All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane Page 0,82

Tucker had been a master class in how another person’s needs could supersede every agenda he’d ever had.

“It’s beautiful, Angel,” Tucker said softly.

“Yes.” Angel couldn’t help the pride that resonated in his voice. “Your aunt used to say flowers were the best people she knew.” The garden faded, and he saw instead a lonely woman, staving off bitterness, taking great draughts of peace and beauty in her own backyard. “She dealt with some of the worst actual people—you’ve seen that. So I tried to give her the most beautiful flower people I could.”

“Mm.” Tucker had set his sandwich plate down and was leaning forward, chin on his hand, elbow balanced on his knees. “You did good, Angel. You’re right. The flowers are beautiful. You can keep them up?”

Angel smiled, appreciating that Tucker could see it was no small endeavor.

“If you could pay the boy who mows the lawn in cash, it would be a whole lot easier.” Angel’s head started to actually ache in the human way, and not in the figurative way it had been aching every time he tinkered with the lawnmower boy’s bank account.

Tucker’s chuckle warmed his heart. “I don’t even want to know.”

Angel made vague gestures and then realized his words got fuzzy when talking about electronics. “Let’s just say that once I got over my surprise, I welcomed computers and all that came with them,” he said delicately.

Tucker laughed some more, and then he frowned. “But Andy told me he stopped mowing lawns after Ruth died. Why didn’t you hire him back?”

Angel grunted. “Because he wanted cash only, Tucker. That didn’t work for me.”

More laughter, and Angel glowed a little inside. Then Tucker raised his head quickly, like a rabbit sensing a hunting cat, and gazed out into the purpling shadows of the garden.

“The ghosts are coming in,” he whispered.

“We should go.” Angel didn’t want a reprise of their first night, when Sophie and Bridget had introduced Tucker to the harsh world of otherworldly redemption.

“But look.” A sweet smile tilted at Tucker’s mouth, and Angel checked the direction of his gaze.

The two women, arm in arm, walked toward the stairs. Sophie’s spectral face was full of mischief, and Bridget scowled as she tried to resist Sophie’s charms.

For a moment, love was bright as a star in the sky, and the lovers possessed more hope than fear.

The tension in Angel’s shoulders relaxed in that moment, and he and Tucker both turned their heads and watched as the two ghosts walked up the steps on the other side of Tucker, avoiding the two men out of their time as though by instinct. Angel smiled, a shaft of joy penetrating his heart like sunshine through storm clouds, and for the first time since he’d started this quest, he felt, fully throughout his being, the thing that would be gained by setting the spirits free of this very earthly prison.

He wanted what Tucker wanted. For these human souls to be happy.

He reached to squeeze Tucker’s knee, to share the revelation, and his hand slid through. Tucker didn’t even shudder, and Angel opened his mouth to tell him, to share, when he saw Tucker’s gaze fixed on a point not five feet in front of the stairs.

Angel turned slowly and froze.

The rules of heaven indeed.

I Know You

TUCKER WATCHED the women pass by, feeling the breeze from Sophie’s skirt. They didn’t see him or Angel, and he was pleased with that.

They deserved privacy, and he’d already intruded so much.

He was aware of Angel’s touch—and as he felt the point of sorrow that they seemed to forever be either too much flesh or too much spirit, he turned his head—

And froze.

He recognized this ghost from Sophie’s point of view. To her eyes, he’d loomed like the monster he was, but in truth he was a midsized man, even for the turn of the twentieth century. He might have once been handsome, square-jawed with high cheekbones, but his face was lined with more than age and more than greed. Every line, every burst capillary, every bag and pouch of skin was twisted with the work of the twin destroyers: malice and madness.

His nose, bright and bulbous, should have made him a ludicrous figure, and so should his great drooping mustache, but instead both features added to the grotesquerie of his fury.

He was glaring at Tucker with so much hatred Tucker’s stomach roiled.

His mouth worked: “I see you!”

Tucker stood, his weariness falling away. “I see you too, fucker. You know what I saw you