Wounded Angel (The Earth Angels) - By Stacy Gail Page 0,31
corner by the door. Logic insisted no one intent on doing her harm would knock, but since logic had nothing to do with potential attacks, she figured better safe than sorry. Another pounding on the door boomed through the small house before she peered through the peephole.
What the hell...?
“Ella!” With his dark hair mussed as if he’d raked his fingers through it and his eyes red-rimmed and sleepless, Nate bellowed as if trying to cave the door in through the sound of his voice alone. “Ella, damn it, open the door! Be alive and open this fucking door!”
* * *
Nate was too big for her kitchen.
The scent of coffee perfumed the air, and the microwave dinged to announce the day-old cinnamon rolls were now warm. With a quick peek to see if the pats of butter on the rolls had melted into a uniform gooey goodness, Ella took them out and placed them on the dinette table. Nate sat there, unmoving and out of the way, but he was just so damn big it felt like there wasn’t enough room for the both of them.
Then again, dressed in a bathrobe and llama socks, it was no wonder she was wishing the man was anywhere but there. But no matter how horrified she might be over her appearance, her grannies on both sides of the family tree would rise out of their graves to haunt her if she didn’t remember her manners.
“Feel free to help yourself, Nate. Those rolls come from the bakery by the gym. Ironically they do a brisk business, thanks to our clientele rewarding themselves for working out. Do twenty reps and give yourself a cookie.”
“Thanks, but I didn’t come here to bum a meal off of you.”
“Coffee and a roll could never be called a meal.” As she spoke, she placed a mug of steaming coffee at his place and settled down across from him with her own mug, then forked a gooey roll onto his plate when he didn’t serve himself. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but considering how you were trying to demolish my door, I have a feeling you didn’t drop by to see if my Southern hospitality muscles were rusty.”
His face was the grimmest she had ever seen it as he took a fortifying sip of coffee. “I thought I’d find you dead.”
“I gathered that from what you were yelling, so that doesn’t surprise me.” Surprise, no. Alarm, yes. On every possible level, her instincts were on red alert and she was ready to bolt into the nearest hole she could find. “The question is why you thought this. It’s not like I’m in any danger of spontaneously keeling over. Don’t I appear to be in relatively decent shape?”
“Whatever goddesslike shape you’re in has nothing to do with suffering a sudden accident.”
Her mind veered off into two radically different directions—the irrelevant and the ominous. “Goddesslike? You think I’m in goddesslike shape?”
Funny, how the irrelevant was so much more appealing than the ominous.
He gave her a look designed to make her quake in her llama socks. “This isn’t a joke, Ella.”
“Then what is it?”
“One woman is dead with parts of her body still being teased out from under a train at Union Station, and another didn’t show up at the Wrigley Building for work this morning when she’s the type you can set your watch by.”
“Okay.” Ella looked down at the hand gripping her mug and was amazed how her fingers could feel so cold while holding onto something so hot. “I’m sorry to hear someone died. I just don’t see why someone getting hit by a train and another disappearing would make you think I was in danger.”
“Briella Fields, Gabrielle Litte and Ella Little. These were the three names I pinpointed in Chicago who could possibly be Gabriella Littlefield. Briella Fields is the one who got knocked into a train. Gabrielle Litte is the one who didn’t show up for work. And you...”
“And me.” Ella put the coffee down, untouched. “Nothing’s happened to me.”
“Yet.”
She stifled a shiver and focused all her energy on boring holes into him with her stare alone. “You’re doing a bang-up job of freaking me out.”
“That’s not my intention. My only goal is to keep you safe.”
“I’m not sure what your intention is, and that’s a problem. See, two years ago I would have fallen for a line like you’re trying to feed me now—”