An Angel for Emily Read online

  With the dress on its way, Michael went back to the computer. Maybe he could yet find out why someone was trying to kill his Emily. “Correction,” he told himself. Not his Emily. Emily was soon going to belong to a man he had been assured was kind, thoughtful, a good companion, intelligent, had a great sense of humor and—

  Michael refused to remember what else his fellow angel had said about the man who was going to be at the ball tomorrow night.

  “Alfred,” Michael said without looking up from the computer screen, “tell the Captain I want his wife’s rubies.” He listened for a moment. “Yes, the whole set, with the bracelet and earrings, and, no, he’s not going to get them back. I’m going to give them to Emily.”

  He turned back to the computer and tried to give it his full attention.

  Chapter 21

  IF I DIDN’T LOVE YOU I’D HATE YOU,” IRENE SAID AS SHE looked at Emily in the deep-red dress. For something so expensive, the dress was deceptively simple. It appeared to be merely a sheath of red silk satin, but because of the way it was cut and the way the inside was engineered, it pushed Emily’s ample bosom up until it was nearly spilling over the top.

  “You don’t think it’s too much?”

  “You or the dress?”

  “Both I guess,” Emily said apprehensively as she tried to push some of her flesh under the silk.

  “Darling, do you have any idea how much women pay to get boobs like yours?”

  Emily let out a sound that was very much like a giggle.

  “I tell you, that boyfriend of yours certainly has taste.”

  “He’s not—”

  “Yeah,” Irene said, “you told me. He’s not your boyfriend. Yeah and I’m a natural blond. What’s he doing with that computer anyway?”

  “Trying to find out who wants me dead,” Emily said, for she’d told her friend the truth. In fact, she’d told her friend the entire truth, but her friend didn’t realize it. Irene had laughed a lot when she’d heard a second time that Michael was Emily’s guardian angel.

  Emily and Irene were an odd choice for friends as they could hardly be greater opposites. Irene was all glamor: her idea of roughing it was to wear only two-inch heels. Emily, on the other hand, didn’t own a pair of high heels.

  But they had been friends from the instant Irene had walked into the Greenbriar Library and asked about renting a place in town. Much to her horror, Irene had been told by her physician, who knew Irene’s true age, something that no one else (including the passport office) did, that she either had to calm down her burning-the-candle-at-both-ends lifestyle or be prepared to pay the price for too much hard-lived fun. Reluctantly and with a great deal of protestation, Irene had rented a tiny house in the absurdly quiet town of Greenbriar. But to her amazement, she had grown to love the place. She’d met Emily the first day; they’d had lunch together at the local diner and had been friends ever since.

  “We’re no competition to each other,” Irene had said. “You’re not trying to get my job and heaven knows I don’t want yours. Or your boyfriend,” she said, referring to Donald. “You don’t envy me and I don’t envy you. It’s that simple.”

  Whatever the truth was, together it seemed they could find a solution to almost any problem. Emily could see what Irene needed to do in her big city life and Irene always had some exciting advice for Emily to liven up her life. Their only disagreement had been over Donald. Irene hated the man, thought he wanted Emily for his own selfish purposes and often told her so.

  When Irene had met Michael she’d liked him instantly. “An angel, huh? With eyes like those, I think he’s more likely from the devil.”

  “He’s not for me,” Emily had said stiffly. “So don’t get your hopes up. He’s going to leave.”

  “I see. San Quentin? Is that where they put hit men nowadays? Or will they try to kill him again?”

  It was obvious that Irene thought Emily had again been conned. She liked Michael but she wasn’t about to believe that he was an angel.

  But now, as Emily stood in Irene’s living room wearing her fabulously expensive dress, her hair now a deep red and piled on top of her head, Irene stepped back to admire her friend. Physically, she and Emily were also opposites. Irene was nearly six feet while Emily was barely five. Irene had broad, square shoulders and a figure that was made for clothes. She looked elegant in whatever she put on. Emily, with her bosomy, curvy figure, looked matronly or slutty, depending on what she wore.

  But in the red dress she had on now, she looked sexy and elegant and, well, rich.

  “You look like your daddy races horses, your brother plays polo and your mother heads charity committees,” Irene said, smiling.

  “It’s not too much?” she asked again. “You don’t think there’s too much of me showing?”

  “Not at all. What do you think, Michael?” Irene asked him. He was standing to one side of the room and in his tuxedo, he was dazzlingly handsome, but Emily tried hard not to look at him. She had to keep her vow to find an appropriate man, one who wasn’t going to, literally, fly away at any moment.

  “I think it looks bare,” he said, scowling.

  “All you men think that,” Irene said, smiling. “At least the possessive ones of you do. Think she’ll attract the attention of the three men in the photo?”

  “I’m sure they are interested only in a woman of means.”

  “Then they won’t want me,” Emily said. “I feel like the small-town librarian wearing borrowed clothes.”

  “Like Cinderella must have felt,” Irene said, laughing, then looked at Michael curiously as he took something from his pocket.

  “Perhaps this will help your self-confidence,” he said as he fastened a necklace about her ivory neck. There was a band of rubies set in gold that hugged the base of her neck and several perfect, large, drop-shaped rubies dripped from the band.

  “And these,” Michael said as he handed Emily the matching earrings. Rubies the size of pigeon’s eggs dangled from small, round rubies set in gold. “And this,” he said, adding to her hand a bracelet that was three rows of round rubies.

  “The captain’s,” she whispered. “His wife’s rubies.”

  “Those are real, aren’t they?” Irene said in a whisper of reverence that such jewels deserved. She recovered before Emily did. “If those don’t make you change your mind about looking like boring Miss Emily Jane Todd, then nothing on earth will.”

  “Emily is anything but boring,” Michael said and for a moment he looked at Emily with eyes so hot that the rubies seemed to be made of fire. Quickly, he turned away as he went to get her coat.

  “Oh my,” Irene said. “It’s been a long time since a man looked at me like that. And you said he wasn’t interested in you in ‘that’ way? Is that what you said, Emily?”

  “I told you, he’s going to leave.”

  “Wait for him,” Irene said into her ear. “Wait for him for all eternity is my advice to you.”

  “Try till the end of time,” she muttered, then walked toward Michael where he was holding out her coat. It was white satin, lined with the same red of her dress and shoes. Emily knew immediately that Michael had been right: the rubies had done the trick. As they left Irene’s apartment, Emily felt as though she were the most devastatingly beautiful woman on earth. In the limo that Michael had arranged to take them to the ball (she didn’t ask how he’d paid for it), she didn’t pay one bit of attention to his orders. She didn’t hear him tell her that she was to leave everything to him and that she was to stay away from the three men.

  “I can read their minds,” Michael said. “I’ll know which man it is and I’ll come up with some way to stop this.”

  “Only if you know why the man wants to kill me,” she muttered. Wouldn’t it make sense if she tried to find out? Wouldn’t it be interesting if she could charm him with her—she nearly giggled again—charm him with her rubies and her cleavage?

  “Emily, I don’t like what you’re thinking,” Michael said seriousl