A Forever Christmas - By Marie Ferrarella Page 0,57

could recall the woman smiling, let alone almost beaming at her. Her arm still around her shoulders, Miss Joan looked at the gathering. “Okay, settle down now. You’re embarrassing her,” she told the people in the diner, her eyes sweeping over each of them individually.

The applause died down—all except for one customer. He was sitting on a stool at the far end of the counter and turned around very slowly now to look knowingly in her direction. Tall, with chestnut-brown hair, the same color as his trim moustache, the man looked to be somewhere in his early forties.

No one recognized him.

He went on clapping, his hands meeting lowly, rhythmically.

“I said you’re embarrassing her,” Miss Joan repeated with emphasis as she glared at the stranger. She was not a woman who backed off, especially when met with opposition.

The man smirked at Miss Joan’s statement. “Oh, she doesn’t embarrass easily,” he told Miss Joan, never taking his eyes off Angel. Except that he didn’t call her that. He called her by another name. “Do you, Dorothy?” he asked.

Vacating his stool, the stranger moved like a panther stalking its prey and came over to where Angel was standing.

“Dorothy?” Gabe echoed.

He didn’t like the looks of the man who sounded as if he was so familiar with Angel’s life. Secretly, he’d been dreading something like this and now that it was happening, it was even worse than he’d imagined.

There’d been a small part of him all along that had whispered, Some things are better left alone. And now he had a gut feeling he knew why.

“That’s her name. Dorothy Mandra,” the stranger said, never taking his eyes off Angel. He moved even closer to her. “What’s the matter, Dorothy? Not glad to see me?” he asked.

“She doesn’t know you,” Gabe cut in, coming to Angel’s defense. He’d taken an instant dislike to this intruding stranger. “She has amnesia.”

“Amnesia,” the man repeated in a mocking tone. The smile that curved his lips was humorless and cold. “Pretty convenient.”

“Look, mister—” Gabe began, physically turning the man away from Angel.

He could see that the stranger was crowding Angel. Even if she looked at him blankly as if she didn’t know him, on some subconscious level, she had to have recognized him.

Her breathing had gotten slightly audible and definitely labored.

The man shrugged him off and then produced his ID. “That’s ‘Detective Mister,’” the stranger retorted glibly. Flipping open his wallet, his eyes narrowed slightly as he grew serious. “Detective Jake Wynters,” he said, introducing himself. “With the San Antonio Police Department.”

He added the latter for the sharp-featured older woman’s benefit. She looked as if she could take him apart with her talons if he made any missteps.

Wynters doled his information out one piece at a time. “And Dorothy’s my fiancée,” he informed Gabe and the other customers. “My missing fiancée,” he emphasized. “She went missing around the same time that my fifty-thousand-dollar bank account did.” Smirking at her knowingly, he was all but on top of Angel as he uttered rhetorically, “Didn’t you, Dorothy?”

Gabe felt as if someone had punched him straight in the gut. Still, he pulled Wynters back a second time even as Miss Joan put herself between the threatening detective and Angel.

“We didn’t find any money on her,” Gabe informed the outsider.

Wynters looked at the woman he’d come to bring back with him. “She’s a bright girl. Dorothy would have hidden it somewhere so she could get to it later.”

He was lying about the money, but in his experience, nothing turned people against one another more quickly than the hope of recovering hidden money. He wanted to make sure no one would try to get in his way and stop him from bringing her back with him. If they thought she was a thief, his job would be easier.

Miss Joan looked as unconvinced as Gabe felt. “You know him, honey?” she asked Angel.

She had to, Angel thought. Why else did she have this sudden, overwhelming dread rising up within her? The very sound of his voice made her want to shrink back. And yet, she didn’t recognize him, couldn’t connect him to a single event in her life.

Couldn’t remember ever having seen him.

She had no choice but to shake her head. “No, I don’t know him,” she said quietly.

Wynters snorted. “We had an argument just before she took off. She’s just angry, that’s all,” he insisted, reaching for her.

Angel instinctively pulled back and now it was Gabe who stood between her and the San Antonio