by Peggy Webb
Touched by Angels
by Peggy Webb
Copyright
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Peggy Webb
Cover design copyright 2011 Pat Ryan Graphics
Publishing History/ Bantam Books, 1992
All rights reserved. Copyright 1992 by Peggy Webb.
In memory of Cooper, who touched all our lives and gave us a glimpse of angels.
Chapter One
The child came out of nowhere.
One minute Jake Townsend was racing down the highway, taking the curves too fast, tempting fate to spare him one more time, and the next minute he was swerving toward the ditch. Dirt and gravel spewed up. hitting his helmet like sudden summer hail. His motorcycle tilted at a crazy angle.
He swore loudly, wrestling with his machine in a life-and-death struggle. The motorcycle came to a bone-jarring stop in the ditch.
Jake jumped free and ran toward the child. She was standing in the middle of the road, sucking her thumb and observing him with enormous eyes. Blue eyes. Bonnie's eyes. Jake froze. The blue eyes regarded him, unblinking. His heart started beating so hard, he nearly lost his breath.
"Bonnie?" he whispered, knowing she wouldn't answer, knowing she could never answer.
The child pulled her thumb from her mouth. It made a soft popping sound.
Jake broke out in a sweat. He passed his hand over
his face. His legs wouldn't move. He was caught in a time warp, trapped in the middle of the dusty road with the blue-eyed child.
Suddenly he heard the car bearing down on them with engine roaring. Jake's paralysis vanished. In one quick motion he grabbed the child and raced to the other side of the road. Dust settled over them as the car whizzed by.
His heart was pumping so hard, he could hear the mad rush of blood in his ears. His legs felt weak.
He looked at the child in his arms. "Oh Lord. I've saved you. Bonnie, I've saved you." He pressed his face to the child's hair. One soft curl clung to his cheek. The morning sun burnished it gold.
Jake's heartbeat slowed and his breathing returned to normal. The child was not Bonnie at all. Bonnie's hair had been dark, almost as dark as his own.
"It's all right, sweetheart," he crooned. "Everything is all right now. You're safe."
The child didn’t appear at all frightened. She merely sat in his arms and regarded him with her placid blue eyes.
"What's your name, darling?" Jake asked. But she didn't answer. Maybe she was scared after all, he thought. She looked about four years old. Most four-year-olds told their names when asked. Jake tried again. "Mommy? Where's Mommy?"
"JENNY! JENNY!" The female voice came from behind them.
"I guess that answers my last question." He turned around, still holding on to the unflappable Jenny. The woman racing toward him looked as if she had come straight from combat in a hot and dusty country. Her jeans were grimy, her white blouse was no longer anything to brag about, and her hair straggled from its ponytail. She might have been pretty if she were cleaned up. He couldn’t tell. And at the moment he didn't care.
"Is this your child?"
She didn't answer. Instead she plucked the little girl from his arms and cuddled her close. Tears streaked through the dust on her cheeks.
"Jenny," she murmured over and over, "Jenny, my Jenny."
"She's safe," Jake said gently. "Don't worry, she's safe now."
"When I discovered her missing, I was terrified." The mother looked at him with eyes as blue as her child's.
There was something so wise and beautiful about those eyes that Jake wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her. An image of himself as comforter and protector rose up in his mind, and for one glorious golden moment Jake felt human. Warmth and compassion flowed through him, thawing the iceberg that encased his heart. But the moment was fleeting. Caring too much was hell. He'd been there once; he didn't plan to go again.
Jenny and her mother tugged at his heart. There's danger here, Jake's mind whispered. He turned away from mother and child—so much temptation, so many memories—and started across the road.
"Wait. I don't even know your name," the woman called after him.
His first instinct was to keep on going. But something made him turn around.
"It's not necessary for you to know my name. We won't be seeing each other again." He would make damned sure of that. He had enough ghosts in his dreams. He didn't want them haunting his waking hours as well.
"I don't blame you for being cross. I'm not a bad mother." Jenny's mother got fresh tears in her eyes. "It's just that sometimes Jenny gets away. She's . . The woman paused, biting her lower lip. ". . . just Jenny."
Jake could never hold firm in the face of a woman's tears. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.
"Don’t cry. Everything is okay now."
The woman sniffled into the handkerchief while Jenny patted her face. Suddenly the child turned to Jake.
"Mommy sad." There was a faraway quality to Jenny's voice, as if she were bending down from some distant cloud to speak to him.
Jake found himself wondering about mother and child. Who were they? Where had they come from? He had grown up in Florence, Alabama. The house behind them had been vacant for the last five years. It was so old and ramshackle; the local kids used it for a ghost house on Halloween.
"I'm Sarah Love, and this is my daughter, Jenny." The woman extended her hand.
Jake was taken aback, as if she had read his mind. He hesitated for a moment then took her hand. It was soft and smooth, but not at all fragile. There was strength and firmness in Sarah Love's grip. Strength and firmness and a willingness to be friends.
He didn't want to be friends with Sarah Love. He didn't want to know whether she would be merely pretty or simply beautiful in a blue dress that matched her eyes. He didn't want to know whether the rosy glow showing through ail the dirt on her face was natural or the result of clever cosmetics.
"I owe you a tremendous debt of thanks," the woman said, smiling through her tears. "You saved Jenny's life."
"You owe me nothing." Jake released her hand. He intended to go quickly, but the child suddenly reached toward him, smiling. Jenny's smile turned his heart upside down. Her dimpled hand waved in the air, and before he knew what he was doing, he had reached for it. It was as light as a dandelion.
"Nice man," Jenny said.
Jake hadn't been nice in six years. Nevertheless he stood by the roadside holding on to Jenny's hand, feeling as if he had just received the Nice Man of the Year award. He fancied that if he looked into the mirror, he might actually see a man who had a heart. He knew that wasn't so, of course. Most people called him cold and many went so far as to call him a heartless bastard. Women, of course, were a different matter. They called him other names, pet names, mainly on the telephone. They called in droves, begging to comfort and soothe him and make him forget. He took their comfort and their soothing, but he never forgot.
And now Jenny was offering comfort. But she was a different matter. She had Bonnie's blue eyes.
"And you're a nice little girl," he said, bending over like a knight in King Arthur's court and pressing a kiss on Jenny's hand. She giggled. Then, feeling a bit foolish, he released her and gave her mother a stern look. "Take care of this child, Sarah Love."
He left quickly before she could reply. He'd had enough of niceness and chivalry for one morning. He climbed onto his motorcycle and revved it to life. He thought he heard Sarah Love's voice over the engine, but he didn't turn off the machine. Nor did he strain his ears to hear. As far as he was concerned, Sarah and Jenny Love were a part of his past, something unexpected that had happened to him on a fine summer morning.
He wa
s careful not to spin out as he drove off in case mother and child were still standing beside the road. He didn't want to send rocks spewing their way. Dust billowed behind him as he raced down the road.
Sarah stood in the dust watching him go. Jenny wiggled in her arms, wanting to get down.
"He didn't even tell me his name," she whispered.
"Nice man," Jenny said.
"Yes, my darling. He was a very nice man." And he saved your life, she thought, but she didn't say it aloud. Jenny would not have understood, just as she hadn't understood the danger of wandering into the middle of the road. She was too young to know about life and death and danger.
o0o
Sarah took one last look down the road, then set Jenny on her feet and took her hand.
"Let's go back inside, Jenny. We have a lot of unpacking to do."
She led her daughter up the cracked sidewalk to the house she preferred to call "full of character" rather than dilapidated. With a fresh coat of paint and a thorough cleaning, it would be almost as good as new. She had been lucky to find it at such a good price. Her income was modest, and her child support payments were barely enough to pay for Jenny's clothes and schooling, let alone a fancy house.
Not that Sarah wanted to complain. Far from it. She had Jenny. And that was all that mattered.
The old screen door squeaked shut behind them. This time Sarah made sure it was latched. Jenny went straight to her toy box with her solemn dignified gait, then turned to smile at her mother as if to say, "What was all the fuss about?"
For a moment Sarah leaned her head against the door frame and closed her eyes. Suddenly she felt very much alone and totally inadequate to the task of raising Jenny.
"Damn you, Bobby Wayne Love," she whispered. "Damn your selfish hide." The accusation, directed at her ex-husband, who was probably kicked back in a swivel chair in a car dealership somewhere in south Georgia, made her feel better. That's where the last few child support checks had come from, south Georgia; and Bobby Wayne had always been able to get a job selling. He was a smooth, fast talking man who could sell anything, including the notion that he would love Sarah Henley for better or for worse.
He hadn't survived the worst. Six months after Jenny's birth he had left. "I just can't cope," he had said.
Well, not only could Sarah cope, she could triumph. She straightened her shoulders and picked up her dust mop. She had a house to clean.
o0o
Jake pushed himself and his employees, confirming his reputation as a heartless machine. He strode through the Townsend Building like a hungry panther, growling orders here, changing magazine layouts there, sending employees scurrying on dozens of last-minute errands, driving himself until he was too exhausted to remember a pair of guileless blue eyes. And if he had been asked, he couldn't have told whether he was remembering Jenny's eyes or her mother's, the wise blue eyes of Sarah Love.
By late afternoon he knew he had to go back. He had to see for himself if Sarah and Jenny Love were all that he remembered.
He punched the intercom on his desk and paged his secretary. "Gwendolyn, will you come in here?"
When he called, Gwendolyn Phepps didn’t waste time. She bustled into the office, glaring at him. Jake hid his smile. Gwendolyn was the only person at Townsend Publishing who was not afraid of him. She bullied him and he bullied her. Both of them loved it. And both of them pretended it was deadly serious.
"What took you so long, Gwendolyn?"
"It's Miss Phepps to you, Jake. And if you want somebody on roller skates, just say so, and I’ll shag my fanny out of here so fast, you won't see a thing except my dust. Now, dammit, what do you want?"
"You need to clean up your language. Miss Phepps. We're a serious publishing business around here."
"If we're all that serious, how come you wear ratty old blue jeans and shirts I wouldn't use for my dog's bedding and go squirting around on that motorcycle like a mad dog straight from hell?"
"You need to study syntax."
"You need to study manners."
Jake always let her have the last word. It was part of an unspoken pact between them. He twirled his gold pen between his fingers, watching it catch the late afternoon sunlight streaming through his sixth- floor office window.
Gwendolyn melted into an easy chair like butter on a hot bun. spreading her skirt around her enormous bulk. She looked totally relaxed. Jake wasn't fooled. Gwendolyn Phepps had the sharpness and energy of a rocket programmed to go to the moon.
"I don't have all day, you know," she reminded him.
"I'm thinking of ordering a rose," he said.
"A rose? You never order a rose. You always order orchids. And then never less than two dozen."
"This is different."
"How different?" He didn’t answer. "One rose," she continued. "It sounds personal to me, like you might finally be planning to join the land of the living."
"Gwendolyn, don’t push your luck."
"No, sir." She saluted.
Jake twirled his pen again, watching the reflection of sunlight on his desk top and thinking of bright golden hair.
"Make it yellow," he said.
"What shall I put on the card?"
Jake mused awhile longer. He thought of Sarah Love with smudges on her rosy face. Of course, Sarah wasn’t his concern. The child was the one he had scared half to death. "For Jenny," he said.
"Where shall I have the flower sent?"
"You know that old house on the edge of town? The one that's been vacant for so long?"
"Yes ..." Gwendolyn bent her head over her pad as she wrote.
Jake imagined the delivery boy carrying the florist's box to the sagging old house. He imagined the look of surprise on Sarah Love's face. And Jenny . . . He couldn't imagine her reaction. She was unpredictable. Suddenly he wanted to see her reaction; he wanted to watch that angel's face as she caught her first glimpse of the yellow rose, just for her.
"Never mind," he said. "Just send it here."
Gwendolyn opened her mouth to comment, but Jake stood up and banged his palm on the desk. "Not another word, or I’ll have you coated with peanut butter and hung out for the birds."
Jake decided to dress for the occasion. Though he generally stuck to jeans and comfortable clothes, except when he escorted one of the town's elegant beauties to a function that demanded formal clothes, he kept a wardrobe of suits and white shirts and proper ties at Townsend Publishing for those times when he needed to give the impression of being a conservative businessman whose only flash of the radical was an occasional fondness for wild ties. He also decided to drive his staid and steady Buick, parked in the company garage. He was afraid the motorcycle might bring back bad memories for the child.
He even caught himself whistling along with the radio once as he maneuvered the big car out of town; though why he should be so cheerful about calling on Jenny, he couldn’t say. Nor could he fathom why he observed the speed limits—a first for him.
The gate leading up to the house was firmly padlocked, so he parked the car by the side of the road. Not that it would have done any good to enter the gate: There was nothing but a path of weeds leading up to a garage that no longer had a roof. If Sarah Love had a car, she kept it hidden somewhere. Maybe her husband had driven it to work.
Jake realized he had never considered the possibility that Sarah Love might have a husband. He clutched his yellow rose while the dust settled on his white shirt, and speculated about the husband. He was probably somebody squat and square with a beer belly. Maybe he even chewed tobacco. Not that any of it mattered, of course. He hadn’t come to see Sarah: he had come to see Jenny.
Tucking the rose under his arm, Jake climbed the fence. Though he hadn’t climbed a fence in years, he still remembered how. When he was growing up, it had been a handy means of escape from the Townsend Mansion.
The sagging wooden steps creaked as he mounted them and rang the doorbell. There was no answer, no smiling face of Sarah Love, no patter
of feet, no soft scurrying sounds or surreptitious straightening of furniture. Jake was undaunted. He had come to deliver a rose, and by George he was going to deliver it.
He left the porch and walked toward the backyard. Sarah was somewhere on the premises. Jake could sense her presence. All his senses were tingling, as if they were plugged into an electrical socket.
"Run, you fool," he muttered to himself. "Leave while there's still time."
He ignored his own warnings. Weeds pulled at his pants as he walked. Cockleburs caught in his socks. A lizard slithered over his shoes.
Unexpectedly he came upon them, Jenny and Sarah Love, sitting at a child's table in the middle of a weed patch, sipping from chipped china cups. They were having a tea party and had even dressed for the occasion. Jenny wore a white dress with a pink satin sash. A large bow, sagging slightly, held her wispy blond hair in place.
But it wasn't Jenny who held his attention: It was Sarah. No longer did she look as if she had come from an extended tour of duty in the desert. She wore a soft gauzy dress the color of ripe peaches. Her hair and skin shone as if they had been rubbed down with moon dust. And her face . . . Jake got lost in the contemplation of Sarah Love's face. It was heart- shaped, the features as delicate and rosy as if they had been sculpted from summer flowers. It was the kind of face men wrote poems about.
Watching them, he held his breath, unaware that he was squeezing the stem of the rose. He had come to a tumbledown house and stumbled into paradise. Sarah was smiling, and Jenny's laughter pealed on the warm summer air. Jake felt like an interloper, a stranger who had no business witnessing such innocent joy.
Once he had known the joy, heard the laughter, felt the warmth of a smile just for him. But he had destroyed the source, forfeited all rights. Watching the two at their private tea party, he felt like a thief.
Sarah's smile caught at his heart once more. He squeezed the rose and took a deep breath, forcing himself back in control.
He had merely come to deliver a flower. That was all. He decided to do it quickly before he took leave of his senses altogether.
