Send Me An Angel (3 page)

“I have to go to work. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to stay. But I can’t.”

His smile flashed again, “May I come with you?”

Ellie grinned as she thought of the flutter her angel would cause in the Pathology department of the hospital where she worked. “You can’t.” She pulled a bundle of cash from her purse, “If you want to go out, you’ll need this.” A frown creased her forehead, “Are you going to be okay on your own? Is it safe for you to be out?”

He got to his feet. The sheets slithered down and fell in a tangled mess beside the bed. Ellie ignored them. Her appreciation of the sight he presented superceded her need to keep things tidy.

He stalked towards her. His angelic face was determined, set. Ellie suddenly had a complete understanding of what warrior angels must look like. He didn’t look cruel, but that firm mouth was now authoritative rather than sensuous, his eyes no longer cloudy, but burning fiercely with a knowledge and understanding Ellie could not even begin to measure.

“Ellie, I am an angel, not a child. My knowledge of the actual processes of sex did not exist, but my knowledge of the human mind, of how it works, its wants, its needs, its strengths and, sadly, its failings, is infinite. Even without my wings, I will be safe in a way you could never be. You do not have to protect me. Nor do you need to worry about me.”

Power shimmered about him in a golden glow. He was imposing, awe-inspiring and intimidating. Ellie swallowed, nodded briefly and turned to go. Before she reached the door, a long arm wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her in for a kiss.
A long, scorching kiss that set fire to her skin and melted her bones.

When it was finished
Peter
held her close. He whispered against her cheeks, “Do not be frightened by me, Ellie. But do not be frightened for me either.”

His arms surrounded her and held her. Even though she knew he had lost his wings, knew they couldn’t be enclosing her in a protective embrace, warmth flowed through her, soothing all the worried, frightened places, tempting her to relax the strict rules and routines she imposed on herself in an attempt to maintain order in a frightening world.

He crooned softly to her, “You can let go now Ellie. You can let go, because I am here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Chapter Four

As Medical Technologist and head of the hospital pathology lab, Ellie ran a tightly disciplined, efficient department. She discouraged casual chat, and expected her professional demeanor to be taken as a role model.

When the new lab assistant dropped a tray of biopsy specimens, Ellie felt a surge of anger. She was about to blister the girl with a scathing tirade about her careless treatment of irreplaceable biological material, but, before the cutting words could be uttered, Ellie felt the warmth of phantom wings. Their aura surrounded her, calmed her,
helped
her to see it had been an accident, that the girl was terrified.

Ellie crawled around the floor, looking under cupboards, finding the specimens, dusting them off and returning them to the trays. She picked up the last mesh container, put it back on the tray and dusted her hands, “There, no harm done. It might have been different if the lids had come off, and the biopsies got mixed up so we couldn’t identify them, but, luckily, they didn’t.”

The lab assistant picked up the tray and clutched it to her tightly, “Thank you for helping me. And,
th
, thank you for not yelling at me. I know it really annoys you when things don’t go right. I expected you to be really angry over this.” The girl’s face was losing its strained whiteness.

“We managed to fix it all up. I know you didn’t mean it…”
Sarah
, her name badge said
Sarah
. How long had Ellie been working with people whom she hadn’t even bothered to learn to call by name? “
Sarah
, I’m sorry if I’ve seemed unreasonably difficult or hard to get along with.”

The white in
Sarah
’s face was drowned out by a growing flush of red, “I didn’t mean to criticize or offend you. It’s just that, you, um, don’t have much patience with errors, and, as a newcomer to the department, I made a few, and…”

Ellie took pity on the girl’s embarrassment, “I do like to know that everything is working just as it should be, but it wouldn’t hurt me to be a little more tolerant of human error.”

Ellie strolled into her office, unaware of the receptionist who stood open-mouthed in the doorway to the main lab. When the office door clicked shut, the receptionist sagged against the door frame, “What got into Dragon Lady?”

Sarah
giggled, “If it was anyone else, I’d say a man.
But
not with her. Where on earth would you find a man willing to take her on?” An innate fairness made her add, “But she was nice to me. I dropped a tray of specimens, and, normally, I’d have expected to have my skin peeled.”

The receptionist cast a glance towards the closed office door, “Don’t count on it lasting. This has got to be a momentary aberration.”

On the other side of the wall, Ellie shook her head. In typical government fashion the whole building had been erected as cheaply as possible. Voices carried through the walls. It wasn’t the first time she’d overheard comments about herself. Dragon Lady was relatively mild.
Bitch
had been uttered through clenched teeth more than once. Ellie didn’t care. A good supervisor doesn’t have to be liked by her staff. Funny that today it bothered her. Funny that today of all days, she actually cared what people thought of her.

She spent a little too much time during the rest of the day, thinking. Worrying about whether she had let herself get too mean, too cynical,
too
fussy. Would
Peter
pick that up, be disgusted by it and leave? And why did that matter so much anyway?

The answer to that was obvious. She wanted him. If he was on Earth, she wanted him to be with her.

She thought of the lessons she could teach him, of the training he could undergo. For as long as he stayed, she had the opportunity to train him exactly the way she wanted him. Malleable clay, hers to mould into the kind of man she wanted. To be at her beck and call whenever, and however, she wanted him.

Anticipation buzzed as Ellie opened the door. Her pulse rate fluttered as she thought of the lesson she intended for tonight.

The buzz of excitement turned to irritation when she checked in every room of the house and couldn’t find him. She walked outside, and checked the garden. When she caught herself checking under large bushes, she spun on her heel and stomped back inside, disgusted at herself and her neediness.
 

Self-disgust didn’t in any way diminish her concern. For the next hour she paced, fumed and fretted. When the door finally swung open, she attacked, “Where have you been?”

Peter
’s face was calm, showing no reaction to the anger crackling in Ellie’s voice, “I went out.”

“What if someone had seen you? What if they got suspicious and called the police? Did you think of that? I don’t think the police would believe the Fallen Angel story.”

He crossed the room and stood in front of her. He reached out a hand and smoothed away a wisp of hair that had whirled free in her anger, and now rested on her cheek. His hands stroked on, along the line of her jaw, followed the curve of her neck and settled on her shoulders, “Lots of people saw me. I am now just a man. There is nothing to make anyone take any particular notice of me.”

Ellie gave a little snort of disbelief. Hadn’t he looked in the mirror before he went out? Every woman on the planet, from sixteen to sixty was going to notice him. Still, she had to concede his point. What they were noticing was unlikely to have them calling for the cops. Calling for a glass, or a bucket, or a whole shower full of cold water was more likely.

His golden, honeyed voice surrounded her, “I told you this morning, I am not a child.”

He most certainly wasn’t. Ellie leaned into him, and let his strong hands massage away her worry. And with the worry went her anger. He had not taken himself back to where he had come from, had not moved on, or simply abandoned her in search of something or someone more interesting. He was here.
With her.

She spoke quietly, “What did you do while you were out? Where did you go?”

The massaging hands gripped a little more strongly, applied a little more pressure, and then relaxed, “I walked. I watched the people who passed.” He sighed, “So many unhappy people here.
So many hurt.”

Ellie swung around to face him, “You can tell how people are feeling just by being near them?”

“Well, yes. People don’t, often can’t, express their deepest feelings. I wouldn’t be much use as a counselor in Heaven, if I didn’t know what emotions I was dealing with.”

Ellie tensed, undoing the beneficial effect of the massage, “Can you read…No wait, do you
think
you can read my emotions?”

“Yes. Your predominant emotion is fear.”

“You’re wrong. I get angry, I get impatient with fools, but I am not, and have never been, afraid of anyone.” She could hear the aggression in her voice. Her thoughts were private. She
didn’t
want anyone, angel or human, being able to know what was going on in her mind.

Peter
raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. It was the nothing that got to her, made her want to explain, elaborate, “Look, I’ll own up to being neat, fussy even, but that’s only because most people are such slobs.” She thought of the lab assistant’s reaction that morning, “And, okay, I might have a bit of a temper, but I do what I have to do efficiently, and I’m not prepared to put up with being surrounded by fools and incompetents.
But
afraid? I don’t think so.”

Peter
shook his head, “You make everything in your world ordered and predictable. When anything steps out of its assigned order or place or behavior, you get angry. That anger is because you are afraid of what will happen to you if things begin to get out of your control.”

Ellie snapped. She poked a sharp, accusatory finger into his chest, “That’s utter rubbish. If I’m such a control freak, how do you explain your presence here? Where does taking in a naked man, who appeared on my doorstep, fit into your notion that I need complete control?”

Peter
folded his arms. He looked down at the finger still pushing against the hard muscles of his chest. Then he looked back at Ellie’s face. Under his calm, considering gaze, she became conscious of the heat in her cheeks, of the tightness of her lips, and the tension she suddenly realized she carried constantly in her shoulders. She began to pull her hand away, but he captured it and held it gently, “I think I fell to your doorstep for a reason, Ellie. He does know everything after all, and I think He knew you needed me. And since I was going to fall anyway,”
Peter
smiled his awe-inspiring smile again, “well, here I am.”

This time it was Ellie who shook her head, “That might explain it to you, although I can’t imagine, He...” she stopped and looked up, nervously. “I really can’t believe He caters to the kind of need I have for you.” She shrugged off her trepidation, and got back to the core of the argument, “It isn’t relevant anyway. It doesn’t explain why I hauled you into my house in a totally unpredictable, non-control-freak kind of way. You can’t explain that, can you?” Although she resisted the urge to tack on a
nyaah-nyaah
,nyah
-nyah-nyaah
, she knew it was there in her tone.

“Ellie, I’m an angel. Of course I can explain it. One, as you so correctly suggest, you did have needs. Needs a naked man was exactly designed to fulfill. Two, you have other needs I can take care of, whether you choose to acknowledge them or not. Three, it was your birthday, so you were in a, shall we say, receptive state of mind. Four, well, never mind four. You’re just starting to calm down.”

For someone who claimed to be able to read emotions, it was an extremely stupid thing to say. Even Ellie, who didn’t claim an ability to read other people at the best of times, could see that. How else was she supposed to react other than to recover her hand and put her forefinger to good use again? She poked him, hard, “You have less than one second to start explaining. Number four reason is…? This had better be good.”

The compellingly confident guardian angel receded, to be replaced by the bewildered man who had been startled by his own body. His mouth curved up in an unsure little grimace, nothing like his usual million watt glow, “Um, I don’t think you really want to know.”

She tapped her foot, and folded her arms, and huffed out a very expressive breath.

He got the message, “Okay, you
do
want to know. I may, have to, er,
start the story
a little time before I fell to earth.” She pursed her lips. He sped up the pace. “Guardian Angels have a job to do. They protect their charges.”

“But you’re not a guardian angel. Is this relevant?”

“Yes, it
is
relevant. To protect their charges, Guardian Angels have to have powers. Counseling
Angels
have a job to do, too. We have to reconcile
our
charges to their new position in Heaven, help them overcome their sense of loss and grief. We have powers as well.”

Ellie realized she really didn’t like where this was going. Her eyes narrowed, “Spit it out.”

“Obviously, a Guardian Angel’s powers would be pointless if they only worked in Heaven. The powers have to work on Earth. Even though a Counseling Angel would never be expected to work outside Heaven, it appears that those powers are active on Earth as well.”

“It appears? Exactly what does
it appears
mean?”

“You have to understand I didn’t intend this to happen. I was in a totally new situation, was only partially conscious, and calming distressed people down was second nature to me, I’ve been doing it for eons, after all.”

Ellie broke into his frantic stream of explanation, “You did it to me. You did some kind of spacey, angel mind-control thing, didn’t you? You got inside my head and you, and you…” rage made her voice shake so much she couldn’t continue. She wrenched out of his grasp and paced furiously up and down the room.
 
“You bastard.
You told me you
couldn’t
do that. You lying, manipulating…..Svengali. What about everything else? What else have you made me
do
?”

His voice became a little lower, gentler. He held out his hands in a gesture of innocence, “Ellie, you know I haven’t made you do anything.
I
haven’t controlled
you
.” His voice dropped so low, Ellie couldn’t quite make out what he said, and she wasn’t in the mood to ask him to repeat it. She thought she caught the words
shoe
, and
other foot
, but this wasn’t the time to let the conversation drift off into matters of dress and accessories. In any case, he raised his voice back to an audible level, “I calmed you, that’s all. Made you realize there was nothing to be afraid of.”

“I already told you I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t need you to calm me down.” Her eyes narrowed and she turned a gaze glittering with anger and accusation at him, “Are you trying to do it now? Don’t you dare use your powers, or whatever they are, on me
now.
”

Peter
looked hurt, “I wouldn’t. Not now. You’re feelings are legitimate, and need to be worked through. Calming powers are normally only used in those situations where my, ah…
client’s
feelings are so deep and destructive they prevent healing.”

“Then you had no right to use them on me. Being concerned,
not
afraid, about a naked man asleep on your doorstop is a perfectly normal response.”

Just for a moment, frustration gave his mellow voice a hard edge, “I told you, I wasn’t fully conscious. It was all new to me too, remember? I didn’t intend to do it. If I’d thought about it, I probably would have expected to have lost my powers along with everything else. But I didn’t think. I just reacted. I didn’t want you to feel bad or fright… um, concerned.”