He was lying on the dusty, littered floor, his eyes closed, flat on his back. One of his boots was still caught in the rung of a ladder. A pool of blood gleamed beneath his head, shining dark red under the bald light-bulb.


Teague Larson had never gone for angels. It wasn’t personal. He’d just always liked sex and sin and trouble too much to waste a lot of time on the saintly types.

On the other hand, he’d never planned on being dead before-and he figured he had to be dead. No one’s head could hurt this bad and still be alive. It seemed further proof of his unfortunate demise that the woman had miraculously appeared out of nowhere.

She was so damned gorgeous that he might even forgive her for being an angel. After his head stopped hurting. If his head ever stopped hurting.

It wasn’t helping that his personal, breathtakingly unforgettable angel was swearing loudly enough to wake all the rest of the dead.

“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Does it ever occur to anybody that sometime I’d like to be the one who gets rescued? No. Have I ever asked anything from anyone? No. Did I get my sisters married, get my parents retired, get everybody settled? But for Pete’s sake, I need a break today. The one thing I do not need is a problem like you. If you die, I swear, I’m going to kill you, and I’m not kidding! You don’t want to see me in a temper. Trust me. You are going to wake up and you’re going to be all right, or I swear, you’ll be sorry!”

Truth to tell, she wasn’t directly talking to him. She just seemed to be shrieking in a top-voice soprano as she flew around the place. He closed his eyes again, willing the room to stop spinning, willing his head to hurt less-at least enough that he could grasp what was going on.

Unfortunately his memory was slowly seeping back in Technicolor and surround sound. Blurry pictures filled his mind of the ladder tipping, then the noisy crash and scrambling fall. It was the worst kind of memory, because it mortifyingly illustrated one guy stubbornly trying to do the job of two. The story of his life. Too much pride. No ability to compromise. Hell, he’d never played well with others in the sandbox.

His personal angel suddenly pushed the ladder out of the way, which jarred his ankle. Until then, he hadn’t known his ankle hurt even worse than his head. He’d been better off when he thought he was dead. It’d been quiet around here then. Safer. Now that she’d forced him back to reality, there was no going back to that nice, warm, unconscious place. She’d ruined it.

On the other hand, there seemed to be compensations.

He watched her peel off a silly farmer’s hat, shimmy out of an oversize old barn coat, push off clodhopper boots. If he’d had the energy, he’d damn near have gasped at the transformation. He’d already seen she had a gorgeous face, but beneath all that clothing was some kind of guy’s favorite secret fantasy.

Deliberately, enticingly, she stroked the front of his pants, clearly trying to get into his pocket. He wasn’t in the mood, no, but pain or no pain, a guy could be forced to rise with enough motivation. She was gentle enough, but she was obviously in a rush, hurrying, hurrying, as if she couldn’t wait to get her hands on his you-know-what.

Okay, now he knew definitely that he wasn’t dead. The view alone inspired him to keep his eyes open, no matter how badly he was hurting. The way her head was bent over him, he saw a tumble of rich, dark hair. Beneath that crazy old farmer’s coat was a Christmas-red coat-the kind of thing women looked at in fashion magazines, not the kind of coat people wore in White Hills, Vermont. Didn’t matter, she shrugged out of the coat swiftly.

She was stripping for him. Teague told himself his mind was still jangled with pain, but she took off both her coats, hadn’t she? And she was still moving, still touching him, still in a big rush. Teague liked to think he’d ignited his share of passion-no lover he’d had ever complained-but he’d never provoked a complete stranger to immediate intimacy before. If he weren’t half-dead and more than half-goofy, he’d be loving it. He was loving it. He just had a sneaky feeling that he was temporarily a pickle short of a brain. On the other hand, who the hell needed reality?

When she leaned over him, her soft black sweater brushed his cheek. The sweater’s V-neck offered him a free look at firm, high breasts. Bountiful breasts. Bountiful, god’s-gift-to-a-man, turgid-nippled, plump breasts with the scent of exotic perfume deep in the shadow between them. When she shifted a little, he caught a glimpse of sleek, long legs encased in black pants. A pert little butt.

He liked the legs, but man, that little butt was the sexiest thing he’d seen in months. Maybe years.

He’d only caught a glance at her face before-enough to label her looks striking-but now she turned. Even fantasies weren’t this perfect. The skin was smoother than a baby’s. A slash of elegant cheekbones had been burned by the wind, the cherry color startling next to all that white skin. A high arch of eyebrows framed big, soft eyes, brown gold like cognac, and her mouth…oh, God, that kissable mouth…

But then he forgot her looks altogether, because her fingers dug really deep into his pocket. Instead of closing her hand around his best friend, though, her fingers emerged into the light, clasping his cell phone.

“Come on,” she muttered. “Come on, 911, come on…”

All right, so possibly he wasn’t as excited about her or life as he first thought. His eyelids drooped; he couldn’t keep them open. His mind felt as muzzy as steel-wool soup. He heard her voice on the phone, caught partial snatches of her side of a conversation, but he seemed to be uncontrollably fading in and out.

“Sheriff, this is Daisy Campbell…yeah, Margaux and Colin’s oldest daughter… George Webster? You’re the sheriff now? Well, that’s great, but listen, I…”

She pushed a red-nailed hand through her wild mane of hair. “Yes, I’m back from the south of France. And yes, it’s beautiful there. But listen, I…”

She jerked to her feet and spun around, talking faster, appearing more and more agitated. “Yes, I changed my last name back to Campbell. You’re right, marriage wasn’t for me. Everyone always said that, didn’t they? That I’d never settle down…” She seemed to try to interrupt him several more times, and then finally spit out, “Sheriff! Would you listen? I’m at the Cunningham place. They’re not here-”

Again, the person on the other end must have talked some more, because she cut in again. “Well, that’s nice to know, that they’re vacationing in Pittsburgh, but the point is that there’s a strange man here… Teague Larson, you say? Yes. Yes. It does look as if he’s a carpenter or electrician or something, but the point is that he’s hurt. Bad hurt. And no, I can’t very well calm down and take it easy. I know there’s a blizzard but…”

Fade out. Teague tried to catch more, but beneath his eyelids all he could see was a canvas of pea green. Dizzying swirls of pea green. A stomach-churning paisley pattern of swirling pea green.

At some point-who knew how long-he felt her hands on him again. She pulled off his tool belt, which felt a million times better. Smooth, chilled fingers pressed the inside of his wrist, then the carotid artery in his neck. After that, she laid her cheek right on top of his chest, with all that vibrant dark hair tickling his nostrils. Moments passed before she spoke into the cell phone again.

“I can’t do a pulse. I’m not a nurse, for Pete’s sake. Yes, it seems as if his heart’s beating strong, but I have nothing to compare it- What the Sam Hill do you mean days! I know we’re in the middle of a blizzard. I don’t care. I want an ambulance here right now!”

Okay. If she was going to do the shrieking thing, he was going back to the unconscious thing. Angel or no angel, the pain just wasn’t worth it. If she patted him down again, he’d rethink it, maybe wake up again, but until then there just wasn’t a lot of motivation to stay with it.

“Damn it, I’m telling you he could be hurt badly! He could have broken bones. And there’s blood beneath his head. Okay, okay, I’ll…”

More colorful swirls filled his mind. Not pea green this time. More like the blend of colors from stirring whipped cream into coffee. At first the swirling sensation was as fast as a whirlpool, but then everything seemed to slow down, soften, dance to a far quieter tune.

When he heard her voice again, she seemed calmer. At least a little calmer. She’d quit swearing a blue streak at the sheriff, anyway.

“Yeah, I did that. Yeah, okay. I can do that, too. And yes, I can plug in his cell phone somewhere, as long as there’s power here. But you have to promise to pick him up as soon as you can. I can keep calling with a report every few hours, but the very second you can get an ambulance or Medi-Vac here, I want…”

Teague remembered nothing else for a while. When he woke the next time, shadows had darkened. The wind outside was still howling like a lonely wolf, but the kitchen was completely silent. The naked light fixture over the sink glared straight in his eyes-but not for long.

Huge, gorgeous dark eyes suddenly blocked that sharp, bright light. It was her again. She was real, after all. Who’d ever believe it?

And then there was her voice, not screaming at all now, but low, low as a sexy blues singer, low as sexual promises in the dead of night, whispering an ardent, “Merde!”

Two

Daisy had notoriously bad judgment-and bad luck-with men, but this was ridiculous.

“Even Jean-Luc never put me through this,” she muttered. “If I never take care of another man as long as I live, it’ll be too soon. I’m not only going to be celibate. I’m going to buy a chastity belt with a lock and no key. I’m going to take antiestrogen pills. Maybe I could try to turn gay. Maybe I could try hypnotism, see if there’s a way I could get an automatic flight response near an attractive guy…”