When Angels Fall (24 page)

“Anyway, I held onto her upper body so she wouldn’t do any further damage to her injured arm, and she went to wailing at her back with the one usable arm she had left and knocked us both to the ground.

“I fell on top of her and the button on my pants got caught in the zipper of her jeans. We were trying to unhook ourselves when you arrived to find us in this altogether
compromising
yet
totally
innocent position here on the ground. And now, yet again, I find myself asking for you to please not kill me, Mr. Angel.”

Gabriel snapped his fingers and Wesley flew off of Dani and landed on the ground a few feet away. With Wesley out of the way, Gabriel could see that Dani’s face was covered in blood.

He made light emit from his body so he could get a better look at her. She had a small cut on her forehead and her arm was swollen from her elbow to her hand.

“Fuck me, he glows,” Wesley mumbled from behind him.

Gabriel leaned over Dani and picked her up. He quickly carried her through the woods and back to the house.

5.

Gabriel laid Dani on the couch when he got her back to the house.
“What were you doing in the wood
s
?
Don’t you know how dangerous that is?
”

Dani just glared at him, trying to burn holes in him with her stare.

“Your arm is broken, love, but not as badly as your ankle was,” he said. “I can mend it without having to reset the bone.”

He looked back up into her face and Dani continued to glare back at him. She could feel the muscle under her right eye twitching; a twitch that usually preceded a physical snap.

“You’re being childish by not speaking to me,” he said. “I know you’re mad, but we should talk about it.”

Dani felt the twitch in her eye jump into double time. As if she
could
speak to him! He’d frozen h
er damn vocal cords! Gabriel to
ok hold of her arm where she assumed the break was.

Her whole arm was hurting so badly that she really couldn’t tell
where
it was broken anymore. She felt the hot and cold sensations that she’d felt when he fixed her ankle, and then the pain was gone. She watched the swelling leave her arm so quickly that it looked as if it were being deflated.

He reached up to touch her head
,
but she batted his hand away. She got up and marched up the stairs to take a shower.

“Dani,” Gabriel called after her. “Don’t you want me to fix that cut?”

She answered him by slamming the bedroom door and then the bathroom door beyond it. She took a quick shower to get off
all
the grim
e
that had stuck to her, and then stood under the hot spray from the shower head and brushed the leave
s
and twigs from her hair.

She got out and used her towel to wipe the steam from the bathroom mirror so she could see how badly her head was cut. It wasn’t too bad. The cut was only about an inch and a half long, but it was kind of deep. She would normally go to the hospital for something like this, but she
obviously
couldn’t do that now.

Luckily she knew a little boxing triage and
k
new how to fix a cut wh
en she was in a pinch. And she’d
seen the supplies she’d need right inside this house. She wrapped a towel around her, pressed a dry washcloth to the wound to stop the oozing blood and went back down the stairs to get what she needed from a kitchen drawer.

Gabriel was still in the living room, “What are you doing?” he asked, but she walked right past him and into the kitchen.

Dani
dug through a kitchen drawer and pulled out a tube of Super Glue that she’d seen earlier, and carried it back up the stairs with her. She was looking in the bathroom closet for cotton swabs when she felt the pressure in her throat let go. Gabriel had finally remembered to release her vocal cords.

She found the swabs and carried three of them back over to the sink with her. She pulled the washcloth from her head and rechecked the cut for bleeding in the mirror. The blood flow had stopped. She wet the washcloth and wiped the clotted blood from the cut, then spun the cap off the Super Glue.

She held the cut slightly open and laid a thin line of Super Glue deep in the wound, then used two of the cotton swaps to run down each side of the cut to seal the wound shut. She then turned the swaps sideways and used the plastic bars to pinch the wound closed for ten seconds. She released the wound and looked at it in the mirror. It was sealed.

She used the third swab to wipe away the excess Super Glue before the beads had time to dry on her skin. She threw the bloody washcloth and swabs into the small trashcan under the sink and left the bathroom.

Gabriel was sitting on the end of the bed
,
waiting for her.

6.

Gabriel looked up at
Dani, “You can speak now
. I’m sorry I left you that way.
I’d forgotten I’d done it.”

He got up and walked over to her, “Let me fix your head,” he said before he realized that she’d already done something to it. “How did you seal this?”

“Super Glue; the stitches of champions,” she said, quoting her old coach, and then stepped around Gabriel to get the bag with her clothes in it.

“You squirted glue into that cut?” he asked, going to her and placing his hand on her shoulder. “Are you crazy, Dani?”

“Oh, I’m
Dani
again?” she snapped, and brushed his hand from her shoulder. “Because I was beginning to think my name was
woman
as much as you’ve barked it at me today.”

He took her shoulders and turned her around to face him, “I’m sorry.”

“Stop touching me,” she said pulling away from him. “I’m pissed and I’ll probably hit you
,
and I don’t really feel like going rounds with you like I did with Buddy. I’ve had enough of that to last me a lifetime.”

Gabriel’s head jerked as if he’d been slapped.

“Hit me all you’d like, Dani,” Gabriel said. “I can promise you that I’ll never lift one finger to you in return.”

Her shoulders slumped and Gabriel could see how tired she was; of him or just this conversation, he wasn’t sure.

“I apologize, that was uncalled for. I know you’re nothing like Buddy,” she said quietly. “Are we done here?” she asked, throwing on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.

The last comment made Gabriel’s skin crawl with fear, “What do you mean
are we done
?”

“Are…we…done?” she asked with her back to him and her hand on the doorknob.

Gabriel just stared at her in stunned silence. He suddenly found it hard to breathe. There was no misunderstanding in what she was saying
or
what she meant. She was asking him if they were done being together. And now it was him that was left with the inability to speak.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said and turned the doorknob.

Gabriel instinctively
knew that if she walked through that door that there would be no going back for them. He raced over and slammed the door closed before she’d opened it more than a few inches.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked in a wavering voice. “Why would you
ever
think we’re done?”

“It occurred to me the moment that you thought I’d snuck off to fuck a stranger in the woods while you were gone,” she said without turning to face him.

“Dani, no, I never thought that,” he said, f
orcing her to turn and face him.
“I was just…,”

“Jealous? I know,” she said.
“
And
don’t take this the wrong way, but so was Buddy. And when he got jealous, it never turned into anything good.”

“I would
never
hit you, Dani,” he said. “Please believe that.”

“You can’t really believe that I’m the
only
person Buddy ever hi
t,” Dani said. “He would pick a
fight with any man he thought had
even
looked
me. He wouldn’t actually start in on
me
until we were alone.”

“Dani, I wouldn’t…,” he tried to say.

“But you did, though,” she said, cutting him off. “Wes is a good man and he was
helping
me, but you couldn’t see that because you were to busy seeing what you wanted to see. Or maybe
just
what you
expected
to see.”

“I know Wesley is a good man,” Gabriel said, trying to pull Dani to him, but she wasn’t having it. “I know that better than you do.”

“Really, because you treated him like straight up trash,” she said. “And for what? Helping your woman while she was in pain? For trying to carry me home when I couldn’t make my way there alone? He w
as just trying to get me out of
the woods and you were going to kill him for it.”

Gabriel wanted to argue back with her
,
but he couldn’t. Every word she’d said was true. He had jumped to conclusions when he’d seen them on the ground. And she’d given him no cause to feel that way;
and
for that matter, neither had Wesley.

“You’re right, about everything, and all I can say is I’m sorry, and that it will never happen again,”
Gabriel said and bowed his head.
“And beg you not to leave me. I’ll get on my knees if it’s what you want. I love you, Dani.”

She gazed up at him for a moment and then w
rapped her arms around her neck.
“I love you, too. And I don’t
want
to be away from you. I want to be with you forever.”

Gabriel wanted that more than anything. To be with Dani forever was a beautiful dream, but he was afraid that a dream was all it could ever be. But he’d hold onto her for as long as he possibly could.

“Now will you let me fix that cut on your head,” he asked, smiling down at her.

“You don’t like my home triage?” she asked
with a smile
.

“No, I don’t,” he said. “Super Glue was not invented as a medical supply.”

“My head is fine,” she said, kissing him softly on the lips. “It’s not the first time I’ve repaired an injury like this.”

She started kissing him on the neck and Gabriel groaned, “You know you’re the only woman I’ve every made love to, don’t you? I’ve only done that once, and
you
want to temp
t
me with your lips?”

“The first
woman
, yes,” she said, “but there has to be an angel up in Heaven that’s missing you.”

Gabriel laughed, “There are no female angels, Dani.”

“Good,” she said and starting kissing her way across his collar bone. “I don’t like to share.”

He pushed her away gently before things could go too far for him to turn back, “Hold that thought, I have to go talk to someone.”

“Now?” she asked in frustration
.

He kissed the corner of her mouth, “Yes, now; just give me thirty minutes.”

“Okay, but
hurry
,” she said.

1.

Dani made her way quickly down the path to the main house. She knocked on the door
,
and a voice inside beckoned her in. Jenny was sitting on the couch when Dani opened the door.

“Hi, Dani,” Jenny said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight.”

“I wa
s just wondering if Bev is home,
” Dani said.

“No, I’m sorry, she’s not,” Jenny said. “She went to
Nashville
. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Well,” Dani said shyly.
“I was gonna ask her if she had anything a little
sexier
than a T-shirt that I could borrow for t
he night, but that’s okay. Gabriel will
be back in less than half an hour anyway.”

“Come with me, then,” Jenny said, getting off the couch. “You’d be surprise
d
I what I can do with
that
much time.”

Dani followed her down a hallway to a large bedroom. Jenny sat her down at a vanity table and had Dani’s hair and make-up done in ten minute
s
flat, and then she walked over to a large Wardrobe Cabinet that was standing in the corner of the room.

She opened the door, “Are you looking for
angel
white or a something a little
naughtier
?”

“Definitely naughtier,” Dani said.