Chapter 31
“I’m afraid we’re losing him,” Evangeline muttered as she paced the small living room. “The darkness within him is too strong. He can’t fight it off much longer.”
Liam watched her pace. He didn’t have anything to say because he had already said it all. Yeah, he had fucked up this whole assignment. He had admitted it, apologized for it, and now the best course of action was just to keep his mouth shut. Evangeline was still glaring at him, and he figured anything else he had to say would only make things worse.
He looked at the clock on the stove and wondered what time Adela was going to be home. He knew she had gone to lunch with Missy, but it seemed like lunch would only take a little while, yet Adela had been gone for three hours now.
Liam went into the kitchen for more coffee. As he leaned against the stove sipping the brew, he felt as though they had failed. How in the world were they supposed to help two people fall in love when they didn’t even know where one of them was?
The door opened and Adela stepped in. She leaned against the door and sighed.
“How was lunch?” Liam asked. Her blonde hair cascaded down to her hips, and she gave it a push behind her back. Worry etched her brow, and she looked very tired.
“It was . . . interesting.”
“Did you find out anything?”
She met his gaze and nodded. “But I’m not sure how it’s going to help us.”
Liam walked back to the couch and sat down, motioning for Adela to follow.
She sat on the opposite end of the couch and folded her hands in her lap. Her back was straight, and when her gaze met his, he felt like he had been punched in the gut. So much emotion clouded her eyes, he couldn’t understand what he was seeing. What he did understand was that he had an almost overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and pull her close and comfort her, tell her that everything would be okay. She looked as if she had just received a lot of bad news.
“By the look on your face, I’m guessing it’s not good news,” Evangeline said.
Adela shook her head and studied her hands.
“Tell us, Adela,” Evangeline said.
Adela took a deep breath and began talking.
Liam’s intestines tightened while he listened. A woman who had cheated on her man and then not only left, but took off with their life savings. A man desperate to find her but couldn’t muster the hate in his heart for her. A man who just wanted what he lost back in his arms. Now Jeff’s reaction to Liam’s indiscretions was understood. Jeff viewed Liam’s actions as the catalyst of what broke up his own marriage.
Adela leaned back on the couch and exhaled.
“How do we go about gluing a couple back together where one party doesn’t seem to want to be included?” Liam asked.
Adela shrugged, and they both looked up at Evangeline.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
The sun filtered in the window behind her, making her hair appear more golden. As she studied the floor, she truly looked like the heavenly entity she was. Liam wanted to tell her the answers weren’t going to be found on the floor but figured he was doing well with the keeping-his-mouth-shut plan.
“None,” she said. “Except that we need to find her and convince her that her being with Jeff is meant to be.”
“And how do we do that?” Adela asked. “Do we just ring her new doorbell?”
“Maybe if we had our wings back we could—”
“That’s against the rules. These assignments must be completed as humans,” Evangeline said.
Liam stood. “Why, Evangeline? No one has been able to answer me that. Why the fuck not?”
Evangeline glared at him. “It’s not our place to question—”
“Then whose place is it?” Liam asked. “I’ve never understood why we need to be human in order to complete these assignments.”
“It’s not as if you haven’t been enjoying yourself, Liam. Or do I need to remind you that because you like being human so much you almost ruined this? If it weren’t for Adela, we would be at square one, so to speak.”
“I’m aware of that,” Liam said through gritted teeth, and decided to go back to keeping his trap shut.
“I agree with Liam,” Adela said, standing. “Why do we need to be human?”
Liam turned to her, surprised by her support and her questioning of Evangeline. He recalled the tongue-lashing he had received at the beginning of this good-time fuck-all when he had not spoken to Evangeline the way Adela deemed appropriate.
Evangeline pierced Adela with a glare, obviously angry that her two charges were going mutinous all over her ass.
She began pacing again, then turned back to them. “I’m heading to Heaven. We’re obviously at a crossroads and it seems there’s nowhere to go.”
“It’s called a fucking roadblock, sweetheart,” Liam muttered. He turned around and took a sip of his coffee. When he looked back, Evangeline was gone.
Adela stared at the floor. “I can’t believe I just questioned Evangeline.”
Liam set his coffee cup down, walked over, and put his hands on her shoulders. Her dark gaze met his. “Sometimes you need to question those in charge,” he said, taking her hands in his. “Something isn’t right about this, Adela. We need to find out what’s going on. Why did they put us in human form? For me, it wasn’t that big of a jump, but for you, it was huge and disorienting as all hell. I never understood why we needed to be human.”
“I don’t either, Liam,” Adela admitted as she stared down at their hands. “I understood the need to interact with our target, but it seems that things would have gone a lot smoother if we had our angel abilities.”
“Agreed.”
Liam felt heat rise in his body as he stared at Adela. An urge to run his fingers through her hair, to touch her face, to hold her close to him welled, and he was surprised at the honesty of the feeling. It wasn’t because he wanted to bed her; it was because he felt they were a team. Granted, they were a team that had messed everything up, but still, they were together, fighting for the completion of their mission no matter the circumstances.
“What should we do now?” he asked, not wanting this moment, this feeling of camaraderie, to end. He hadn’t felt it since dying with his firefighting brothers, and it was good and right to feel it with Adela.
Adela took a deep breath. “I want to know about your death.”
Liam shook his head. “I’ve told you everything. I burned alive, Adela. It was nasty, horrible, and painful beyond anything I could ever imagine. There isn’t much to tell.”
“Then tell me about your life.”
Liam shrugged. His life had been so much different than hers. Her life had been good and pure, with wanting to help others. His? Not so much. “I was a womanizing asshole who took from everyone. I was selfish, indulgent, and not too much different than I am now, except now I appreciate life a lot more than I used to.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, not much to be proud of, I’ll tell you that.”
There was a long stretch of silence.
“Perhaps we should talk about what’s going on here in the present,” Adela murmured, not meeting his gaze.
Liam smiled. He really wanted her to like him, and somewhere within him, he felt she did. But would she like him once she really got to know him?
Probably not—most women didn’t.
But Adela wasn’t most women.