A Forever Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  So far, there was only one bed—his—and that was in the master bedroom. The other two bedrooms had a variety of things piled up in them, none of them meant to provide any kind of rest for the weary. In actuality, the exact opposite was true. Both rooms were in a state of varying degrees of chaos.

  Since it had a bed, Gabe decided to give Angel his bedroom while he made himself as comfortable as possible on the secondhand sofa he’d picked up for his living room.

  Gabe made his way up the stairs slowly, watching Angel’s face as he went. Though her lashes seemed to flutter a little, she continued sleeping. When he finally set her down on top of the covers on his bed, it had no effect on her.

  Angel went on sleeping.

  A quirky smile curved his lips as he stepped back for a second. Taking the extra blanket he had folded at the foot of his bed, he spread it out and covered her.

  She really did look like an angel, sleeping that way, he thought.

  He hoped that the morning would turn out to be better for her. Maybe she’d even remember who she was.

  People shouldn’t be shut out of their own lives, he reasoned.

  It occurred to him, as he all but tiptoed out of the room, that he was pretty damn tired himself. He hadn’t exactly been sitting around these past eighteen hours, twiddling his thumbs.

  Closing the door softly behind him, Gabe went downstairs.

  As he passed by the kitchen, he glanced toward it out of habit. For exactly ten seconds, he considered making himself something to eat. But his need to sleep far outweighed his desire to eat. He made his way into the living room. Gathering the newspaper that was haphazardly strewn over the sofa, he dumped the pages onto the floor and sat down. The worn leather sofa creaked a little as it accepted his weight. Like the house, it was old, but comfortable.

  Putting his muscle into it, he pulled off first one boot, then the other. He placed them on top of the newspapers so he could find them readily enough in the morning and lay down. No sooner had his head touched the flattened-out pillow in the corner than his cell phone began to both ring and buzz in his pocket.

  He didn’t know which he hated more, the ringing or the buzzing.

  The cell phone was something he would have just as easily done without. But the phone had come with his badge and the job. It was the sheriff’s belief that since the terrain they oversaw was so scattered and large, a cell phone—when the signal found it—was a good way to stay in touch. With that explained to him, Gabe couldn’t just ignore the phone even though he had little use for it, or any of the other new “toys” out there. Electronic novelties carried absolutely no fascination for him.

  Pulling the phone from his pocket, he pressed the accept button. “This is Gabe.”

  “Where are you?”

  It wasn’t Rick, it was Alma. And she sounded pretty miffed.

  “Home,” he told his sister. “Technically,” he added before she could bombard him with any more questions, “my shift is over. I’m off the clock.”

  “That shouldn’t stop you from swinging by the sheriff’s office at the end of the day.”

  “It can,” he contradicted, “since I got shanghaied into being someone’s fairy godmother,” he informed his sister.

  She supposed she was worrying too much about Gabe making a good impression. If Larry, the deputy whose place he was taking, decided for one reason or another not to return to Forever, she wanted Gabe to be the one to fill the position permanently. That started by making a good impression—every single day.

  “How is she?” she asked about the woman who’d been placed in his care.

  “Right now? Asleep,” he told her. Just like I’d like to be.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line and he knew that questions were popping up in his sister’s mind like toast out of a squadron of toasters set on low.

  “Where is she asleep?” he heard Alma finally ask.

  “In a bed. I didn’t think the rock garden was a good place to put her,” he deadpanned.

  Alma ignored his sarcasm, sailing right by it as if he hadn’t even tapped into the tone. “Your bed?” she asked.

  “Well, yeah, it’s the only one I got in the house, remember?”

  She knew the kind of man her brother was, so she didn’t ask the one question that begged asking: Where are you going to sleep? Instead, she went to another line of questioning altogether. “Then I take it they didn’t want to keep her overnight at the hospital?”

  “No reason to.” Thank God, he added silently. It would have been a hassle for him if they had. He would have either had to get a room at a local hotel, or driven back and forth from Pine Ridge twice. Neither of which appealed to him. “All the tests they took of her came back negative.”

  “But she still doesn’t remember.”

  He could hear the frown in Alma’s voice. “But she still doesn’t remember,” he echoed, confirming his sister’s assumption.

  “You didn’t have to bring her to your place, you know. You could have brought her here,” Alma told him.

  He was in no mood to justify his actions to his sister right now. Lack of sleep made him less tolerant and more irritable.

  “Made a spur-of-the-moment decision,” he told her. “Angel fell asleep while we were driving back from Pine Ridge. I didn’t have the heart to wake her up.”

  “Angel, huh? Well, I guess if you had to come up with a name, that’s as good as any. But did it ever occur to you that she might have wanted you to wake her up?” Alma pointed out.

  “Well, we won’t know until she does, will we?” he countered. Tired of sparring, however innocuously, with Alma, he asked, “Is there anything else? Because if there isn’t, I’m pretty beat and I’d like to turn in. On the sofa,” he underscored in case she felt duty-bound to ask him where he was spending the night.

  “Never doubted it for a moment,” she said. “Go, get your beauty sleep, Gabe. By my count you’re about three years behind and are getting to look pretty mangy and scary.”

  “I can always count on you to feed my ego,” Gabe quipped. “Good night, Alma.”

  Not waiting for her response, he hung up. He didn’t want to give her any time to regroup and ask him about something else.

  With a sigh that came from deep down in his bones, Gabe stretched out on the sofa. He pulled down the crocheted throw lying along the back of the sofa and wrapped it around himself to ward off the pending cold.

  Gabe had always had the ability to fall asleep within three minutes of his head hitting anything that could remotely pass for a pillow. Tonight was no exception.

  If anything, he was asleep in two minutes rather than three.

  And he would have slept right through until morning—if the scream hadn’t woken him up.

  Scissoring apart a dream that evaporated the instant he opened his eyes, Gabe bolted upright, trying to separate reality from any remaining strands of his dream that might have somehow managed to linger around.

  Confusion temporarily dimmed his ability to think.

  That vanished the moment he heard the scream again. It wasn’t bloodcurdling so much as profoundly heartbreaking.

  And it was also not a dream. Both screams had come from upstairs.

  Angel!

  Gabe’s feet hit the floor, running. He made it across the living room in record time, heading for the stairs. Taking them two at a time, he quickly made it up the stairs and to his room.

  It didn’t even occur to him to stand on ceremony and knock, or call through the door. Rules and polite behavior quickly died in the face of Angel’s screams.

  He threw open the door. A solid block of darkness met him. He felt the left wall for a light switch. Finding it, he flipped it to the up position.

  It didn’t really help all that much.

  He blinked, trying to adjust his vision as he looked around. Angel wasn’t where he’d left her. The bed was empty.

  “Angel?” he called out. “Where are you? Why are you screaming?”
r />   She didn’t answer.

  He found her huddled in the corner on the floor just beneath the window. There was a crescent moon out and an eerie yellow glow touched the windowsill. It seemed to heighten the aura of fear emanating from her.

  “Angel?” he said, worried as he crossed to her. “Are you all right?”

  Rather than answer, Angel looked up at him with enormous, frightened eyes. Gabe crouched down to her level. What had spooked her this way? If someone had tried to break in, he would have heard them.

  He needed to calm her down, he thought. Otherwise, the situation could grow out of control.

  “You’re shaking like a leaf in the wind,” he noted. “Why? What happened?”

  As he tried to put his arm around her, Angel stiffened and pulled back.

  Was she still asleep? He’d heard that people could look awake when they really weren’t. Sleepwalking didn’t just involve walking. It took in all facets of this strange condition.

  Was she in the throes of some kind of a nightmare that was holding her prisoner?

  “Angel, it’s me,” he told her as softly as possible. He refused to remove his hands from her shoulders. He saw it as the only way he could anchor her. “It’s Gabe. You’re in my house. You’re safe,” he said, then repeated with emphasis, “Safe. Do you understand?”

  Angel struggled, trying to pull away again. And then she began to sob. Within a moment, she suddenly slumped against him, her sobs growing louder. And then they began to subside.

  “Gabe?”

  Did she recognize him, or had her nightmare somehow caused her to forget him, as well?

  “Yes, Gabe. You know, the guy who’s been hanging out with you all day, taking you to hospitals and fun places like that.” And then he dropped the teasing tone. Instead, he lightly stroked her hair, still trying to calm her. “You had a nightmare.”

  “No, I—” She stopped abruptly. “A nightmare?” she repeated. She looked at him in wonder. “But it was so real.”

  Maybe this was the key they needed to unlock her memory. He loathed having her relive something that obviously terrified her, but if it meant that she could start to remember, Gabe felt that he had to try. “What was it about?”

  Distress filled her eyes as she looked up at him and realized, “I can’t remember.”

  Chapter Seven

  The next moment, in a fit of pure frustration as angry tears filled her eyes, Angel fisted her hand and hit it against the wall.

  “I can’t remember, I can’t remember, I can’t remember,” she cried, her voice growing more agitated with each repetition.

  Moved and almost overwhelmed with sympathy, Gabe enfolded her in his arms. Angel was too weary and too drained to struggle and pull away.

  “Then don’t try,” Gabe told her gently.

  Desperately searching for a clearing in the fog that had laid siege to her mind, Angel raised her head to look up at him, confused. Was he really telling her to give up?

  “What?”

  “Then don’t try,” Gabe repeated. “Just for now,” he advised, “just let yourself be.”

  “But who is ‘myself’?” she cried. Didn’t he see? That was the problem. She didn’t know. How could she be herself when she didn’t know what that meant, what it involved.

  To her surprise, he didn’t shrug or dismiss her exasperated question. Instead, looking directly into her eyes, he gave her an answer.

  “A beautiful woman who survived a horrific accident that could have very easily been fatal. You’re a survivor,” he told her. “For now, that’ll be enough. We’ll build on that.”

  “‘We’?” she questioned. How could there be a “we” when she was so very alone?

  Gabe nodded. “You and me. And everyone else in town.” He smiled as he saw the skepticism entering her eyes. “Forever’s that kind of a town. People like helping their neighbors whenever they can.”

  He made it sound like a perfect place. She would have loved to believe him. But there was just one thing wrong with his assumption.

  “I’m not a neighbor,” she pointed out.

  His eyes continued to hold hers. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  Of course she was here, she thought. He knew that. “Yes, but—”

  Gabe cut in, stopping her right there. “People in Forever don’t need anything more than that. So—” a whimsical smile curved Gabe’s lips as he looked at her “—are you planning on staying down here until morning, or would you like to get up? Maybe lie down and get a little more sleep?” he suggested, nodding at the bed.

  She looked back at the bed she’d run from in her terrified, semiwakeful state and let out a ragged breath. “I don’t think I can sleep,” she told him.

  “Okay.” Rising to his feet, Gabe extended his hand to her. After a beat, she took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet. “I can make us some coffee,” he offered.

  For the first time, questions that had nothing to do with the past she couldn’t remember occurred to Angel. She looked around at her surroundings. “Is this your place?”

  He nodded, then apologized. “Sorry about the mess. I just moved here.”

  He’d tendered the explanation that, according to Alma, was getting a little frayed around the edges since he’d made absolutely no headway in organizing his things since the first day he brought them into the house. Cleaning had never been one of his attributes and most likely never would be, but for now, Angel didn’t need to know that about him.

  “Why here?” Angel asked.

  “Because the owner gave me a good deal on the place and I—”

  Angel shook her head. He’d misunderstood her question. Small wonder, she thought, since she’d only given him a snippet of what had occurred to her in her mind.

  “No, why did you bring me here?”

  “You fell asleep in the car on the way back. You looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to disturb you. I figured it was just easier to carry you into my house than go knocking on Alma’s or Miss Joan’s door to stay there.”

  She turned to look at him. His description of the events took her by surprise. “You carried me into the house?”

  He laughed. Why would that surprise her? Other than waking her up—which he was trying not to do—that had been his only option.

  “Well, my magic wand’s in the shop and dragging you from the car into the house by your hair just didn’t seem like the way to go, so yeah, I carried you,” he told her. “Why?”

  “No reason.” She didn’t want to tell him that the thought of his carrying her like some princess in a fairy tale seemed so incredibly sweet, not to mention romantic.

  It wasn’t until almost a minute later that she realized his words struck a faraway chord in the barren wasteland that comprised her mind. She tried to make it come closer, but couldn’t.

  Had someone carried her up the stairs before? Or was she just imagining it?

  “It just sounded…” Her voice trailed off for a moment before she concluded, “Familiar.”

  Gabe fought the urge to press, to ask her what else might have sounded familiar. That would have definitely been the wrong way to proceed. What she needed right now was to give herself time to heal, to relax, and maybe then she would remember something more.

  Until then, they both had to remain patient—most of all, he had to remain patient because as far as he was concerned, it was up to him to set the pace for her.

  So, reining in his curiosity, Gabe nodded and said, “Good. Something to build on later.” He emphasized the last word. “Now, would you like that cup of coffee?”

  Angel looked at the bed again. “No, maybe you’re right,” she allowed. “Maybe I should try to get some more sleep.”

  “Okay. Sounds good,” he agreed readily. Beginning to make his way toward the door, he said, “I’ll be just downstairs if you need me.” He pointed in the general direction of the door even as he started to walk out.

  “Gabe?”

  Something in her voice stopp
ed him and he turned from the door. “Yes?”

  “Would you…” She licked her lips, lips that suddenly seemed so very dry to her. “Would you…” She began again, only to have the words freeze in her throat. She felt awkward and uncomfortable about the request she wanted to make. A request to a man who’d virtually been a stranger to her less than a day ago.

  She had no right to ask this of him, Angel told herself.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was trying to say, Gabe thought. He could remember a time, when he was a very young boy, when he had been afraid of the dark. In a way, this was a little like that.

  “Would you like me to stay until you fall asleep?” he asked kindly.

  Relief instantly washed over her features. “Would you?”

  He felt something stir inside of him. That protective streak he was trying to ignore. She just seemed to keep bringing it out.

  “Sure.” As she lay down on the bed, Gabe sank down on the floor, his back against the bed. There was no chair in the room. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere, anyway,” he told her.

  She was more tired than she realized. And having him here allowed her to relax enough to sleep.

  “Gabe?”

  He could hear the drowsiness creeping into Angel’s voice. “Yes?”

  “I’m glad you were the one who saved me.”

  Her remark made him smile. “Yeah.” He laughed softly. “Considering that the alternative’s pretty gruesome.”

  He didn’t understand again, Angel realized hazily. “No, I’m glad you were the one who saved me,” she repeated with fading emphasis.

  Within a few moments, secure in Gabe’s presence that he would be there to ward off her demons, Angel fell asleep.

  An enigmatic smile played on his lips as Gabe twisted around and looked at her for a long moment.

  “Yeah,” he finally replied very quietly. “Me, too.”

  For a second, he thought about getting up and going downstairs, now that she was asleep. But if she woke up again and found herself alone, she might feel anxious or even threatened. He didn’t want to chance that.