A Forever Christmas - By Marie Ferrarella Page 0,16

will. Hey,” he spoke up with enthusiasm, “that’s nice.”

She looked around, but saw nothing unusual and had no idea what he was referring to. “What is?” she finally asked.

Easing to a stop at the light, he took the opportunity to look at her again. “You just smiled.”

She wasn’t aware of doing that. “I did?”

Even as she asked, she ran her fingertips along her lips to see if they were curving. And they were. She took solace in that and grew momentarily hopeful.

“You did,” he confirmed. “You should do that more often,” Gabe encouraged. “It lights up your whole face. Like an angel’s,” he added with a wink.

Something fluttered in her stomach when he did that. It mystified her even as she found herself enjoying it.

She had no idea what to make of any of it.

The diner was just beyond the next stop sign.

“Well, we’re here,” he told her, coming to a stop in one of the diner’s designated parking spaces.

“Where’s ‘here’?” she asked, cocking her head as she peered through the windshield.

“Miss Joan’s diner,” he told her, unbuckling his seat belt and getting out.

Rather than head straight for the diner’s door, Gabe rounded the hood of his vehicle and opened the door on Angel’s side. He offered her his arm and stood waiting to help her out.

Though her memory continued to be a complete devastating blank, some distant instinct whispered that this wasn’t what she was accustomed to. That having someone open the door for her and help her out of a vehicle was a completely new experience for her.

What a very strange thing to catch her attention, she thought, walking through the door of the diner as Gabe held it open for her.

Unlike the bone-chilling temperature outside, the inside of the diner embraced her with warmth the moment Gabe closed the door behind him.

Warmth and the scent of—

Fried chicken?

Angel stopped moving toward the counter for a moment, stunned by what was, she realized, her first fragment of a memory.

Gabe was immediately at her side, looking to see what had caught her attention. Nothing out of the ordinary popped up. But, he realized, that was his ordinary. It might not be hers.

“What’s wrong?” Gabe asked. The expression on her face was difficult to place.

Angel turned toward him and said, “Fried chicken. I smell fried chicken.”

There was mounting excitement in her voice, the way there might have been in the voice of the fifteenth century Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon the moment he realized that he’d stumbled across the long-missing Fountain of Youth in Florida.

“That’s because that’s the special of the day,” Miss Joan informed her, calling out the information from her place behind the counter.

In the past few months, Miss Joan had finally broken down and married the man who’d been courting her for longer than anyone could remember. But, wedding or no wedding, everyone still called her Miss Joan. And Joan Randall Monroe definitely would not have had it any other way.

“C’mon over here, darlin’,” she called, beckoning Angel over to her. “Pull up a stool and rest yourself. I’ll bring you a plate of chicken that’ll make you swear you’ve died and gone to heaven.” She paused a second before heading to the kitchen. “White or dark?” Miss Joan asked.

Angel looked at the still-attractive strawberry blonde blankly. “Excuse me?”

“What’s your preference, darlin’?” Miss Joan rephrased her question. “Do you like white meat or dark meat better?”

Angel blew out an edgy breath. Even that was a mystery to her. What kind of a woman didn’t know if she liked white meat or dark meat?

“I don’t know,” she answered unhappily.

As if not knowing was perfectly plausible, Miss Joan never missed a beat. “Then I’ll bring you both.” But before leaving, her almost-violet eyes shifted toward Gabe. “And you, handsome? What’ll you have?”

“Dark,” he said with finality. “And if you don’t mind, make both to go.”

Miss Joan looked from Gabe to the young woman beside him and then shook her head, as if mystified at the way any mind under fifty worked. “A little cold to be having a picnic, isn’t it?”

“No, no picnic,” he told her. “We’re on our way to Pine Ridge.”

Gabe thought nothing of sharing that sort of information with Miss Joan. Everyone did. Besides, the woman had a way of finding things out whether or not she was directly told. This just wound up saving time for both of them.

“Nothing wrong, I hope,” Miss Joan said sympathetically. No one went to Pine Ridge unless it was to