Archangel Rafe (A Novel of The Seven Book 1) (2 page)

Her granddaughter was next in line. She was perfect. Hopefully she’d have that same strength of spirit that infused her grandmother’s every breath. It would be quick and easy. He could move on to the Second Sphere and leave the administration of healing on Earth to the new Archangel Healer. Then he wouldn’t have to spend any more appreciable time in the Earthly Realm or deal with humans.

The sooner he started, the sooner he’d be finished.

“An excellent choice.” But when Victor smiled, showing a lot of teeth and very little pleasure, Rafe wondered if he was screwed.

TWO

“I’m having night sweats,” Angelina Guerisse announced to her sister, Janine. And the dream that preceded them was the same every time.

Every single freaking time. She really wanted to use the F-bomb, but she was a firm believer in practicing what she preached and she was trying to get her fifteen-year-old son to stop swearing so much.

“Oh Ange, sounds like the change.” Delicately, Janine lifted the swizzle out of the glass, her French manicure acrylics, shiny and perfect in the accent lighting of the hottest new singles spot for the over forty set, and executed one long swipe of her tongue over an olive.

“The
change
?” Angelina snorted. “You sound like Grammy.”

“The change, change of life, menopause, The Big M.” Janine sucked down a dirty martini, her collagen-enhanced lips perfectly outlined and slicked shiny in a shade of bold red that matched her toenails and her Prada bag. “It sucks.”

“Is there a reason you’re treating that olive as if it were attached to a penis?”

Janine practically shimmied in her seat, and surreptitiously eased her shoulders back. Somehow, with that one small move, her saline-enhanced breasts stuck out just a little bit more. “Eleven o’clock is a hottie.”

Angelina started to shift.

“Don’t look straight at him,” Janine hissed, and nothing on her face moved more than a millimeter.

Angelina stroked the tiny sun spot, the shape like a target symbol with three circles that had recently appeared on the inside of her right wrist. “I may be old but I’m not stupid, Janine.”

“He’s been checking out our table for the last twenty minutes.” Janine patted her hand gently. “And you’re not old. Look at me, fifty is the new forty, darling.”

Why did she let herself be put through this every Tuesday night? Janine was on the hunt for a new husband. Angelina could have told Janine she wouldn’t find him here but she didn’t have the heart. And after all, what did she know? Wasn’t she almost divorced herself?

Her sister was lonely. She wanted a companion. The Guerisse women did not have good luck with men. She wanted to ask why Janine tortured herself like this every week but she kept her mouth shut.

“Do you think he’s looking at me or you?” Janine asked.

There was no way in hel...eck he was checking Angelina out. She looked more like Janine’s spinster aunt than her younger sister. And it showed. Angelina knew it. So did Janine, although she was far too sensitive to mention the demise of Angelina’s appearance. Janine just tried to drag her to the plastic surgeon every chance she could.

As if Retin-A, saline and Botox could magically morph Angelina back into an attractive woman. The problem was she didn’t feel attractive. She felt old, used up, and discarded by the roadside like a wadded up wrapper from McDonald’s.

“He’s looking at you.” Angelina was way too young for him. “I’m too young to be starting menopause,” she quietly wailed.

A tuxedoed piano player trilled an intricate opening on the baby grand while no one listened, the music layered over the muted flirting and discreet drinking as desperate people got quietly loaded.

Janine took a healthy sip of martini, swallowed sultrily. She gave the guy an eye-popping profile. “Tell me about the dream.”

“How’d you know I dreamed?”

“Everyone dreams. It’s just a matter of whether you remember or not.” Janine aimed her laser focus at Angelina. Angelina figured she had ten minutes tops before he made his way over to them and she ended up driving home by herself. Again.

Frankly, Angelina hated these girls’ night out. She loved Janine. But going out with her emphasized where Angelina would likely be two years into her divorce, if she followed in the footsteps of her sister and friends, primped, primed and prowling for action. Just the idea of adding ‘find a man’ to her to-do list was daunting.

“Come on, give.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to share the dream but it was starting to freak her out. “I’m in a really hot place. It’s a white background all misty and sort of like I’m looking through chiffon. But it’s hot, my skin seems to sizzle and the air stings, you know how when the temp hits 105 and then you get in the hot pool and everything is hyper-sensitive?”

“Hell?”

“How should I know?” That wasn’t the part that freaked her out. She barely paid attention to the background. “I’m naked. But....” Not embarrassed about it.

“But what?”

“Like I look now.” Before Gary’s infidelity, she could have given Janine a run for her money even without the cosmetic enhancements. Now, she wouldn’t even be caught dead in a one-piece swimsuit, and Spanx was her new best friend.

“So far, so good.” Janine grinned wickedly. “Any sex?”

Heat flooded through her, as if she were right in the middle of one of the damn dreams. Her face felt like she’d spent too long at the pool and forgotten sunscreen. “Uh, yeah.”

“Give me details.”

“It’s always the same,” she whispered. The guy was gorgeous. Wasn’t that the way of dreams? “He’s tall, at least six-five. Lots of muscles, but not bulging, more sleek and solid. He’s dark. And he has the most beautiful, tortured--”

“Get to the good part.” Janine sucked the swizzle between her lips, never forgetting that she was putting on a show for the guy in the corner. “Is he naked too?”

“Eyes. He has the most beautiful, tortured eyes. All smoke and--”

Janine gave her the death stare.

Angelina relented. “Yes, he’s naked too.”

And the things he did to her, to her body, were sinful and decadent and reverent all at the same time.

“It’s pretty one-sided.”

“Does he screw you blind?”

She squirmed in her seat. Arousal flooded parts that hadn’t seen a man in months. “No. We don’t get that far.”

“Well, damn.”

“He just...worships me, over and over with his hands and his mouth.” Eyes closed in reverence. Of course, she didn’t know why she thought he was being reverent. It was weird. She knew she was dreaming, remembered when she woke up. She never remembered her dreams. “Until he’s just about to...you know.”

“Jesus, Ange, it’s a wonder you ever had children.”

She ignored Janine, caught up in the sheer eroticism of the memory. The slick glide of his tongue along the inside of her thigh, the slightly rough skim of his fingertips along her breasts before he molded and cupped, the brush of his hair against her collarbone as he closed his mouth over her nipple, the wiry curls and heavy, solid weight of his sex against her softer, swollen and ready body. The heady scent of ancient herbs smoldered in the air. The whole experience was extremely sensual and erotic, right until he opened his eyes.

He presses a kiss to the sunspot and bolts of fire shoot through her body. And then....

“He opens his eyes and he looks down at me with sheer horror, as if he’s committed the most grievous sin on earth, in heaven or hell...and then I wake up, sweating like a pig.”

And I think, great, even a dream guy doesn’t want me.

“That’s just what that prick Gary did to you, honey. You’ll get over it. You need to find someone else. Someone to replace the dream and Gary and then you’ll feel better.” Janine frowned as much as she could with the botulism toxin freezing her forehead. “You don’t want to be lonely.”

She was wrong. That was exactly what Angelina wanted. To be alone. She had too many responsibilities as it was. The care and feeding of a man would be just one more.

Janine offered up her target du jour for her. “You want eleven o’clock?”

“No.” Angelina hesitated. “You don’t want him either. You need someone who wants you, not just your looks.”

Janine pulled back into herself.

“Thank you, though.” That’s what Janine didn’t get. Angelina didn’t want some anonymous face and body. She didn’t want anybody except maybe the dream guy.

“Forget the dream. You need a real man.”

Angelina looked around. “The guy in my dream isn’t real either. I mean, he really isn’t a guy.”

“What?” Her perfectly shadowed eyes rounded. “What’s that mean, it’s a woman?”

“No! Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But....” Angelina eyed the scant distance between tables and hoped no one was actually eavesdropping on their conversation, knowing she was crazy. She had to be. She rubbed the spot with her thumb. “He’s got wings.”

“Like an airplane?”

“Like an angel,” she whispered.

THREE

“I’m wearing this and you can’t stop me.” Lina practically stomped her foot.

Angelina’s head throbbed. Pain stabbed through her right eye in unrelenting spears, and threatened to split her entire brain in half, which if she were lucky, would kill her instantly.
If I were dead I wouldn’t have to listen to Lina defy me every chance she got.

They used to have the most wonderful relationship. Close, loving, open. Lina would tell her all sorts of things. Innocent things. Who went out with who. Whether they actually talked to each other or just exchanged texts. When they first hugged. Angelina had been the envy of her friends because she had more inside scoop on the middle school goings on than anyone else.

Now Lina wanted to go to her first high school dance in a very short, strapless dress and a very thin thong. So not happening.

Angelina sat on Lina’s ruffled white eyelet bedspread. Her make-up bag jumbled together with stuffed Sesame Street toys and her look-alike American Girl doll. With a sense of total bewilderment Angelina wondered how Lina had gone from innocent to sexual in such a short time.

“Angelina Paulina, I love you,” she said in warning. “But, not in that outfit.”

“Angelina Jolie.” Lina spat, “You can’t stop me.”

She and the famous Angelina Jolie only had one thing in common. A name.

The famous one had six kids and an adoring husband and a French chateau. She had two kids, an asshole almost ex-, and a giant mortgage she couldn’t afford.

Wonder if Grammy would have christened her Angelina Jolie if she’d known the case of envy the name would inspire.

Her grandma had named her, christening her Angelina Jolie Guerisse. It was a little weird but in her family, the tradition was that the reigning matriarch named the girl children. Grammy had named her daughter as well, which had not gone over well with her, soon to be, ex-husband.

All those years of playing God and thinking his word was ultimate and suddenly little ole Grammy Angel butted her nose into the hospital room, took one look at their precious daughter and christened her Angelina Marie. He’d thrown a hissy fit of monumental proportions. Perhaps that should have been Angelina’s first clue that they weren’t going to spend the rest of their lives together.

“Dad would let me.”

Only if Lina loaned the dress to his girlfriend first.

Oops. Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy. True. Sadly. But that didn’t matter to Lina, she just wanted to dig on her mother.

When had their relationship changed from pals to adversaries? And where had her sweet, beautiful daughter disappeared to? Gone were the days where Angelina could distract her daughter with a shiny toy to stave off a tantrum.

“Let’s compromise,” Angelina wheedled, not up to another fight about another thing today. Wasn’t she entitled to one break?

She and Gary had compromised on Lina’s middle name, Paulina, after his own mother. Who named their kid, Angelina Paulina? The rhythm was all wrong. Another indicator perhaps of a man too self-absorbed and self-involved? Too bad she didn’t figure it out fourteen years ago when Lina was born and save herself a lot of heartache.

Well it was all water under the bridge now. Or at least it would be soon.

“How are we going to compromise?” Lina asked suspiciously.

“Leggings,” Angelina said, desperate to stop her daughter from crossing the line into slutsville. “Thin leggings.”

Angelina hoped she’d agree. Lina was right. Gary would let her wear the dress. But Gary was too caught up with his new girlfriend to pay attention to what their teenagers were doing these days.

A few years ago, the thought that her fourteen-year-old daughter might be having more sex than her was inconceivable. Now, sadly, it was entirely possible. Truthfully, she couldn’t face being a divorced grandma so she stuffed some condoms in Lina’s purse and hoped for the best.

“Fine.” Lina pulled out a pair from her drawer that matched perfectly, so it was possible she’d planned to wear leggings all along.

Angelina sighed. One crisis down, a hundred more to go.

All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and lose herself in sleep, in dreams. Lose herself in the one place where no one wanted to change her, no one wanted to desert her, no one wanted to argue with her just for the sake of arguing, where she had no responsibility, where she was worshiped by her very own angel.

Was it bedtime yet?

***

Just walking through the automatic doors to the nursing home brought Angelina down. The walls were supposed to be a soothing blue but the pall that coated the place turned everything gray. That hospital-y, medicinal smell permeated every single molecule of air in the extended living facility, and sucked the vitality from anyone who dared enter.

Grammy had been a vibrant, vital force in her life, always present, always engaged. She had raised Angelina and Janine after their mother took off. And every freaking time she stepped into this place, Angelina cursed the inefficiency of Grammy’s mind and the strength of her body. It made Angelina’s heart hurt that Grammy was reduced to this mere subsistence. An institution. A holding cell, waiting for death. Angelina shrugged off the sadness. Her thoughts were unfair. The staff at the senior home was excellent. They truly cared about the people who lived here and they were on top of the medical needs of their patients.