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  Kissed by an Angel

  Элизабет Чандлер

  Ivy and Tristan have the love of a lifetime-until Tristan dies in a car accident. Now Tristan returns as an angel, but Ivy is unable to feel his presence.

  Элизабет Чандлер

  Kissed by an Angel

  For Pat and Dennis,

  October 15, 1994

  Chapter 1

  "I never knew how romantic a backseat could be," Ivy said, resting against it, smiling at Tristan.

  Then she looked past him at the pile of junk on the car floor. "Maybe you should pull your tie out of that old Burger King cup."

  Tristan reached down and grimaced. He tossed the dripping thing into the front of the car, then sat back next to Ivy.

  "Ow!" The smell of crushed flowers filled the air.

  Ivy laughed out loud.

  "What's so funny?" Tristan asked, pulling the smashed roses from behind him, but he was laughing, too.

  "What if someone had come along and seen your father's Clergy sticker on the bumper?"

  Tristan tossed the flowers into the front seat and pulled her toward him again. He traced the silk strap of her dress, then tenderly kissed her shoulder. "I'd have told them I was with an angel."

  "Oh, what a line!"

  "Ivy, I love you," Tristan said, his face suddenly serious.

  She stared back at him, then bit her lip.

  "This isn't some kind of game for me. I love you, Ivy Lyons, and one day you're going to believe me."

  She put her arms around him and held him tightly. "Love you, Tristan Carruthers," she whispered into his neck. Ivy did believe him, and she trusted him as she trusted no one else. One day she'd have the nerve to say it, all of the words out loud. I love you, Tristan. She'd shout it out the windows. She'd string a banner straight across the school pool.

  It took a few minutes to straighten themselves up. Ivy started laughing again. Tristan smiled and watched her try to tame her gold tumbleweed of hair-a useless effort. Then he started the car, urging it over the ruts and stones and onto the narrow road.

  "Last glimpse of the river," he said as the road made a sharp turn away from it.

  The June sun, dropping over the west ridge of the Connecticut countryside, shafted light on the very tops of the trees, flaking them with gold. The winding road slipped into a tunnel of maples, poplars, and oaks. Ivy felt as if she were sliding under the waves with Tristan, the setting sun glittering on top, the two of them moving together through a chasm of blue, purple, and deep green. Tristan flicked on his headlights.

  "You really don't have to hurry," said Ivy. "I'm not hungry anymore."

  "I ruined your appetite?"

  She shook her head. "I guess I'm all filled up with happiness," she said softly.

  The car sped along and took a curve sharply.

  "I said, we don't have to hurry."

  "That's funny," Tristan murmured. "I wonder what's-" He glanced down at his feet. "This doesn't feel…"

  "Slow down, okay? It doesn't matter if we're a little late- Oh!" Ivy pointed straight ahead.

  "Tristan!"

  Something had plunged through the bushes and into the roadway. She hadn't seen what it was, just the flicker of motion among the deep shadows. Then the deer stopped. It turned its head, its eyes drawn to the car's bright headlights.

  "Tristan!"

  They were rushing toward the shining eyes.

  "Tristan, don't you see it?"

  Rushing still.

  "Ivy, something's-" "A deer!" she exclaimed.

  The animal's eyes blazed. Then light came from behind it, a bright burst around its dark shape. A car was coming from the opposite direction. Trees walled them in. There was no room to veer left or right.

  "Stop!" she shouted. "1' m-" "Stop, why don't you stop?" she pleaded. "Tristan, stop!"

  The windshield exploded.

  For days after, all Ivy could remember was the waterfall of glass.

  At the sound of the gun, Ivy jumped. She hated pools, especially indoor pools. Even though she and her friends were ten feet from the edge, she felt as if she were swimming. The air itself seemed dark, a dank mist, bluish green, heavy with the smell of chlorine. Everything echoed-the gun, the shouts of the crowd, the explosion of swimmers in the water. When Ivy had first entered the domed pool area, she'd gulped for breath. She wished she were outside in the bright and windy March day.

  "Tell me again," she said. "Which one is he?"

  Suzanne Goldstein looked at Beth Van Dyke. Beth looked back at Suzanne. They both shook their heads, sighing.

  "Well, how am I supposed to be able to tell?" Ivy asked. "They're hairless, every one of them, with shaved arms, shaved legs, and shaved chests-a team of bald guys in rubber caps and goggles. They're wearing our school colors, but for all I know, they could be a shipload of aliens."

  "If those are aliens," Beth said, rapidly clicking her ballpoint pen, "I'm moving to that planet."

  Suzanne took the pen away from Beth and said in a husky voice, "God, I love swim meets!"

  "But you don't watch the swimmers once they're in the water," Ivy observed.

  "Because she's checking out the group coming up to the blocks," Beth explained.

  "Tristan is the one in the center lane," said Suzanne. "The best swimmers always race in the center lanes."

  "He's our flyer," Beth added. "The best at the butterfly stroke. Best in the state, in fact."

  Ivy already knew that. The swim team poster was all over school: Tristan surging up out of the water, his shoulders rushing forward at you, his powerful arms pulled back like wings.

  The person in charge of publicity knew what she was doing when she selected that photo. She had produced numerous copies, which was a good thing, for the taped-up posters of Tristan were continually disappearing-into girls' lockers.

  Sometime during this poster craze, Beth and Suzanne had begun to think that Tristan was interested in Ivy. Two collisions in the hall in one week was all that it took to convince Beth, an imaginative writer who had read a library of Harlequin romances.

  "But, Beth, I've walked into you plenty of times," Ivy argued with her. "You know how I am."

  "We do," Suzanne said. "Head in the clouds. Three miles above earth. Angel zone. But still, I think Beth is onto something. Remember, he walked into you."

  "Maybe he's clumsy when he's outside the water. Like a frog," Ivy had added, knowing all the while there was nothing clumsy about Tristan Carruthers.

  He had been pointed out to her in January, that first, snowy day when she had arrived at Stonehill High School. A cheerleader had been assigned as a guide to Ivy and was leading her through a crowded cafeteria.

  "You're probably checking out the jocks," the cheerleader said.

  Actually, Ivy was busy trying to figure out what the stringy green stuff was that her new school was serving to its students.

  "At your school in Norwalk, the girls probably dream about football stars. But a lot of girls at Stonehill-" Dream about him, Ivy thought as she followed the cheerleader's glance toward Tristan.

  "Actually, I prefer a guy with a brain," Ivy told the fluffy redhead.

  "But he's got a brain!" Suzanne had insisted when Ivy repeated this conversation to her a few minutes later.

  Suzanne was the only girl Ivy already knew at Stonehill, and she had somehow found Ivy in the mob that day.

  "I mean a brain that isn't waterlogged," Ivy added. "You know I've never been interested in jocks. I want someone I can talk to."

  Suzanne blew through her lips. "You're already communicating with the angels-" "Don't start on that," Ivy warned her.

  "Angels?" Beth asked. She had been eavesdropping from the next table. "Yo
u talk to angels?"

  Suzanne rolled her eyes, annoyed by this interruption, then turned back to Ivy. "You'd think that somewhere in that wingy collection of yours, you'd have at least one angel of love."

  "I do."

  "What kind of things do you say to them?" Beth interjected again. She opened a notepad. Her pencil was poised as if she were going to copy what Ivy said, word for word.

  Suzanne pretended Beth wasn't there. "Well, if you do have an angel of love, Ivy, she's screwing up. Somebody ought to remind her of her mission."

  Ivy shrugged. Not that she wasn't interested in guys, but her days were full enough-her music, her job at the shop, keeping up her grades, and helping to take care of her eight-year-old brother, Philip. It had been a bumpy couple of months for Philip, their mother, and her. She would not have made it through without the angels.

  After that day in January, Beth had sought out Ivy to question her about her belief in angels and show her some of her romantic short stories. Ivy enjoyed talking to her. Beth, who was round-faced with shoulder-length frosted hair and clothes that ranged from flaky to dowdy, lived many incredibly romantic and passionate lives-in her mind.

  Suzanne, with her magnificent long black mane of hair and dramatic eyebrows and cheekbones, also pursued and lived out many passions-in the classrooms and hallways, leaving the guys of Stonehill High emotionally exhausted. Beth and Suzanne had never really been friends, but late in February they became allies in the cause of getting Ivy together with Tristan.

  "I heard that he is pretty smart," Beth had said at another lunch in the cafeteria.

  "A total brain," Suzanne agreed. "Top of the class."

  Ivy raised an eyebrow.

  "Or close enough."

  "Swimming is a subtle sport," Beth continued. "It looks as if all they're doing is going back and forth, but a guy like Tristan has a plan, a complex winning strategy for each race."

  "Uh-huh," Ivy said.

  "All we're saying is that you should come to one swim meet," Suzanne told her.

  "And sit up front," Beth suggested.

  "And let me dress you that day," Suzanne added. "You know I can pick out your clothes better than you."

  Ivy had shaken her head, wondering then and for days after how her friends could think a guy like Tristan would be interested in her.

  But when Tristan had stood up at the junior class assembly and told everyone how much the team needed them to come to the last big school meet, all the time staring right at her, it seemed she had little choice.

  "If we lose this meet," Suzanne said, "it's on your head, girl."

  Now, in late March, Ivy watched Tristan shake out his arms and legs. He had a perfect build for a swimmer, broad and powerful shoulders, narrow hips. The cap hid his straight brown hair, which she remembered to be shortish and thickish.

  "Every inch of him hard with muscle," breathed Beth. After several clicks of her pen, which she had taken back from Suzanne, she was writing away in her notebook. "'Like glistening rock.

  Sinuous in the hands of the sculptor, molten in the fingers of the lover…'" Ivy peered down at Beth's pad. "What is it this time," she asked, "poetry or a romance?"

  "Does it make a difference?" her friend replied.

  "Swimmers up!" shouted the starting official, and the competitors climbed onto their blocks.

  "My, my," Suzanne murmured, "those little suits don't leave much to the imagination, do they? I wonder what Gregory would look like in one."

  Ivy nudged her. "Keep your voice down. He's right over there."

  "I know," Suzanne said, running her fingers through her hair.

  "On your marks.."

  Beth leaned forward for a look at Gregory Baines. "'His long, lean body, hungry and hot…'" Bang!

  "You always use words that begin with h," Suzanne said.

  Beth nodded. "When you alliterate h, it sounds like heavy breathing. Hungry, heated, heady-" "Are either of you bothering to watch the race?" Ivy interrupted.

  "It's four hundred meters, Ivy. All Tristan does is go back and forth, back and forth."

  "I see. Whatever happened to the total brain with his complex winning strategy in the subtle sport of swimming?" Ivy asked.

  Beth was writing again. "'Flying like an angel, wishing his watery wings were warm arms for Ivy.' I'm really inspired today!"

  "Me too," Suzanne said, her glance traveling down the line of bodies in the ready area, then skipping over the spectators to Gregory.

  Ivy followed her glance, then quickly turned her attention back to the swimmers. For the last three months Suzanne had been in hot- heated, hungry-pursuit of Gregory Baines. Ivy wished that Suzanne would get herself stuck on somebody else, and do it soon, real soon, before the first Saturday in April.

  "Who's that little brunette?" Suzanne asked. "I hate little petite types. Gregory doesn't look right with someone petite. Little face, little hands, little dainty feet."

  "Big boobs," Beth said, glancing up.

  "Who is she? Ever seen her before, Ivy?"

  "Suzanne, you've been in this school a lot longer than-" "You're not even looking," Suzanne interrupted.

  "Because I'm watching our hero, just like I'm supposed to be doing. What does waller mean?

  Everybody shouts 'Waller!' when Tristan does a turn."

  "That's his nickname," Beth replied, "because of the way he attacks the wall. He hurls himself head first into it, so he can push off fast."

  "I see," Ivy said. "Sounds like a total brain to me, hurling his head against a concrete wall. How long do these meets usually last?"

  "Ivy, come on," Suzanne whined, and pulled on her arm. "Look and see if you know who the little brunette is."

  "Twinkie."

  "You're making that up!" Suzanne said.

  "It's Twinkie Hammonds," Ivy insisted. "She's a senior in my music class."

  Aware of Suzanne's continuous staring, Twinkie turned around and gave her a nasty look. Gregory noticed the expression and glanced over his shoulder at them. Ivy saw the amusement spreading over his face.

  Gregory Baines had a charming smile, dark hair, and gray eyes, very cool gray eyes, Ivy thought.

  He was tall, but it wasn't his height that made him stand out in a crowd. It was his self-confidence. He was like an actor, like the star of a movie, who was part of it all, yet when the show was over, held himself apart from the others, believing he was better than the rest. The Baineses were the richest people in the wealthy town of Stonehill, but Ivy knew that it wasn't Gregory's money but this coolness, this aloofness, that drove Suzanne wild. Suzanne always wanted what she couldn't have.

  Ivy put her arm lightly around her friend. She pointed to a hunk of a swimmer stretching out in the ready area, hoping to distract her. Then she yelled, "Waller!" as Tristan went into his last turn. "I think I'm getting into this," she said, but it appeared Suzanne's thoughts were on Gregory now. This time, Ivy feared, Suzanne was in deep.

  "He's looking at us," Suzanne said excitedly. "He's coming this way."

  Ivy felt herself tensing up.

  "And the Chihuahua is following him."

  Gregory Why? Ivy wondered. What could have to say to her now after almost three months of ignoring her? In January she had learned quickly that Gregory would not acknowledge her presence. And as if bound by some silent agreement, neither he nor Ivy had advertised that his father was going to marry her mother. Few people knew that he and Ivy would be living in the same house come April.

  "Hi, Ivy!" Twinkie was the first to speak. She squeezed herself in next to Ivy, ignoring Suzanne and barely glancing at Beth. "I was just telling Gregory how we always sit near each other in music class."

  Ivy looked at the girl with surprise. She had never really noticed where Twinkie sat.

  "He said he hasn't heard you play the piano. I was telling him how terrific you are."

  Ivy opened her mouth but could think of nothing to say. The last time she had played an original composition for the class, Twinki
e had shown her appreciation by filing her nails.

  Then Ivy felt Gregory's eyes on her. When she met his look, he winked. Ivy gestured quickly toward her friends and said, "You know Suzanne Goldstein and Beth Van Dyke?"

  "Not real well," he said, smiling at each in turn.

  Suzanne glowed. Beth focused on him with the interest of a researcher, her hand clicking away on the ballpoint.

  "Guess what, Ivy? In April you won't be living far from my house. Not far at all," Twinkie said.

  "It will be a lot easier to study together now."

  Easier?

  "I can give you a ride to school. It will be a quicker drive to your house."

  Quicker?

  "Maybe we can get together more."

  More?

  "Well, Ivy," Suzanne exclaimed, batting her long, dark lashes, "you never told me that you and Twinkie were such good friends! Maybe we can all get together more. You'd like to go to Twinkie's house, wouldn't you, Beth?"

  Gregory barely suppressed his smile.

  "We could have a sleepover, Twinkie."

  Twinkie didn't look enthused.

  "We could talk about guys and vote on who's the hottest date around." Suzanne turned her gaze upon Gregory, sliding her eyes down and up him, taking in everything. He continued to look amused.

  "We know some other girls, from Ivy's old school in Norwalk," Suzanne went on cheerily. She knew that Stonehill's high-class commuters to New York City would have nothing to do with blue-collar Norwalk. "They'd love to come.

  Then we can all be friends. Don't you think that would be fun?"

  "Not really," Twinkie said, and turned her back on Suzanne.

  "Nice talking to you, Ivy. See you soon, I hope. Come on, Greg, it's crowded over here." She tugged on his arm.

  As Ivy turned back to the action in the pool Gregory caught her chin. With the tips of his fingers he tilted her face up toward him. He was smiling.

  "Innocent Ivy," he said. "You look embarrassed. Why? It works both ways, you know. There are plenty of guys, guys I hardly know, who are suddenly talking like they're my best friends, who are counting on dropping by my house the first week of April. Why do you suppose that is?"