Christmas Angel (20 page)

I’m
supposed
to be?”

Lillian handed the necklace back to her. “I suspect that you’re here for a reason. When you find it, you’ll know.”

“And what if one day I wake up, and I’m back at the Magnolia?”

“Then what you need wasn’t to be found here.” Lillian clasped her hands together and regarded her. “I have learned and believe there are no coincidences.

Everything is connected—and that remains one of life’s greatest mysteries.”

Rosalee, quiet for some time, sighed heavily. “You were always the romantic, Lillian. But teaching science for nearly fifty years has taught me there are logical reasons for such phenomena.”

Angel looked at Miss Brisbee. “You knew about her past and Sheriff Jake?”

“Only after reading the book I bought at the library’s closing.” Rosalee blinked innocently. “Well, I couldn't have you believing I was some crazy old woman the first time we met, could I? I needed time to test my hypothesis.”

Lillian cast a weary glance at Angel. “She’s going to go off on one of her scientific
tangents
again. You need to watch your blood pressure, Rosie. You know how it spikes when you get excited.”

Rosalee ignored her and turned to Angel. “I admit I was curious when you came over and told me your name. After all, I’d read the book and a name like yours a person doesn’t forget easily. That’s why I contacted Lillian, to pick what’s left of her brain—”

“Thank you, Rosie,” Lillian inserted.

“I wanted to piece together how this could happen not once, not twice—but three times from the same area.” She went on, driven by her enthusiasm. “There are a number of theories of course on time travel. Many great scientists have studied the mysteries of the universe. There’s the popular idea we live in parallel universes, then of course, the theory of wormholes…”

Lillian’s face reflected her exasperation. “And have they ever scientifically proven anything at all with all these theories?”

“Well, no one has yet invented a time machine, if that’s what you mean. But the very fact it cannot be disproven means it’s possible. It may take many years and hard work, but it is possible.”

“Sweetheart,” Lillian stated softly, “We’re living proof. And what I believe to be true, what I know, is we were somehow transported through time by our innermost desire.”

“That’s what this Burt fellow told you?” Rosalee looked at her with a jaundiced eye.

Lillian regarded her friend. “He never said. He only said to follow my heart. No magic words, no special potions.” She placed her hands on her lap. “I do believe, however, he must be some type of conduit or everyone would be flitting about from place to place willy-nilly.” She shrugged then and took Angel’s face between her wrinkled hands. “You must look deep inside you, dear child. What were you looking for just before you arrived?”

She pressed her memory. “Only to find Billy.” She searched Lillian’s eyes. “I remember being told to follow my heart, let the music lead me to my heart’s desire.”

“Then you must keep searching.”

“But how will I now? How long do I look?”

“Until you find what you’re looking for.” Lillian stood and kissed Miss Brisbee on the cheek. “Rosie always wanted to write a book about Jake and me, but who would’ve believed it?”

“Wait. Sheriff Jake, how is he? Is he well?” Angel asked as she walked to the door with both women.

Lillian stopped and took Angel’s hands. “I believe he is. A couple of weeks ago, two days before he was to retire, he passed on. He was at his desk,” she smiled with fondness, “doing his job. He loved taking care of people.”

Angel blinked. “Did he know a Detective Jackson? Maybe Detective Gleason?”

“Perhaps…I can’t say. He would talk about the rookies, the young men. There are so many different divisions, so many special teams, but I suspect it’s possible.” Lillian patted her hand. “Now I’ve got to run. My children are picking me up tonight in a fancy car. I’m to receive a memorial in Jake’s honor at the

Policeman’s Ball.”

“That’s where Shado said he was taking me. It’s the reason he bought the dress.”

“Well, he sounds like a lovely man, and you’ll be sure I get a proper introduction.” She smiled, seemingly not half as surprised by the news as Angel was. “Then I shall see you again this evening, and Rosie, lovely afternoon. We’ll talk soon.”

Miss Brisbee held the door for both women. “Unless I find myself on the high seas with a black-hearted pirate!” She brushed her hand through the air.

Lillian stopped and with a smile pointed her finger at her friend. “Be careful what you wish for, Rosalee Brisbee.”

She laughed and waved before closing the door to her apartment.

Angel looked at Lillian. Here was the woman who had at one time been a mentor and the closest thing to a mother she’d ever had. “I don’t want to say good-bye. What if something happens before tonight, and I don’t see you?”

Lillian smiled at her with the wisdom of age warming her expression. “It is a gift, this precious love we share with a select few in our lives. You, Jake, and I have been given something rare—a connection, an unbreakable bond. I don’t know what happens when we die, but I believe Jake is waiting for me somewhere. I know you and I will meet again, Angel. If not tonight at the ball, then in another place.”

Angel hugged the woman tightly, afraid to let go, afraid she might never find what Lillian and Jake had shared.

“You mustn’t be afraid. There is always risk in following what you desire most—your passion. But the greatest risk is not taking one.”

Angel nodded and swiped the tears from her cheek. Something shifted inside her, and a calm settled within. She leaned over the railing and watched to make sure Miss Lillian made it safely down the stairs. She understood now what she wanted, what she needed, and the risk she was about to take to prove Shado Jackson needed her.

“Angel, sorry I’m late. With the snow, some of the streets are down to narrow little one lane—” Shado dumped his suit bag over the back of his recliner. He pushed off his boots and hung up his parka then stopped. An uneasy feeling crawled up the back of his neck. She hadn’t answered him. “Angel?” His instincts went full alert as he scanned the room, his gaze falling to the open window. Dammit, her and the window…if he’d told her once…. “Angel?” he shouted as he strode to the window and slammed it shut.

“Almost ready.” Her voice came from inside the bathroom.

His nerves, stretched tight from a long day at work worrying about her at home alone, had caused him to snap. He released a deep breath and looked around. Everything was in perfect order, exactly the way she liked it. The apartment had taken on more and more of Angel’s little touches, and it felt good to be home. He swiped his hands across his face and let out a sigh. What he’d give for a hot shower, a pizza, and a night in, away from the world.

The sound of a door opening drew his attention, and a cloud of steam smelling like fresh-picked flowers rolled into the lighted hallway.

“Are you about done? I need to get in and shower. You can’t believe how the precinct starts to smell after a while.” He braced his hands on his hips and stared at the floor, waiting. One bathroom. He didn’t know how people who lived with roommates did it.

“Are you ready?”

The playful tone in her voice prompted him to move within sight of the door. A shower was no longer uppermost in his mind. “Ready.” Which might have been a lie, but he’d already imagined her in the dress more than once, seeing it cascading down her lithe body. Reality would surely be this side of spectacular.

He was wrong—dead wrong.

She emerged from the room—a goddess, a proverbial Siren. His eyes may have bugged a little as he took her in from her blonde hair swept up in a graceful swirl revealing her slender neck and statuesque shoulders, to lower where the gown formed a deep
V
in front, showing just enough of her pale flesh beneath to tease. She made a slow turn with her arms poised like Vanna White, displaying the grand prize. His eyes nearly fell from his head when the back came into view to reveal the low drape of fabric hanging loose above the base of her spine. The gown required no undergarments that he could see, and he didn’t want to think about the places he couldn’t. It occurred to him for the first time perhaps he was wrong to think of taking her out in such a gown. Unable to speak, he stared slack jawed at how stunning she looked.

She faced him again, arms wide, her bright eyes alive with expectation, and in the next instant, the joy was snatched from her expression. She glanced down, nervously smoothing her hands over her hips and the gentle slope of her stomach. “You don’t like it.” Her mouth turned down in a tempting pout.

He shook his head and slapped his hand to his chest in an attempt to jumpstart his heart. “Looking
so good
should be a crime, Angel.” A spark snapped in her eyes, and her bright smile sent an unholy signal straight to his groin.

“Oh, then you like it?”

Understatement
. Idol worship came to mind. He could only nod. “Listen, I need to grab a shower, and we can get going.” If he didn’t peel his eyeballs from her chest, they’d never get out of there. He scooted around her, careful not to get near. Tonight, the woman should have come with a high combustibility warning.

“Wait, I almost forgot.” Her hand snagged his arm, stopping him in his tracks. She sashayed across the living room. His eyes fell to the fluid sway of her hips. He’d not been nearly generous enough with his vision. She bent over to pick up the mug book. She had no idea how damn sexy she looked, and Shado shut his eyes, relieving himself of the torture.

“I found the man.”

His eyes popped open.
Man?
“What? Oh,
the
man!” His brain kicked in.

“Yes.” She rotated the book and handed it to him, pointing at the picture.

“You’re sure?” In all the confusion, Shado had gotten only a glimpse of the suspect before the man had smacked Angel and taken off down the hall. He was big with excessively hairy arms. That much he remembered. The bozo was a whole lot uglier than memory served. “This is fantastic, Angel.” He nodded and flashed a grin. “Good job.” He reached out to cup her face and placed a chaste kiss on her cheek. “This is…this is really, really great.” His hand wouldn’t move, even though his brain continued to scream at him to let go. “You’re absolutely sure?” he repeated, not knowing what else to say.

“Oh, it’s him. I’m sure.”

He cleared his throat and dropped his hand. “I need to give Gleason a call, so we can get an APB on this guy. With any luck, we might be able to strike a deal to find out where Espinoza is.”

“Then you’d be happy?” She folded her arms and regarded him.

He caught the implication. “I’ve been searching for this Espinoza for three years, Angel. Yeah, it’d be a good start, anyway.”

She nodded.

He picked up the phone.

“Shado?”

He looked up. “Yeah?”

“There’s something else I need to tell you. Something we need to discuss.”

“Can it wait?”

She licked her lips, her look pensive.

He replaced the phone in the cradle. “What is it?”

She released a soft sigh and perched on the edge of the recliner. “I’m not exactly clear on everything. But I have been reading, and today, my suspicions were confirmed that I might not exactly belong here.”

He studied her face as he sat down across from her. “That’s something we knew, Angel. We’ve just been waiting for your memory to return.” His intuition twisted something foreign in his gut. “Has your memory recovered? Do you remember where you’re from?”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “But it sounds farfetched.”

He chuckled. “Believe me, very little could faze me. I’ve seen it all. Go ahead, hit me.”

She frowned. “Why would I hit you?”

“It’s an expression. What I mean is, go ahead and tell me.”

“Oh. Well, you remember the book I borrowed from Miss Brisbee?”

He nodded. “
Tales of the Sweet Magnolia
, yep.” Something shifted inside him, and he remembered Gleason’s strange commentary about her name associated with some woman living in some old 1881 mining town near the Reno area
.

She picked up the book and flipped to the pages in the back, then handed it to him. “Read the list of names.”

He eyed her as he accepted it, carefully following the list of women who once were residents of the Magnolia bordello in Deadwater Gulch. Like so many of the small mining towns, which had popped up in the west and died away almost as fast, most of the details concerning the populations were lost with exception of a few with their own records.

His gaze fell on one name in particular. He glanced up and met her steady blue eyes. “Apparently you had some colorful ancestors.” He smiled.

“That was my first thought,” she started. “But then I got thinking about the clothes I was wearing the night we met—how many women still wear corsets?”

He shrugged. “I suppose it depends on your tastes, but they’re making a comeback.”

“What about everything around here I didn’t understand, simple things you’ve had to teach me? Do you remember how strange it all seemed to me?”

An odd sensation curled like a frozen snake in his gut. “That can be explained by your temporary amnesia.”

“And what about my strange visions?” she asked.

“From watching too much
Gunsmoke
, reading this book…anything could have triggered those.” He wasn’t entirely certain what she was building up to, but it sounded beyond farfetched. Perhaps she’d sustained more of a head injury than was detected.

She searched his face. “I know what I’m saying sounds…impossible. I’m not sure I even believe it completely, but honestly, when you think about it—
really
think about it—it makes sense.”

“What? What makes sense?” She had him teetering on the brink of wanting to know more or scheduling her for further evaluation by a medical professional.

She leaned forward and pulled the necklace from beneath a stack of papers on the coffee table. “Do you recognize this?”

“Sure. The old man at the store must have given it to me.”

She regarded him with a curious look. “You didn’t buy it to go with the dress?”

“Well.” He hesitated. “That’s the strange thing about it. I found it in my pocket last night and I’d intended to drop by the store today and pay him to rent it, but I forgot in my hurry to get to the station. I’ll stop in tomorrow, explain the mistake, and make things right with him. I swear, I don’t even remember touching the necklace. How it wound up in my pocket, I have no clue.”

A ghost of a smile played on her lips. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen it.”

This conversation was getting stranger by the minute. Not impossible however that she may have thought she’d seen something similar to it somewhere else.

“Sheriff…I guess he would be called Detective Jake Sloan used to own it, or rather his wife, Lillian, did.”

The book slipped from his hands. “Wait a minute. Whoa, how do you know

Jake and his wife?”

She nodded. “I knew them, but not in recent times, until today.”

“You lost me.”

“Shado, I met Miss Lillian today over at Miss Brisbee’s.”

He stared at her, sensing the other shoe was about to drop. “Okay.”

“I know in your line of work,” she continued, “you rely on facts. But there are some things beyond explanation.”

And he had a strong feeling he wasn’t going to like, much less understand what she was about to say. Still, he was curious. “Try me.”

She leveled her gaze on him. “I knew Miss Lillian when she was a madam at the Sweet Magnolia.”

He couldn’t help but grin at the thought, picturing the sweet, silver-haired woman, the wife of one of the most revered detectives on the force, as a bordello madam—in this era or any other. He took a deep breath and knelt down in front of Angel. He lifted her hands in his. “Sweetheart, you’ve been through more than anyone should have to go through. It’s not unusual to have these visions, and I’m sure they
seem
very real to you.”

She smiled softly. “I was afraid to say anything because I wasn’t sure you’d believe me. But now that I’ve identified my attacker and there’s hope you’ll catch

Espinoza, I don’t know what is going to happen.”

He squeezed her fingers. “Let’s not worry about it right now. There’s no rush.

We’ll help you do whatever you need to do.”

She smiled. “I want only to understand why I was brought here.”
Brought here?

“But more than anything, I want you to know, if something happens to me, if I don’t get the chance later to tell you…I want to thank you and let you know I’ve not regretted one moment spent with you.”

“And I feel the same, Angel, but nothing is going to happen. I’m going to call Gleason, take a shower, and then we’ll go to this dance, enjoy ourselves, and worry about tomorrow…tomorrow.” He met her skeptical stare. “Okay?”

He took the necklace from her grasp. “Here let me help you.” He leaned forward, reaching around her to hook the clasp. He let it drop from his fingers, relishing the petal-like softness of her skin, forcing himself not to thread his fingers through her hair, freeing it from its confines. He leaned back on bended knee, still in front of her. “I’ll be done soon.” He started to rise, and she caught his wrist.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He eyed her with uncertainty in his gut. “How about we talk more about this tomorrow? Maybe we both deserve a night where we can forget everything else and enjoy the time out?” It was the single strangest confession he’d made in quite a while, and he suspected it had more to do with not wanting to deal with the implications of what she was asking him to believe.

She nodded and eased farther back in the chair with a look that said she knew he was avoiding the issue. He walked back to his bedroom and picked up the phone, setting things in motion with Gleason.

“She’s fingered him. The guy’s name is Eddie Montega.”

“Good work. I’ll get his name out there and his picture. This will all be over soon and you can get back to your life as a free-wheeling bachelor, my friend,” Gleason said.

“Yeah,” he stated absently. His mind was not focused on the subject at hand, rather on Angel’s disturbing comments about “if something were to happen to her.”

“You okay, man? You’re still bringing Angel tonight, right?”

Shado blinked from his reverie, “Uh, yeah. We’ll be a little late but we’ll be there.”

“Good. See you later.”

He dropped the phone in the cradle and looked toward the door. Flashbacks of the night he’d driven home and how she’d reacted, calling the Camaro his “carriage” popped into his brain. Was it the amnesia or simple coincidence she’d never seen a seatbelt, or that she had exemplary skills in braiding a rug from Tshirt strips? Had ignorance made her innocent of the dangers with electrical appliances near water, or a secluded upbringing, one which explained her throwback to
Gunsmoke
-style clothing? Perhaps more disturbing, where had she learned some of the techniques and the casual stance on the sex they’d shared? No, it was impossible.