by Nicki Elson
“What’s going on?” she asked.
He met her gaze and gave a chagrinned half-smile—it didn’t even cause the slightest dent in the sides of his face. “I was planning on getting into this after we’d had a chance to eat, but I apparently need to work on my poker face.”
“Is it bad news?” she asked.
He reached his hands across the table and touched hers with just the tips of his fingers. “Maggie, I’ve been seeing someone else.”
The entire restaurant may as well have fallen into a dark pit and left Maggie perched amidst a gray sea of nothing, because that’s exactly how she felt. She hadn’t seen this coming from eight million miles away.
“I know we’ve never talked about being exclusive,” he continued. “So for all I know you’re seeing someone else too, but we’ve progressed far enough that I feel like I owe you an explanation. I guess what I’ve realized about myself is that I’m just not the type of guy who can handle dating two women at once.”
“And you’re choosing her.”
Raymond watched Maggie and cautiously nodded just as the waiter approached to tell them all about the soup of the day.
“You know what? I’m not hungry, but thanks,” Maggie said, handing the server her menu.
“Give us a few more minutes,” Raymond interjected.
The confused waiter looked down at Maggie’s menu and seemed to consider giving it back to her, but after a nod from Ray, he left with it.
“A restaurant, Ray? Really? You think this is a good place to break up with someone?”
“I’m sorry, you’re right. This wasn’t the right place to do it. Come on.” He set his menu down and stood, reaching for Maggie’s hand. “I don’t blame you for being shocked. But I think it’ll benefit you just as much as me if you’ll let me explain.”
Maggie ignored his outstretched hand, but stood and led him out of the restaurant. The day was overcast, but with mild temperatures, so Maggie continued down the sidewalk.
When they passed a coffee shop, Raymond said, “At least let me buy you a coffee.”
“Hot chocolate. The biggest they’ve got. With whipped cream.” A few minutes later, armed with her warm cup of security, she was ready to hear him out. They’d walked onto the main bridge and stood on one of the curved lookout points over the shallow river.
“I wasn’t looking for someone else. I dropped off the dating site and felt very grateful to have met you. But then she came back in my life, a former college girlfriend. After graduation we’d gone our separate directions, and even at university our timing had never been quite right, but it looks like we’ve been given a second chance.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“She first called me about a month ago. She moved back into the area. For a while it was honestly just a reuniting of old friends—a phone call here, a lunch there, but in the last couple of weeks the old flames reignited. I suppose it’s because we’ve got all that history to build on that it’s moving so fast.”
Maggie saw the gentle glow under his surface as he spoke of this other woman and noticed something missing under her own—there was no nagging sting of jealousy.
“The only negative is having to end things with you,” Ray said.
“Yeah, her timing’s still rather sucky for me.” Maggie stared hard at him. His downturned mouth and the glassiness of his warm, brown eyes gave his otherwise sturdy face a somewhat pathetic air and convinced her of his sincerity. Softening, she said, “I appreciate you being honest and not stringing me along.”
“I’d never do that. I respect you too much.” He chanced a small smile.
“Thanks.” She nodded but couldn’t quite smile back. Ray was a good guy, and she could see that he was already beating himself up over hurting her, so she shrugged and added, “Who am I to mess with fate?”
He cocked his eyebrow. “You believe in fate?”
Now Maggie was able to smile as she glanced down and confessed, “No.”
“Didn’t think so.”
When she lifted her eyes back to his, one side of Ray’s mouth lifted in a regretful half-smile. “I didn’t believe in it either, but I wouldn’t be doing this unless I was sure, and I think my certainty can only be explained by fate, as if an angel carried her on his wings and brought her back into my life.”
Maggie turned her gaze toward the rushing river and murmured, “Interesting choice of words.”
Once safely back in her car, she drove around for a bit and let the tears flow, afterward blaming her red eyes on late-season allergies. At the end of the day, with the kids in bed, she thought she’d cry again, but didn’t. Instead she pulled a load of whites out of the dryer and sat cross legged on her bed folding clothes while watching TV.
Evan appeared, and a quick glance at the careful way in which he regarded her told Maggie he knew what had happened. “Relax,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“Does your heart hurt?” he asked.
Maggie paused in her folding and considered his question. After a few moments, she shook her head. “Not my heart this time. Just my ego. Getting kinda tired of being the rejectee.”
“Good,” Evan answered. “Egos are much easier to heal.”
Maggie balled up one last pair of socks and set it on top of the pile in the basket. “Might be nice to get to see your face around here more often—and not only when I’m feeling sorry for myself.”
“I think I can arrange that. Right now, however, I’m going to let you get your rest.”
Maggie nodded, wanting nothing more than to curl up under her blankets for a long, solitary sleep.
Ever since the exorcism, an unspoken tension had flickered between Maggie and Monsignor Sarto. She avoided interaction with him even more than usual, but often felt him scrutinizing her. Yet the moment she turned her head in his direction, his eyes would dart away.
“I’m not saying he’s evil or anything. I just find it a little hard to trust him after he used me as demon bait,” she explained to Evan one evening in the quiet of her bedroom. She hadn’t been able to let go of the hostility on her own, so she was bringing her concerns to the angel.
“It was an effective plan,” he responded.
“Seriously? You’re taking his side?”
“There are no sides, Maggie. Only truth, and the truth is that, although you may not like them, his tactics worked.”
“And what if they hadn’t? What if the demon had entered me? Would you still be defending him?”
A playful smirk danced across Evan’s full lips and into his shining eyes. “Then it would’ve been my turn to play exorcist.”
“You can do that?” she asked from her seated position on the bed.
Evan, standing above her, tilted his head and leveled a teasing glare that was both charming and challenging. “Do you doubt me?”
Maggie smiled, intrigued by this new aspect of her angel. “I’m quite sure you’re capable, but…how would you do it? I don’t picture you walking around with a little leather bag full of goodies.”
“I don’t need goodies.”
Maggie laughed. “How then?”
Evan clasped his hands together behind his back and made a show of pacing alongside the bed while he examined her through narrowed eyes, sizing her up.
“You’re a fighter,” he declared.
Maggie opened her mouth to deliver a quip, but before she could utter a sound, he’d climbed onto the bed and laid her flat, pinning her hands over her head and trapping her hips between his thighs. She made an instinctual move to break free, but he didn’t budge a millimeter.
“So my first act would be to subdue you,” he said. “Then I’d ask—politely, of course—for the demon to come forth. We’d have a conversation, he’d see he didn’t stand a chance, and he’d leave.”
“That easy, huh?” Maggie asked, doing her best to match his nonchalant demeanor rather than give in to the rush of adrenaline fluttering dangerously close to her surface.
“
True, they’re not all cooperative. Some can be irritatingly stubborn. Those get threatened with an angel’s kiss.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad.” Maggie’s voice sounded very small to her own ears.
“That’s because you’re not a demon.” His eyes left hers to wander down to her parted lips. “If you were, you’d flee at the first graze.”
Maggie held her breath as he lowered his face and pressed his lips softly against hers while inhaling the air from her mouth into his own. Any negative thoughts she’d had, any unpleasant feelings she’d clung to throughout the day drifted away.
He lifted his mouth from hers, holding his face only inches away. When he exhaled, his breath cooled the moisture he’d left behind on her lips.
“What if that doesn’t work?” she asked in the barest of whispers.
He answered by pressing his mouth more earnestly onto hers. The blending sensation that occurred whenever they pressed flesh to flesh was hardly discernible as they melded in a gentle, yet all-encompassing kiss. As they moved together, Evan pulled all malevolence out of her, leaving behind only the purest sentiments, untainted by anything corrupt or shameful. Her thoughts merged into a translucent and feathery cloud.
His pressure eventually eased, but he lingered over her mouth, not seeming inclined to pull fully away, and Maggie noticed the inexplicable absence of the questions that should have been swirling in her mind. She didn’t worry that the sensual encounter was wrong; she somehow knew it wasn’t. She also understood that this was as physical as things could ever get between them. But that knowledge didn’t leave her aching for more—her dominant emotion as he pressed his mouth one final time to hers was satisfaction.
He released her wrists and removed his weight from hers, lying on his side and looking down on what she was sure must be a dazed expression. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She shook herself into focus and murmured, “That was amazing. The demons must run screaming from that level of…of…bliss.”
Evan smiled. “Consider it a taste of what you can expect in the next life.” He trailed his fingertips along the side of her face, and for a long while they simply watched each other.
Inevitably, however, Maggie’s curiosity returned and she reluctantly broke the enchanted silence. “Can all angels do that?”
“We all have the ability, but it takes a certain level of training.”
“So you’re a trained demon hunter?” She pushed herself to sitting, and now looked down on his agile form as he reclined on a propped arm.
“It’s not my specialty, but I’ve received some training.”
“And why are you showing me this now?”
He glanced away and sat up, his mouth pulled tight.
“Evan, tell me.”
“I’ve been concerned about Tommy’s demon. No signs of it have appeared in the vicinity, and I started thinking that perhaps it had, in fact, entered you and gone immediately dormant, biding its time until my attention went elsewhere. You’ve been holding more grudges than usual lately—that’s often a sign.”
“I thought you said my problems with Sharon seemed like a human issue.”
“True, but now I see you’re holding onto your animosity toward the monsignor too, so it seemed like a good idea to check, just in case.”
“So this was a sneak attack?”
Evan chuckled. “I guess you could say that.”
“And you’re sure it couldn’t still be in there, hiding in some dark corner?”
“I was pretty thorough.”
Maggie smiled and nodded in agreement as her face flushed. It only took a moment away from Evan’s touch for her human instincts to kick in, and her reflections on the kiss were already twisting it into something slightly naughty. The way the white linen stretched across his chest when he sat up, giving a hint of the lean but defined muscle beneath, wasn’t helping. “What about the last time you kissed me, the quick one behind the bushes? Were you checking then too?”
“No. I told you, that was a spontaneous reaction because I was happy to see you.”
“What about the time you kissed my forehead, at the canyon? I was pretty low then, were you worried that evil influences were involved?”
“That was…something else.” His gaze fell for a moment before he lifted it to her again, the muscles between his jaw and cheekbones flexing.
“What, exactly? You’ve never really explained it.”
“I was tempering a random spark of something I’d not felt before. An urge, most likely lust.” His resolute focus on her didn’t waver. He didn’t smile, but his look wasn’t harsh either. He was merely stating facts. “That kiss was done as an act of self-control.”
“The control you didn’t exercise behind the bushes.” She wanted to coax out a warmer reaction to his confession.
He tilted his head and raised his eyebrow in warning. “Technically, that’s correct, but that was a kiss of friendship and what I was demonstrating prior to that was control over my lust, which I’ve contained ever since.”
Maggie nodded and kept her smug smile internal—he’d said “contained” not “extinguished.” Satisfied with the answer, she was ready to move on. “Have you ever actually cast out a demon?”
“That was my first attempt on a human.”
“So that’s a no?”
He pushed himself back to lean against the headboard, raking his fingers through his hair. “Not exactly.”
“What then—cows? Sheep?” She’d only been joking, but became concerned when a dark shadow crossed his face. “You don’t have to answer that,” she quickly added.
“I cast them out of my Lord’s kingdom.”
“Out of…do you mean you…” Maggie thought she should’ve been numbed to new revelations by that point, but each one continued to astonish her, and this one most of all. It was impossible for her to picture her gentle angel in the midst of the great battle in Heaven.
He sat with knees bent and forearms resting on them while he stared at the fingers of one hand twisting over the knuckles of the other. Crawling to him, Maggie took both his hands into hers. He stopped fidgeting and turned his palms up to grasp onto her, letting his breath drain out in a slow exhale.
He didn’t look at her as he said, “I lost brothers that day. Lucifer had been doing his work discreetly. The signs were there that something was going on—unexplained fires, strange symbols; it was how they communicated—but no one on the other side understood it. It was a brilliant strategy. We had no idea who’d been recruited to his side until weapons were drawn.” Evan’s fingers wrapped tightly around Maggie’s wrists, and a new kind of energy flowed into her. It was cold and trembled at the edges. “Angels who’d been by my side for ages, whom I’d trusted and served with, suddenly held their blades to me. We didn’t have time to sort it out. We had to react immediately.”
Maggie shuddered involuntarily, and Evan’s eyes snapped up. He dropped his frozen hold on her and clutched his hands into fists on his knees. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Maggie moved to sit beside him, resting one hand protectively on his shoulder and reaching the other across to cup his jaw. “How many times have you patiently listened to my petty drama? This is so much bigger. You can tell me. I’ll listen. I want to.”
He pressed his mouth into a straight line before whispering, “I don’t want to relive it.”
“You don’t have to.”
He ducked his head, and Maggie instinctively guided it to her chest. Leaning back against the headboard, she slid her hand from his shoulder to the side of his head and let the other drop to his back as he rolled into her and wrapped his arms around her waist. With her knees pulled up on either side to fully cradle him, she stroked his back and combed her fingers through his hair as she’d done so many times to comfort her children.
They lay wrapped in each other until the vibe coming from Evan warmed enough for Maggie to fall asleep. She only half woke once during the night to find herself alone und
er her covers and hear Evan murmur, “Thank you,” before he left.
Chapter 17
THE NEXT DAY AT WORK, Maggie received a text from Carl asking her to call him that evening to discuss Thanksgiving. It was his turn with the kids so she wasn’t sure what there was to discuss—unless this time he wanted to usurp the whole weekend and take them to Disney World or somewhere else fabulous without her.
She never would’ve been able to predict what Carl actually said: “Melissa and I were talking, and we’d like to invite you to join us for Thanksgiving dinner.”
Maggie didn’t respond.
“Mags? You still there?”
“Yes. So…is this a we’ll-ask-her-to-be-nice-but-hope-she-says-no invitation?”
“If it was, would I tell you that?”
“Guess not.” She twisted her lips and bit them. It was all she could think to do in her utter confusion.
“Seriously, we want you here. It would be nice for the kids to be able to celebrate with both parents, don’t you think? And I know she’d never tell you this, but Kirsten worries about you when you’re left alone on holidays.”
“Yeah, she does the same about you.”
“So come on, it’ll be fun,” Carl coaxed.
Maggie exhaled. She knew she was about to give in, so she threw up one more barrier. “Does Melissa still not know about our little escapade last spring?”
It was Carl’s turn to be silent.
“Carlicious, still there?”
“She doesn’t know, and I’d like to keep it that way. She and I were broken up at the time, so you and I didn’t do anything wrong, but I don’t imagine she’d be thrilled with the news. I don’t see what the purpose would be in telling her.”
“Relax, I agree one hundred percent.”
“Good. So are we on for Thanksgiving?”
“Yes. And…thanks for the invite.”
“Words are cheap, Magpie. Know how you could show me your appreciation?”
“How?” she asked cautiously.
“By bringing your famous sweet potato casserole. I told Missy you would.”
“Aha! I knew there had to be an ulterior motive.” Maggie laughed, thinking perhaps this would be fun after all.