Walking on Air Page 4

  The angel Gabriel smiled. “It isn’t God who turns people’s lives topsy-turvy on a regular basis. It’s the influence of evil and the actions of humans who make the lives of other people miserable.”

  “But this time, in Nan Hoffman’s case, it will be God raining misfortune on her head,” Gabe pointed out.

  Michael nodded. “Yes, this time it will be our heavenly Father helping to orchestrate events, but I assure you, this sort of measure is taken only in extreme cases. As for your making things worse than they already are, if that should happen, we will simply erase from Nan’s memory all that occurs during your visit back to earth. Things will return to the way they are right now, with you dead and doomed to hell, and Nancy Hoffman living a pathetically sad life without any hope of ever leading a fruitful one.”

  “In short,” Gabriel interjected, “if you fail, Nan will recall nothing of what transpires and no damage will be done. Except, of course, to you, Gabe. For you, failure means eternal damnation.”

  Gabe resumed gazing down at the Hoffman woman. She seemed to be frozen in place, as if time down there had stopped. He mourned the fact that the angels had turned her motionless after she’d finished dressing. She had a body to make any man salivate, and Gabe had been enjoying the view. Absently, he asked, “Exactly what kind of ammunition were you referring to when you said I’d be able to coerce the woman into marrying me? I’m not pushing any woman around, no matter what you say.”

  Gabriel smiled slightly. “Before we get to that, you must first commit to the assignment, and to do that, you should be made aware of everything you will be expected to accomplish.”

  “Shoot.”

  “First of all, you must agree not to die intestate the second time around. You will be expected to leave all your worldly goods to Nan so she will no longer have to work so hard to make ends meet after she is widowed.”

  “I have no problem with that,” Gabe said honestly. “My father’s money has never meant all that much to me, and I don’t really care who it’s left to.”

  “Second,” Gabriel went on, “you will be expected to free Nan from her past, which still haunts her and from which she is still running. Unbeknownst to her, Horace Barclay, the man she believes she killed, survived being stabbed with her knitting needle and is alive to this day.”

  “She went after a man with a knitting needle?” Gabe glanced down at Nan with new respect. “She doesn’t look like she’s got it in her.”

  “Normally, she doesn’t,” Michael said. “You of all people should understand how it feels to be backed into a corner. Nan was trying to ward off the unwanted physical advances of Horace Barclay, a much older man to whom she’d been affianced by her father, and she threatened Barclay with the needle to hold him at bay. Unfortunately, Horace tripped on the edge of a carpet, fell on top of her, and impaled himself. Nan couldn’t feel a pulse or see any sign that he was breathing, so she believed the man dead. After emptying her father’s coffers, she fled with her younger sister, assumed another name, and ended up living in Random, where she’s been hiding from the law ever since.”

  “So she still thinks they’re trying to find her and put a noose around her neck?” Gabe asked.

  “Precisely,” Gabriel replied. “How you impart to Nan that Barclay didn’t die and chose to press no charges because the incident was an embarrassment to him—well, that will be entirely up to you.”

  Gabe nodded. “I reckon I’ll know when the moment is right—if I decide to take her on.”

  Michael shifted on his chair, glanced at a sheet of paper, and cleared his throat. “Third, there is your relationship with Nan to discuss. As we have already made clear, we don’t care how you go about it, but you must accomplish several tasks. You must not only get Nan to marry you, but you must also gain her complete trust, make her fall in love with you, and then make physical love to her. The last is extremely important, for in Nan’s mind lovemaking is yet another way in which a man exercises his control over a woman. It will, of course, have to be a pleasurable experience for her, no matter how you decide to initiate it.”

  He was supposed to accomplish all this in a lousy month? And had he just heard right? Once again, Gabe held up a hand. “Are you saying you don’t care how I get into the lady’s drawers, coercion notwithstanding, as long as I make her enjoy it? This deal is starting to smell worse than last week’s fish. Am I having a weird dream or something? I mean, okay, a guy can go to hell up here for adultery, yet rape isn’t against your rules?”

  The angel Gabriel smiled, a gentle curve of his lips that made his face seem to glow from within. “Of course rape is against God’s rules, as are all actions that cause another person pain or sadness. If we believed, even for a moment, that you would ever force a woman to submit sexually, this conversation wouldn’t be taking place.”

  Gabe scratched behind his ear, a habit of his when he grew confused. “Pardon me for saying so, but up until now, you boys didn’t seem to hold me in very high regard.”

  “You’re basically a good man,” Gabriel assured him. “You’ve simply never had much opportunity to prove it. That is precisely why you are being given this second chance. How you handle Nan Hoffman will be entirely up to you, just as it would have been before you died. Everyone has carte blanche in life to do whatever he pleases and in whatever fashion he chooses. This situation is no different, except that, because of time constraints, you will be armed with a good deal of knowledge about Nan, so you’ll have a better chance of accomplishing your mission within a month.”

  Michael added, “Matters of the heart between a man and woman come with all kinds of unspoken rules. If you don’t know what they are, then God and both of us have misjudged you.”

  Gabe decided this was no time to plead ignorance of unspoken rules. The closest he’d ever come to tugging a woman’s heartstrings was when he paid a working girl double her usual rate. Recalling his brief little dance in hellfire, Gabe sighed. “I’ll agree to the stipulations. Of the three lost souls you’ve shown me, Nan Hoffman is the most appealing, and I think I stand a better chance of success with her than I would with the other two.”

  Gabe no sooner agreed than the angels began cramming his head with knowledge about Nan’s past. The scene at Gabe’s feet changed, showing a much younger Nan being cruelly harangued by a man named Martin Sullivan whom Gabe soon deduced was her father, which gave him cause to wonder if maybe he hadn’t actually been lucky to be ignored by his own sire. As Gabe watched Nan’s life flash by, he began to seethe with anger. Little wonder she shied away from men. Scene after scene unfolded, revealing bits and pieces of her past, none of them pretty. Her father constantly accused her of being stupid, ugly, clumsy. The list of faults went on and on. Gabe could only marvel that the young woman had gathered enough self-confidence to run away from home in the first place, let alone start a business of her own and manage to make a success of it.

  Gabe soon realized he was no longer trying to catch glimpses of Nan’s delectable figure and instead was becoming entranced by her lovely gray eyes, which seemed to darken with shadows year by year until they began to look haunted and bruised. By the time the angels concluded the viewing, his throat felt oddly tight.

  Gabe turned to face the robed men. “So that fat old bastard Horace Barclay didn’t die, and Nancy has been hiding all these years for nothing?”

  “Do you truly feel her hiding all this time has been for naught?” Gabriel asked with a mysterious smile. “Sometimes God works in strange ways. Because of Nan’s flight from home, her little sister, Laney, has been spared the ordeal of growing up in her father’s household. She is consequently a happy, well-adjusted girl who might otherwise have been only a shadow of her present self. Now our heavenly Father feels it is Nan’s turn to be happy. Are you ready to return to earth and see to that for Him?”

  Gabe nodded his agreement. The next instant, a strange, dizzy sensation cam
e over him, he became lost in a whirlpool of darkness, and he felt as if he were falling. Then everything went black.

  Chapter Three

  Gabe jerked awake to face total darkness. Had the angels double-crossed him and routed him straight to the nether regions after all? But no, hell was hot and he was drenched in icy sweat. So where had those two jokers landed him? Blindly, he groped the surfaces around him. Blankets and sheets? Afraid to move, he lay there for a moment until his vision adjusted. Clear, bright light crowded against a window shade, sending slanting beams across a room. His Stetson reposed atop a hulking dresser, and there was his towel slung over the washstand. His hotel room, he realized, and released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. It whooshed in the silent room as loudly as a frustrated bull during a mating ritual.

  Damn. What a crazy dream! Bullet holes and angels and a forced marriage. That did it. He was swearing off drinking. He didn’t even believe in all that pearly-gates stuff. He ran a hand over his chest to assure himself that he was all in one piece. No gunshot wound. Cautiously he sat up, stroking his jaw to check for whiskers. Normally, his fingertips rasped over the night’s growth, but this morning his face felt freshly shaved. Weird. He pushed out of bed, stepped to the window, and drew aside the blind. Below lay the main thoroughfare of Random. He’d apparently slept later than usual, because he saw passersby on the boardwalks, bustling this way and that. The normalcy of the scene was reassuring, but he didn’t like needing reassurance.

  Forget it, Valance, he ordered silently. Just a bad dream. Grinning, he released the shade and shook his head. It was Christmas, and judging by the amount of sunlight bathing the window, he’d slept through quite a chunk of it. No predawn walk down Main, no slug in his chest. It had all been a figment of his imagination, undoubtedly because he’d overindulged at the saloon last night. Yahoo! He was destined to live another day. He just hoped he hadn’t snoozed through the breakfast hour at the hotel restaurant. With it being a holiday, no other restaurants were likely to be serving.

  After lighting the lamp on the stand beside the bed, Gabe made faster work of his morning ablutions than usual because he didn’t need to shave. Then, donning his black Stetson, he went downstairs, still half smiling over the crazy dream he’d had. Tonight he’d make sure he ate a light supper and avoided the saloon.

  For a dream, it had seemed incredibly real. He could call up images of the angels’ faces with such clarity that he could have sworn he’d actually met the fellows. And the details. Their hairy legs and bony knees, their robes, the timbre of their voices, and the expressions in their eyes. It boggled his mind that he’d been able to conjure up something so vivid from his imagination. Angels, indeed. He was pretty sure they appeared only to the devout, and that sure as hell didn’t include him.

  Gabe’s favorite table by a window in the hotel dining room was available. He liked it because he could keep an eye on the boardwalk through a gap in the white, frilly curtains and also see the entrance to study people coming in for a meal. A man with Gabe’s reputation couldn’t be too careful, and he’d learned to spot trouble with only a glance. And he never, ever sat with his back to a door. Just in case.

  Agnes, the waitress, a plump, jovial redhead with merry blue eyes, hurried over to fill Gabe’s coffee cup. He gave her a smile. “Merry Christmas, Agnes. I’m sorry you got stuck working when you’ve got a husband and kids at home who are probably lost without you.”

  She nearly slopped hot liquid on the white tablecloth as she gave a startled laugh. “You’ve got me at a disadvantage, mister. How’d you come to know my name is Agnes?”

  What was this? Gabe had been patronizing the place for more than a month. He and Agnes had been on a first-name basis almost from the start. He tried to think what to say, but she forestalled him.

  “One thing’s for sure, stranger. You’re a kidder. Christmas is a month away. Land’s sake, lighten my load, Lord, please. Just thinking about fixing Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow before my shift here starts makes me feel tired. At least the boss had mercy and has me coming in for dinner preparation and serving, not breakfast and lunch.”

  Since her words had his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, Gabe was relieved when the woman barely drew a breath before she started chattering again. “I wish it was Christmas. Then I’d have all the holidays nearly behind me.” She sighed and puffed at a red curl that had escaped her braid to dangle over one eye. “Working the hours I do, I’m flat dreading Christmas.” She slanted her eyes toward the ceiling. “God, don’t strike me dead for saying so.” Then she glanced at Gabe and winked. “I’m only human. I love Christmas just as much as the next person. It’s just that I have so much to do to get ready. Teddy’s socks I’m knitting are only half-done, and though I’ve been saving as much of my tips as I can, I still don’t have enough to get my Jenny that doll she’s hankering for over at the general store.” She laughed and rolled her blue eyes. “It’ll all come right in the end. I get in a dither like this every year.”

  Gabe’s stomach clenched, and his hunger for a hearty breakfast vanished. “Uh, ma’am, you said you were going to be cooking Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow?”

  She laughed again. “I sure did. Lost track of the days, did you? You’ve been on the trail for a while, I’m guessing. What’s your name, stranger?”

  “Gabe.” Mind racing, his body suddenly clammy with sweat, Gabe was relieved he wasn’t so rattled that he’d forgotten his name. “Gabriel Valance.”

  Agnes gave him a long study. “The Gabriel Valance?”

  Gabe hated when people asked him that. “In the flesh, but I’m not half as bad as my reputation paints me.”

  Agnes set the coffeepot on the table to pull a tablet and pencil from her apron pocket. “I’m glad to hear it. I have no wish to get shot if you don’t like the food.” Her smile had gone faint. “What can I get for you this morning, Mr. Valance?”

  “Call me Gabe, if it’s all the same to you, and I’ll just have my regular.”

  Agnes arched a burnished brow. “Which is? I’m no mind reader. If I was, I’d set up shop, make heaps of money, and quit this miserable job.”

  Gabe felt as if he’d just stepped from a nightmare into another unreality. The dream . . . only now he was coming to think maybe it hadn’t been a dream after all. Had he actually been shot last night and been in that shack with those angels? As he thought about it in the bright light of morning, it all seemed so crazy—too crazy to be true. But there stood Agnes, who’d been bringing him chicken-fried steak, spuds, eggs, and toast for a month, and she had no recollection of having done so. One of them was plumb nuts, and he had a hunch it wasn’t Agnes.

  Gabe gave the woman his order. As the waitress hurried away, Gabe took in the autumn theme of the table arrangements, sprays of burnished leaves providing beds for small orange pumpkins and colorful gourds. Only yesterday—his yesterday, anyway—the centerpieces had been made with pine boughs and sprigs of holly. He could recall the evergreen scent clearly. What the hell? Unless he’d dreamed an entire month of his life, he’d gone back in time.

  Just then, another waitress, a skinny little brunette named Sarah who always seemed to be battling a cold, stepped over to Simon White’s table. Before the banker glanced up, he straightened his bow tie, and the gesture keyed Gabe’s recall. He remembered this day—his first breakfast in this particular hotel dining room—and suddenly he knew what White was going to say before he said it. “My appetite is a little off this morning, Sarah. I’ll be happy with some oatmeal mush and a glass of milk.”

  En route back to the kitchen, Sarah stopped to clear a table. As she turned, arms laden with dishes, Gabe nearly called out, “Don’t drop them!” And the next instant, just as he knew she would, Sarah dropped everything. Cups, bowls, plates, and remaining food hit the floor and exploded at her feet, creating a mess that encompassed a full square yard.

  Gabe sank back on hi
s chair, feeling light-headed. He truly had been in that shack last night. He’d lived through this morning once before and knew every single thing that was going to happen next. Just as that unwelcome realization sank fully into his brain, Sarah, Simon White, and every other person in the room became suddenly motionless. Agnes, caught in the act of scratching her generous backside, stood still as a statue by a nearby table, her gaze sightless. The thin waitress who’d bent to pick up a shard of glass was no longer moving.

  Gabe leaped up from the table, feeling panicked. What was this? This was madness, all of it. It couldn’t really be happening. He was still dreaming.

  And then the angel Gabriel materialized, standing in all his robed glory not three feet away. Startled, Gabe fell back a step, setting his chair off balance and nearly toppling it. “Jesus H. Christ!” he yelled. “Are you trying to scare me to death?” Distractedly he noticed that everyone but him was still frozen in place.

  The golden-haired angel smiled kindly. “No, Gabe. I apologize for giving you a start. Michael and I forgot to warn you about a few things.” With a wave of his hand, he indicated the people frozen in different positions around the room. “I assure you, this isn’t a dream. In a moment, time will resume its pace, and everything will return to normal. In the meanwhile, no one can overhear our conversation.”

  Gabe gaped at him. “Normal, did you say? You’re not much good at definitions. And couldn’t you have just whispered what you need to say in my ear?”