A Forever Christmas(60)

“Then I’d suggest you leave your name and number with my office so we can reach you the moment Angel’s memory comes back,” Rick told the man pleasantly. “You’ll find the office just north of here. It’s right on your way out of town,” he emphasized.

Muttering a string of curses audibly under his breath and threatening to return with enough legal power to mow down this “Godforsaken pimple of a nothing town,” the detective stormed out of the diner.

Applause met his departure, adding insult to his gaping wounds.

Only when the diner door closed again did Angel release the breath she’d been holding all this time. Visibly relieved, she forced a smile to her lips.

Gabe looked at her. He could literally feel her fear, even if she tried to pretend she was fine. He remembered her first night in his house. She’d woken up, screaming because of a nightmare. Was this man the reason why? Had she dreamed about him coming after her? Was Wynters who she was running from?

His look was intense as he asked her, “Are you sure you don’t remember him?”

Angel shook her head all the harder, as if in denial she hoped to make Wynters’s very presence vanish from her mind.

“No. No,” she repeated with feeling. “I don’t know him.”

Gabe nodded. He could see that she wanted to be done with this. At least he could do that for her. “Good enough for me,” he told her.

“Angel, why don’t you go home?” Miss Joan suggested, even as some of her customers met that suggestion with groans. They’d put up with a lot, all because they were all waiting for one of her breakfasts. “You’ve had a hell of a morning and maybe you should just—”

“No!” Angel refused with feeling. “I want to be here. I want to be doing something—cooking. It’ll take my mind off that awful man with those flat eyes of his. Please?”

Her last words were all but drowned out by several of the customers, raising their voices to egg her on, enthusiastically backing her decision to stay and cook for them.

Faced with Angel’s stubbornness and her customers growing demands to have Angel whip up her specialties, Miss Joan raised her hands in complete surrender.

“Hey, far be it for me to deny you something that makes you happy,” she declared. “Besides, I think I’d probably have a mass rebellion on my hands if I didn’t let you stay.” She looked at the customers who were all but champing at the bit—threatening to eat that bit at any second if they weren’t fed and fed soon. “Okay, boys, place your orders. She’s staying,” she declared.

A round of cheers met her words.

Touched, Angel smiled and retreated to the kitchen. Eduardo was waiting for her. “Thank you,” she said simply, at a loss for any other words.

In threatening the detective with a shotgun unless he retreated, Eduardo had behaved as if he was her father, bent on protecting her. Something told her that had never happened to her before.

Whether that meant she had no father, or that she had a father who didn’t care enough about her to come to her defense, she didn’t know.

What she did know was that she liked the sensation of having someone watch over her.

Like Gabe, a small voice whispered.

Eduardo waved away her thanks. “I was not going to allow that man to take you away and leave me with all this cooking to do by myself,” he grumbled. “Since you started to work here, I am not so overworked as I was before,” he told her, refusing to give up the game altogether.

“Glad I can help,” she told him, brushing a quick, grateful kiss against his grizzled cheek.

“Are you going to be all right here?” Gabe asked, sticking his head into the kitchen.

She waved away his concern. “I’ll be fine, Gabe,” she said with conviction. “I’ve got Eduardo, Miss Joan and, from the looks of it, a quarter of the town here to protect me.” She grinned reassuringly at Gabe. She didn’t want him to worry about her. “What could go wrong?”

The trouble was, he knew what could go wrong. There were a dozen things that could easily conspire against her. More than a dozen, he amended, glancing back over his shoulder at Angel.

But saying that to her would only make her worry again and the look that passed over her face when she first encountered the detective had slashed at his heart something fierce. He didn’t want her experiencing that again if he could help it.

Gabe forced himself to walk out of the diner. He needed to get back to the sheriff’s office. Specifically, he needed to get to a computer and find out exactly what there was to know about Detective Jake Wynters of the San Antonio Police Department.