Midwinter Magic (4 page)

He shook his head, grinning. “I don’t trust. You’ll have to prove yourself.”

He cranked up the radio, letting the opening riffs engulf them like a tidal wave. Now what would she do? Either she’d gotten her shirt at a thrift shop, or she would at least know the chorus. Bonus points if she—

Sarah’s voice blended perfectly with Vince Neil’s from the very first syllable.

Jack couldn’t hide his surprise. Sure, this was a song people of a certain age had
heard
of, and vaguely remembered roller-skating to. But it was no “Hotel California.” Only someone who
liked
Mötley Crüe would bother memorizing these lyrics.

Someone like him.

Hands on the wheel and eyes facing forward, he opened his mouth and sang along with her. He expected his off-key caterwaul to immediately ruin the moment. There was a reason he only sang in the shower and the car, when no one was around to overhear.

But Sarah didn’t even pause. If she noticed anything unmelodic about his voice, she gave no outward sign. Instead, she leaned forward and turned the dash into an impromptu drum kit, pounding along with the rhythm and ending the set by twirling an imaginary drumstick and flinging it in his direction.

He caught it and flung it right back. She pretended to catch it in her teeth and spit it on the floor between them. He cracked up. The music was too loud to even discern the sound of his laughter. It took him an extra beat to realize that he and pretty, kooky Sarah Phimm were drumming beats and clowning to hair metal as if they’d known each other all their lives.

She’d made him laugh. Actually
laugh
. For the first time since. . . the hearing.

Jack swallowed. Had it really been that long since he’d laughed? He’d assumed he’d lost all his friends because they’d never really been his friends to begin with. But maybe they weren’t the only ones who had changed.

He’d been fun once, hadn’t he? When was the last time he’d played air drums or felt completely unself-conscious in front of another person?

Probably not since high school.

He gripped the wheel a little tighter. Yeah, high school. Sophomore year. Sadie Hawkins dance with a stoner girl who wore shoes just like Sarah’s. He’d gone as her date because she’d been brave enough to ask him, and ended up having the most fun he’d had at any school dance, ever. She’d been as bad a dancer as he was, but she hadn’t seen any reason not to flounder front and center, right in front of the speakers. They’d owned that dance floor.

The next week, he’d turned sixteen and started apprenticing for his father. No more sports, no more dances. No more patchouli-scented girls in reinforced boots. From that birthday on, everything was about making money. Pleasing his father. Starting his own company. Keeping his eye on the bottom line.

Yeah. That’d all turned out great. He hadn’t kept any of that. And he shouldn’t feel too cozy toward Sarah, either. She was much cooler than anticipated, but even the coolest of chicks had to go home sometime. And she wouldn’t be back. Neither would he. He’d be. . . wherever he was needed. He passed through Malibu only a handful of days in the year. The rest of the time, even
he
didn’t know where he’d be from day to day, week to week.

It was a good thing his father had conditioned him not to count on anyone except himself. Otherwise this dull ache inside might be misinterpreted as loneliness.

He grimaced. Morgans didn’t get lonely. They didn’t need other people. As his father was fond of telling a much younger Jack, “Right now, you need me, but I don’t need you. And someday, you won’t need me either.” It was a mark of pride. A goal to work toward. The mythical, fantastical state of not needing anyone. Of not caring about anything but success. By the time his father passed, Jack had learned the lesson far too well.

Was it too late to unlearn it?

He glanced over at Sarah. Her face was turned toward the window and he couldn’t see her expression. Maybe she was trying to sleep. He turned the radio down.

Her face swiveled to his, a question in her eyes.

Well, he had her attention. What was the plan now?

“Uh. . .” Jack’s mind went blank. He whipped his gaze back to the road and heroically withstood the impulse to face-palm. Dozens of girlfriends, two hundred international takeovers and ten billion dollars later, and he’d still somehow managed to revert to the eloquence level of his fifteen-year-old self?

No. He was still Jack Morgan, pillar of confidence, nerves of steel.

So why did spending time with Sarah feel so different?

“You wore a Lakers jersey yesterday,” he found himself saying. As far as exposing his deep insights and razor-sharp wit went, it wasn’t much. But maybe it would at least get them talking again.

“Mm,” she answered noncommittally.

True, it hadn’t exactly been a question. And while she’d turned out to actually know the lyrics for the band featured on her concert tee, the presence of sports paraphernalia often said less about a person’s athletic fanaticism and more about that person’s geography. Are you from Chicago? Then you’ve got a Bears hat somewhere in your closet. Malibu? Sure, maybe the Lakers. Although a jersey still seemed a little more meaningful than a ball cap.

“You like basketball?” he tried again.

Her eyes widened as if she’d never considered the possibility before in her life. “I’m familiar with it,” she answered hesitantly, as if it might’ve been a trick question.

And, honestly. Wasn’t it? Hadn’t part of him been waiting for her to say she did, just so he could test her with pedantic trivia to prove she wasn’t a real fan? Classy. But now that he’d called himself out on his dickishness, he might as well carry it through.

“Do you have a jersey because you actually
like
the Lakers, or do you have a Lakers jersey just because they’re from California?”

She wrinkled her nose at him as if he’d lost his mind. “They’re not ‘from California,’” she said haughtily, as if he’d suggested Santa Claus lived in the tropics. “The Lakers were the old Detroit Gems, relocated to Minneapolis. They picked their new name in honor of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes. The team didn’t move to LA until 1960.”

He stared at her. Speechless. Words utterly and completely failed him.

“They’re not ‘from California,’” she repeated stubbornly and lifted her chin in the air.

“Marry me.”

“What?”
She reared back in nothing short of full-on horror.

He shrugged winningly. “I always said I’d marry the first girl who gave me that answer.”

“You’ve never said that in your entire life!”

“Well, I thought it plenty of times. Is that a no?”

“It’s a ‘you’re crazy.’”

He smiled. “Crazy in a good way?”

“Crazy like Elgin Baylor scoring sixty-one points in a playoff game and keeping the record for fifty years.”

“So, crazy-awesome then. I’ll take it.”

“You oughtta take your meds,” she muttered under her breath.

Once again, Jack had to grip the wheel to stop himself from laughing. He’d twice made
People
magazine’s list of “50 Most Eligible Bachelors” and he’d just gotten shot down by a Mötley Crüe fan in a poodle skirt.

He slid another look her way. She was something else.

With or without a plastic cupcake on her head, Sarah was undeniably pretty. Naturally lovely, not a cosmetically altered Barbie clone. Eccentric, sure, but with a big heart. Why else would she give a guy a ride to the middle of nowhere in her factory-condition SUV?

She was refreshingly. . .
real
. He’d spent his adult life knowing everyone in his private world feared him, and then the past few years knowing the entire world would be better off hating him. He hadn’t been able to be “just Jack” in. . . well, in a long-ass time.

If ever.

And yet here, with her, he was singing off-key and playing air drums and poking fun at himself and having one of the best afternoons in years.

Crap. Afternoon. Already the sunlight was growing dim. He glanced down at the odometer. They were almost to the river. Playtime was over. As soon as she saw the village—or lack thereof—Sarah would be on her way. Anybody would. He couldn’t blame her. He was still humbled she’d allowed him to take up this much of her time.

He knew better than to get attached.

S
ARAH STOPPED
drumming a microsecond before the SUV tires skidded to a stop. Not that they’d been clipping along at a speedy pace to begin with. They couldn’t.

Over the past several kilometers, the pothole-sprinkled paved road had given way to a gravel road, which had given way to a dirt road, which had given way to a mud path, which had led them to what had possibly once been a fairly serviceable bridge.

For, like, horses. Or foot traffic. Maybe.

It was barely wider than the SUV. The sides might have concrete under the layers of caked-on dirt and mud, but the bottom consisted solely of wooden slats. Moldered slats. Broken slats. Sections of no slats, where, forty feet below, wicked currents churned over layers of jagged rock.

Jack put the SUV back into gear.

“What are you doing?” Sarah squeaked.

But she already knew. This? This was why Jack Morgan needed a keeper. When he had a goal, every ounce of his focus, every cell in his body, concentrated on achieving that goal. He never knew defeat because he never acknowledged opposition, much less setbacks. And he certainly wasn’t going to let a mere death trap stand in the way of him and some no-name village in the middle of nowhere.

“I’m driving across,” Jack answered reasonably, as if anyone in their right mind would’ve come to the same decision. “We can’t abandon your car. The village is on the other side of this river. Driving across makes the most sense.”

“Absolutely not,” Sarah said flatly.

His eyebrows rose as if he were honestly shocked that respect for one’s life outweighed foolhardy hero-complex risks in her world. “What’s your—Oh.” His eyebrows lowered and he nodded in belated understanding. “Your car. Right.” He shifted back into neutral and lifted the parking brake. “Thanks so much for taking me this far. I really appreciate it. Let me give you some money to cover the detailing and probably a new pair of shocks. . .”

Sarah tilted her face heavenward but the only illumination was the dome light. She didn’t care about the
car
. She cared about his freaking
life
. How hard was that to understand?

He’d finally given her the opening she’d been looking for, in terms of disappearing without suspicion, and she couldn’t even take it. Firstly because she’d never driven anything. Sure, she’d been right next to him during Drivers’ Ed and pretty much every second of rush hour traffic since, but she’d witnessed enough first-time driver mishaps to know there was no chance of her pulling off a successful three-point turn on sloped mud in an unfamiliar stick-shift behemoth and navigating out of sight without raising suspicion or totaling the damn thing worse than the bridge was likely to do.

And the bridge! As long as she stayed glued to his side, she could ensure the bridge would last another day. If she drove off, she wouldn’t be there to save him from rapids or pit vipers or food poisoning. Even if she managed to drive away semi-competently and ditch the car around the first curve, that was more than enough time for a man who thought
this
was a good idea to get into a lot more trouble.

“Drive.”

His fingers froze on his open wallet. “What?”

“Drive,” she repeated, gesturing toward the dilapidated bridge in defeat. “But I’m going on record as saying this is a terrible idea, and you have to stop risking your life on the off chance you might be able to help others.”

“Why should I?” His bafflement was genuine, damn him. “My life doesn’t have any more value than anyone else’s. Have you checked the Internet lately? Some would say my life doesn’t have any value at all. But here I am. I might as well do what I can to make a difference, don’t you think?”

Sarah glared at him in silence.
I’ll get fired if you die
seemed the wrong response here, as was
I’ve been half in love with you for years, so. . .  yeah. Your life matters more to me than a whole village of strangers.
They were going to have to agree to disagree.

“Are you driving or not?”

“I’m driving.” He lowered the parking brake and shifted into gear.

The SUV inched across the bridge. Tires slipped, planks groaned and cracked, but Sarah kept it from falling apart.

When they reached the other side, Jack grinned at her as if he’d never had a doubt in the world. But he shot an unnerved glance toward the rearview mirror. “Where’s the department of transportation when you need them? They really ought to fix that bridge.”

Sarah crossed her arms and stared straight ahead. He was right. “They” should. But they wouldn’t, because there
was
no “they.” The Bolivian government could barely handle what was already on their plate. Which left who? Sarah was contractually prohibited from performing any miracles that affected anyone other than her assigned client. And as to other guardian angels in the vicinity? As far as she knew, there weren’t any. It wasn’t exactly the most-requested track at Uni.

Jack coaxed the SUV along the increasingly indiscernible path. “Don’t worry so much. I knew the bridge had to be stronger than it looked.” He grinned. “And maybe I’m just lucky.”

She gaped at him as if he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had. That bridge was held together by spit and sunshine. If she hadn’t helped it along, he’d be trapped between a twisted SUV and jagged rocks right now.
She
was his luck, both good and bad. And she definitely couldn’t trust him to be alone for even a second.

He killed the engine when they finally rolled up on the village.

A dozen flimsy, weather-beaten shacks. Rusty tin roofs missing whole sections. A few crops, a few chickens, two cows. That was it. No cars. No stores. Not even a church.

“Perfect.” Jack’s eyes shone.

Sarah sighed. She knew where this was going.

“This is where I’m meant to be,” he continued happily. “These are
precisely
the people who could use some Christmas spirit.”

“And some roofs,” she muttered.

“Definitely new roofs. And a school! Can you believe there’s no school?”

“Gobsmacked.”

“Come on, let’s go find Alvaro.”

“Yay.” She slid out of her seat, vaporizing every mosquito within a three-yard radius of the car. He was
not
getting yellow fever before they even grabbed their luggage. If she caught it fast enough, she could zap viruses and germs right out of his bloodstream, but she shouldn’t have to. Prevention was the best cure.

A handful of cute, barefoot children in ill-fitting clothes bounded up to them. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Jack crouched down to eye level. “We’re looking for a man named Alvaro. Do any of you know Alvaro?”

“Grandfather!” two of the children screamed in unison.

A man whose body seemed twice as old as his face limped over to them.
“Buenas tardes
.
”

“Good afternoon, sir. I was told to ask for you when I arrived.” Jack showed him the paper the schoolteacher had drawn.

The man’s eyes softened. “You’re friends with my daughter? Come. Eat with us. You must spend the night.”

Chicken and rice was easy enough, but it was immediately apparent that spending the night would be more problematic. Alvaro’s tiny house could barely offer standing room to its inhabitants. The thin walls shook as thunder rent the air.

Cold rain fell like automatic gunfire against the metal roof, slithering through the cracks and drizzling the two-room interior with a miserable layer of wet. A puddle grew in the middle of the living area. The children curled up around the edges, careful to stay between the growing puddle and the slick slime of the damp walls.

Jack lowered his mouth to Sarah’s ear. “Do you have a tent, by any chance?”

Sarah nodded quickly, closing her eyes as she adjusted the contents of the trunk. If Jack needed a tent, he’d get the most miraculous tent she could muster.

“Sweet.” Jack turned to Alvaro and his wife. “I’m here to fix the roofs in this village. I don’t yet have the supplies, but we do have an extra tent that will keep the children safe and dry until I can do more.”

Sarah hesitated. If the tent was for this family and not for Jack personally, she wasn’t supposed to share the miracle love. If she followed the letter of her contract, she probably ought to unmiracle the tent and claim she’d forgotten to bring it after all. But it was already in the SUV. . . And these kids. . . And that roof. . .

It wasn’t worth getting fired over and not be able to guard
anyone
anymore, but if she justified the gray area by claiming a tent for the family would directly affect her assigned subject’s peace of mind—and then was very careful not to stretch any more rules—she might get through her end-of-month review with her title still intact.

Decision made, Sarah led Jack to the trunk and watched his eyes sparkle when he saw the size of the tent.

“This baby will fit the whole family! It’s perfect!” In his delight, he gave her a quick, excited hug he probably wouldn’t even remember, and launched himself into the task of setting the tent up alongside the shack before the freezing rain coalesced into an outright downpour.

Sarah, on the other hand, was perfectly motionless. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She could barely even think.

Jack had
touched
her. Happily. Voluntarily.
Consciously
.

He might’ve accidentally trod upon one of her feathers a time or two without knowing any different, but this—this! She’d never even dreamed about being hugged. Not by him, not by anybody. Sure, people hugged each other as much in heaven as they did on Earth or among the bureaucracies of Nether-Netherland. But the life of a nonmanagerial guardian angel was a life of unending solitude. Constantly surrounded by throngs of people, including the one you cared the most about in the whole world, but doomed to remain unnoticed and invisible for eternity. No one to talk to, to laugh with, to cry with, to love. Just loneliness.

Until now.

She’d been
hugged
. By
Jack!

Sarah rubbed her arms and shivered. It had been over in an instant, but she would remember it forever.

Jack saw her shiver just as he drove the final stake. He was instantly at her side. “You’re cold. Of course you’re cold. Why didn’t you wait inside? Here, get in the car. I’m going to put the other tent up far enough away to give them a little privacy. My tent isn’t as big as this one, but soon you’ll be warm. Or at least dry.”

She nodded, and let him tuck her back into the passenger seat.

As soon as she was safe from the elements, he dashed to Alvaro’s leaky house to usher the occupants into their new shelter. Her miracles might not be supposed to affect other people, but the children’s smiles and the look of utter gratitude in Alvaro’s eyes warmed her to her soul.

Once the family was settled, Jack unhooked a small, two-person tent from the bottom of his backpack and had it staked and functional within seconds. He tossed her bag inside after his, and then motioned for her to join him. In a daze, she did.

 How many nights had she passed with him in this very tent? Careful to stay out of reach, yet close enough to watch over him as he slept? This time, it would be different.

This time would be very,
very
different.

He unrolled a thin mat and wadded up a pair of clean towels to use as pillows. The look he shot her was nothing short of sheepish. “It’s not the Ritz, but. . .”

“It’s lovely.” She lay down beside him and stretched out her limbs as naturally as she could, which was undoubtedly as awkwardly and self-consciously as possible.

She was lying. On a mat. With Jack Morgan.

Her foot twitched. Then her arm twitched. Then her eye twitched. Her wings were tucked beneath her as tightly as possible but she could swear that even her feathers twitched. Every single inch of her body was completely on edge. And horribly, deliciously, hyperaware of the very strong, very male, very
right-there-oh-my-God
human lying next to her in the tent.

Every other woman who’d ever lain next to him had been a million times more jaded and experienced than Sarah ever would be. Like driving a stick shift across a collapsing bridge in the middle of Bolivia, watching someone do something and doing it yourself were two totally different things. Not that there was any chance of romance. Which was lucky, since she’d never be able to live up to even the worst of his memories.

In fact, she couldn’t even think of a time he’d spent the night with a woman he wasn’t romantically involved with. Making this completely new territory. For both of them. Unless he was thinking sharing a tent meant sharing their bodies. . . Her heartbeat reached supersonic speeds. She couldn’t take the pressure. The anticipation. The terror.

She hoped he wouldn’t try anything.

Oh, God, she hoped he
would
.

She tilted her head, millimeter by millimeter, until she could see his face out of the corner of her eye.

His eyes were closed. His lips, slightly parted. His breath, even. He was beautiful. He was. . . sleeping. Sleeping!

Sarah swallowed hard and did her best not to reach out and touch his face. It was her duty to watch over him, not to involve her heart. Or her hands.