Page 23 of Angel

I was just a plain-faced artist who, for years, hid in the blinding shadow cast by my half-sister’s radiance.

Now, I was about to spend a holiday with her former fiancé, the man I loved in secret, unable to hide my adoration of him behind my art, work, or gallery walls.

Would my agonizing, long-buried crush on Angel emerge and embarrass me?

I’d have to be very careful around him.

I was certain Angel would never love me, but perhaps with time out of the spotlight, we’d get a chance to explore more than just an awkward in-law situation-ship.

Maybe, once we were alone together, he’d find it in him to see beyond my plainness to the heart of me.

I clung to the desperate hope that he’d go easy on me, praying he understood that I was just as much a victim in this circus as he was.

‘Roxy?’

I glanced up as my mother approached, still wearing her dark sunglasses despite the late hour.

In a peach Chanel suit, she resembled a magazine cover model, albeit a mature one, clutching a prosecco in one hand and her Bvlgari Women’s Serpenti Forever handbag in the other.

Her brother, my Uncle Ed, accompanied her.

Edmund Hughes was a lean-as-a-whip British aristocrat and a collector of rare butterflies.

The pair were tight, bound by a shared survival story that traced back to a crumbling estate in Yorkshire.

Elsa and Ed were scions of the House of Hughes, a minor but ancient branch of English nobility.

In the last hundred years, their family’s prestige dwindled to just a drafty manor house, a historic title and a series of scandals.

Their mother, my grandmother, Tabitha, endured a public divorce from her cheating husband in the late 1960s.

However, she refused to be suffocated by the rigid disdain of high society in London.

Packing up her two young children and what remained of her dignity, she emigrated to the United States to start fresh.

Elsa and Ed grew up in Nashville, navigating the contrast between America’s hustle culture and their polite, aristocratic roots.

Tabitha left them a tiny inheritance.

To augment his share, Edmund sold classic cars for a living.

He was tenacious and loyal to my mother and me, and loathed Reese and Evangeline with a vengeance.

Now, both she and he opened their arms, and I rushed into them.

‘I’m so sorry honey, Reese is being such a beast,’ Elsa murmured as she pushed a handkerchief into my hands.

I dabbed at my tears as Ed stroked my hair.

‘I’ve a bit of money, we can get lawyers to stop this pantomime,’ he offered with vehemence.

‘No,’ I countered in a panic, ‘Father threatened Angel’s band and family. I won’t risk Reese going to war because we’re all going to be victims and he’s going to win. He always does.’

Ed studied my face for a long time before nodding.

‘Fine, I’ll back off. However, that new husband of yours better give you the royal treatment. Angel is a good man, but his judgment on Evangeline never sat well with me. Sorry, Elsa, I know she’s your daughter, but -.’

My mother sniffed and waved her hand in agreement.