Page 107 of Kiss an Angel

His eyes had begun to glaze. He tugged at her bottom lip with his own.

“Oh, Alex . . .”

“Quiet, love. Be quiet and let me love you.”

His words made her pulse leap. She matched his rhythm and clung to him while tears filled her eyes. In another few hours she would have to face him in the arena, but for now, there was no danger, only delight. It danced through her body, filled her heart, and exploded in a canopy of stars.

Afterward, as she stood in the bathroom fixing her makeup for the next performance, her feeling of well-being collapsed. No matter what she wanted to believe, there was no real intimacy between them as long as Alex had so many secrets.

“You want some coffee before we go back out in the rain?” he called out.

She set down her lipstick and left the bathroom. He stood at the kitchen counter wearing only his jeans, with one of their yellow bath towels looped around his neck. She tucked her fingers into the pockets of his terry cloth robe. “What I want is for you to sit down and tell me what you do when you’re not traveling with the circus.”

“Are we back to that again?”

“I don’t think we’ve ever really left it. I’ve had enough, Alex. I want to know.”

“If this is about what I did to you . . .”

“That just brought it on. I don’t want any more mystery. If you’re not a medical doctor or a vet, just what kind of doctor are you?”

“How about a dentist?”

He looked so hopeful that she nearly smiled. “You’re not a dentist. I know for a fact that you don’t floss every day.”

“I do, too.”

“Liar. Every other day, max. And you’re definitely not a shrink, although you’re certainly neurotic enough.”

He picked up his coffee mug from the counter and stared down into its depths. “I’m a college professor, Daisy.”

“You’re what?”

He looked up at her. “I’m a professor of art history at a small private college in Connecticut. I’m on sabbatical right now.”

She’d prepared herself for a lot of things, but not this, although now that she thought about it, she shouldn’t have been so surprised. There had been subtle clues. She remembered Heather saying that Alex once had taken her to a gallery and talked to her about the pictures. There were the art magazines that she thought had been left behind by the trailer’s former tenants and a number of references he’d made to famous paintings.

She walked over to stand next to him. “Why did you make it such a mystery?”

He shrugged and took a sip.

“Let me guess. This is just like what you did with the trailer, isn’t it? Choosing this place instead of something nicer? You knew I’d be a lot more comfortable with a college professor than with Alexi the Cossack, and you didn’t want me to be comfortable.”

“I couldn’t let you lose sight of how different we are. I’m still a circus performer, Daisy. Alexi the Cossack is a big pa

rt of who I am.”

“But you’re also a college professor.”

“It’s a creaky old campus.”

She remembered the threadbare college T-shirt she sometimes slept in. “Did you go to the University of North Carolina?”

“I did my undergraduate work there, and I got my master’s and doctorate at NYU.”

“It’s hard to take in.”

He brushed his thumb over her chin. “It doesn’t change anything. It’s still raining like a son of a bitch, we have a show to put on, and you look so beautiful right now that all I want to do is take that robe off you and start playing doctor all over again.”

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