A Forever Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Not really,” he told her. “Actually, it all seems very serious, at least to me.” Holding her to him, he gave in to the urge that he’d been wrestling with all the way home. He kissed her. Then, as he drew back his head again, he shook it, utterly mystified. “What the hell have you done to me, Angel?” Affection laced every word. “What kind of spells do they teach you to cast in your world?”

  She was incredibly content. Too content. And that worried her. She was afraid that something would happen to steal all of this away from her.

  But for tonight, she’d pretend that this would go on forever and that this was paradise.

  Because it was.

  She threaded her arms around his neck, savoring the moment. Savoring him.

  “The same kind they teach to cast in your world,” she answered quietly just before she pressed her lips against his.

  They got around to putting up the tree and decorating it a great deal later than Angel had initially anticipated.

  The delay was well worth it.

  * * *

  DESPITE THE FACT that only small bits and pieces of her previous life started to fall into place—she had a preference for Mexican food and was able to create minor miracles in the kitchen—Angel found that she was less and less focused on trying to remember the life she’d had before coming to Forever.

  That was largely because she was happy here, happy in a town that had accepted her so readily. And far more than just “happy” with the man who had come into her life, a man who continually placed her wants and needs above his own each and every time.

  For all intents and purposes, she’d been a clean slate when Gabe had rescued her. As the days slipped into one another, she felt the desire to find her past lessened bit by bit. If she never found out who she was or why she’d wound up here, well, that was all right, too. As long as she was allowed to remain here, with Gabe, for the rest of her life.

  She had an underlying fear of what any sort of “discovery” about her previous life would yield. Although she was inexplicably certain that she didn’t have a husband waiting for her somewhere, Angel began to suspect that if she did remember all those pertinent pieces of information about herself and her world, she wouldn’t be too happy with what that discovery would yield.

  So, banking down what she assumed was a natural strain of curiosity, Angel stopped asking Gabe if he’d found out anything when she saw him at the end of each day.

  Instead, she focused on the evening ahead, whether that involved just the two of them in his house, or visiting with his family, or just staying at Miss Joan’s diner after her shift was over, enjoying the company of the people she’d come to think of as her friends.

  * * *

  “HARD TO IMAGINE what it was like without her around, isn’t it?” Miss Joan commented to Gabe as Angel disappeared into the kitchen after volunteering to prepare dinner for one of her regular customers. The man had been unavoidably detained and looked genuinely disappointed when he realized he’d arrived too late for her to make his dinner. Taking off her jacket, Angel was quick to set his mind at rest as she headed back into the kitchen.

  She’d been touched by the man’s apparent disappointment so she’d told him to hang on and away she went to prepare his dinner, tossing a “you don’t mind, do you, Gabe?” over her shoulder.

  “No, I don’t mind,” he’d called after her, but he doubted if she’d heard.

  How could he stop her? Her selflessness was one of the things that made Angel Angel. And it was one of the reasons why he’d fallen in love with her.

  “Yeah,” Gabe heard himself admit, answering Miss Joan’s question.

  And it was true. He’d gone from zealously guarding his feelings to allowing others to see just how caught up he was in this woman.

  Damn, he’d sure come a long way from that man Erica had trampled. That man who, right after that, had sworn off any and all relationships for the next decade—if not longer.

  “Making any headway finding out her real name?” Miss Joan asked. Her voice had a mildly disinterested ring to it, but she wasn’t fooling him. The woman had ears like a bat and could listen to three different conversations at once. “The IT guy from County said he finally got rid of that virus that took all your systems down.”

  Gabe eyed the older woman. Everyone who lived in or passed through Forever wound up eating at the diner, and somewhere along the line they’d find themselves, quite unintentionally, baring their souls to Miss Joan. Gabe wasn’t too surprised that the woman knew something that only he and the other deputies in the sheriff’s office knew.

  “Not yet,” he told Miss Joan. “Up until now, Alma’s been combing through the files by hand, placing calls to other sheriffs’ offices and police stations. At first it was only within a hundred-mile radius, but then she expanded it somewhat when she didn’t get a positive response.”

  He’d found out that his sister had made up a small poster with Angel’s picture. She made sure it was mailed out to all the various offices.

  The process was painfully slow in comparison to what they’d become accustomed to, but in lieu of a functioning computer—each would shut down the moment the internet was accessed—that method had to suffice.

  Now, however, they had gotten back on track and things would move far more quickly again.

  If there was anywhere to move, Gabe silently qualified.

  On a personal level, though he knew it was selfish, he hoped that they would never find out who Angel actually was and where she belonged. She was his Angel and that was all that really mattered to him.

  But, as one of Forever’s deputies, he felt obligated to do whatever he could in order to get answers for Angel—or whatever her real name was.

  As if reading his mind, Miss Joan leaned her head closer to his and suggested, “Why don’t you let it go until after Christmas?”

  Not that he wasn’t sorely tempted, but that would be giving in to a personal whim. Gabe shook his head. “Wouldn’t be right.”

  To which, in response, Miss Joan shrugged her thin shoulders. “Oh, I don’t know. There’s ‘right,’ and then there’s right.”

  She walked away then, leaving him to contemplate the difference—and secretly wishing for the advent of another computer virus.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The police detective froze as the image of the young woman on the bulletin board he’d just passed registered with his brain.

  Stunned, he backtracked the few steps he’d taken and stared at the eight-by-ten photocopy secured onto the overfilled board with thumbtacks haphazardly stuck into two of its corners. The quality of the photograph wasn’t the best, but it was good enough to stop the breath in his lungs.

  That was her, it had to be.

  But how could it be?

  Dorothy was dead.

  There were three small, concise paragraphs on the sheet directly below the photograph. The first time he scanned them, not a single word penetrated his brain. Banking down his mounting agitation, he read the paragraphs again. And then a third time. Finally the fog around his brain began to release its hold. He could make out the words.

  The woman had been found in Forever, Texas. Whoever had sent out the poster was trying to find out who she was. Apparently the woman had been involved in an accident and had lost her memory.

  Yeah, right, he silently jeered.

  Anger, relief and disbelief all stampeded through him as he reread the words for yet a fourth time.

  Maybe it was true. Maybe Dorothy had lost her memory. He turned the idea over in his head. That meant a clean slate, a clean start.

  He smiled for the first time since the poster had caught his attention. If it was true, maybe this time she would get things right. There’d be no problems if she just got things right.

  He could bring her home and start over.

  A second chance.

  He nodded to himself as he took down the poster. Maybe it would work out, after all.

  Changing directio
n, he went in search of his lieutenant. He was going to need some time off to go down to Forever and bring her back.

  Forever.

  He laughed shortly under his breath. Had to be some little pimple of a town that undoubtedly housed a couple of hayseed families and a bar. He’d never heard of it before, but that didn’t matter. He’d find it. And bring her back.

  One way or another.

  * * *

  “SHE GOT YOU TO GET a Christmas tree, huh?” Alma asked her brother the second Gabe walked into the sheriff’s office the next morning.

  He was late and that wasn’t like him. Ordinarily she’d rag on him for that, but the Christmas tree purchase was just too good to pass up without a comment. That took front and center.

  Gabe could see that his sister had been all but bursting, waiting to spring the subject on him. That was Alma, all right. He supposed he should count himself lucky that his sister hadn’t called him in the middle of the night to laugh about the change he’d undergone since he’d saved Angel’s life.

  It seemed that by saving hers, he’d transformed his own.

  He did his best to look as if he was scowling at his sister. He and Angel had gone directly home with the tree, not stopping to talk to anyone. How the hell did Alma find out?

  “Who told you?” he asked.

  “I have my sources,” she informed him smugly.

  “Mona saw you when she was coming home after paying Ed Sawyer’s colicky mare a visit,” Joe Lone Wolf told him matter-of-factly in his monotone voice. Gabe turned around to look at the sheriff’s brother-in-law. Joe shrugged, as if the outcome had been predestined and inevitable. “She told me, I told Alma.”

  Gabe sighed. He should have known that nothing remained secret or private in Forever. Some things just took longer to get around than others. But they all got around eventually.

  He shrugged as he sat down with the coffee he’d gotten at Miss Joan’s when he’d dropped Angel off. It was still steaming.

  “No big deal,” he told his sister with an indifferent shrug. Removing the lid, he tossed it into the wastebasket. He figured the coffee wasn’t going to last him long enough to require being covered again.

  “No big deal?” Alma echoed, getting up and crossing to his desk. “When I asked you at Thanksgiving if you needed any help in picking out a Christmas tree for your new place, you gave me a ten-minute speech about ‘not needing any commercial trappings’ to remind you what holiday to celebrate.” Making no effort to suppress the grin on her lips, she pinned him down with a penetrating look. “As I recall, you were pretty adamant.”

  Gabe took a long sip of his coffee as he looked away. “So I changed my mind,” he said with a touch of impatience. “It happens.”

  Alma’s grin turned into an utterly enigmatic smile. “Yes, it seems that it certainly does.”

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it,” he warned her.

  “Okay,” Alma agreed. “No big deal.” She pinned him with a look. “Does that mean you don’t care if I got any responses to that poster of Angel I sent out?”

  He hadn’t thought he could switch from being seemingly casual to a man on tactical alert in under a second, but he could and he did.

  “Did you?” he demanded sharply.

  “Then you do care,” Alma concluded.

  “Alma, give me a straight answer to my question or so help me…”

  When his voice trailed off, she jumped right in. “So help you what? Help you level with your sister?” Alma suggested.

  Joe rose, unfolding his lanky torso. “I think I’ll look in on Ben, see how our resident town drunk is doing this morning,” Joe said to no one in particular.

  “See if he’s sober and ready to go back to his wife,” Alma called after Joe’s departing back.

  “It’s either one or the other. If he’s sober, he won’t be ready to go back to his wife,” Joe pointed out without turning around.

  Turning back to her brother, she coaxed, “Why don’t you just admit that Angel’s gotten to you? After all, she’s beautiful, bright, cooks up a storm and anyone with eyes can see that she’s just crazy about you.” Alma rested her case. “In short, she’s everything I ever wanted for you.”

  “Fine, ‘Mom.’” He deliberately inclined his head submissively, although he did manage to keep the sarcasm down. “She’s gotten to me. Now answer the question. Has anyone called about the poster?”

  Alma dropped her teasing attitude and shook her head.

  “Not so far, no.” She felt obligated to add a coda to that. “The posters probably got lost in the shuffle.”

  “Most people don’t pay that much attention to something that comes via snail mail these days,” the sheriff commented.

  Brother and sister turned to look toward Rick’s office. Their boss was standing outside the doorway, nursing what amounted to his third cup of hot tar.

  “How long have you been standing there?” Alma asked.

  Though Rick was generally affable, Alma was the only one in the office who ever challenged him or acted as if they were basically on the same level. She’d been with the sheriff’s department the longest length of time and figured that put her on close to equal footing with Rick.

  “Long enough to decide that there isn’t a brother and sister on earth who don’t argue,” Rick replied, a half smile on his lips. “So, no takers for our amnesia victim?” he asked, looking to confirm what he’d overheard.

  “None,” she replied. “And I haven’t found any matches to missing persons files since our system came back up yesterday,” she added.

  “Would be nice to tell ‘Angel’ who she really is by Christmas,” Rick speculated.

  Alma exchanged glances with her brother. “Maybe Angel doesn’t want to know who she is,” Alma suggested.

  Had Angel said something to Alma? Gabe wondered. “What makes you say that?” he asked suspiciously.

  Alma shrugged. “Just a gut feeling,” she admitted. “I figure if it really mattered so much to her, she would have been pushing us to try harder.”

  “Meaning what?” Gabe asked. Was she suggesting that Angel wanted to cover something up?

  “Down, Gabe. I meant no disrespect here. It’s just that maybe, on some level, she’s afraid that she won’t want to find out who she is. Maybe, when you found her, she was already running from something.”

  Gabe had his own theories on that. He snorted. “Most likely whoever it was who left those fatal notches on her brake lines.”

  Rick nodded, agreeing. “Sounds like a good theory to me. Too bad the sedan was so badly damaged. There might have been a decent set of prints or two we could have lifted.”

  Gabe nodded, but his mind had raced ahead and was now elsewhere. What if someone did recognize her from that photocopy Alma had sent out? How was he going to be able to determine that whoever came looking for Angel wasn’t the guy who’d obviously set out to kill her?

  He frowned. “Really wish you hadn’t sent out that poster, Alma.”

  “We had to do something,” she pointed out defensively. “Can’t just hang back and let her go on wondering who she is for the rest of her life.”

  What Alma said was true enough on the surface, but what if what Angel found out was something she would have rather left buried in the recess of her mind? He’d be doing her no favors by digging all that up.

  Just then, a loud noise erupted from the rear of the building where their jail cells were located. Stunned, all three law enforcement officers quickly made their way to the back where they discovered Ben Walker, the man known affectionately as one of Forever’s two resident drunks, was standing on his cot, looking properly terrified by the slip of a woman standing on the other side of the cell’s bars, shouting at him to stop acting like the state’s biggest ass and the greatest disappointment of her life. The sentiment was reinforced and peppered with a great many blue words.

  “Now, Eleanor, you know I’m going to have to fine you for all those cuss words coming out of th
at genteel mouth of yours,” Rick told the woman mildly. Glancing toward his brother-in-law, he asked, “How much is Eleanor up to now, Joe?”

  Joe paused for a second to calculate, then answered, “Twenty-five dollars by last count.”

  “Well, it’s all worth it,” Eleanor declared with a toss of her dyed flaming-red hair. “You’d cuss, too, if you had to be married to that poor excuse for a man,” she informed the sheriff, gesturing dismissively at her husband.

  Rick took hold of the woman’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Eleanor, it’s almost Christmas and in the spirit of the season, I’m going to forget about your fine—but I want you to practice a little of that Christian charity you’re so famous for and give your husband another chance.”

  “Another chance?” she echoed incredulously. “I’ve already given him another chance. I’ve given him a dozen extra chances—”

  “Then it shouldn’t be all that hard to give him one more,” Rick said amiably. There was resistance in the woman’s rounded face. “Do it as a favor to the rest of us,” he coaxed.

  Eleanor Walker, who had at one point in time been considered to be quite stunning, sighed dramatically. Twice. And then she shrugged in surrender, mumbling, “All right, but only for you, Sheriff.”

  “Thank you, Eleanor. Can’t ask for anything better than that.” Rick looked pointedly at the man still standing on his cot, eyeing his wife fearfully. It made for a ludicrous scene, seeing as how Ben was twice his wife’s size. “And you, Ben, I want you to promise not to touch a drop of anything with alcohol in it for the next thirty days—”

  “Thirty days!” Eleanor cried, outraged that the time limit was so short.

  “Thirty days?” Ben lamented at the same time. The expression on his face clearly indicating that he viewed thirty days to be close to an eternity.

  “Thirty days,” Rick repeated. “Otherwise, I’m locking you both up—in the same cell.” Inserting his key in the lock of his prisoner’s door, he looked from husband to wife, then back again, waiting. “So is it a deal?” he asked.

  Having no choice, Ben nodded sheepishly. “It’s a deal.”