Angel Unaware (7 page)

“We’re almost there,” he announced, his excitement sounding forced.

A moment later, he pulled the truck to the curb behind a small car, nearly hidden under the large pine tree tied to its roof. When Dora glanced to the side, she saw the Christmas tree lot. She turned back to Tony. He grinned, and her heartbeat nearly deafened her.

Penny glanced up and for the first time that night, he became animated. “Are we getting a real tree, Uncle Tony?”

He grinned down at her. “We sure are. And guess what? You get to pick it out.” Penny’s eyes grew wide. “Me?”

“Yup. You.” He opened his door, stepped into the street, then reached for his niece. She stood on the seat, held out her arms, then slid into his embrace. Carrying Penny, Tony came around to Dora’s side of the truck and opened the door for her. “Come on, Dora. You have to come, too. After all, this was your idea.” Though the last words could have been accusatory, his soft tone and ready smile made them sound more like a thank-you.

Dora didn’t need a second invitation. She sprang from the truck to the sidewalk. As her feet hit the ground, they slipped out from under her on the ice, and she would have gone down if Tony had not been there to slide an arm around her waist and catch her while he balanced Penny on his hip. He held Dora against his side. The warmth of his big body seeped through her layers of clothing and sent a chill rushing over her that had nothing to do with the winter weather.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, caught in his gaze. He stared silently down at her for a long time before he nodded, then released his hold on her.

When Dora had regained her composure and her footing, she looked at the other people milling around the lot. Laughing adults wandered among the variety of trees, and the excited chatter of children filled the air. Piped in from some unseen location came the strains of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

They could have been one of those “normal” families out getting their Christmas tree. But they weren’t. Forgetting that would be a foolish thing to do. But Dora refused to let anything ruin the night. She pushed aside thoughts of her imminent return to Celestial Maintenance, and absorbed every bit of her surroundings, stuffing it into her memory to play back when she could no longer experience it firsthand.

Tony set Penny on her feet. “Well, you better get going. Find us a tree.”

With a smile glued to her lips, Penny scampered off obediently, leaving Dora and Tony to weather the awkward silence left by the child’s absence. Pulling her coat closer around her, Dora turned her attention to a blue spruce.

“Look at how beautifully this is shaped,” she said to fill the tense void.

Tony took the end of one of the limbs in his hand, and then broke one of the tiny fragile needles. The smell of fresh pine seeped into the cold night air. Dora breathed deeply, storing the fragrance with the rest of the memories.

Tony watched her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was your first Christmas.”

Dora froze. She couldn’t very well admit that it
was
her first Christmas, or at the very least her first on Earth. “I feel like every Christmas is my first,” she said quickly. “I just love this season of the year.”

He grinned again.

Dora almost wished he wouldn’t do that. Every time he smiled she felt as if her insides were that ball of snow that had melted in her hand that morning. Not good.

The streetlights blinked on and off several times. Dora glanced around her and found, from the other people’s complete disregard for anything but selecting a tree, that she’d been the only one to witness the blinking lights. Evidently, Calvin didn’t approve of her musings. “We’d better find Penny,” she told Tony, then sidled past him and into the clump of trees into which Penny had disappeared moments earlier.

Once inside the thick barrier of trees, Dora became instantly disoriented. Looking around her, she tried to decide where she’d come from, but every direction looked the same, a wall of impenetrable pine trees. She turned to retrace her steps and ran headlong into Tony’s wide chest. When she again lost her footing on the slick snow, his arms automatically encircled her.

Raising her face to thank him, she lost all sense of time and place. He was staring down at her. His eyes held warmth and, for the first time since she’d come into Tony Falcone’s home, a faint glimmer of life. Mesmerized, she held her breath and waited. For what, she had no idea. She only knew that something momentous was about to happen to her. Something that would change her life forever.

Very slowly, Tony lowered his head and gently touched her lips with his. His mouth was cool at first, then turned warm and sweet and oh, so inviting. She curled her arms around Tony’s neck and hung on, never wanting to let the moment end. Never wanting to—

Out of the corner of her eye, Dora could see every light in town blinking madly. Instantly, she pulled free of Tony’s embrace.

“Dora?”

“We need to go find Penny,” she said, her voice choked with regret.

Tony stared at her, but before he could ask the questions she knew hovered on his lips, a scream came from the other side of the lot.

Penny
.

CHAPTER 4

When Tony and Dora reached the spot where Penny stood unharmed, they stopped dead in their tracks. Penny was jumping up and down next to the most pitiful-looking tree Dora had ever seen, a brilliant smile transforming her usually solemn face.

Both heaved a deep sigh of relief. Penny had screamed with excitement and not in distress as they had feared. Dora couldn’t recall being that frightened ever before.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tony open his mouth to scold Penny for scaring them. But Dora nudged him and shook her head. He closed his mouth. “Well, what do you think?” The little girl turned sideways and surveyed her find with adoring eyes. “Isn’t it special?”

Special
was one way to describe it. The tree couldn’t have been more than five feet tall and the branches, though heavily covered in healthy needles, were sparse and fragile looking. Dora wasn’t sure they could even support the weight of the ornaments. The top curled decidedly to the left on the end of an equally crooked trunk.

Tony cleared his throat. “Are you sure this is the one you want? Did you look at some of the others?” He grabbed a tall tree at random from the group beside him. “How about this one?”

Penny’s smile wilted. The indecision in her face made Dora want to cry. Obviously, Penny wanted to please Tony, but she also wanted the tree she’d picked. Finally she said, “You said I could pick the tree.”

“That’s right,” Dora said, going to stand beside Penny. She looped her arm around the girl’s slim shoulders. “You did say that.”

Tony replaced the tree he’d selected and stared at them. “Uncle Tony, this isn’t the most beautifulest tree, but if we don’t buy it, it’ll have to spend Christmas all alone. Nobody else will want it.” Tears glistened in Penny’s eyes. “It’s not the tree’s fault that it’s not perfect.”

Dora could see the hesitation still filling the girl’s face. This was a big step for the child. Not only was she transferring her own loneliness to the tree, but she was also weighing the result of her disagreement with her uncle.

Silently Dora pleaded with Penny to stick with her decision to buy that particular tree. It was time the child realized that if she didn’t agree with her uncle it would not harm their relationship, that if she didn’t want another tree, Tony wouldn’t stop loving her. How could Dora get that across to Penny without coming right out and saying so?

Of course. A democratic decision. Wasn’t that how most mortals solved disputes? Perhaps, if she sided with Penny, it might give the little girl the courage to stand by her tree selection.

“Let’s take a vote,” Dora suggested. “I think we should take this tree,” she said, raising her hand. She turned to Penny. “What’s your vote?” Slowly and with a lot of obvious trepidation, but perhaps feeling bolstered by Dora’s willingness to take sides with her against her uncle, Penny raised her hand, too.

Tony looked from one to the other, and then grinned broadly. “I vote we buy it, too.” Penny whooped with joy, then ran to her uncle and hugged his legs.

Looking awkward and uncomfortable with the show of affection, Tony appeared to be searching for a way to react. Finally, he simply patted Penny’s shoulder. As if she sensed his discomfort, Penny pulled away and moved back to Dora’s side.

Well, at least Penny got her tree. That was something. Dora breathed a sigh of relief and looked heavenward.

She made an imaginary line in the air with her finger.

One for the angel
. The streetlights blinked once, then burned steadily. Calvin evidently approved.

“It will be so pretty when we get all the ornaments on it, you’ll see,” Penny told Tony, her excitement fired up again. They dragged the tree to the cash register balanced on the tailgate of a pickup truck.

“We want this one,” Penny announced to the salesman. He glanced at the tree and shook his head. “It’ll take a little work,” the man said, quickly taking Tony’s money before he could change his mind.

That he was relieved to have gotten rid of the tree was quite obvious, and he was doing nothing to cover it and spare a little girl’s feelings. He probably would have been a lot more polite if they’d bought one of the perfectly shaped, more expensive trees.

“It’s a bit pitiful now, but when you add a few balls, some lights, and a little tinsel, it’ll be passable.” He counted out Tony’s change.

For the first time that Dora could ever remember, she actually wanted to slap someone. Couldn’t this man see he was hurting Penny’s feelings? Then again, maybe he simply didn’t care. He had his money, and he’d gotten rid of a tree that he hadn’t had any hope of selling, so what difference did it make if he walked over the feelings of a little girl?

As Tony carried the tree to the truck and secured it in the back, Dora glanced over her shoulder at the salesman, smiled, and then fluttered her fingertips. The cash register drawer flew open, spilling money all over the snow.
Calvin was right; these mortals put value in all the wrong things
, she thought as she watched the man scramble to collect the coins and bills fluttering in the sudden winter breeze.

“That’s the last of them,” Tony announced, placing a big cardboard box bulging at the seams with ornaments on the living room floor. He straightened and massaged his lower back.

The room hadn’t been in this kind of disorder since he’d moved in. Pine needles littered the rug, along with discarded ornament boxes and strings of colored lights draped over the sofa arm. In the corner, secure in the tree stand, was the tree. If possible, it looked more forlorn than it had in the tree lot.

He had some serious doubts as to whether it could support the four boxes of ornaments he’d dragged out of the attic and that Dora and Penny planned to hang on it. Even if it did manage to withstand the strain of being bedecked in dozens of shiny balls and several strings of glittering lights, the tree was hopeless. But he didn’t say anything.

On the floor in front of the coffee table, Dora and Penny were busy removing all the balls from their boxes and fastening a hook on each one. The glow in Dora’s eyes and the animation in his niece’s face confirmed his decision to get the real tree and to keep his opinions of it to himself. The two of them were having the time of their lives. He just wished he could feel the joy they were experiencing.

Unfortunately, the whole scenario merely served as a painful reminder of the one person who wasn’t there to join in the fun — his sister. Until she’d gotten married, he and Rosalie had always decorated their tree together, just the two of them. It had been a special time filled with laughter and celebration. She would have made hot chocolate with those tiny marshmallows and set out a plate of assorted homemade Christmas sugar cookies to snack on while they worked. The old stereo would have blared Christmas carols, and they would have sung along in their off-key voices, laughing hysterically when one of them screeched out a sour high note.

“Uncle Tony?”

He roused himself from his thoughts to see that Penny was holding up the tree topper, an angel dressed in white flowing robes with a sparkling halo and majestic, golden wings. Rosalie’s tree topper.

“Yes, Penny?”

“I found the angel. Can you lift me up to put her on top like Daddy used to?”

Tony felt as if someone had sucker punched him. All the air had left his lungs. A memory of his sister lifting him to place the tree topper on when he was a little boy flashed through his mind. His stomach turned over. A sharp pain pierced his heart. He glanced at Dora.

Dora stared at the angel in Penny’s hands. It reminded her of the stories the other angels had told her about Michael, one of the Archangels on the Heavenly Council. Dora wasn’t sure Michael wouldn’t like the notion of him wearing a flowing robe or being referred to as a
her
. To Dora’s knowledge, the only female on the Heavenly Council was Gabriel, and ofttimes, even the mortal theologians and scholars argued about that.