by Terri Garey
Evan leaned against the counter, a wry twist to his mouth. “Let’s see…what is it you might not like about her?” He lifted up a hand, counting on his fingers, “Perfect hair, perfect face, perfect body…”
“Exactly.” I didn’t care if I was interrupting him or not. “She’s too perfect. I can’t stand that in a person.”
“Uh-huh.” He turned away, walking toward the back room. “Jealousy does not become you, darling.”
I raised my voice, aiming it at his retreating back. “I’m not jealous, and don’t call me ‘darling.’”
Wisely, he didn’t respond.
It wasn’t jealousy that had my hackles raised; Selene’s appearance in my store left me feeling threatened, and I didn’t like that feeling.
I wasn’t buying her Little Miss Innocent routine. We had met before, and she knew it as well as I did, or my name wasn’t Nicki Styx.
The buzzer at the back door rang, and a moment later I heard Evan’s voice raised in greeting. Then I heard a voice that completely brightened my day. “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!”
It was Joe, carrying something bulky under his arm as he walked down the hall in my direction. I was surprised to see him since his shift in the E.R. wasn’t over until early evening.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said with a grin. “I come bearing gifts.”
The rich scent of cinnamon hit my nose as he held up what he was carrying—two big mesh bags full of pine cones, obviously steeped in cinnamon oil.
“What—”
He cut me off by swooping in for a kiss, green eyes twinkling. “One of the nurses was selling these as a holiday fund-raiser for her kid’s school, and I thought they’d make the store smell great. ’Tis the season, you know.”
Delighted, I took a deep breath. “Mmmm…” I went on tiptoes to steal my own kiss. “How sweet!”
“I’ve got a bunch more in the car,” he said, obviously pleased with himself. “My leather seats are going to smell like these for weeks.”
Laughing, I took the bags and stood there, arms full of pine cones, looking up at him. His dark hair was mussed by the wind, the tip of his nose just a teeny bit pink. He radiated good health, good looks, and a good heart, and I felt my own heart swell with love in response.
“Other girls get flowers, but I get cinnamon pine cones,” I said smugly. “Am I lucky, or what?”
He slipped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer, nestling himself between the two bags of pine cones I now held in my arms. I leaned into him, enjoying the feel of his solid warmth against my thighs and belly.
“We’re both lucky,” he said, smiling down into my eyes. “I can’t imagine life without you anymore—I can barely remember life before you.” And then he kissed me, cold lips firm against mine.
Then he pulled back. “Let me get the rest of these in. I’ve only got an hour. Dr. Aldridge called in with the flu, and it’s a full moon—we’ve got our hands full today. Can Evan watch the shop while you grab a bite to eat with me?”
“Go ahead,” Evan said, coming up behind him. “Maybe food will sweeten her disposition. She’s being quite the pain today.”
“I am not,” I answered indignantly, but my attempt to defend myself was aborted as Joe’s attention was caught by something outside the front window.
“Call 911,” he said, and dashed for the door.
A small crowd had gathered, bunched around Joe’s broad back as he knelt over someone lying on the sidewalk. I held the store cell phone in my hand, trying to describe to the dispatcher what was going on. “Somebody collapsed on the sidewalk in front of
8219 Euclid Avenue
,” I told her. “There’s a doctor on the scene. Other than that, I don’t know what’s going on.”
A woman near the back of the crowd murmured to the woman standing next to her, “Is she dead? She looks dead.”
“I don’t know.” Her friend was shaking her head, both of them craning their necks and staring.
I couldn’t see much of anything except a plump pair of legs, encased in black pants, and a pair of white tennis shoes. A couple of shopping bags lay on the sidewalk near the person’s feet.
“Is the victim breathing?” asked the dispatcher, in my ear.
“I have no idea.”
“He looks like he knows what he’s doing,” said the first woman, to her companion. She was obvi ously talking about Joe, who was oblivious to the crowd.
He was leaning over the woman, stiff-armed as he pressed rhythmically on her chest.
“Step back, Alma,” said an older man on the woman’s other side. “Give the man some room.”
They shifted, and I could clearly see the figure of an elderly woman lying spread-eagle on the sidewalk. I heard someone crying, and saw a little girl with her face buried against another woman’s leg. “There now, dear,” the woman murmured, stroking the girl’s head as she watched the scene on the sidewalk. “Calm down. It will be okay.”
“Grandma,” the girl choked, shooting the figure on the ground an agonized glance.
“Shhh,” murmured the woman who held her against her leg.
“Nicki!” Joe raised his head long enough to look around, and saw me at the edge of the crowd. “Come help me!”
“I’ve got to go,” I told the dispatcher. “Please hurry.” I hung up and stuck the phone in the pocket of my jeans, wishing I’d thought to grab a jacket before rushing out of the store. The temperature had definitely dropped since morning, and I was freezing. I worked my way in between a couple of people to get closer to Joe.
“Get on the other side,” he said, never ceasing his rhythmic pumping of the lady’s chest. His green eyes were intent on mine, face grim. “Ever done mouth-to-mouth?”
Under different circumstances that question might’ve been funny, but now was obviously not the time for humor. “No,” I answered, terrified at the very thought.
“I’ll walk you through it,” he said tersely.
I dropped to my knees beside the lady, feeling the chill of the sidewalk through my jeans. Then I looked at her face, and time stood still.
“Tilt her head back,” Joe said, unaware of my shock.
When I didn’t react, he repeated himself, more urgently this time. “Put your hand under her neck and tilt her head back.”
“I—” I couldn’t do it.
The woman on the ground was far too familiar. Her gray hair was in a sedate bun this time, not straggling around her cheeks, and she was wearing a black velour jogging suit like any modern-day grandmother might wear out Christmas shopping.
Except modern-day grandmothers didn’t float above beds in the middle of the night, cackling about occasionally killing people while they slept.
“Nicki.” Joe’s voice was sharp, eyes sharper still.
I looked into those green depths—unable to speak, unable to explain—and shook my head, numbly.
“I’ll do it,” said a man’s voice, from the crowd. “I took a course once, years ago.”
“Oh, Arthur,” a woman breathed, “are you sure you want to get involved?”
The man didn’t answer, merely lowering himself to his knees beside me and nudging me aside.
I was still staring at Joe, and what I saw in his face made my stomach clench. Disbelief, disappointment…then he looked away, and I could breathe again.
“Here,” he said to the man who’d offered to help. “You take over the chest compressions while I clear her airway.”
I rolled back onto the balls of my feet and stood up, making way for the guy to reach the old lady’s chest. He put his palms where Joe’s had been and starting pumping, keeping the same rhythm Joe had.
Joe slipped a hand under the back of the woman’s neck and lifted, so her head tilted back and her mouth fell partly open. With his other hand, he pinched her nose shut and leaned in to put his mouth on hers.
I had a really bad feeling about this. “Joe, don’t—”
He ignored me, blowing into the old lady’s
mouth once, pulling back slightly, then again. Letting go of her nose and turning his head so his ear was near her mouth, he listened to see if she was breathing on her own.
“Oh my,” murmured one of the women in the crowd, obviously spellbound. The little girl was still crying, her sobs beginning to sound like hiccups.
“Keep it going,” Joe said to the man pressing the old lady’s chest. A second later, he blew into her mouth again, twice.
This time, when he let her nose go, her entire body spasmed as she coughed a weak little cough. A collective gasp and excited murmurings came from the crowd around me.
“Don’t stop,” Joe said sharply to the man doing the chest compressions. “Not until I tell you.”
“This is that woman’s lucky day,” I overheard a man say to someone on the sidewalk. “If this guy hadn’t been here, she’d be a dead duck.”
I took a step back, mentally as well as physically. The man’s companion pushed forward, and I found myself looking at Joe over his shoulder. That teeny bit of distance gave me a new perspective somehow, and I suddenly saw Joe as these strangers must see him: dark hair, broad shoulders, strong hands…the sexy, playful lover I was used to was gone, and in his place was a man who didn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done to save a person’s life. A competent, capable, self-assured guy who just happened to be majorly handsome.
The wail of sirens filtered into my consciousness, breaking my odd sense of separateness from the scene. The old lady on the sidewalk coughed again, moving a little, and Joe gestured to the man to stop his compressions. As the ambulance pulled to the curb, people scattered to make way for the paramedics.
Joe was on the other side of the woman, while I stood with the group of bystanders. He spoke to the two EMTs, who immediately started oxygen on the old lady.
“Grandma!” The little girl who’d been clinging to a woman’s leg broke free and darted toward the woman on the ground.
“Whoa there, now,” Joe said, catching her by the arm before she could get in the way. “Your grandma’s going to the hospital where she can be looked after. You stay back here with me.” And before I knew it, he’d scooped her up into his arms. She was wearing a red wool hat and a bulky coat—I couldn’t see her face, but her hair was brown beneath the hat, shoulder-length.
“Kate?” Another woman’s voice was raised above the din, sounding frantic. “Mother? What’s happened?”
And there was Selene, at Joe’s elbow, looking worried and upset, and utterly, impossibly gorgeous. She was weighted down with shopping bags, which she dropped to the sidewalk in apparent shock. “Mother!”
“Grandma got sick,” sobbed the girl, from Joe’s arms. “She fell down.”
“Oh, my poor baby,” Selene said. She reached for her, but Kate buried her face in Joe’s shoulder, clinging to his neck.
I wasn’t buying it. An overwhelming sense of foreboding came over me; it just didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem genuine. I wanted to scream, It’s an act! It’s all an act! but I didn’t dare. As far as the world was concerned, someone’s life had just been saved, and it wouldn’t do to ruin the moment.
Staring at Joe, Selene, and Kate, clustered together on the sidewalk like some perverted version of a family I wasn’t a part of, I somehow knew my life was the one at risk. There was menace here—I could feel it.
Once the paramedics got the old lady onto a stretcher and loaded her into the back of the ambulance, I moved to stand beside Joe. He was still holding Kate, but she wasn’t looking at me, and neither was Selene. They were both focused on their so-called grandma.
I touched his arm.
He glanced down sharply, as if surprised to see me there.
“Joe, I—”
“I’d like to shake your hand, young man.” The guy who’d helped with the CPR had come up, flanked by the two women who’d kept up a running commentary with each other while today’s drama played out on the sidewalk. “You’re quite the hero.”
Joe finally put the little girl down to shake hands, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t like him touching her, just as I hadn’t liked him putting his mouth on the old lady’s mouth. Something was rotten in Denmark—or in this case, Little Five—and he just didn’t know it yet.
“Oh, yes,” fluttered the man’s wife, a chubby woman with gray hair, “that was so impressive! Are you a doctor?”
“Yes,” Joe said.
“I knew it,” the man said to his wife. “Didn’t I tell you, Alma?”
“How incredibly lucky,” breathed the other lady. “What are the odds of you being here when that poor woman collapsed like that? It’s a miracle, I tell you, a Christmas miracle!”
It sure was.
“Oh, I’m so grateful to you, Doctor.” Selene, who’d been listening, reached out and grabbed Joe by the arm. She had Kate on her hip now. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if—” She teared up, ruby red lips trembling. “Mother had just stepped out with Kate while I was at the cash register. I had no idea she was ill! I would never have dragged her out Christmas shopping if I’d known…” She broke down entirely, covering her face with her free hand as she sobbed. Kate started wailing again, too, in sympathy. The two women bystanders looked at each other and made sympathetic noises.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Joe said soothingly. “She’s in good hands now. You can follow the ambulance to the hospital and meet her there when she arrives.”
“Oh.” Selene made a charmingly valiant effort to cease her crocodile tears. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I should get to the hospital.” Her fake effort failed, unsurprisingly, as a new spate of tears spilled down her perfect alabaster cheeks. She held out a slender manicured hand, staring at it as if it belonged to someone else. “I’m shaking so hard I’m not sure I can drive.”
Oh no, you don’t—
“I’ll give the two of you a ride.” Joe made his offer before I could stop him. “I have to get back to the hospital anyway.”
I was beginning to feel invisible. “Joe.”
He turned to me, a slight frown on his face. I had the feeling I hadn’t been forgiven for not leaping into action with mouth-to-mouth when he’d asked me to. “I’m sorry about lunch, Nicki. I’ll call you later.”
“I need to talk to you.” I kept my voice low, but urgent.
“I want Grandma!” Kate began to cry again, and Selene comforted her.
“There now, darling, don’t cry. This nice man is going to take us to Grandma, don’t you worry.”
Joe had already turned away, and I knew that for the time being at least, I was outmanned, outgunned, and outmaneuvered.
Grimly, I set my lips and said nothing. This battle might be lost, but the war was far from over.
CHAPTER 2
I waited a couple of hours before going down to the hospital. It was tough to wait, but I knew Selene would have to let go of Joe’s arm long enough for him to do what he needed to do once they got there, and I’d have a much better chance of convincing him she was up to something if she wasn’t around.
I filled the minutes as best I could by staying busy, and thinking hard.
“Did you see how Joe leapt into action?” Evan had watched the scene from the store’s front window, and now, unfortunately, seemed to want to talk about nothing else. “He sprinted across that street like an action hero. Reminded me of Hugh Jackman.”
“Joe’s cuter than Hugh Jackman,” I said, and meant it. “But yes, he was awesome.”
As far as Evan and the rest of the world were concerned, Joe had saved the life of some old lady who’d apparently had a heart attack on the sidewalk. I was the only one who knew there’d been some type of supernatural setup involved, but I said nothing about it to Evan. There was no need to get him worked up about Selene and her friends until I knew what was going on.
Besides, Joe was a hero. He’d seen a need and jumped to fill it, heedless of the consequences. My feelings for him had deepened since we’d first met, but toda
y it really hit me: Joe had qualities a lot of men didn’t. His quiet self-confidence, his “take charge” attitude, combined with that dark hair, those intense green eyes that saw straight into your soul…
Forget Hugh Jackman; I had a real man in my life.
Evan went on, in full gush mode. “Those broad shoulders, that cute butt!”
“Stop drooling over my boyfriend,” I told him flatly. “I’m the only one who gets to drool over my boyfriend.”
“I was talking about Hugh Jackman.”
“Yeah, right.”
Silence greeted that remark, and a moment later I heard the distinctive flip of a magazine page being turned. I went back to sweeping the last of the glitter and snowflakes from our window dressing from the carpet, and back to my own thoughts.
Broom in hand, I looked out the window at the store across the street. It was an organic market now, no longer the site of Divinyls Music.
Could Sammy be behind this?
Sammy Divine was a sexy, lying devil who’d raised all kinds of hell in my life, then disappeared from it. To be entirely accurate, Sammy wasn’t just a devil…he was the Devil. A blond fallen angel with a lust for the flesh, he was hotter than Hell, and lived there, too. I hadn’t seen him in at least eight months, and had begun to hope he might be gone for good.
Had he sent these three to start trouble? Why had they shown themselves to me last night, and then behaved like strangers today?
Let her remember, the little girl had said. She brought it on herself, and what can she do about it?
Brought what on myself?
I made it until two o’clock before I skipped out to see Joe. “I’ve got some errands to run, Evan. Would you mind if I left a little early?”
“Not at all.” By now, he was up to his ears in shoeboxes, packing up what was left of our summer stock so we could fill the shelves with boots and flats. “You’ve been no fun at all today.”
“I know.” I sighed, not bothering to deny it. “I’ll be better tomorrow.” I hoped.
“Go on.” He waved a sandal in my direction. “Go do some Christmas shopping or something. Macy’s has cashmere sweaters on sale, but don’t forget, beige makes me look washed out.”
