A Forever Christmas(39)

“A whole rainbow’s worth,” she told him. “How about you?” she asked, her eyes on his face. “Seeing any colors?”

“No, no colors,” he answered.

“Oh.”

The lone word sounded incredibly sad as well as very isolated, he thought. For a second, he was tempted to come clean and tell her exactly what he really was feeling, but then decided against it. It would be better for her all around if she didn’t know just how much she was affecting him.

He deliberately changed the subject. “So tell me about your day,” he coaxed.

It took a beat, but then he saw Angel’s face light up as she started to fill him in on how she’d fared in Miss Joan’s kitchen with Eduardo.

When she finished, he was impressed and completely convinced that in all likelihood Angel could probably get along with the devil himself if need be. And if her narrative was any example, she would probably be able to find some kind of redeeming qualities about the fallen angel and list them in glowing terms.

She was, at this point, truly one of a kind. He wondered if that would change once her memory returned. He almost didn’t want to find out.

* * *

“CHRISTMAS?” ANGEL repeated.

It was a little more than a week later—a week filled with a measure of self-restraint Gabe never thought he was capable of displaying—and he set the groundwork to tell her about the town’s biggest holiday tradition.

“Christmas,” he acknowledged, then suddenly paused as a thought hit him. Though he was beginning to piece a few things together, he still wasn’t clear on the extent of what she knew and didn’t know. “You do know what that is, right?”

She smiled tolerantly at him. “Yes, I know what Christmas is. My brain is missing some very crucial information, but it wasn’t completely sucked dry or flattened to a pancake by the accident. I do remember some things.”

Just not who I am. Although there had been dreams, dreams that vanished when she opened her eyes, but that brought with them a vague feeling of familiarity while they lasted.

“Just checking,” he told her with a grin. “Anyway, everyone is getting together in the town square this afternoon to watch the annual Christmas tree being put up. It’s being brought in sometime this morning—”

“From where?” she wanted to know.

“There’s this forest north of here. We’ve been getting the town’s tree from there for as long as I can remember. Anyway—”

She wasn’t finished asking questions. “Who gets to pick the tree?”

Another question that had never occurred to him to ask. He’d just took what he’d observed as a given. “Miss Joan usually goes along with whoever winds up bringing the tree back, so I guess, knowing Miss Joan, she does.”

She nodded, accepting his explanation. “Could we go along, too?” She asked the question with all the eagerness of a child.

That would have been a case of too many cooks spoiling whatever it was that cooks conferred over, he thought, unable to remember the last of the old saying.

“We have work to do,” he reminded her gently. It struck him how very domestic that line sounded to his ear. Like what a husband—or wife—might say to their spouse.

The thought did not spook him the way it might have once. As a matter of fact, this past week with Angel had played like a scene right out of that same fantasy, he couldn’t help thinking. They went off to work together in the morning and he dropped her off at Miss Joan’s diner, then stopped by there for lunch. And after his shift was over, he picked her up and they’d go home together.

To his house, not their house, Gabe emphasized pointedly. He had to remember to keep that in perspective. Once her memory returned—and more and more of him was beginning to really hope that either it wouldn’t, or that that day was really far in the future—she, whoever she was, would leave and go back to her life.

And he would go back to the emptiness of his.

Empty in comparison to the way it was now, he deliberately specified for himself. Because right now, his life was filled with her chatter, her spontaneous laughter and her incredible cooking. Not to mention her warmth.

And because of that, Gabe was finding it harder and harder to restrain himself. Restraining himself when what he desperately wanted to do was sweep her into his arms and revisit the pulse-accelerating experience of kissing her.

Being alone with her—as pleasurable as it was—only seemed to insure that someday very soon he would find himself stepping over the line…hell, racing over the line, and making love with her.