Page 7 of Calling All Angels
He ground his teeth together.
“No.Violet.That was it. You called me Violet. Didn’t you?”
“No.” He couldn’t meet her eye now. “Maybe. That’s no’ important.”
“I think perhaps it is. Maybe that’s the key to my dream. Who is this Violet person?”
“Nobody.”
“Hmmm.” She eyed him for a full ten seconds before she walked closer to him, coming practically under his nose. She gave a sniff as if she were testing out his scent, scanning the full length of him from the ground up until her gaze landed on his face.
He felt the rake of her gaze rush through him like the heat of a flame.
“I thought angels couldn’t lie.”
“And I thought you didn’t believe in angels.”
Emma tapped her steepled fingertips together thoughtfully. “Show me your wings.”
A bark of laughter escaped him. “What? Why?”
“To prove to me you are who you say you are. You could be anyone. You could be—” She pointed downward. “Why should I trust you? I mean, how do I know you’re here in my best interests?”
Connor glanced around the ICU, where medical personnel flitted in and out of the sliding glass-doored rooms past desperately ill patients, most of whom had their own stoic guardians posted nearby, a mixture of males and females. The constant sounds of the place were like the thrum of a hundred high-pitched drums, all disjointed and struggling. Even Emma James’s heart. “If I do show you, then what?”
“Then”—she swallowed thickly—“I-I don’t know.”
“Then, you’ll stop arguin’ wi’ me?”
“Maybe.”
He was much taller than she was. He loomed over her until she was forced, by his mere will, to take a step back, bumping into the bed before rounding it to the other side. She lifted her chin in direct defiance of his most practiced intimidating look.Whatever resolves this unpleasant reunion in the quickest way possible.
What compelled him, no doubt, was pride. Ego, even. Because he’d never shown his wings to any mortal before. But she wasn’t mortal, was she? Not exactly. So, in one effortless movement, he unfolded and stretched his wings.
Chapter Two
His wings toweredover him magnificently—if he did say so himself—translucent, brilliantly etched against the green hospital walls, a feathery show as much a part of him as his breath or the memories that inhabited his skin.
Their full effect elicited a gasp from Emma as she stumbled away from him, colliding with the wall behind her, sliding down hard onto the bare linoleum floor, against the wall, with both hands over her mouth.
Against his better judgment, he settled his wings back into place where he should have kept them all along and crouched down beside her. No doubt the Council would use this bit of pride against him in his review. “Believe me now?”
She waved a silent hand at him, at an apparently uncharacteristic loss for words.
Was she…crying?
Balls.
He steeled himself against her tears. He’d never been any good with a woman’s tears, least of all hers. He coached himself against feeling anything at all.Dangerous, dangerous ground, Connor.
“Dinna cry,” he told her, but it came out more like a demand than a comfort.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” She gulped back a sob. “I think I’m entitled. Don’t you?”
“’Tis no’ like you.”
“How would you know what I’m like?” She blurted out the question on a sob. “And this is all a little much for me. This is all some kind of mistake. I’m not ready to die, though I’d hardly expect you to understand.”
