Page 17 of Calling All Angels
“In yourliving room?” he asked as if he were speaking to a dim-witted Labrador retriever.
“No. I know what we’re doinghere. But why am I…here with you? Like this?”
Surreptitiously, he glanced at his wrist again. Now it was at +2 percent.Huh.With a frown, he lifted his gaze back to her. “Every case is different,” he told her. “Butthisnever happens unless it’s close.”
“It…meaning death?”
He wouldn’t meet her gaze, but he nodded.
“Are you keeping the truth from me because you don’t like me?”
“My feelin’s have naught to do with anythin’. I’ve been assigned to ye. T’ help ye muddle through this part. And so ye know, ’twas not my decision. Though even guardians generally get a choice in the matter.”
Her expression flattened. “Your choice would not have been me, is that what you’re saying?”
He looked back at Winston, who was still eating kibble off the floor. “T’ be honest, no.”
Color rose to her pale cheeks. “Dare I ask why not?”
“’Tis no matter to ye now.”
“I beg to differ. I think I have a right to know why you hate me.”
“I dinna hate ye.”Exactly.
“Have I already done something to offend you? Is it my missing shoe? Shoeless women offend you? Or maybe it was my driving skills. Or lack thereof. By the way, I wasn’t drinking. I was perfectly sober. I remember that much. I would never… But we’ve hardly known each other a hot minute. I can’t think what I could have done to—”
“Youdid nothing.”
“Then why—?” He was clearly frustrating her. “Are you just generally ill-tempered? Because that seems antithetical to everything angels are supposed to be about.”
This woman. She did amuse him against his will. He contained his smile, though. No point rubbing salt in the wound. “I suppose I am.”
“But there’s more. Isn’t there?”
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the sound of kibble crunching and Winston’s soft growls as he ate. “We…might’ve known one another once.”
Taken aback, she said, “Known each other? I don’t recall, and I think I would remember you. In fact, there’s no doubt in my mind. Was it before you became…this?” She gestured at his angel form with her finger.
“’Twas a long time ago,” he admitted, but even that went way outside his sharing boundaries.
“How long ago?”
“We should go if it’s the accident scene you’re wantin’ to see.”
“No, no,” she said. “You started this. Now you have to tell me.”
“I don’t actually. And I’d rather not get into it.”
She blinked at him, her mind still apparently scanning her hard drive to remember him. There was a flicker of something, he thought, but it was unlikely she’d have a passing glance at such a memory, even in her state of being. He had no desire to dredge up old wounds with her. It would only cause both of them pain. And that wasn’t his job. No matter what, it wasn’t what he’d been sent to do. He started for the door, but she wasn’t about to go so easily.
“Do you know why I’m so good at my job?” she asked him, still standing in the middle of the room when he looked back. Her chin was stubbornly up. The look in her eye was more pity than anger. “I sell things. Real estate. Homes. Lifestyles. I find a property to pair up with the person who belongs with it. Almost anyone can do a halfway decent job at selling real estate. But to excel, to build a company that people put their trust into, one must be able to read people, to get underneath their skin, see past the thing they say they want. To discover the thing they actually need. Understand what they’re not telling me.”
He didn’t like where this was going.
“I can separate myself from my feelings about a person, whether I like them or not, because that’s my job. You? You’re not the type to suffer fools or hide your feelings or even, maybe, let go of a grudge.”
Connor just stared at her, giving nothing away.
