An Angel for Emily Read online

  That loosened her jaw. “I what?”

  “You can’t fall in love with me.” Taking advantage of Emily’s speechlessness, he got up and walked away, his back to her. “While I was in that waterfall, no, don’t tell me, that shower, I—” Turning, he looked back at her. “You know, it is quite one thing to watch mortals and their toilet habits but quite another to experience them. I find them a great nuisance. In fact, I find most everything about these bodies a nuisance.”

  Emily was glaring at him. “So why don’t you just fly off to where you really belong?”

  His smile broadened. “I have offended you.”

  “How could you?” she asked sweetly. “You have made me into a fugitive wanted by criminals as well as law enforcement agencies, not to mention your wife, but you tell me I’m not to fall in love with you. Tell me, oh please do, how do I refrain myself?”

  Michael laughed, then again sat down on the bed beside her. “I’m just telling you in case you feel so inclined. Once my mission here is done, I have to go home.”

  “And home is Heaven?” Emily asked, one eyebrow raised.

  “Yes, exactly. I’ll go back to keeping you from drowning in ponds and tickling your nose whenever I see trouble ahead.”

  At that Emily drew the covers up around her neck. “I would like for you to get out of my life,” she said quietly. “You appear to be in good health now so I’d like for you to—”

  “Here, feel my head,” he said, bending toward her, ignoring her words.

  Emily wanted to remain aloof but she was curious as to what had happened after last night. She put her hands in the damp curls of his hair and felt all of his scalp. There wasn’t a wound or dent or any sign that last night there had been a fat, round piece of lead sticking out of his scalp.

  “And look at these,” he said, sitting up and again roaming his hands over his chest.

  She saw what could be healed-over scars from what could have been bullet holes.

  “And here,” he said, turning around so she could see his back. “Two of them came out the back.”

  She couldn’t help herself as she ran her hands over the scars that did indeed look like bullet holes. Donald had said that the man had been killed in his cell, “his chest full of bullet holes, and one round in his head.”

  Turning back around, Michael picked up the piece of lead from the bedside table. “This was causing me horrible pain, but after you took it out I was fine. Did you sleep well?”

  As he spoke he handed the bullet to Emily, and for a while she sat there looking at the horrid little thing. Last night she had pulled this from the man’s head with a pair of pliers, and this morning there wasn’t so much as a cut on his scalp to show it had been there.

  She looked up at him. “Who are you?” she whispered. “How can you open locked doors? How can you have something like this taken from your head and not bleed? How do you know so much about me?”

  “Emily,” he said softly, then reached for her hand.

  “Don’t you dare touch me,” she said. “Every time you touch me odd things happen. You…you hypnotized me last night, didn’t you?”

  “I had to. Otherwise you were going to call a doctor. But expending the energy to calm your mind was more than I could do last night,” he said. “I became unconscious.”

  “You are creating a diversion,” she said, “and you are not answering my question. Who are you?”

  “I seem to remember that I told you I would not talk of, well, of angels unless you asked me to.”

  “Oh, so now I’m to beg you to tell me….” She looked away and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. These last days had been too much for her.

  “Are all mortal women so illogical?”

  “Of all the chauvinistic things I have ever had said to me, that is the worst!” she said as she flung back the covers and discovered that she was in her underwear. Her slacks and shirt were laid neatly across the back of a chair at the other end of the room.

  “Did you undress me?” she said, seething as she glared at him.

  “You seemed to be uncomfortable and I wanted you to sleep well.” He seemed to know that he had done something wrong, but he wasn’t sure what.

  When she continued to get out of bed, he caught her hand, and, as always, she calmed. “I will tell you everything I know if you’ll listen. But I warn you that I don’t know much. You must believe me when I tell you that I’m as confused and disoriented as you are. I’d like to go home as much as you do. I don’t want to be chased by people, shot at or have to climb out windows. I have duties and work to do just like anyone else.”

  “Just your work happens to be in Heaven,” she said, pulling away from his touch.

  “Yes,” he said simply. “My work happens to be elsewhere.”

  “What you’re asking me to believe is impossible.”

  “Why?” He took a deep breath. “Mortals never believe in what they can’t see. You don’t believe an animal exists until you actually see it. But whether you believe in something or not has no effect on what is or is not. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand you; it’s just that I don’t believe you.”

  Michael looked at her a moment, then blinked. “Oh, I see. You believe in angels, you just don’t believe I am an angel.”

  “Bingo!”

  At that Michael laughed. “What can I do to prove it to you? Other than sprout wings, that is?”

  She knew he was making fun of her but she wasn’t going to allow herself to get angry. Instead, she just sat there and glared at him.

  After a while he got up and walked about the room. “All right, you’ve seen some things but not enough to make you believe that I am what I say I am. What do you think has been the cause of what you have seen?”

  “You’re a magician and you have some clairvoyant powers. You’re very good with locks.”

  “And bullets,” he said, smiling at her, but she didn’t answer so he sat back down on the bed.

  “All right, Emily, I’m asking for your help as one mortal to another. My, uh, clairvoyant powers have told me that there is a situation that needs solving and it involves you. But I have no idea what the problem is so I have to find it before I can solve it.”

  “What kind of problem is it?” She could have bitten off her tongue when she said it, but when he presented the situation this way she was intrigued. She loved helping Donald research stories. In fact, she just loved mysteries in general.

  “I don’t know, but what would be so big that an angel would need to be sent to earth?”

  “Evil,” she said. “True evil.”

  At that Michael’s face lit up. “That’s right. That’s what it must be. I haven’t had much time to think since I got here, but evil must be the answer.” He leaned toward her. “So what evil surrounds you?”

  “Me? In a small-town library? You must be kidding.” She was back to normal now, and she could keep this good-looking man at a distance. But why did they always seem to end up alone in bedrooms?

  Again he stood and began to walk about the room. The towel was slipping lower over his hips and Emily suddenly wished there was a telephone in the room. If there were, she’d call Donald right now.

  “That’s just what I thought. That town you live in is quite without interest and, as always, your life is without excitement and—”

  “I beg your pardon!” she said. “My life is not without excitement. For your information, I happen to be engaged to a man who plans to be governor of this state and maybe even president.”

  “No,” Michael said solemnly. “He always has grand plans when he’s young, then spends his old age telling everyone what he could have been if someone hadn’t hindered him.”

  “Of all the—” Emily said, flinging back the covers.

  “Ah yes, I forgot that you never could take the truth.”

  At that Emily sat back down. “I can take the truth as well as the next man.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “And the last I h