Angel with Attitude Read online

  Val looked down at herself, feeling embarrassed for the first time. “This, I, uh . . .”

  Well, that sounded intelligent, she thought.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you . . .” He stretched out his hand and seemed to be waiting for something.

  “Her name’s Valerie,” Reggie piped up.

  She stepped closer to the motel and out of the way of two young boys riding skateboards.

  They stared at her lack of clothes with wide eyes as they passed by.

  At least they don’t have a camera, too, she thought.

  “Valerie,” the man continued. Then she found that she was shaking his hand, finding it as strangely warm and comforting as his smile. “I am Bartholomew Barlow. I look after the

  Paradise Inn.”

  She nodded stiffly. “About the job. I don’t really know—”

  “My former employee unfortunately has left us. With no notice. I’ve had to manage on my own for several weeks, and I fear I’m too old, too tired, to continue without assistance. Your help would be greatly appreciated.”

  Reggie nodded. “Lisa was gorgeous, too. Didn’t even say good-bye before she took off.”

  Mr. Barlow finally let go of Val’s hand and she felt oddly bereft. “I’m not sure I’m what you’re looking for.”

  “Nonsense. You’ll do just fine. Though, I’m afraid I’m unable to pay very much. This isn’t the busy time of year around here. At the moment we only have a few tenants.”

  “I live here permanently,” Reggie added. “Barlow cut me a great deal. Until Claire lets me move in with her, that is.”

  Barlow turned his gaze to the other man. “Speaking of deals. I believe you are behind on your rent.”

  Reggie glanced at his wristwatch and tapped it with his index finger. “Will you look at the time? I have somewhere I need to be. Nice meeting you, Valerie.”

  Val watched the back of his head moving away as he scurried along the sidewalk. She turned her attention back to the kindly old man.

  “It’s not the money, I . . . I just don’t think I’ll be here very long.”

  “Here in Niagara Falls?”

  She was about to say “on Earth,” but stopped herself. “Yeah, here in Niagara Falls.”

  “You don’t like it here?”

  “I don’t belong here. There’s somewhere else I need to be.”

  He nodded. “Homesick. I understand completely. If you would like the job for as long as you’re here, I would certainly be willing to work something out.”

  “Why are you doing this? Offering me a job?”

  “Because I am in need of a maid. And you are here. Perhaps you’d like to go back to wherever you’re staying and give it some thought?”

  She almost smiled at that, but then realized that it wasn’t very funny. “I don’t have anywhere to stay.”

  “No?” He appeared to mull over a thought. “Well, you are welcome to use one of my rooms for as long as you care to. Like I said, there are plenty available. Freshen up. Change your clothes.” He crooked his eyebrow again at her choice of wardrobe.

  She pulled the small amount of T-shirt material down as far as she could. “Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t have any clothes?”

  She waited for the inevitable questions that she was certain she wouldn’t be able to answer properly. Why don’t you have anywhere to stay? Why don’t you have any possessions . . . suitcases . . . friends . . . family? But he didn’t ask any of that.

  “I see,” Barlow finally said. “Then perhaps, if you agree to work for me for a while, I can arrange a small advance on your first paycheck. Help to get you settled? How does that sound?”

  Frankly, it sounded too good to be true to her. Was he a demon? She eyed him warily. Is this how they approached to try to lure her to Hell?

  But he hadn’t approached her. She’d approached him.

  She stared at him for a moment longer, expecting there to be a catch. Expecting him to suddenly turn cruel or lewd. But he simply regarded her with mild interest and a warm expression on his wrinkled face.

  She finally put her thoughts into words. “Why are you being so kind to me?”

  “Because I can be. We all fall on hard times now and then. I certainly have.”

  She felt the almost overwhelming urge to give this kind stranger a hug, but she didn’t. Instead, she gave him a big, heartfelt smile, her first one, and it felt very good.

  She looked at the motel again, and it didn’t look quite so bad anymore. It was run-down and old and needed a fresh paint job, but she was welcome there. As she walked into the courtyard leading to the manager’s office, she suddenly felt welcome there. An odd feeling of warmth came over her, taking the chill away as she followed Mr. Barlow. She exhaled slowly. This would have to do until she figured out how to get back to Heaven.

  She frowned suddenly

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “Did you say you need me to be a maid? As in a ‘cleaning rooms’ and ‘making beds’ maid?”

  He turned and nodded at her. “That’s right.”

  She sighed, but continued to follow the old man. It could be worse, she supposed. She could be working at Booty Call.

  Chapter Two

  A nine-year-old little girl was going to solve all of Valerie’s problems. Well, all of her problems were really only one, extremely large problem. But the important thing was, after two months stuck in the earthly realm, she’d finally found somebody to help her.

  Two months. She could hardly believe it. Working as a maid at the Paradise Inn, which included, as she’d predicted, cleaning rooms and making beds. Also, cleaning toilets, which was just absolutely disgusting. Not the work for an angel, that’s for sure. Not that she could entirely remember what she had and hadn’t done as an angel anymore. Details were still more unclear than she’d like them to be. But she knew that it beat being human any day of the week.

  So that’s what she’d done. Worked as a maid. Tried to be friendly to people she met and not give away what she truly was in case they’d think her insane. Tried to cope the best she could with her situation.

  She also tried to do as many good deeds as she could. The golden scroll had said that that was one way to get back on Heaven’s good side. Even though she was positive she hadn’t done anything worth getting thrown out for, she wasn’t taking any chances. She helped little old ladies cross the street, she returned stray dogs to their homes, she picked up trash from the sidewalks. Whether these were considered good deeds, or just being helpful, she wasn’t sure.

  But she’d soon find out. Because tomorrow was the day she’d fix everything.

  The nine-year-old girl who was the answer to Val’s problems was actually a psychic, and through hard work and a good chunk of luck, Val had an appointment with her. Tomorrow.

  She’d channel somebody Up There and then Val could ask what went wrong and how she could fix things as soon as possible. Two months was more than enough time for her to decide, most definitely, that while there were certain elements to being a human that weren’t entirely distasteful—although she’d be hard pressed to give any examples at present—it was not something she wanted to be for any extended amount of time.

  She’d been extremely lucky, too. Two months and she hadn’t run into any of those alleged

  Tempter Demons the golden scroll had so adamantly warned against. She’d kept a vigilant watch, too. Most nights losing a ton of sleep shivering and shaking, waiting for some nasty demon to pounce on her and carry her off to Hell. But nothing happened. No pouncing. She figured the seeming lack of interest in the demon community proved her situation was all an unfortunate error. She must have been off demon radar. And that was just fine by her.

  Val sneezed and wiped her nose on her sleeve as she walked along the darkened street. Bad head cold, her first one. At first she’d panicked, thinking it would kill her, but then remembered that colds were mostly harmless—just incredibly annoying. She was on her way back to the Paradise Inn af
ter a midnight drugstore run in the chill of early December. She needed NyQuil. It was nice to have a goal that was easy to accomplish. Plus, it was on sale.

  Buy two, get one free. She’d bought ten just in case.

  How did she get the cold in the first place? From a good deed gone bad: attempting to save a jumper from throwing himself over the Falls only resulted in getting her wet. And being wet in below-zero temperature was a surefire way of getting majorly sick.

  She learned something new about being human every day.

  The falling snow stung her face and she gathered her thin, hooded sweatshirt closer. A pathetic sight to say the least. The self-pity she felt was almost palpable and completely uncontrollable. She stopped walking for a moment and pulled out a notebook from the pocket of her hoody and opened it up.

  “The only snow in Heaven is on the Heavenly Slopes ski hill.”

  She let out a long breath. Just reading from what she’d dubbed her Heavenly Memories

  Notebook put her mind at ease. It was immediate stress relief. Every memory of Heaven that came to mind got written down in the book, just in case she forgot. And, sadly, her memory was getting worse with every passing day. She figured it had to do with having a human brain.

  It simply couldn’t possibly hold all the wonders that she’d experienced as an angel. That had to be the reason. She kept the notebook with her at all hours of the day while she tried not to feel sorry for herself.

  Well, not any more than absolutely necessary.

  Luckily, with it being well after midnight by then, there wasn’t an audience for her extreme misery.

  The immediate goal was to go back to tiny room seventeen at the motel, chug back the cold medicine, get into bed and pull the covers up over her head. She might get up sometime early the next afternoon and watch a soap or two before her all-important, most certainly life-

  changing, appointment with the psychic. She had to get her quota of TV viewing in. One thing she had to admit she enjoyed about being human was watching television—it was an excellent place to study realistic human interaction—as suggested in the stupid, golden scroll. In fact, she liked it so much, that when she got back to Heaven she wanted to get cable Up There so she could keep up with Days of Our Lives.

  The motel loomed in front of her, its VACANCY sign a tacky beacon in the darkness. It was only a few blocks away from the drugstore, a distance that felt three times as far when feeling sick as a dog in the sub-zero temperature.

  She felt a sneeze coming on. Or maybe she was going to throw up. Maybe both.

  She was so not going to miss any of this. The sickness, the cold weather, the way her back hurt in the morning from the lousy mattress in her room. But it was only for one more night.

  Tomorrow she’d fix everything.

  She heard something then. Voices. She stopped walking and turned around. It was a man shouting obscenities from around a corner. He sounded angry.

  Then she heard a woman’s voice. Smaller, meeker, pleading with him, but Val couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  Without thinking, she found herself moving toward the voices.

  A large man, roughly the size of an obese grizzly bear, had a woman up against the brick wall by her throat.

  “There. Try to get away from me now, bitch.”

  “Let me go,” the woman sobbed. Flakes of snow swirled around the dark alleyway from the cold wind.

  “Lemme think about that.” He cocked his head to one side. “No.”

  “Why? Please! I didn’t do anything to you.”

  He grinned. “Little girls shouldn’t be out late at night. The big bad wolf might get them and eat them up.” He moved closer to her face and snapped his teeth.

  “Excuse me,” Val said as she ran a hand under her clogged nose. “Do either of you happen to have the time?”

  His head whipped around in her direction, his eyes wide. She’d surprised him.

  “Time for you to mind your own business,” he growled. “Get lost.”

  Val gritted her teeth and tried to look brave. “Why don’t you let her go and we can all get lost?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Go away. I mean it.”

  The woman had taken this small distraction as her one opportunity. She sank her teeth into his hand and when he released her with a loud yelp of pain, she kicked him in the shin and ran away, her high-heels clicking against the icy pavement.

  Val’s good deed for the night was accomplished successfully. She hoped somebody Up There was keeping track of these things.

  She turned around just as a hand clamped down on her shoulder. The obese grizzly bear roughly turned her back to face his furious expression.

  “I thought I told you to mind your own business?” he snarled.

  She stood her ground and tried to ignore the sick, sinking feeling in her stomach. “Look, I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Could have fooled me. Looks to me like you’re looking for trouble. Looks like you want to know what I do to people who get in my way.”

  He dug his fingers into her upper arm, pulling her close enough to get an unpleasant whiff of his dollar-store cologne. It didn’t quite make up for the putrid stench of his breath, though.

  She was almost thankful that her nose was nearly stuffed shut from the cold.

  His black eyes narrowed. “You owe me now.”

  “I owe you?”

  “You let her escape. I didn’t get her purse or anything else. You owe me.”

  Val gasped as his grip tightened. “I don’t have any money.”

  He stared down at her for a few moments before his scowl turned into a lecherous grin.

  “Maybe we can work something out, pretty thing.” He licked his thin lips and moved his face toward hers.

  “Forget it.” She slapped him across the face hard enough to make her hand sting.

  The grin vanished and his expression darkened. “Who said I was giving you a choice?”

  Before she could make another move to protect herself, he clamped his sweaty hand over her mouth. Her ankle twisted as he dragged her farther into the alley and she dropped her bag of cold medication so she could fight him with everything she had—but it wasn’t going to be enough. The guy was strong and built like a truck. She felt fingers of panic squeeze her already rapidly beating heart.

  He pushed her up against the wall behind a Dumpster and took a step back to get a better look.

  “Yeah, this is gonna be good. Blondes are my favorite.” He licked his lips.

  Val held her hands up in front of her. “You do not want to do this.”

  “Why not?”

  She tried to slow her breathing down so she could put together complete sentences. “Just look at me. I’m sick. I’ve got a very bad virus. Incredibly contagious. And . . . and I haven’t showered today. Yuck, right?”

  “You look pretty damn good to me.”

  “You do not want to do this.”

  He grinned to show her his broken, rotted teeth. “Oh, yes I do. Trust me on that.”

  And then he was on her. She lashed out with the only weapon she currently had—her fingernails. She got him across his cheek and a watched a line of crimson appear. He stepped back to touch his face, stunned for a moment when he saw the blood on his fingers.

  “You’re gonna regret that,” he said. And she believed him. She really did.

  He hit her hard across the face, hard enough that she sank down to the ground, ears ringing from the force of the blow. He grabbed the front of her sweatshirt and pulled her back up to her feet as if she weighed nothing at all and her already injured ankle turned the wrong way.

  As it snapped she felt pain shoot up her leg like a lightning bolt.

  He clutched her throat and pressed her up against the brick wall, hard and fast enough to knock the wind out of her. His fingers closed tighter around her windpipe and he started to squeeze. She stared at him, eyes wide, but after a moment things began to go blurry . . . to fade away. She stopped clawing at him
like a wild animal and her hands fell slackly to her sides.

  This is what she got for trying to help somebody out: she was going to die. Her good deeds suddenly flashed in front of her eyes. No, she hadn’t done enough. And saving that kid the other day from the Pomeranian that was looking at him funny probably didn’t even count.

  This horrible man was going to kill her and she hadn’t had enough time to fix things yet. To make Heaven take her back. They had to take her back . . . had to . . .

  Suddenly, he released her. As she sank down to the ground in a heap, sputtering for breath, she watched him rise into the air. It struck her as odd, but her brain wasn’t making logical connections at the moment. He looked down at Val with surprise before he flew backward and slammed against the other wall of the alley, then fell to the snow-covered ground.

  Unconscious.

  A dark shape moved before her eyes. She blinked and tried to focus on it and saw it slowly condense into that of a man. He crouched down in front of her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She coughed. “Do I look okay?”

  “Not especially.”

  It took another moment before everything completely came back into focus. The man held his hand out and she grabbed it. He pulled her up to her feet, a movement that was met with a gasp of pain as she realized just how hurt her ankle was.

  “Did he harm you?” the stranger asked with a frown.

  Standing, she could see he was much taller than her five and a half feet. Well over six feet, she estimated. He wore a serious expression on his shadowed face and a long leather jacket over dark clothes. From what she could see in the dim light from a nearby street lamp he was very handsome.

  Movie-star handsome.

  At least, he was the best-looking man she’d seen outside of the movies or TV. He almost didn’t look real.