An Angel for Emily Read online

  “You seem to have all my smiles,” she said, clinging to him.

  “I just want them for eternity, that’s all.”

  “And how long is eternity?”

  “Until I stop loving you, which will be never.”

  Emily put her head back and let him kiss her neck. “I so love it when you do that.”

  “And what about this? And this?”

  Emily didn’t have the strength to answer—at least not in words.

  Chapter 16

  WHEN EMILY AWOKE, IT WAS FULL DAYLIGHT AND SHE was alone in the little glade. And she was stark naked. It was romantic to be nude at night when a beautiful man was making love to you, but to wake up in full sunlight, alone with no clothes on, just made her feel embarrassed.

  “Michael?” she whispered, but received no reply, so her embarrassment increased. What if some schoolchildren, playing hookey, had come upon her?

  Quickly, she grabbed her clothes from where they’d been tossed into the bushes and pulled them on. So much for angels, she thought with disgust. An angel didn’t just turn over and go to sleep, he flew away into never-never land.

  Now that it was daylight, the sane and sensible Emily was back and she was trying not to remember what had happened last night. Or what she thought had happened. There couldn’t have been wings and wood sprites, couldn’t have been…. Well, the truth was, she was an engaged woman and there just couldn’t have been another man.

  It was while she was pulling her sweater over her head that she finally remembered what had happened last night. The woman with the gun! The car explosion! Had she really left the scene of a crime?

  She was still pulling her sweater down as she started running toward the library. Had anyone found the car yet?

  She was some distance from the library when she saw the red lights and heard the noise of many voices. Obviously, the car had been found. Emily slowed her pace and kept herself hidden in the trees, thinking that it was better to find out what was going on before bursting onto the scene. When she was close enough, she saw two fire engines, half a dozen police cars and two big news vans with satellite dishes on top. There was general chaos and confusion as what seemed to be a hundred people ran about and tripped over each other.

  At the edge of the forest was a pile of firemen’s coats, great heavy things that would cover a person twice Emily’s size. Cautiously, she picked up one of the coats, put it on and then put on a helmet that pretty much covered her face.

  Cautiously, she walked into the midst of the mayhem and went to a man who was fiddling with what looked to be a sound machine for one of the news vans. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  The man didn’t look at her but kept turning knobs. “Where have you been that you haven’t heard?”

  “I spent the night cavorting with angels and wood sprites and just woke up.”

  The man gave a half-smile in her direction then turned more knobs. “The local librarian was blown up in her car.”

  “W-what?”

  “Emily Todd, librarian, blown up,” he said. “Seems she was leading a double life. Librarian by day, criminal by night.”

  “Criminal?!”

  The man gave Emily a sharp glance but she pulled the helmet closer down over her face so he couldn’t see her. “Yeah. She was living with the FBI’s most wanted criminal. There’s rumors that she had something to do with the mob. She used to spend a lot of time in the mountains and they think she was taking goods to mobsters on the lam. She seems to be a real piece of work because she had the whole town believing she was taking books to underprivileged kids. She was even given some awards for it, but here she was working for the mob.”

  Emily could only stare at his profile as he turned knobs and then listened to earphones.

  “It was Donald who broke the story,” the man continued.

  “Donald?” Emily managed to whisper through a throat closed to the point of pain.

  “Yeah, you know, Mr. News? Surely you’ve heard of him. He broke the Johnson case a couple of years back.” The man paused as he finally seemed to have adjusted the knobs to his satisfaction. “So now it looks like he’s broken the Todd case. You know, I wonder if she’s any relation to Mary Todd Lincoln? That woman was crazy too. Hey! Maybe I oughtta tell Donald and he can look into it. Listen, help yourself to coffee and doughnuts. Nobody’s looking.”

  Emily was too stunned to move, much less eat anything. She just stood there staring at the control panel as though it were of great fascination. So now it seemed that she was dead. And it was a good thing too since she was a thoroughly evil person who helped mobsters escape the law.

  “This can’t be,” she said to herself. “I’ll just have to tell the truth and get this sorted out.” With resolve, she reached up to remove her helmet but then she saw the men who had come to her hotel room that night. FBI, she thought. If she went to them she’d have to tell the truth, that she had harbored a man thought to be a criminal. And that she had lied to them. And last night that man’s wife had been blown up in Emily’s car and instead of reporting it to the police, Emily had run away into the woods and made love with a man who was not her fiancé.

  “Worse and worse,” she muttered.

  “What is?” asked a woman standing near her. “This mess or life in general?”

  “This mess,” Emily said, ducking her head so her face couldn’t be seen. “I just arrived here, so what makes everyone think it’s Miss Todd in the car?” She thought the “Miss” made her seem a bit more respectable than what the sound man had insinuated.

  “It was her car and her handbag was blown free. Of course it’s not positive yet as there wasn’t much left of the body but Donald identified her as his former fiancée.”

  “How could he do that?”

  The woman shrugged. “I don’t know but he certainly seems to know it’s her, and it may be the biggest story of his career. Seems that Miss Emily Jane Todd was into some heavy dirt. There’s talk of drugs and money laundering and who knows what else? Lord! And to think that Donald almost married someone like that! Just goes to show you that even with years of dealing with criminals you can still be bamboozled. Hey! Are you okay? You ought to get something to eat. Fighting that fire must have been hard work.”

  Emily tried to breathe but it wasn’t easy. Under the heavy coat she was sweating profusely. It was as though she were seeing her own future and what would have happened to her if she had been the one to start the engine of her own car. If she had, she would be dead now and her name would have been ruined forever. All her years of trying to do right and to give more than she received would have gone down the drain. Instead, everyone would remember her as involved with the Mafia. As someone who harbored criminals, as someone who lied to the FBI.

  When she swayed on her feet and felt as though she were going to faint, she caught herself. She would not collapse now! she told herself. If she were to fall to the ground in a stupor at the injustice of what she had just heard, she’d never recover. She’d be hauled off to FBI headquarters and probably be locked up and never heard from again.

  No, instead she had to think and to plan. Alone, she thought with some bitterness. So much for angels, she thought angrily. Where was her guardian angel when she needed him? Was he practicing using his wings and that’s why he had left her alone to figure out what to do?

  Turning, she saw that the woman had a notebook sticking out of her pocket. Heavens, she was probably a reporter. One wrong word and Emily would find herself in prison.

  Emily glanced at the woman from under the helmet just enough that her blushing cheek could be seen. A blush of rage instead of the shy embarrassment that she hoped the woman took the red for. “Could I impose on you for something? You wouldn’t know Donald Stewart very well, would you? I mean, are you high enough on the ladder to be able to get me his autograph?”

  “Of course I am,” the woman snapped so Emily knew that she had probably never spoken to Donald in her life.

  “Th