A Forever Christmas(22)

Now, of course, there was just miles and miles of miles and miles. Nothing differentiated one section of land from another as they drove back to Forever from Pine Ridge.

Back to Forever. As if that was where she’d come from, Angel mocked herself. She didn’t belong in Forever. And she was getting to believe that she didn’t belong anywhere.

The restlessness that insisted on haunting her was back in spades. A restlessness that came from not knowing.

Would she ever know where she belonged? Or, for that matter, even what kind of a person she was? It was awful, not knowing.

Was she kind, heartless, intelligent, lazy, a little of all of that—or what?

As before, no answers came to her, not even so much as a vague hunch that she might be on the right path to discovery.

God, but she was getting tired of feeling like a living question mark.

So very tired…

* * *

ANGEL HAD BEEN QUIET for the past ten, twelve miles Gabe thought, glancing toward the woman to his right. Were things coming back to her? Or was it frustration that kept her silent?

Whether he liked it or not, because he’d rescued her, he felt responsible for this lost woman.

Gabe wasn’t the type who immediately shouldered responsibility with gusto and enthusiasm, but neither did he attempt to shrug it off or hide behind some rock in an out-and-out attempt to avoid it. It was what it was and he accepted it. In some cultures, he knew, because he’d saved her, the woman he’d christened “Angel,” her soul was his.

Just what he needed, he thought with a touch of cynicism, a spare soul to trip him up. These days, he wasn’t all that certain what to do with his own, not after the way Erica had left him at such loose ends.

He’d never seen himself as some fancy-free playboy, but neither had he thought of himself as being the marrying kind—at least, not until Erica had crossed his path. Suddenly the thought of settling down with a wife and two, three kids didn’t seem so bad. As a matter of fact, it sounded pretty good.

Except now he wouldn’t get to find out because Erica had decided she could “do better.” Dumping him without warning, she’d turned around and made Seth Madden the center of her world.

Just like that.

Granted, Seth was a banker and came across more polished than he did, but hell, Seth had eyes that belonged to a flounder that had been dead for two days. Was that what Erica really wanted, a man with lifeless eyes?

Gabe couldn’t manage to convince himself of that—and he definitely couldn’t bring himself to either forgive Erica, or let the whole thing go.

He felt as if he was permanently stuck in limbo.

Probably not unlike Angel and her memory loss.

He tried to picture himself in that sort of a situation and found himself being very grateful that he wasn’t in that sort of a situation.

“We’re here,” he announced.

By “here,” Gabe meant that they had just crossed the town limits and were now officially in Forever.

“Angel? We’re here,” he repeated when he received no response in return. When she failed to say anything the second time, Gabe slowed the car down to almost a crawl—which was less than twenty miles an hour to his way of thinking—and looked at Angel’s face more closely.

He forced himself not to get distracted by how very pretty she was and only think of her as someone who had had one hell of a day.

“Really awful to be you right now, isn’t it?” he murmured softly in sympathy.

She seemed to be sound asleep, her head leaning slightly forward. Watching her, Gabe was fairly certain she was going to have a really bad crick in her neck to add to the litany of aches and pains that she would have tomorrow. All of which would be due to the car accident she’d barely survived.

“Angel?” he said softly, trying to rouse her but not startle her.

The only thing he received in reply was the sound of her even breathing.

Gabe frowned, thinking. He couldn’t very well just leave her here, sleeping in his truck, but he felt bad about waking her up. If he did, she might wind up being awake all night.

Still, it was getting really cold and he couldn’t just run the engine so that he could keep the heat on for her. Other than that being an impossibly expensive way to keep someone warm, there was also the very real danger of filling the inside of his vehicle with carbon monoxide.

Maybe she’d wake up on her own if he just gave her a little more time. It was worth a try.

With a shrug, Gabe drove the truck to his house.