Angel Unaware (5 page)

Thoughts of his business had driven Tony to the wall phone in the kitchen. He picked up the receiver and dialed a number from memory. The phone rang twice before his foreman, Jake Armstrong, snapped, “Falcone Builders.”

Tony cringed. “Jake, what’s up?”

A deep sigh came through the wires. “The lumber was just delivered.”

“And?” Tony held his breath and waited. “The boards are all
checked
.”

A load of split wood. Damn, just what they didn’t need.

“We’ll have to send the whole load back. It’s gonna really screw with the schedule.” A background voice called Jake’s name. Jake barked an order, and then a door slammed. “Damn. I can’t even get two minutes for a phone call without someone needing something.”

Guilt swamped Tony. Jake should not be carrying this extra load. He had enough to do supervising the laborers, and Jake was right, waiting for another delivery of lumber would put the project behind. As it was, with this change in the weather, making the building’s completion date would be close, too close. They already had two feet of snow on the ground, and the weatherman had promised more that night. If anything else went wrong …

“I’ll be right there.”

“Great.” Relief echoed from Jake’s voice, but concern replaced it quickly. “What about Penny?”

“I hired a nanny today from that company your sister recommended. This woman is heaven-sent. I think she’s going to solve my problems. I’ll be able to spend much more time at the site. But this new twist with the lumber is the last thing we needed.” Tony ran an agitated hand through his hair. “If we have to wait for another delivery, we’ll need a miracle to make that deadline.”

“Tell me about it.” Jake paused. “Tony, this new nanny … is she a likely prospect?” A hint of teasing colored his voice.

A heavy, exasperated sigh escaped Tony. Jake’s determination to get him hitched was wearing thin. “The nanny’s a knockout, but that’s all I’m saying. Now, get your mind back on business, and I’ll see you in a little while.” Tony hung up the phone and turned to find Dora standing in the doorway. Her dark, velvety gaze held his. Damn, a man could crawl into those eyes and forget his troubles in their inky depths. She blinked, and he could feel his nerves loosen. Then he felt a surge of warmth. He flinched. He’d never met a woman who could send such sensations coursing through his entire being without touching him. He suddenly wanted to forget she was Penny’s nanny and just sit down and talk with her. Since Rosalie’s death, he hadn’t
really
talked to anyone, not even Millie. “Problem?” she asked.

He immediately jolted from his daydreams. For a split second, he thought she’d read his mind. But that was crazy. No one could read minds. She must have overheard his conversation with Jake. But how much had she heard? Had she been there when he’d called her a knockout?

Embarrassed at the idea, he averted his gaze and rubbed at an imaginary smudge on the spotless countertop. “I … uh … I have to get over to the building site. We had a bad lumber delivery.” He raised his gaze to hers.

“Checked,” Dora said. He raised an eyebrow. “I heard.” She knew nothing of lumber and building. She smiled and licked her lips. “Why is that a problem?”

At first he tensed. Then his shoulders loosened. “Checked … split lumber is weak and will result in an unsafe building.”

“Ah. And it will put you behind if you have to order more, and then you won’t be able to be here with us … with Penny.”

He nodded. She really wished he wouldn’t do that. Every time he did, a thick wave of his hair fell over his forehead, and she had to fight down the urge to brush it back in place. She crammed her hands into her jeans pockets. “Well, then, you’d better be going.”

Relief flooded his face. “Don’t wait supper for me.” He hurried past her, grabbed his coat, and disappeared out the front door.

Dora stared at the door for a long time, thinking about Tony’s conversation with Jake and his need for a miracle. She hesitated for only a moment, glanced at the ceiling, then back to the closed front door. Grinning, she lifted her hand and waved it through the air.

“See you for supper, Mr. Falcone,” she said, brushed her palms together, and then opened the refrigerator, wondering what a
knockout
was and if it was a good thing to be.

As he stepped outside the construction shack, Tony slapped a yellow hard hat on his head. A cold wind blew off the river, biting painfully at his exposed face and hands. He turned up his collar and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his down-filled work jacket. Bending his head against the buffeting blast of icy air blowing off the frozen river just beyond the hills surrounding the work site, he followed Jake. Snow crunched under their feet, and the brittle crust made it a challenge to stay upright.

“Here it is,” Jake said, pointing to the stack of new lumber. “Every last one has a split running anywhere from three to six inches.”

Tony leaned down and picked up one of the boards. He turned it in his hand, closely inspecting the wood. “This one isn’t split, Jake.” He picked up another board. “Neither is this one.”

Board after board proved to be in perfect shape. In fact, they had never received such a superior load of wood. Tony turned to find a questioning frown pleating his foreman’s brow.

Jake stepped around Tony and removed a board from the pile, running his experienced fingers over the wood, searching for the splits. “This is nuts. These boards were split. Hank saw them, too.” He stood and looked around for his second-in-command. Seeing him near the construction shack, he called to him. “Hank, come over here.”

Hank ambled over. “Did you show Tony that crap the lumber company sent us?”

Without another word, Jake turned back to Tony. “Need I say more?”

When Tony pulled into his driveway in plenty of time for the supper he’d told Dora he’d miss, he still couldn’t figure out what had happened to the lumber. Not for one moment did Tony doubt that Jake saw what he’d reported. So what was the explanation?

He, Jake, and Hank had discussed it at length, inspecting every board in the shipment, and none of them could come up with a reasonable explanation for why lumber that had been defective had suddenly become perfect.

They’d finally all agreed that no matter the reason, it meant the project, barring any other problems, would come in on time, and they would all be home for supper. That should please Dora, who hadn’t seemed particularly happy about him missing the meal with her and Penny.

Dora
. He quickly climbed out of the truck and headed for the house, suddenly very eager to see Penny’s nanny.

The sound of Tony’s truck pulling into the driveway brought a smile to Dora’s lips. When the front door closed and he strode into the kitchen, she reminded herself to look surprised to see him.

She swung around to face him. “I thought you were going to miss supper,” she said innocently.

“Things weren’t as bad as I thought at the site,” he said, obviously not about to try to explain the mix-up with the lumber. Dora knew he couldn’t explain it to himself. How was he going to explain it to someone whom he presumed knew nothing about it? He smiled, and her stomach felt bottomless, just like it always did when Lucas, the Storm Angel, threw a rainbow across the heavens after a torrential summer rain.

Weak-kneed, Dora searched for something to hang on to. With her hand braced against the counter in front of her, she forced her lips to return his smile.

“Penny will be pleased. She seemed disappointed that you weren’t coming home to eat with her.”

He grabbed a can of soda from the refrigerator, flopped into a chair, popped the top, and stared at her. “Disappointed? I didn’t think she’d even notice.”

Shocked at his words, Dora stared back. “Didn’t you know? Penny notices everything about you.”

This seemed to surprise Tony. “Really? And having been here for just a matter of hours, you know this how?”

Uh-oh
. This bit of information had been part of the briefing Calvin had given Dora before she came down to Earth.

She shrugged.

“Just an educated hunch I’ve developed from working with children.”

Hunch
. She liked that word and had heard many humans use it as an evasion tactic. It seemed to work. Tony sipped his soda and let the subject drop. Either that or he just didn’t want to discuss Penny with her.

Tony finished his drink, crushed the can in his strong fingers, and threw it in the recycling bin beside the trash basket. He paused next to the stove and sniffed the aromas coming from the oven. “Smells delicious. How long before dinner? I want to take a shower.”

Dora stared at him. She’d found a recipe in one of the books for the chicken and cheese casserole, but had never checked to see how long it would take to bake.

Thirty minutes
. The voice came from inside her head.

Thank you, Calvin.

You really need to start acting more like a mortal if you’re to complete this assignment successfully
, he scolded.

“I will,” Dora said in exasperation.

“Will what?” Tony was staring at her as if she’d grown an extra head.

“Uh … I will … let you know. It’ll be about thirty minutes.”

He nodded, stared at her for a few seconds longer, and then left the room.

She waited until she heard the bathroom door close behind him. Determinedly, Dora strode into the hall. After checking to make certain the coast was clear, she stepped in front of the mirror. As before, her image as an angel peered back at her. She waited a respectable few seconds for Calvin to appear. When he didn’t, she called to him in a forceful whisper.

“Calvin!”

In the mirror’s sleek surface, a shiny light shimmered over her right shoulder and slowly took the form of her boss. “Yes?”

“You have to stop hovering.”

“Hovering?” He frowned indignantly. “I beg your pardon. I have never hovered in all my years as an angel. Guided, instructed, educated, but never hovered.”

She frowned, and her halo slid sideways. She quickly righted it. “You hovered, and you have to stop it. I have to do this on my own. Otherwise, I can’t prove anything about my worth to the Heavenly Council.”

For a long moment, he just stood there, arms crossed over his chest, brows knitted in a thoughtful frown. Then he straightened. “Very well, as of this moment, you are on your own.” He shimmered out of sight.

Dora stared at the mirror where his image had been.

Suddenly doubts buffeted her. Had she done the right thing by asking Calvin not to interfere, or had she guaranteed her own failure?

“Did you mean that, Calvin?”

Calvin jumped. “You have to stop sneaking up on me, Grace,” he said sternly to the angel standing right behind him.

“Sorry.” She stepped forward into his line of vision. “Well, did you mean that?”

“What?”

“That you’d leave Dora alone to make her own decisions down there?”

He avoided her eyes. “Of course.” His discomfort growing due to his blatant lie, he turned to her. “Aren’t you supposed to be cleaning robes for the Christmas choir?”

For a long time, Grace stared at him. Finally, she shook her head and flew off.

He hated having to lie to Grace, but he couldn’t take the chance that she’d contact Dora and tell her he would still be watching her every move and, if necessary, intervening. And with Dora, intervening had become a way of life for Calvin.

CHAPTER 3

At first, Dora concentrated her full attention on savoring her first supper as a mortal. The creamy cheese and spicy chicken caressed her palette the way the bland, celestial ambrosia never had.

If she did say so herself, she’d done an excellent job cooking her first mortal meal. Calvin had lived up to his word that whenever she needed a skill, she would have it. To her complete astonishment, cooking seemed to be one of those skills at which she excelled.

She’s nearly finished her second portion of casserole, when she realized that, other than the clank of silverware against china, there had not been another sound in the cozy kitchen. The entire meal had been eaten in absolute silence. The family dinner conversations she’d listened in on at the Earth Pool, and had so looked forward to taking part in, had not happened.

Dora eased back in her chair and looked at her dinner companions. Tony, head bowed, shoveled food into his mouth like a starving man, but said nothing. Calvin had told Dora during her briefing that Tony had opted for hot dogs and pizza as the main staples of his and Penny’s limited diet. On occasion, Mrs. Sullivan from next door brought over homemade pasta and sauce, but that happened only when her ailing husband felt well enough not to demand her undivided attention.

Penny, too, ate with relish, and, like her uncle, she did it in complete silence. The little girl exhibited none of the behaviors that Dora had seen from other children during the many hours she’d gazed into the Earth Pool: no talking with her mouth full, no chattering about her day at school, no filling them in on what she’d done with her friends.