A Forever Christmas(24)

He didn’t know which he hated more, the ringing or the buzzing.

The cell phone was something he would have just as easily done without. But the phone had come with his badge and the job. It was the sheriff’s belief that since the terrain they oversaw was so scattered and large, a cell phone—when the signal found it—was a good way to stay in touch. With that explained to him, Gabe couldn’t just ignore the phone even though he had little use for it, or any of the other new “toys” out there. Electronic novelties carried absolutely no fascination for him.

Pulling the phone from his pocket, he pressed the accept button. “This is Gabe.”

“Where are you?”

It wasn’t Rick, it was Alma. And she sounded pretty miffed.

“Home,” he told his sister. “Technically,” he added before she could bombard him with any more questions, “my shift is over. I’m off the clock.”

“That shouldn’t stop you from swinging by the sheriff’s office at the end of the day.”

“It can,” he contradicted, “since I got shanghaied into being someone’s fairy godmother,” he informed his sister.

She supposed she was worrying too much about Gabe making a good impression. If Larry, the deputy whose place he was taking, decided for one reason or another not to return to Forever, she wanted Gabe to be the one to fill the position permanently. That started by making a good impression—every single day.

“How is she?” she asked about the woman who’d been placed in his care.

“Right now? Asleep,” he told her. Just like I’d like to be.

There was a pause on the other end of the line and he knew that questions were popping up in his sister’s mind like toast out of a squadron of toasters set on low.

“Where is she asleep?” he heard Alma finally ask.

“In a bed. I didn’t think the rock garden was a good place to put her,” he deadpanned.

Alma ignored his sarcasm, sailing right by it as if he hadn’t even tapped into the tone. “Your bed?” she asked.

“Well, yeah, it’s the only one I got in the house, remember?”

She knew the kind of man her brother was, so she didn’t ask the one question that begged asking: Where are you going to sleep? Instead, she went to another line of questioning altogether. “Then I take it they didn’t want to keep her overnight at the hospital?”

“No reason to.” Thank God, he added silently. It would have been a hassle for him if they had. He would have either had to get a room at a local hotel, or driven back and forth from Pine Ridge twice. Neither of which appealed to him. “All the tests they took of her came back negative.”

“But she still doesn’t remember.”

He could hear the frown in Alma’s voice. “But she still doesn’t remember,” he echoed, confirming his sister’s assumption.

“You didn’t have to bring her to your place, you know. You could have brought her here,” Alma told him.

He was in no mood to justify his actions to his sister right now. Lack of sleep made him less tolerant and more irritable.

“Made a spur-of-the-moment decision,” he told her. “Angel fell asleep while we were driving back from Pine Ridge. I didn’t have the heart to wake her up.”

“Angel, huh? Well, I guess if you had to come up with a name, that’s as good as any. But did it ever occur to you that she might have wanted you to wake her up?” Alma pointed out.

“Well, we won’t know until she does, will we?” he countered. Tired of sparring, however innocuously, with Alma, he asked, “Is there anything else? Because if there isn’t, I’m pretty beat and I’d like to turn in. On the sofa,” he underscored in case she felt duty-bound to ask him where he was spending the night.

“Never doubted it for a moment,” she said. “Go, get your beauty sleep, Gabe. By my count you’re about three years behind and are getting to look pretty mangy and scary.”

“I can always count on you to feed my ego,” Gabe quipped. “Good night, Alma.”

Not waiting for her response, he hung up. He didn’t want to give her any time to regroup and ask him about something else.

With a sigh that came from deep down in his bones, Gabe stretched out on the sofa. He pulled down the crocheted throw lying along the back of the sofa and wrapped it around himself to ward off the pending cold.