An Angel for Emily Read online

  Emily sighed. “Get one of them that says ‘frozen yogurt,’ not the other kind.”

  “Ah, I see. Emily, I’m beginning to think that this word ‘cream’ is a curse word to you. Now, where were we?”

  “You were telling me that someone was trying to kill me to keep me from publishing the Duke’s love letters.”

  Michael looked puzzled for a moment, then grinned. “You want a title in your next life? I could arrange it. Usually it’s not considered a reward. Lots of temptation and lots of responsibility. And not a whole lot of love.”

  “No, I don’t want a title. I want—” She narrowed her eyes at him. “So why don’t you want to talk about this anymore?”

  “I think we just have to find out who wants to blow you up and no amount of talking is going to figure it out. It does amaze me that you don’t know something like that.”

  She put the filled basket on the counter while Michael looked at the candy bars and gum in front of the cash register. “Those are all good for you, so get as many as you like,” she said sweetly as she started to empty the basket. “Not all of us have the advantages that you have of being able to see what’s not there. We poor mortals live our boring little lives and don’t see evil spirits everywhere.”

  The man behind the counter woke up and started to ring up the purchases as Michael put half a dozen candy bars on the counter. “What’s this ‘caramel’? If you’re referring to Mr. Moss, he wasn’t any more evil than…than this man,” Michael said, smiling at the man behind the counter, then he dropped another four candy bars onto the counter. “And, Emily, dear, you are the worst liar I have ever seen,” he said companionably, referring to her attempt to get him to not purchase the candy bars.

  An hour later, they had pulled over at a rest stop and were eating their sandwiches—Michael was sampling the junk food he’d bought—when Emily turned to him and said, “If those men found you—or me—at that truck stop, then they must know who I am and where I live.”

  “Yes,” he said gently, stretching out the coconut-covered pink icing of a cake he’d bought.

  She sat down at the picnic table heavily. “They’re sure to be following us,” she said, knowing without a doubt that he had blocked her from seeing this very obvious fact.

  “No, not anymore.”

  “And you’re sure of that, are you?” she said, leaning across the table from him. “You act like you know what’s going on, but you didn’t know that my car was being fitted with a bomb.”

  “True, I didn’t.” He looked at her, now having discarded the icing but enjoying the chocolate cake inside. “The truth is that I have no idea what I can and cannot do. I know my powers when I’m at home because I’ve had years of experience, but here I find I’m extremely limited. For one thing, I can’t see the future.” A frown creased his brow as he looked off at the view that the picnic table overlooked. “I was frightened this morning because I couldn’t see that everything was going to be all right about that bomb. I could feel that something was wrong with the car, but I didn’t know what it was. For all I knew it could have had a broken….” He made a back-and-forth motion with his hand.

  “Windshield wiper.”

  “Yes. But then I don’t think something so minor would have made the aura of the car turn dark like that. But what do I know? I’d never ridden in a car before I went with you.”

  “But now you can sense that no one is following us, right?”

  “Yes. They put the bomb on your car and they left. I could tell that much.” He smiled. “So far, my powers seem to be limited to being able to do things with you. I can make your car door open, but I tried to open other locked car doors and couldn’t. And only your hotel door opens to me. Isn’t that odd?”

  “Being able to open any locked door is odd,” she said. “And being able to see auras is odd. Not to mention ghosts. And then there’s that little girl at the ice cream parlor. And the bullet in your head, plus the ones in your body. And there seem to be a million things about everyday life that you don’t know. And—”

  “Be careful, Emily, or you’ll be telling me that you believe me.”

  “I believe that you think you can see ghosts and you think you can—”

  “So what would you do with me if I really were an angel?”

  “Protect you,” she said without thinking. But when she said it she blushed and looked down at her half-finished candy bar, which she couldn’t believe she was eating in the first place. Angels were protectors, not the other way around.

  “So what would make you believe? A miracle? A vision? What?”

  “I don’t know,” she said as she stood and began putting food away and avoiding his eyes.

  “What is it called when a person stands by the roadside and asks others for a ride?”

  “Hitchhiking,” she said quickly, then gave him a stern look. “And don’t you think about doing it. It’s dangerous.”

  “If you leave me somewhere I will hitchhike to your town and look for the evil that surrounds you on my own. No one will know you’ve ever met me.”

  “And you’ll be reported to the police within ten minutes of stepping into town,” she said abruptly. She put the food into the trunk of the car, but Michael didn’t move. Instead, he sat at the table and looked at the view, sipping his awful, sugary fruit drink that she could tell he didn’t like but wasn’t going to admit it.

  I should leave him, she thought. I should just drive off and leave him now. He is not my responsibility and I don’t need more complications in my absolutely perfect life. For that’s the way she saw her life—perfect. She had everything she wanted: a job she loved, a man she loved, friends—and she’d just been honored by the National Library Association. The only thing left that she wanted was to marry Donald and have a couple of children.

  But she didn’t leave the man sitting at the table; instead, she went back and sat at the opposite end of the bench and stared at the view.

  “Maybe you could find out something about the Madison House for me,” she said slowly. “You see, I’d rather like to write a book about what happened there. I’ve done a lot of research already, but something is missing.”

  “So what’s the story?” Michael said as though he weren’t interested at all. “Mortal spirits always have a reason for not leaving this earth.”

  “I’ve heard the story all my life. We children used to frighten each other with taunts that Old Man Madison was going to get us, but in the last years I’ve…well, I don’t know, I’ve become more compassionate.”

  “You’ve always been willing to help people.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him to stop pretending that he’d known her a long time, but why should she turn down a compliment? “It’s a simple story really and one I’m sure happened many times in the past. A beautiful young woman was in love with a handsome, but poor, young man and her father refused them permission to marry. Instead, the father forced the girl to marry a friend of his, a rich Mr. Madison—old enough to be her father. As far as I can tell, they lived together in polite misery for ten years, then the young man who loved the woman came back to town. No one knows what happened, whether she sneaked out to see him or what. But her husband killed the young man in a jealous rage.”

  “Unfortunately, I’ve seen that too often,” Michael said seriously. “Jealousy is a major failing of you mortals.”

  “Oh? I can’t wait to tell Mickey that,” she said, pointedly, reminding him of just one of the names he’d called Donald.

  Michael grinned. “So now I guess your old Mr. Madison haunts the house.”

  “Someone does. After the murder, there was a trial and a servant of the husband’s testified that he’d seen his master kill the young man. It was his testimony that convicted the man, because the body was never found. Anyway, Mr. Madison was hanged, the servant later jumped to his death from a window of the house, and the widow never left the house again and finally went mad.”

  “So the spirit in the ho