Midwinter Magic (6 page)

T
HREE DAYS
later, the roofs were fixed and the frame was set for a small community center that could double as a church or school, whatever the locals needed. The problem was,
only
the frame was set.

No. Jack ran swollen fingers through his hair. That wasn’t the problem.

The problem was the bridge.

Sarah was right about the bridge’s instability and untrustworthiness. When he’d gone back in the daylight to orchestrate the piecemeal transfer of heavy materials, as he’d promised he’d do, he’d gotten an eyeful of reality. From the SUV, the bridge looked like a bridge. A
dangerous
bridge but, you know, a bridge. On foot, with the sides and underbelly at eye level, the bridge looked less like a bridge and more like a false-floor death trap. The locals didn’t even dare cross the thing on horseback, which was one of the reasons they were so isolated and helpless.

They were also smarter than him. He could not believe he’d strutted across in an SUV and pulling a trailer. He couldn’t even see how it was physically possible. Even if the weathered slats could somehow support the weight, the missing sections should’ve swallowed a tire, or sent him careening off the side.

He’d placed all the right phone calls, but the government was months away from sending help. He finally found a private company capable of replacing the bridge, but they were booked solid and couldn’t break ground until after the rainy season, anyway.

Which meant triple the work and quadruple the frustration, because even triple the work wasn’t good enough. He’d paid out the nose to find a team to run telephone and electricity lines, and there were the workers on the other side of river, staring in disbelief at the joke of a bridge.

Obviously their trucks couldn’t cross. They weighed ten times as much as the little trailer. The men could walk over, sure, but then what? Haul miles of cabling in thick coils on their backs? The company he’d hired to redo the village’s poor plumbing had managed, but they hadn’t needed to bring utility poles across the bridge. Or basket cranes. Construction equipment was much heavier than the SUV, even with a heavy trailer.

All of which meant that for three solid days, Jack awoke long before dawn, scouted out territory, dreamed up plans, organized men, tromped through mud, shimmied up trees, scaled roofs, schlepped heavy equipment, mixed concrete, inhaled fumes, barked orders, watched out for children, rationed food, bandaged wounds, kept up morale, directed traffic, cut wires, hammered nails, bent pipes, and tumbled into his tent for a scant five hours’ sleep before getting up and doing it all over.

He hadn’t had a spare moment to even talk to Sarah, much less contemplate kissing her again. Not that she left him alone to this madness. She was everywhere he was, doing everything he was, always within earshot if he needed an extra hand. She was amazing, the villagers were amazing, the unexpected help from the neighboring towns was amazing, but what they really needed was. . . more.

The day after the hearing, he’d liquidated his assets. He earmarked one third of the money for doing this exact sort of thing for the rest of his life. He donated another third to all the worthy causes he’d ignored during his years as a power-hungry mogul. He used the final third to start the nonprofit Morgan Foundation, with the goal of bringing relief to third-world countries and people in need throughout the globe.

Despite the full subsidization and grant money to anyone willing to donate a year of their time, the Morgan Foundation was unarguably Jack’s least successful venture. The few volunteers he did have were stretched to their limits, and there were none to spare for a tiny village in the mountains of Bolivia, the week before Christmas.

Nonetheless, the faces around him were hopeful—possibly for the first time in their lives—and Jack was determined not to let them down. The villagers, like the majority of Bolivians, were Roman Catholics. They believed in goodness. And they deserved a Christmas miracle.

He lent his bruised shoulders to help haul the thick logs for the utility poles across the bridge and into town, and went back three more times until all the cabling had been brought across as well.

The men were busy holding poles and climbing ladders and running cable when Jack finally decided he could use a thirty-second break. He glanced around for Sarah and spotted her at the foot of an incline, gathering fruit with some of the local children.

He was so focused on
her
that he failed to watch where he was going, and his boot inevitably tangled in a nest of forgotten wire. He was bending over to try and untangle his foot when the rumbling began.

His first thought was
thunder
. His second thought was
earthquake
. His third thought was
Run!

He caught sight of Sarah’s terrified face and the screaming children pointing at something just behind him. Still struggling with the nest of wires, he glanced over his shoulder.

A stack of heavy utility logs had broken loose from the pile and was tumbling down the mountain directly toward him.

“Oh,
fuck.
”

Jack whipped his head back to his foot, frantically trying to loosen the wires enough to untie his trapped boot and hop one-footed down the mountain if he had to, but there was no way, no time, and nowhere to go.

When the shadows of the falling logs fell over his back, he glanced up at Sarah. At least she’d be the last thing he saw before he was crushed to death under seven-hundred-pound utility poles.

Her face was no longer terrified. If anything, she looked. . . confused?

She was doing the blinky-fluttery thing again, her face tilted not toward him, but toward his impending annihilation.

He braced for impact.

The first log bounced overhead, close enough to rustle his hair. The second log. . . didn’t happen.

After several long seconds of absolutely nothing, Jack straightened his hunched spine and stared over his shoulder.

The utility poles had. . .
stopped
. Against all logic, against all gravity, against everything he’d ever learned from Bill Nye the Science Guy, dozens of heavy logs lay silent on the muddy incline, as harmless as tinker toys. Even the treacherous wiring entangling his feet had fallen aside like so much overcooked spaghetti.

He could walk away. He was
fine
.

He jerked his eyes back toward Sarah. She was looking at him, not at the death logs defying gravity just above him. Nor was she doing the epileptic fluttery thing anymore. If he had to put a word on it, he’d have to say she looked. . .

Guilty.

As if she’d made the impossible possible with just the power of her mind. As if she’d saved his life—no, “guarded him from death”—just as she’d promised she would.

Holy mother of Christ. She
was
a guardian angel!

He scrambled out of the wiring as fast as he could and raced down the incline. His heart was still thundering from the adrenaline, from the fear, from surviving the freaking impossible. He grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to catch his breath.

“Did you do that?” he panted.

She didn’t answer, but her cheeks turned a suspicious shade of pink.

“You
did
do it! I knew you did it! I mean,
are
doing it.” He glanced over his shoulder. Yep, the utility poles were still defying gravity. A crowd was beginning to form.

As if she’d just realized what he meant, Sarah’s eyes widened in alarm—then fluttered unnaturally.

The logs were once again on the move, but this time, not dangerously. The utility poles all but meandered down the incline, harmlessly coming to rest against this tree or that rock.

“You have got to be kidding me.” Jack could barely even breathe, much less think. His heart was still in hyperactive arrhythmia. “You’re an actual angel. You saved my life.”

“All in a day’s work,” she mumbled, without making eye contact. “It’s a full-time job, keeping you safe.”

He stared at her speechlessly. He was pretty sure his head was going to explode at any moment. She really was an angel. A
guardian
angel. Which meant there
were
angels. His mind reeled. So did the rest of him. He had to sit down. No, he couldn’t sit down. There was nowhere to sit. Plus he was still gripping her shoulders. Why was he gripping her shoulders? Was gripping an angel’s shoulders a sin? Oh shit, he’d
kissed
her. He couldn’t remember anything in the Bible specifically being for or against making out with your guardian angel, but high-school mythology had been pretty clear that god+mortal intermingling had never worked out for the Greeks. Or the Romans. Angel/human hanky-panky was probably an equally terrible idea.

He totally wanted to kiss her again, though. Right now. On the lips.

He shoved his hands into his pockets before he could sink them in her hair and further complicate what he’d thought was a very uncomplicated, temporary relationship. What had she said? He’d slept on her
wing
. She had wings. Invisible ones. And he’d slept on one. Possibly drooled on it. Nice.

The memory of first running into her popped into his head. He’d encountered an invisible wall and briefly seen stars. Not stars.
Wings
. He’d seen wings. He’d discounted them because,
wings
. And then she’d appeared out of nowhere. But it wasn’t nowhere, it was right in front of him. The wings were hers. First he clotheslined himself on them, then he pinned her down and drooled on them. Why was she even still here? Guardian angel, sure, he got that, but she must have better things to do than get tackled and drooled upon.
Everyone
had somewhere to be for the holidays.

Oh God. The holidays! If anyone had epic Christmas plans, it would have to be an angel. The questions came so fast and so furious, he was practically speaking in tongues just to get them out.

“What are you doing for Christmas? Do you do Christmas? Or is it more like heavenly Hanukkah? Are you right in the middle of a countdown? Or are you down on Earth because December isn’t your thing? Do you guys do more of a Three Kings celebration instead, come January? Or are our dates so messed up it won’t be holiday time for you until March or August? Oh, man, what if I’m off completely? It’s incredibly presumptuous to assume my Sunday school lessons were the correct ones. Were the Greeks right, after all? The Romans? It would be wicked sweet if there really was a Medusa. Or Romulus and Remus! I already feel like I’ve opened Pandora’s Box.
Is
there a Pandora’s Box? Or a golden fleece?”

 She inched backward. Slowly. And then blinked with careful precision. As if trying—and failing—to comprehend any portion of his exuberant babble.

“Never mind,” he said quickly. “Don’t tell me. It won’t change anything, and I don’t really need to know. The biggest miracle of all isn’t that angels exist, it’s that we’ve got one right here in the mountains of Bolivia, right where divine intervention is needed the most. Can you magic the utility poles into place? Make sure everyone’s wired up, maybe give them some 4G. It’ll be awhile before the government can send anyone out here, and I really want these people to have a good Christmas.”

She bit her lip. “No.”

“And the bridge! They absolutely need a better bridge. And filtered water. And a pharmacy, or at least access to penicillin and—”

He broke off. Replayed her reply. Stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“I’m sorry, did you just say. . . no?”

She nodded infinitesimally. “I’m
your
guardian angel. Not theirs. I can only do miracles that directly affect you, and only when absolutely necessary to keep you out of harm’s way. It’s in my contract.”

An uneasy churning began to bubble deep in his stomach.
Not my job
were the last words he’d ever expected to hear from an angel.

He pressed forward anyway. “Okay, you’re assigned to me. Loud and clear. But you’re obviously not the only guardian angel, right? If I’ve got one of my own, that means there’s gotta be lots of you guys floating around. Right?”

She hesitated, then inclined her head. “There’s a guild. But I’m a peon, not a powerhouse.”

“A guild! Right! Well, there you go. A heavenly guild of guardian angels. I’d hoped there was some sort of infrastructure to handle these things. I’m assuming you’re here because I’m here, right? I mean here-here, not existentially. Bolivia. This village. That clipboard itinerary wasn’t a coincidence. You were following me.”

“Y-yes. I go where you go. But you’re not supposed to see me.”

“I’m not worried about that right now. I’m worried about these people, and their incredibly hard lives. Why aren’t their guardian angels doing anything? They can’t all be off fluffing clouds and playing harps. Shouldn’t
they
be attending to the bridge and the roofs and the penicillin?”

“Hangottinny,” Sarah mumbled without meeting his eyes.

The churning in his stomach twisted all the way into his throat. “I’m sorry, what?”

She kept her eyes averted. “I said, they haven’t got any.”

“Haven’t got any what?”