Where Angels Go (Angels Everywhere #6)(10)

“What’s she doing now?” Goodness asked, crowding close to Gabriel in her eagerness to see Beth.

“It’s lunchtime,” Gabriel said. “She’s at a small waterfront restaurant with a friend.” With one sweep of his arms, Gabriel parted the veil of clouds that obscured the earth below. At first, the view was hazy, but a few seconds later, the air cleared. Then, as though they were gazing through glass, Gabriel and Goodness saw Beth. She and her friend were seated at a table in a busy restaurant. A wreath in the nearby window was decorated with sprigs of holly and red Christmas balls.

Beth’s long dark hair was parted in the middle, and she wore a soft pink cashmere sweater with gray wool pants.

“She looks very pretty,” Goodness whispered.

Gabriel could only agree.

“So, what are your plans for Christmas?” Heidi asked as she picked up half of the tuna-salad sandwich they were sharing.

“I’ll spend it with my parents,” Beth said without any real enthusiasm. Already she was worried. Her mother had suggested—no, insisted—that Beth invite Peter to join them on Christmas Day. It was an unlikely scenario. After six months of impersonal conversation, she had no idea how they were going to make the transition from being WoW partners to friends to…well, dating each other. Sort of. A Christmas Day blind date—with her family, yet. She grimaced.

How could she possibly convince someone she’d never even seen to accompany her to one of the most important holiday functions of the year? She might as well ask for a miracle.

“You’ve drifted off again.”

Beth didn’t need to ask what her friend meant. She often grew quiet when something troubled her. “Can I ask you a question?” Beth asked, setting down her sandwich and leaning toward Heidi.

“Sure, anything. You know that.”

Beth considered the other woman one of her best friends. She’d been a member of Heidi’s wedding party and was godmother to her son, Adam.

“When you first met Sam…” she began. Heidi and Sam had just begun seeing each other when Beth met her; they’d now been married four years.

“When I first met Sam,” Heidi repeated. “Did I know I was going to fall in love with him? Is that what you want to ask?”

Beth blinked. That wasn’t exactly it, but close enough. “Yes.”

“The answer is no. In fact, I thought he was a total nerd. I mean, could you imagine me married to an accountant? I found him so fussy and detail-oriented, I couldn’t picture the two of us together.”

It was remarkable. Heidi, her fun-loving, easygoing friend attracted to a bean counter. Yet as far as Beth could tell, they were completely happy in their relationship. They were so different; Heidi was slapdash and impulsive and, as she’d said, Sam was the opposite. But where it truly mattered—their feelings about marriage and family, for instance—their values were the same. Recently, with Heidi’s encouragement, Sam had joined a couple of his friends in a new business venture. Their firm, specializing in forensic accounting, was doing well.

“It wasn’t like that with John and me,” Beth murmured. “When we first met, I was sure we were the perfect match.” She swallowed hard. She didn’t know why she continued to do this—torturing herself with the details of her failed marriage. All it did was remind her that she simply wasn’t any good at relationships.

“John was a long time ago.”

This was Heidi’s gentle way of urging her to stop dragging the past into the present, and she was right. Sitting up straighter, Beth squared her shoulders. “I think I might have met someone.”

That immediately sparked Heidi’s interest. In the last five years, she’d frequently tried to introduce Beth to available men, mostly colleagues of Sam’s. Beth had declined each and every time. “Who did you meet? Where? When?”

“We met online.”

Her friend instantly brightened. “You signed up with one of those Internet dating services?” Heidi had suggested this approach months earlier—advice Beth had strongly rejected.

“No, we met…I mean, we haven’t really met. We’re partners in an online computer game.”

“That war thing?” Heidi wrinkled her nose in distaste.

Beth nodded. “We teamed up in World of Warcraft last June. But I know next to nothing about him, other than the fact that he lives in Seattle.” Even as she explained this, Beth realized it wasn’t true. Peter was decisive, a characteristic she admired in a man. He was thoughtful, too. The two of them worked well together in the landscape of the game, anticipating and complementing each other’s moves.

“Then find out more,” Heidi urged. “Contact him outside the game. Meet him for coffee or something.”

Beth shook her head. “I couldn’t do that,” she said automatically. And yet she had to, didn’t she? Unless she was prepared to disappoint her mother for the thousandth time.

“Why couldn’t you?” Heidi asked, genuinely perplexed. “You said you’ve been partners for…what? Six months. Make up an excuse. Tell him you want to discuss battle strategy and you’d prefer to do it in the real world.”

“But…he might think I’m hitting on him.”

Heidi smiled. “Well, aren’t you?”