A Forever Christmas(16)

Gabe merely nodded. This time, he turned on the engine. It rumbled to life.

“It’ll come to you,” he promised. “All of it. When you least expect it.”

She slanted a glance at him. Was he talking down to her? Or was there experience on which to base his answer?

“How do you know?” she finally challenged, not wanting to come across like a simpleton, secretly hoping to be convinced.

“I just do,” Gabe said easily. He smiled at her. “It’s called faith.”

Did she have that? Did she have any faith? she wondered. She hoped so. She needed something to hang on to, she thought in desperation. So, for now, maybe it would be faith.

Faith in the man who was sitting beside her. A man who, though she really didn’t remember it, apparently had saved her life.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll have faith.”

Her answer surprised him, but he made a point of not showing her that.

“Good.”

He’d wanted to insert her name here, except that there was no name to use. She hadn’t had any sort of identification on her—no driver’s license, no social security card, no well-creased love letter addressed to her hidden in the pocket of her black dress.

And if there had been any form of ID in the vehicle, most likely it was now burned to a crisp—as she almost was.

“I need something to call you,” he told her. Even as he said it, he began going through possible names and rapidly discarding them for one reason or another. And then he had it. Just like that. “I know, how about Angel?”

“Angel?” she repeated, testing it out on her ear. Like everything else, it didn’t seem familiar, but she liked the sound of it. “Why Angel?”

“Because you look like one,” he answered simply. “At least, like one of the angels I used to picture when I was a kid,” he told her with an affable grin.

“Angel,” she said again, and then nodded. It had a nice ring to it. “All right. I guess you can call me that.”

“Just until you remember your real name,” he emphasized. Although he had a hunch it wasn’t going to be as good as “Angel.”

She looked at him, wishing she could believe what he’d just said. Why was it so easy for him and so hard for her?

“You really think I will?” she asked him.

There wasn’t so much as a second’s hesitation on his part. He saw no point in trying to hedge or qualify his words. This woman didn’t need hesitation. She needed someone to believe for her until she could believe for herself.

“Yes, I really think you will. Hey,” he spoke up with enthusiasm, “that’s nice.”

She looked around, but saw nothing unusual and had no idea what he was referring to. “What is?” she finally asked.

Easing to a stop at the light, he took the opportunity to look at her again. “You just smiled.”

She wasn’t aware of doing that. “I did?”

Even as she asked, she ran her fingertips along her lips to see if they were curving. And they were. She took solace in that and grew momentarily hopeful.

“You did,” he confirmed. “You should do that more often,” Gabe encouraged. “It lights up your whole face. Like an angel’s,” he added with a wink.

Something fluttered in her stomach when he did that. It mystified her even as she found herself enjoying it.

She had no idea what to make of any of it.

The diner was just beyond the next stop sign.

“Well, we’re here,” he told her, coming to a stop in one of the diner’s designated parking spaces.

“Where’s ‘here’?” she asked, cocking her head as she peered through the windshield.

“Miss Joan’s diner,” he told her, unbuckling his seat belt and getting out.

Rather than head straight for the diner’s door, Gabe rounded the hood of his vehicle and opened the door on Angel’s side. He offered her his arm and stood waiting to help her out.

Though her memory continued to be a complete devastating blank, some distant instinct whispered that this wasn’t what she was accustomed to. That having someone open the door for her and help her out of a vehicle was a completely new experience for her.

What a very strange thing to catch her attention, she thought, walking through the door of the diner as Gabe held it open for her.

Unlike the bone-chilling temperature outside, the inside of the diner embraced her with warmth the moment Gabe closed the door behind him.