover with Ella Fitzgerald’s face was framed on the wall. The rest of her father’s old jazz records were stored next to a cherrywood phonograph.

  “If there is anything missing …” Andrew began. He was standing next to her, puffing a little from the steps, looking hopeful. Gregory had come halfway up, just far enough to see.

  “Thanks!” was all Ivy could say. “Thanks!”

  “This is cool, Ivy,” Philip said.

  “And it’s for all three of us to share,” she told him, glad that he was too excited to remember to sulk. Then she turned to speak to Gregory, but he had disappeared.

  Dinner that night seemed to last forever. The lavishness of Andrew’s gifts, the music room for Ivy and a well-stocked playroom for Philip, was both overwhelming and embarrassing. Since Philip, growing moody once more, had decided he would not speak at all at dinner—“Maybe never again,” he’d told Ivy with a pout—it was up to her to express their gratitude to Andrew. But in doing so, she walked a tightrope: when Andrew asked a second time if there was anything else she and Philip wanted, she saw how Gregory’s hands tensed.

  In the middle of dessert, Suzanne telephoned. Ivy made the mistake of picking up the call in the hall outside the dining room. Suzanne was hoping for an invitation to the house that evening. Ivy told her the next day would be better.

  “But I’m all dressed!” Suzanne complained.

  “Of course you are,” Ivy replied, “it’s only seven-thirty.”

  “I meant dressed to come over.”

  “Gee, Suzanne,” Ivy said, playing dumb, “you don’t have to wear anything special to visit me.”

  “What’s Gregory doing tonight?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t asked him.”

  “Well, find out! Find out her name and where she lives,” Suzanne ordered, “and what she’s wearing and where they go. If we don’t know her, find out what she looks like. I just know he has a date,” she wailed, “he must!”

  Ivy had expected this. But she was worn out by the childishness of Philip and Gregory; she didn’t feel like listening to the whining of Suzanne. “I’ve got to go now.”

  “I’ll die if it’s Twinkie Hammonds. Do you think it’s Twinkie Hammonds?”

  “I don’t know. Gregory hasn’t told me. Listen, I’ve got to go.”

  “Ivy, wait! You haven’t told me anything yet.”

  Ivy sighed. “I’ll be taking my usual lunch break at work tomorrow. Call Beth and meet me at the mall, okay?”

  “Okay, but, Ivy—”

  “I’d better get going now,” Ivy said, “or else I’ll miss my chance to hide in the trunk of Gregory’s car.” She hung up.

  “So, how’s Suzanne?” Gregory asked. He was leaning against the frame of the door that led into the dining room, his head cocked, smiling.

  “Fine.”

  “What’s she doing tonight?”

  The laughter in his eyes told her that he had overheard the conversation, and that this was a tease, not sincere interest in the information.

  “I didn’t ask her and she hasn’t told me. But if you two would like to talk it over with each other—”

  He laughed, then touched Ivy on the tip of her nose. “Funny,” he said. “I hope we keep you.”

  P1-5

  It was a relief to go to work Saturday morning, a relief to be back in territory that Ivy knew. Greentree Mall was in the next town over but drew high-school kids from all the surrounding towns. Most of them cruised the stores and hung around the food court. ’Tis the Season, where Ivy had worked for the last year and a half, was directly across from the food court.

  The shop was owned by two old sisters, whose selection of costumes, decorations, paperware, and knickknacks was as eccentric as their style of business. Lillian and Betty rarely returned merchandise, and it was as if all the seasons and holidays had run into one another in one small corner of the world. Vampire costumes hung with the Stars and Stripes; Easter chickens roosted next to miniature plastic menorahs, pine-cone turkeys, and Vulcan ears from the last Trekkie convention.

  Just before one o’clock on Saturday, while waiting for Suzanne and Beth to arrive, Ivy was glancing over the day’s special orders. As always, they were scrawled on Post-it notes and stuck on the wall. Ivy read one of the tags twice, then pulled it off. Couldn’t be, she thought, couldn’t be. Maybe there were two of them. Two guys named Tristan Carruthers?

  “Lillian, what does this mean? ‘For pick-up: Bl Blup Wh and 25 pnc.’?”

  Lillian squinted at the paper. She had bifocals, but they usually rode her chest at the end of a necklace.

  “Well, twenty-five plates, napkins, and cups, you know that. Ah yes, for Tristan Carruthers—an order for the swim team party. Blue blow-up whale. I’ve already got it ready. He called to check on the order this morning.”

  “Trist—Mr. Carruthers called?”

  Now Lillian reached for her glasses. Settling them on her nose, she looked hard at Ivy. “Mr. Carruthers? He didn’t call you Miss Lyons,” she said.

  “Why would he call me anything?” Ivy wondered aloud. “I mean, why did my name come up?”

  “He asked what hours you were working. I told him you take lunch between one and one-forty-five, but otherwise you’d be here till six.” She smiled at Ivy. “And I put in a few good words for you, dear.”

  “A few good words?”

  “I told him what a lovely girl you are, and what a shame it is that someone like you couldn’t find a deserving gentleman friend.”

  Ivy winced, but Lillian had removed her glasses again, so she didn’t notice.

  “He came into the shop last week to place the order,” Lillian continued. “He’s quite a chunk.”

  “Hunk, Lillian.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Tristan’s quite a hunk.”
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  “Well, she’s finally admitting it!” said Suzanne, striding into the store. Beth came in behind her. “Good work, Lillian!” The old woman winked, and Ivy stuck the Post-it back on the wall. She began to dig in her pockets for money.

  “Don’t expect to eat,” Suzanne warned her. “This is an interrogation.”

  Twenty minutes later, Beth was just about finished with her burrito. Suzanne had made inroads on her teriyaki chicken. Ivy’s pizza remained untouched.

  “How should I know?” she was saying, waving her arms with frustration. “I didn’t get into his medicine cupboard!” They had hashed and rehashed and interpreted and reinterpreted every detail that Ivy had observed about Gregory’s room.

  “Well, I guess you’ve only been there one night,” Suzanne said, “But tonight, maybe. You must find out where he’s going tonight. Does he have a curfew? Does he—”

  Ivy picked up an egg roll and stuffed it in Suzanne’s mouth. “It’s Beth’s turn to talk,” she said.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Beth said. “This is interesting.”

  Ivy opened Beth’s folder. “Why don’t you read one of your new stories,” she said, “before Suzanne makes me totally crazy.”

  Beth glanced at Suzanne, then cheerfully pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I’m going to use this new one for drama club on Monday. I’ve been experimenting with in medias res. That means starting right in the middle of the action.”

  Ivy nodded to her encouragingly and took the first bite out of her pizza.

  “‘She clutched the gun to her breast,’” Beth read. “‘Hard and blue, cold and unyielding. Photos of him. Frail and faded photos of him—of him with her—torn-up, tear-soaked, salt-crusted photos lay scattered by her chain She’d wash them away with her own blood—’”

  “Beth, Beth,” Suzanne cut in. “This is lunch. Something a pound lighter?”

  Beth agreeably shuffled through the papers and began again. “‘She clutched his hand to her breast. Warm and damp, soft and supple—’”

  “His hand or her breast?” Suzanne interrupted.

  “Quiet,” said Ivy.