Angel Unaware (14 page)

“Tony?”

He jumped. The impatience edging his foreman’s voice told Tony Jake had had to call to him more than once. “Sorry. What’s up?”

He turned to Jake and stopped dead. Behind him was a light much too bright to be the sun. It seemed to surround him and reminded Tony very much of the light that he’d seen when Dora first came to his house. But as quickly as it had come, it vanished. Tony blinked.

“You okay?” Jake tilted his head to study Tony’s face. The sunlight shining through the window glinted off Jake’s balding head. That had to be what Tony had seen.

“Uh, yeah. I’m fine. Just thinking.”

Jake propped his hip on the corner of Tony’s desk and grinned knowingly. “Thinking, huh? About that sexy little number living at your house, I bet.”

Tony sighed. Dora had been in his thoughts, but not in the way Jake intimated … at least not this time. He’d gotten fairly used to Jake prying into his private life. Correction. Prying into his love life, or lack thereof. But today it hit a very raw nerve.

“No,” he snapped.

Showing no sign that Tony’s clipped reply had bothered him, Jake adjusted his posterior to a more comfortable position, a definite sign he was not going to let go of his subject. Jake’s grin widened. “Well, then, may I suggest you do?”

“No, you may not.” Tony rolled up the blueprints he’d been staring at without seeing for over an hour and stowed them in a cardboard tube. “When I need help with my social life, I’ll ask you. Until then, stick to playing with your hammer and nails.”

Jake shook his head. “It’s not your social life I’m interested in. Besides, someone has to interfere. You’re certainly not doing much on your own.”

Through gritted teeth, Tony snarled, “I can handle my own life. Thank you very much.”

“Right, and you’ve been doing such a sterling job of that lately, haven’t you?” Jake swore under his breath and all playfulness disappeared from both his voice and his expression. “Do you realize that by my count, you haven’t been out with a woman in over a year?”

He threw Jake an it’s-none-of-your-business glare. “I didn’t realize you were keeping track of my social life. And did it ever occur to you that my lack of dating might be because I haven’t met anyone I’m interested in?”

Jake took the cardboard tube from Tony and stood it in the corner of the work shack, along with several others. Then he returned to continue their conversation.

“That might hold true for the other women you’ve met, but I saw how you looked when you talked about this Dora. I heard your voice when you told me about her.” He shook a finger under Tony’s nose. “If that’s not interest, I’ll eat my hard hat. This one is special, and you’d better get off your ass and do something about it before she gets away.”

Heaven save him from matchmaking friends. Still … Tony couldn’t argue Jake’s point about Dora being special. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t easily dismiss his unprecedented reaction to her from the day he opened the front door and saw her silhouetted against that strange halo of light as she stood on his doorstep, right up to the time they kissed in the Christmas tree lot. To be totally honest, she had rocked his world in a way nothing or no one before her ever had.

From the very first, she’d related to Penny as if she’d known her all her life. She seemed to understand his niece’s deepest needs, something he had no hope of ever mastering.

And there lay the crux of his problem.

“There’s just one problem with your advice, genius. If I got involved with Dora, and it went south, she’d leave. I can’t afford for that to happen. I need her help with Penny. She’s good for her, and with her at the house, I can concentrate on this.” He waved a hand to encompass the construction shack and the hodgepodge of papers strewn in front of him.

Jake pulled one of the chairs up next to the desk and sat. Leaning his forearms on it, he studied Tony. “So, am I detecting that you’d
like
to get involved, and the only reason you’re holding back is Penny?” Shaking his head vehemently, Tony threw him a glare. “For crying out loud, I didn’t say that. Getting involved with her was purely a hypothetical example.”

Hitting the desk with his palm, Jake snorted derisively and leaned the chair back on two legs. “Don’t give me that shit. I wasn’t born yesterday. Penny and this construction site have nothing to do with it. They’re excuses. You’re just afraid to get involved. You have been ever since your sister’s accident.”

The carefully hidden wound that cloaked Tony’s memories of the accident burned and split open. The conversation had gone far enough. Tony scowled at Jake. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“Aha!” Jake dropped the chair back on all four legs. “Hit a sore spot, did I?”

Jake had no idea how sore that particular spot was. Riffling through a stack of work orders on his desk, Tony ignored Jake. The more he argued with him, the more Jake would pry into his personal life. “Did you come in here for any reason or just to antagonize me?” His short, crisp tone must have warned Jake he’d gone too far.

Jake looked abashed. His entire demeanor made an abrupt change, and he cleared his throat. “Oh, yeah. That new kid you hired to replace Jim is good. I think you should consider keeping him on permanently.”

Although he could punch holes as big as the Grand Canyon in his foreman’s assessment of his love life, Tony had never doubted Jake’s assessment of the men he hired. “If you say so, it’s okay with me.”

Jake snorted. “I wish it was that easy to talk you into everything.” He started toward the door and stopped. He looked at Tony, his expression that of a concerned friend. “I only want to see you happy. You know that, don’t you?”

A grin slipped across Tony’s lips. His anger of a few minutes before drained away. He nodded. “Yeah. I know. Now, get out of here.”

After Jake left, Tony stared at the closed door. Did his foreman really think he was unhappy? A better question was … was he? He shook his head. More important problems needed his attention than wasting the day worrying about Jake’s assessment of his life, and how to avoid Dora and the attraction he had for her. He chastised himself for being a fool. While he was here agonizing over this, Dora was no doubt home, never giving him a second thought.

Dora sat on the edge of her bed. So, that was that. On Christmas Eve she would have to leave Tony and Penny forever. She clutched her chest.

The other angels had been wrong. It wasn’t only mortals who could feel the excruciating pain of a breaking heart.

CHAPTER 10

Two days later, Penny ran into the house with Tony trailing behind her. He and Dora had decided that if he picked his niece up for a few days instead of Dora, it would help confirm for Penny that Tony’s forgetting her was a onetime fluke and that she could rely on him. That, along with the cell phone Tony had given her, seemed to have bolstered Penny’s confidence that she would not be abandoned again. At least she didn’t appear to be worrying about the incident repeating itself.

“Dora, Dora!” Penny called as she ran down the hall and into the kitchen waving a paper in her hand. “I have to write a story for a contest at school. The winner gets to read their story at the Winter Carnival show.” She handed Dora the sheet of paper she’d been waving around.

“That sounds like fun. Let’s see what you have to write about.” Dora studied the paper. “Hmm. It says you have to write about the best Christmas present you ever got.” She handed the paper back to Penny. “So, what are you going to write about?”

Penny’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure yet. I have to think about it. Teacher says to think real hard before we start writing.”

Tony, who had been regaled with the contest details nonstop on the drive home and was only half-listening to the exchange, studied Dora. With her head bent toward Penny, her hair fell forward and hid her face behind a silken, black veil. But he didn’t need to see her face to know what it looked like. Etched indelibly on his mind’s eye, he’d seen it every night in his dreams and every day in his imagination — an imagination that had become overly active and unbelievably troublesome, especially at work. It still baffled him that she could have such a hold on him after so short a time.

Dora was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But beyond that, she carried that same beauty inside her and showered those around her with its light. In many ways, she reminded him of Rosalie. Though Tony had not spent much time with his niece before Rosalie’s death, he’d spent enough time with them to watch his sister interact with her daughter. Dora had the same innate understanding of Penny and her needs that his sister had exhibited over and over. Recalling Rosalie’s love of animals, he could easily see her having shown the same compassion for Jack that Dora had shown, and the same—

“Right, Tony?”

Dora’s soft voice jolted him back to the here and now. He shook his head and tamped down the embarrassment of being so absorbed in his thoughts that he’d totally missed the conversation between Dora and Penny.

Both Penny and Dora were staring at him expectantly. “Sorry, my mind was wandering.”

“I told Penny we would definitely come listen to her read her story when she wins this contest.” She held up the school paper.

He didn’t miss the positive
when
and not
if
that Dora had used. “Absolutely,” he affirmed and smiled at Penny. “Do you think I can win, Uncle Tony?”

Tony reached toward her and then pulled his hand back. The disappointment in Dora’s expression didn’t go unnoticed. “Of course, you can.”

Unaware of the hesitation in her uncle’s gesture, Penny threw him a smile and then scooped up her backpack and slipped it onto her shoulders. “I’d better get started.” She stopped abruptly. “If that’s okay.”

She looked directly at him, waiting for his approval again. Tony hated that, but he didn’t seem to be able to do anything that would make her see she didn’t need his constant approval for everything she did.

“Tell you what.” He removed the backpack from Penny’s slim shoulders and laid it on one of the kitchen chairs. “Why don’t you sit right here at the table, and Dora will make you a snack? You can start work on your story later. While you have your snack, you can think about what you want to write.”

Both Dora and Penny stared openmouthed at him. Neither of them moved, as though waiting for him to take back his suggestion.

Dora was stunned. In recent days Tony had shown slackening of his rigid rule of no snacks before dinner for Penny. It wasn’t a big step, but it was another step in the right direction.

“I just took some chocolate chip cookies from the oven.” She pointed to a rack of cooling cookies on the counter. “I made them from a recipe Millie gave me. You can have a couple of them with a nice tall glass of cold milk.” She grinned at Penny. “Maybe Uncle Tony would like some, too.” She sent him a speaking glance.

Tony hesitated for a second, then pulled a chair from under the table and sat down. “Sure. I would never pass up warm chocolate chip cookies.” He glanced at Dora. “You’ll have some, too, right?”

Dora flushed. “Sure.” She took a seat next to Tony and they exchanged warm smiles. Tony’s expression touched her as surely as if he’d laid his hand on her heart. Contentment, sweet and peaceful, swept through her.

Jack, who had come into the room unnoticed, barked. Everyone turned to him. The dog’s fur stood on end and pointed in several different directions, as though he’d been scared to death, and in response it had all stood on end.

“Later, you’re going to need to give Jack a good brushing,” Dora said, still staring at the dog and trying to figure out what had happened to him that had disturbed him so much.

Penny laughed. “Okay, but first you can have a cookie, too, Jack, but I have to find one without too many chips. Chocolate’s not good for dogs.” She looked at Tony. “My teacher told me that.”

“Well, then, let’s see if we can find one for him without too many chips. We can’t have old Jack getting sick.” Tony pulled the plate of cooling cookies toward him.

To Dora’s surprise, Tony began searching through the cookies for one they could safely feed Jack. Since they’d taken the mutt in, he’d tolerated Jack and had paid him almost no attention. That he was now concerned for Jack’s health came as a shock. Then it occurred to her his worry centered more on Penny than Jack. The dog had become a central part of her life and if anything happened to him  …

“Here’s one.” Dora handed Penny a smaller cookie with no chips showing. “It’s one of the last I put on the cookie sheet and most of the chips were already in the others.”

For a while, they all watched while Jack gobbled down the cookie as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. As he ate, his hair seemed to smooth itself out. It reminded Dora of how Calvin’s wing feathers went bonkers whenever he was upset and how they slowly fell back into place as he—

The thought stopped Dora cold. Could Jack be—? No. That was ridiculous. Still, he had arrived at the same time she’d told Calvin to stop hovering and had subsequently disappeared from contact above, something to which he’d agreed with uncharacteristic speed. Gracie had said no one had seen Calvin in days and didn’t know where he’d gone. And, despite their newspaper’s classified ad having run for a few days, no one had called to claim the dog.