Angel Unaware (11 page)

“
Jack
?” Millie sucked in a breath. Her blue eyes filled with alarm. “Oh, dear.”

Dora looked at their neighbor’s suddenly pale face. “What is it, Millie?”

Millie took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’m probably just being foolish.”

Something about the dog’s name had really upset Millie, and Dora couldn’t let it drop. “Nonsense. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

The woman took another deep breath, then asked, “What color is the dog?”

“Considering how dirty he was, it took a long, hot, fragrant bath to discover he’s white,” Dora said, taking a bite of a delicious sugar cookie bell decorated with red and green sprinkles and trying to act unconcerned so as not to add to Millie’s upset. “Why?”

Millie sighed and leaned her elbows on the table. She glanced at the door through which Tony had vanished earlier. In a subdued voice, she leaned closer to Dora and said, “When Penny was born, her dad gave her a toy dog. She never went anywhere without it.” Tears gathered in Millie’s eyes. “The day of the accident, the dog was destroyed. We told Penny that it was lost. She was heartbroken.” Millie laid her warm hand on Dora’s arm. “The dog was white, and she’d named him—”

“Jack,” Dora finished for her with a sinking heart. Millie nodded.

This complicated everything. However, it totally explained Penny’s change in personality and her instant attachment to the stray, but it made having to give the dog back to its owners, should they come to claim him, severely problematic. In her child’s mind, Penny no doubt thought that not only had Jack come home to her, but that he’d done so as a real dog.

After Millie left, Dora went in search of Tony to talk to him about the dog and its significance to his niece. He had to know that if the owners ever showed up, he should be ready for what giving it up would do to Penny.

However, when Dora found him in the living room, sitting on the couch and looking downcast, she hesitated. Cradled in his big hands was the angel that had never been added to the tree. He looked tortured, as if his soul was bleeding, and her insides twisted in pain for him. Silently, she sat beside him, all thought of the dog and Penny pushed from her mind.

Tony turned the angel over and over, staring blankly at it. He probably wasn’t even seeing the white silk dress, richly embroidered with gold threads; the snow-white, gold-trimmed marabou-feathered wings; or the sparkling halo resting on the angel’s golden curls. Dora was certain that what he did see were past Christmases playing like a movie in his mind.

“Putting the angel on the tree,” he said in a soft voice, “was always a big deal for my sister, the final touch. It was as if, until that moment, Christmas wasn’t really official. When I was little, Rosalie would lift me up so I could do it. As a teenager, she held the ladder while I put the angel in place.” He chuckled softly. “When I got taller than her, I told her I’d lift her up so she could put it up there, but she was always afraid I’d drop her into the tree, so I’d end up doing—”

His voice broke, and he stopped talking. Instead, he blinked repeatedly and glanced at the ceiling as if sending up an unspoken plea for help in understanding why his beloved sister had been snatched from him.

Aside from the overused, useless platitudes about destiny, it being Rosalie’s time and such, Dora could think of nothing to say that would bring him the peace he so desperately sought. The pain for him that sliced through her almost made her cry out. At a loss for anything else, she took his hand and squeezed it in silent assurance that she was there for him, and she understood.

“Maybe it’s time to start a new tradition,” she said softly.

Tony turned to her.

“Maybe it’s time for you to lift Penny up there to do the honors.” She smiled. “You know, passing on the duty to the next in line. Don’t you think her mother would like that?”

Tony shrugged and continued to rotate the tree topper in his hands. “Maybe,” he finally conceded grudgingly.

He stood and moved next to the tree. For a long moment he stared at the topmost limb, then moved away. He threw Dora a look that said
I can’t
, then he placed the angel gently on the coffee table and strode from the room.

Dora watched him go in silence, knowing he couldn’t bring himself to relinquish this one last tie to his sister. Allowing anyone else to put the angel on the tree would be like acknowledging that Rosalie was truly gone forever. How could she make him see that as long as Penny was here, Rosalie would never be truly gone? That every time he looked at that child, his sister’s face shown back at him?

Suddenly, Dora felt grave doubts about the success of her task. Was it one of futility? Would she ever be able to bring this family back together and establish a loving, close-knit bond between uncle and niece, or were they too badly damaged to ever allow true love back into their hearts?

CHAPTER 7

Tony sat alone in the construction shack, staring down at the blueprints for the houses his company was building that lay on the table before him. A sense of intense pride flowed through him. These were the kind of houses Tony had always dreamed of building—affordable housing for the common man.

They weren’t fancy houses, just small, square dwellings that consisted of a kitchen, bath, living room, and two bedrooms. Each structure was devoid of the deluxe accoutrements some of the homes his contemporaries constructed. When completed, the landscaping would also be minimal: two trees, a lawn, and a few bushes. When the houses were finished, they would provide homes for some of the poorer residents of the town.

Then his gaze wandered to a bit of pencil scratching on the corner of the paper, shaped oddly like a smiling face. Next to it was scribbled a name—
Dora
. As if on cue, the blueprints blurred and another image took their place. Tony blinked, trying to dispel the image, but it persisted.

He wasn’t surprised. This was how it had been every day since Dora had come into his life. He’d be concentrating on something and the smallest thing would send his thoughts spiraling off in her direction. And he didn’t seem to be able to stop it. Like right now when, instead of the blueprints filling his vision, Dora’s face shimmered in front of him. Her face appeared as it had been last night when she’d found him holding the tree topper. A face filled with compassion and understanding.

But how could she understand? How could anyone understand what he was going through? Rosalie, the woman who had been both mother and father to him for most of his life, was gone, and nothing or no one could ever fill the void left behind.

He rubbed his tired, burning eyes with his forefinger and thumb. Would this wretched, aching loneliness ever go away?

Then it dawned on him that last night had been one of the few times he’d missed Rosalie since Dora had come to live with them. He’d been so busy forcing himself not to think about Dora as more than Penny’s babysitter and straining to keep his distance from his enticing employee that he hadn’t had time to think much about his dead sister. Or was he just getting used to her being gone?

Keeping the visions of Dora at bay hadn’t been easy. At the most inopportune moments, she’d pop into his head: Dora bustling about the kitchen, laughing brightly, gossiping over coffee with Millie, or patiently talking to Penny. But mostly, he recalled how she looked and felt in his arms in the tree lot: clinging tightly to his neck, her warm lips pressed to his, responding as no woman had ever responded to him before.

Then the vision would be shattered by her words.
We can’t let this happen again
. Deep down, he knew she was right. If they let the relationship, or whatever label could be put on what was happening between them, develop into something more, he could well lose the one person whom Penny had begun opening up to since the accident. But even worse,
he
could lose Dora. That thought seared through his heart like a hot knife, causing as much pain as the memories of Rosalie. Yet he had to keep Dora at arm’s length for Penny’s sake.

He groaned and combed his fingers through his hair while frustration ate at him with its hungry jaws.

The door to the shack flew open. His foreman, Jake, stuck his head in. “One of the framers just fell off the scaffolding. I think his leg’s broken. Better call 911.”

Tony placed the call, then, grabbing his hard hat, dashed out the door.

Dora finished making Tony’s bed, then sat on it and ran her fingers over the pillow where his head had lain the night before. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. Each time she got near Tony or touched something that reminded her of him, her insides turned as soft as the honey confections she’d eaten in Heaven. At the same time, her skin tingled pleasurably with a strange heat, and her heartbeat raced uncontrollably.

If she were a true mortal, she would have thought she had contracted some illness. Since angels were immune to Earthly afflictions, that couldn’t be it. If not an illness, then there was only one other explanation, one she really didn’t want to even consider, but consider it she must.

Love
.

If that were the case, then she was in major trouble. Calvin would have her wings, her halo, and her hide. She’d be assigned the very worst job in the cosmos, coloring the thunderclouds for eternity.

Woof
!

Jack came bounding into the room, his hair in terrible disarray. He jumped on the bed and began licking Dora’s face. With her hands raised to ward him off, she tried to push him away. “Jack! Get down. You know you’re not supposed to be on the furniture. Down, Jack!”

But the dog ignored her and put his paws on either shoulder, pushing her backward into the bedding, and continued to lick her face. Finally, she turned onto her stomach and slipped off the bed. She glared down at Jack.

“Look, I know you miss Penny, but I don’t have time to play with you.” She pointed at the floor and in her most commanding voice said, “Get down, now!”

Jack bounded to the floor, his hair still in wild disarray. He barked again, then trotted from the room.

One thing Jack’s unannounced arrival had done was to remove her thoughts from her boss, but now that Jack was gone, her tortured, confused musings returned with a vengeance. Dora rubbed her hand across her forehead. What was she to do about this … whatever it was that was happening to her? How could she help Tony and Penny if her own doubts kept pummeling her? What if it was the worst-case scenario … love? How did she stop it?

Gracie. Maybe Gracie would know.

Dora hurried off to her room and swept the sheet from the mirror. Barely acknowledging her angel reflection, she called, “Gracie.” She waited, her gaze trained on the mirror. When Gracie didn’t appear, she called again, this time louder. “Gracie!” Still her angel friend did not appear, nor did Calvin, who must have heard her call.

They were obviously taking her at her word. She was on her own.

Dora slumped onto the edge of her bed. If she couldn’t talk to Gracie, she had no idea to whom she could confide her fears. Tears gathered in her eyes, blurring the image of the forlorn angel in the mirror. She was going to fail to complete her mission, and all because she had let her emotions get in the way, the very thing Calvin had cautioned her against.

But she couldn’t fail. Penny and Tony’s happiness were in her hands. She had to find a way to stop these feelings she had for Tony. She racked her brain for an answer, but none came. This was all so … so mortal, and she had no idea how to control it. How did mortals stop this involuntary flow of emotions toward another person?

The sound of a slamming door at the Sullivans’ house broke through her troubled thoughts. Instantly, Dora knew to whom she could talk. Tony was picking Penny up at school after their parent/teacher conference, so she didn’t have to worry about that. Dora had the rest of the afternoon to try to solve her troubling problem.

Millie opened the door at Dora’s knock and ushered her into her warm, cozy kitchen. “I need to talk to you. Do you have a few minutes?”

“Of course. I always have time for you, Dora. Have a seat, dear. I just made Preston some coffee. Let me take him a cup, and then you and I can visit.”

The older woman poured rich, dark coffee into a heavy earthenware mug, then added two teaspoons of sugar and a dollop of Half & Half. After stirring it thoroughly, she placed it on a tray with a plate of cheese and crackers and carried it from the room.

While she was gone, Dora took in the homey kitchen. The odor of something baking in the oven filled the room. Dora’s taste buds came to life. So far, she’d been able to avoid picking up on some of the vices the mortals had, but their food was something she just couldn’t find it in herself to resist. Millie’s food in particular tempted her beyond control.

Pushing the smell of whatever Millie was baking from her mind, Dora concentrated on her surroundings. Everything, from the ceramic angels lining the windowsill over the sink, to the flower print place mats on the table and the small braided rug in front of the sink screamed
Millie
. Her loving touch was everywhere, and it made the room feel like—home.