All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane

All the Rules of Heaven

By Amy Lane

All That Heaven Will Allow: Book One

When Tucker Henderson inherits Daisy Place, he’s pretty sure it’s not a windfall—everything in his life has come with strings attached. He’s prepared to do his bit to satisfy the supernatural forces in the old house, but he refuses to be all sweetness and light about it.

Angel was sort of hoping for sweetness and light.

Trapped at Daisy Place for over fifty years, Angel hasn’t always been kind to the humans who have helped him in his duty of guiding spirits to the beyond. When Tucker shows up, Angel vows to be more accommodating, but Tucker’s layers of cynicism and apparent selfishness don’t make it easy.

Can Tucker work with a gender-bending, shape-shifting irritant, and can Angel retain his divine intentions when his heart proves all too human?

Mate and the kids—check. And Mary, for being there—but this book wasn’t her favorite. So this book is sort of dedicated to me—it was written to please me, and while nobody else may love it, I know I do.

Author’s Note

For those of you interested in the fairy hill Tucker mentions, by all means check out my Little Goddess stories. In real life, Foresthill is a teeny community. In Amy’s land, there are more things in heaven and earth….

For the Sake of Momentum

THE BED that dominated the center of the room was hand-carved, imported ebony, black as night, and the newel posts had been studded with an ivory inlay, random designs supposedly, dancing around and around in a way that made the unwary stop, lost in the intricacy of runes nobody living could read.

The wallpaper had once been an English garden jungle—cabbage roses, lilacs, mums—riotous around the walls, and the grand window was positioned strategically to catch the early-morning sun overlooking what might once have been a tiny corner of England, transplanted by the cubic foot of earth into the red-clay dirt of the Sierra Foothills.

That same dirt was now the dust that stained the windows, layering every nuance of the old room in hints of bloody deeds.

The tattered curtains no longer blocked out the harsh sun of morning, and the wallpaper curled from the walls in crackled strips. The carpet threads lay bare to the hard soles of the doctor who tended to the dying old woman, but she had no eyes for the living person taking her pulse, giving her surcease from pain, making her last hours bearable.

Her eyes were all for Angel—but nobody else could see him, so he rather regretfully assumed that she appeared crazy to the other people in the room.

“No,” she snapped contentiously. “I won’t tell you. I won’t. It’s not fair.”

Angel gave a frustrated groan and ran fingers through imaginary hair. This was getting tiresome.

“Old woman—”

“Ruth,” she snarled. “You used me up, sucked away my youth, drained me fucking dry. At least get my name right!”

Angel winced. The old wom—Ruth—had a point.

“I’m sorry the task was so difficult,” Angel said gently, containing supreme frustration. She was right. What Angel had asked Ruth Henderson to do with her life had been horrible. Painful. An assault on her senses every day she lived. But Angel needed the name of her successor—he needed to find the person and introduce himself. Angel really couldn’t leave Daisy Place unless he was in company of someone connected to it by blood or spirit.

“You are not sorry,” Ruth sneered. “You could give a shit.” She looked so sweet—like Granny from a Sylvester the Cat cartoon, complete with snowy white braids pinned up to circle her head. She’d asked her nurse to do that for her yesterday, and Angel, as sad and desperate as the situation was, had backed off while the nurse worked and Ruth hummed an Elvis Presley song under her breath. The music had been popular when Ruth was a teenager, and it was almost a smack in Angel’s face.

Yes, Angel had taken up most of her life with a quest nobody else could understand, and now Ruth’s life was ending and Angel was taking the peace that should have held sway.

Her breath was congested and her voice clogged. Her heart was stuttering, and her lungs were filling with fluid, her body failing with every curse she lifted. She’d been a good woman, performing her duty without question at the expense of family, lovers, children of her own.

It was a shock, really, how bitter she’d become as the end neared. A pang of remorse pierced Angel’s heart; the poor woman had been driven