A Forever Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  Being alone with her—as pleasurable as it was—only seemed to insure that someday very soon he would find himself stepping over the line…hell, racing over the line, and making love with her.

  To avoid that, he forced himself to have as little time alone with her as possible. And, with Christmas approaching, he’d come up with the perfect, albeit temporary way to be with Angel, but not alone with Angel.

  “Because the tree is usually anywhere between eighteen and twenty feet tall, almost everyone in town turns out to help with the decorating,” he explained, doing his best not to get lost in those upturned, wide blue eyes of hers. “I thought, while you were still here, you might want to join in.”

  There wasn’t as much as a fraction of a second’s hesitation. A wide smile curved Angel’s mouth, spreading out, up to her eyes.

  “I’d love to!” she declared enthusiastically. Swept up in the moment, she threw her arms around his neck, kissing Gabe.

  Angel loved connecting with these people who had taken her in and offered her their friendship. Loved the idea of taking part in what the townspeople regarded as their tradition. Just as she loved working in the diner and listening to snippets of conversations around her.

  Angel had taken it upon herself to learn as many of the customers’ names as possible. She’d already learned the names of everyone who worked at Miss Joan’s. Doing so gave her a warm sense of belonging. Something she sensed—without being able to offer herself any real proof—she hadn’t really felt before.

  Whether that meant that her “previous” personality was such that she had shied away from people, or that she had lived in isolating circumstances, she didn’t know. All Angel knew—or rather sensed—was that this was different from the life she’d had before.

  Different and preferable.

  For just a split second, he almost gave in. Almost kissed her the way he so desperately wanted to kiss her. But he knew where that would lead and they both had places to be. And people who would ask questions if they didn’t turn up.

  So, digging deep for what might have been just the last of his resolve, he disengaged himself from her arms, gently placing them at her sides.

  “All right, then,” Gabe said as cheerfully as he could manage with his heart beating triple-time in his throat. “I’ll stop by the diner around two and we’ll go to the town square together.”

  She would have gone anywhere with him, including to the edge of the earth and beyond. But she had a sense of responsibility, especially to the woman who had given her a chance to explore this side of her that had flowered unexpectedly. “But I can’t. I’ll be at the diner, working, at two.”

  He shook his head. “Trust me. Nobody will be working at two today—at least, not at their regular jobs.” He paused for a minute to take something out of the hall closet. “Practically everyone will be out in the town square, offering advice and encouragement, while a few poor souls struggle with widgets and a crane, trying to get the tree upright.”

  “Great. I’m game,” she told him.

  He caught her arm as she started heading for the front door. “Wait.”

  “Okay.” A shiver of anticipation danced through her as she turned around. But before she could ask him what she was supposed to be waiting for, he thrust the shopping bag at her.

  “I thought you might need this,” he mumbled.

  “‘This’?” she repeated uncertainly. Looking into the bag, she was surprised to see what appeared to be a suede sleeve. The sleeve was attached to a jacket. A tan suede jacket with fringes that ran along the length of each sleeve and were also along the bottom of the jacket. She held it up against her. “Gabe?” she questioned uncertainly.

  “Temperature’s dropping,” he told her. “Don’t want you turning into an icicle.” Although he couldn’t help thinking there were other ways to keep her warm. Not exactly practical ways, but ways all the same.

  “It’s beautiful,” she cried, quickly opening up the buttons.

  Angel slipped the jacket on over the sweater she’d been wearing. That, too, had been a gift, but from his sister, Alma. Up to this point, all her clothes had been gifts. Alma and she had turned out to be the same size and on the second day she was here, Alma had come over to Gabe’s house with a large box of clothing she’d told her were just “lying around, gathering dust.” The jeans, pullovers, everything that Alma had given her comprised her entire wardrobe.

  Right now, Angel was torn between feeling like an ongoing charity case and very, very blessed. Knowing the spirit that this was intended, she focused only on the latter.

  “Thank you. I really don’t know how I’m going to be able to pay you back for all this—for the jacket, the food, taking me in,” she elaborated. “But I am going to do my damnedest to try,” she promised.

  Moved by gratitude—just as she had been the first time—Angel kissed him. But the first time had been partially an accident. This time, she brushed her lips against his deliberately. And lightly. Anything else might have raised problems of varying degrees.

  So this time, she was the one who drew back first. “We’d better go,” she told him softly. “Before we’re late,” she added.

  Damn it, he had to stop staring at her mouth like that when she talked, Gabe admonished himself. It was as if he was deliberately trying to sabotage his efforts to keep her at arm’s length.

  She was just here until someone recognized her or her memory came back. In either case, he had to remember that she was only passing through his life. A man couldn’t let himself fall in love with someone who was just passing through. That would definitely be asking for trouble, not to mention heartache the magnitude that defied measurement, even on a Richter scale.

  Still, a hundred times a day—not just today—he felt like giving in. Felt like giving himself permission to kiss her just one more time.

  But he knew there was no “just” about it. If he relaxed his guard instead of maintaining it as vigilantly as he had been, there was no telling what would happen.

  Or maybe there was, he amended, slanting a quick, stolen glance at Angel.

  With quick, deliberate steps, he hustled out of the house ahead of Angel, then waited for her to follow so that he could lock the door.

  Not that he had anything of importance to protect even if someone did invade his house. No, the thing in his house that needed protecting was walking ahead of him to his truck.

  * * *

  “THE MORE HANDS the better,” Miss Joan declared later that day. It was two o’clock and, right on the dot, Miss Joan and the “Christmas tree hunting party” had returned with their prize.

  Her words were addressed to Angel when the latter told her that she wanted to help with decorating the town’s tree.

  “You’re going to be helping out, too, right?” Miss Joan asked, pinning Gabe with a look.

  The question was a mere formality, since Miss Joan expected everyone to join in, especially if she actually asked them to.

  Gabe had briefly entertained the idea of begging off this one time. Doing so would give Angel some space and himself some breathing room. But he did enjoy this tradition, and even if he didn’t, there was no arguing with the look on Miss Joan’s face. What Miss Joan wanted, she got. Almost anyone in town could tell him that—if he hadn’t known that for himself.

  She’d never bothered asking him before, just assumed that he—like everyone else—would be there. That she actually had asked him made him think that either he was allowing his feelings for Angel to show, or Miss Joan was reading his mind.

  Being that this was Miss Joan, it was most likely the latter, he decided.

  In either case, he had to admit to himself that he was relieved that the decision was no longer his to make. To turn Miss Joan down was plain asking for trouble and he already had more trouble than he needed.

  “Right,” he replied, flashing a grin at the owner of the diner. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he added for good measure.

  “Good to
hear,” Miss Joan said with a nod.

  Then, as her husband came to join her, the woman stepped back. With her fingers laced through his, she watched in rapt attention as the men she had accompanied on the “tree hunt” slowly righted Forever’s latest Christmas tree.

  She cheered and applauded as enthusiastically as everyone else once the tree was up and secured into place. “Never get tired of seeing that,” she confided. When she saw Harry looking at her, grinning, she cried, “What?”

  “Like seeing you all caught up in this,” he told her. “Makes me think of what you had to have been like, as a young girl.”

  “I was skinnier,” she retorted dismissively. “C’mon, c’mon, grab some decorations,” she urged her husband as well as Angel and Gabe. “We’ve got a lot of work cut out for us and the sun’s not going to hang around, waiting for us to get done. Time’s a-wasting,” she declared, clapping her hands together, as if that would get everyone working faster.

  Because it was Miss Joan doing the clapping, it did.

  Chapter Eleven

  For a moment, when he pulled up to his house, Gabe experienced a feeling of déjà vu.

  He thought that he was going to have to carry Angel into his house the way he had that first evening he’d brought her home.

  His mouth curved as he vividly recalled that evening. At the time, it had seemed the simplest thing to do: bring the beautiful amnesia victim into his house just for the night and decide what to do about the situation in the morning.

  Except somehow, that decision was reached.

  Never explored.

  Somehow or other, as one day fed into another, there were so many other things to deal with that finding another place for Angel didn’t come up.

  Seeing her like this now, sitting in the passenger seat, her head against the headrest, her eyes closed, stirred up all sorts of things within him: nostalgia, desire and a host of other feelings he knew he wasn’t free to act upon.

  Automatically slipping his key into his pocket the moment he turned off the engine, Gabe was about to get out of the truck and come around to her side when he heard her ask, “When are you getting your tree?”

  With a self-deprecating laugh, Gabe settled back in his seat for a second and looked at her. Her eyes were open, which meant she wasn’t talking in her sleep. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “Just resting my eyes,” she told him.

  That wasn’t exactly the whole truth. She’d fallen asleep for a minute or two, lulled by the sway of the vehicle and the long day she’d just put in. But she’d woken up the second he’d brought his truck to a stop before his house.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she pointed out. “When are you getting your tree?”

  “I wasn’t really planning on it,” he confessed. “My dad always has a really tall tree in his living room that we all help decorate, and, knowing Alma, she’ll have one at her place, too. I didn’t see the need to get a tree for my house, especially since it was just going to be me. All that work for just one person seemed like a waste to me.”

  “Not that I agree with you, but even so, it’s not just you anymore,” she reminded him, her eyes holding his prisoner. “Unless you want me to leave.”

  “No!” he cried, uttering the single word with a great deal more feeling than he’d intended. “No,” he repeated, clearing his throat and sounding a lot more subdued this time around.

  He didn’t want her to think he’d prevent her from leaving—if that was what she wanted. But neither did he want her to think he was holding his breath, just waiting for her to leave.

  “Of course I don’t want you to leave. I guess that with everything that’s been going on—trying to find out who you are, looking for a missing-persons file on you—I haven’t been thinking beyond the moment.” He shrugged now, trying to seem open to either decision. “Sure, we can get a tree if you’d like.”

  “When?” she asked with far more eager enthusiasm than he’d thought she was capable of right now, given that she’d done a great deal of climbing up and down the ladder, hanging decorations while balancing herself at precarious angles.

  Well, it was much too late to go cut one down now, he thought.

  “Tomorrow, I guess. Why? You didn’t get enough of decorating today?” he teased. Her eyes, he noticed, were sparkling like a child’s anticipating a meeting with Santa Claus himself.

  “Never enough,” she enthused. “I was kind of sorry when Miss Joan declared the tree done,” she confided. “We could have at least put more tinsel on it.”

  Gabe laughed and shook his head as he got out of the truck, walked to her side and held the door open. “Any more tinsel and that tree was liable to fall over.”

  Without thinking, he slipped his arm around her shoulders, momentarily indulging in a one-arm hug as they walked up to his door. “You’re really one of a kind, Angel,” he marveled. And then he paused just before opening the front door as a thought struck him. “Did decorating the tree remind you of anything?”

  “You mean did it make me remember?” He nodded, watching her expression, searching for a glimmer that hinted she was trying to pin down even a fragment of a memory. He saw nothing. “Almost,” she admitted. “But every time I tried to reach for it, for any of the half shadows that slip in and out of my head so fast, they’re gone before I even realize they’d been there. I wind up with nothing,” she told him, a deep sigh accompanying her words.

  “Maybe you should stop trying,” he advised, not for the first time.

  He closed the door behind them at the same time that he turned on the closest light switch. The lightbulb above their heads popped as the filament sent a surge of electricity through it. Just like that, darkness reclaimed the house.

  “Don’t move,” Gabe instructed. “I’ll turn on the next light.”

  Feeling his way around, he tried to make his way to the light switch leading into the family room. Instead, he managed to find his way to Angel. His outstretched fingers came in contact with something soft and he instantly knew it was her.

  Gabe pulled his hand back. “Sorry,” he murmured.

  “That’s okay,” she said, absolving him of any wrongdoing. “I’m not,” he heard her whisper.

  Frustrated, wanting her more than was good for either one of them, Gabe momentarily halted his search for the light switch.

  “You know,” he complained honestly, “you’re really not making this any easier.”

  “Making what any easier?” she wanted to know.

  Was it his imagination, or had she taken a step closer? “Keeping away from you.”

  “Do you really want to?” She asked the question so quietly, for a brief moment he thought that perhaps he’d just imagined it—or she was communicating with him via her thoughts rather than any spoken word.

  He also could have sworn his throat was tightening. “I think you know the answer to that.”

  “Tell me,” she coaxed, her voice a sultry whisper.

  He tried to steel himself—and failed. “No, I don’t really want to.”

  “Then why?”

  The words were softly whispered against his ear. He had to consciously struggle against giving in to the shiver.

  “Because it’s not fair to you,” he told her. “You’re dealing with a lot here, trying to remember your life before November 26 is just part of it. If I let my guard down,” he said, thinking of all that entailed, all that would result from that simple act of omission, “and then somewhere down the line, you remember that there’s another man in your life who you promised to love to the end of your days—”

  “There isn’t,” she told him.

  She said it with such finality, he almost believed her. He wanted to believe her. But, given her circumstances, he had to challenge her words. “You have amnesia. How can you say that with such certainty?” he added.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted freely, “I just can. It’s a feeling more than anything else. I wasn’t married in that
life I can’t remember,” she told him, confident that she was right. “It’s nothing I can prove, it’s just something that I know.”

  As she spoke, she drew closer to him until she was so close he could feel each breath she took as her chest rose, brushing against his. When she exhaled, he felt her breath along his skin.

  His gut tightened in response as he struggled to hold himself in check.

  He wanted to believe her. Wanted so badly just to take her into his arms, to make love with her and not fear the ramifications and consequences that were waiting for them just beyond the night.

  But there would be ramifications and there would be consequences.

  Gabe gave it one more try. “I need to find the light, Angel.”

  “It’s right here,” she whispered to him. He could feel her rise up on her toes, could feel her mouth teasing his as she spoke. “Inside me. Can’t you see it? You make me glow.”

  He could feel himself weakening rapidly. “Oh, damn, Angel, you could break a saint.”

  “I don’t want a saint,” Angel told him, her eyes never leaving his. “I want you.”

  Gabe groaned as he surrendered, fully aware that tomorrow there would be hell to pay and most likely a mountain of regrets. If not tomorrow, then somewhere down the line.

  But tonight, there was only her, only him and this bonfire of desire burning between them.

  Closing his arms around Angel, he pulled her tightly against him, the hard contours of his body finding solace in her soft curves. The next moment, he sealed his mouth to hers.

  The darkness became their friend rather than something to try to banish or to hold at bay. It enveloped them as one kiss flowered into another and then another.

  And with each kiss, his desire for her grew. It grew at such a startlingly fast rate that he found he could hardly breathe. Wanting her consumed him, but he did what he could to hold himself in check. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten Angel because, Lord knew, feeling like this certainly managed to scare the hell out of him.