Page 39 of Calling All Angels
“The banger lights? Aye. You’ll likely find a few guardians hangin’ around t’ watch the show.”
“Banger lights?” She laughed. “Well, that’s accurate at least. So, have you ever hung around this particular ‘banger lights’ show before? Would I have seen you and your…your wings if I’d looked hard enough?”
“No,” he said, with a small smile. “Him, on the other hand…I would guess ye might’ve seen him.”
She followed Connor’s gaze to a man sitting on top of the gazebo—an impossible place to get to—cross-legged, watching one of Lannie’s boys who had started climbing up a nearby elm tree. The man was dressed in a long dark coat, completely inappropriate for the warm weather. He looked vexed.
“Don’t you do it, Nathan,” he shouted out to Lannie’s six-year-old son. “Don’t. Do. It.”
Not a single, solitary other person seemed to hear this man shouting at the boy, least of all Nathan himself as he started up the tree.
“Who is that?” she asked Connor, who had his eye on the boy.
“That’s Henry,” he said. “An old friend.”
“You mean…he’s a—?”
“Aye. A guardian, too.”
Henry—a handsome youngish man with salt-and-pepper hair with a face and physique better suited to a Tom Ford runway—glanced down at Connor. He touched a finger to his forehead in salute. “Connor.”
“Henry.”
“This boy.” Henry sighed, pointing to the hooligan who imagined himself Spider-Man. “He’ll be the death of me yet.”
Connor laughed. “A stubborn one, eh?”
“Downright defiant.Nathan!” he shouted again. “Think about your choices!”
Nathan was a born climber, a logic-defying risk-taker, and already he’d managed to clamber his way halfway up the gigantic tree near the gazebo.Oh no.Emma jerked a look at Lannie, who was still engrossed in gossip and not paying attention to her son’s peril.
“Connor,” she cried. “He could fall!”
“True. He might.”
Emma stared at him in astonishment. “What kind of an answer is that from a guardian angel?”
“Ye dinna understand.”
“That he’s going to hurt himself? Badly?”
Connor sent her a testy look, continuing to do nothing. For his part, Henry sat on the gazebo, hands clasped atop his head in frustration, awaiting the inevitable as well.
Panic began creeping into her. “But isn’t Henry his—?”
“Guardian? Aye, but he canna always interfere. ’Tis the boy’s lesson to learn. Henry’s tryin’ to teach him.”
“That it hurts to fall from a tree? That you can break your neck?”
“To listen to his inner voice. Henry, in this case.”
“Connor!”
He slid a look at Lannie and shook his head.
That made no sense to her at all. If they wouldn’t, she would! She raced to Lannie’s side. “Look up, Lannie! Look at Nathan. He’s way up in that tree. Look up!”
But Lannie couldn’t hear her, of course. She went on chatting with Gabriella, laughing at something she said. Emma shoved a hand at her shoulder, but, naturally, her hand passed right through. Lannie scratched the spot as if a bug had landed on her.
