Avenger's Angel: A Novel of the Lost Angels Read Free Page B

house one summer.” He handed the pens to Uriel and turned in his seat to signal to the driver.
    “Wait.” Uriel held up his hand. Gillihan paused, his brow arched.
    Uriel felt uneasy. Something was off. This was supposed to be just another signing. . . . And yet something told him that it wouldn’t be. “I’m not ready yet.”
    Max’s gaze narrowed and he sat back in the leather of the opposite seat. “You’d best get ready, my friend. Because it’s going to be a long night.”
    Uriel blew out a sigh and ran a hand through his thick brown hair. “That’s what I’m not ready for.”
     
    Eleanore Granger glanced up when she heard the thunder. She’d known the storm was coming. She smiled to herself. She always knew.
    She glanced back down at the gathering crowd beyond the front doors of the store and couldn’t help the out-and-out grin that lit up her face. “They couldn’t have picked a worse day, could they?” Within minutes, the rain would be falling. Everyone outside would get soaked.
    It was probably wrong that the thought gave her a thrill of satisfaction. But she was tired and she was frustrated and she was sort of sick to death of seeing Comeuppance posters in every store window from here to Timbuktu, interviews with all the cast members on the news, and new fashion designs in department stores that mysteriously resembled what the characters wore throughout the film.
    And all because the main characters were attractive.
    A jet plane carrying 236 passengers had gone down over the Pacific last week and the news slot that covered the horrific story was composed of a single live hour, and a revisit that night and the next morning. Meanwhile, the handsome visage of Christopher Daniels, the actor who played Jonathan Brakes in Comeuppance , seemed to be plastered nonstop on the fifty-inch plasma TV screen above the fireplace in the café of the bookstore. Whether in movie trailers, on interview shows or in news clips, he seemed to have been there for two weeks straight.
    He was up there again, in fact. It was late Saturday afternoon and Denna’s Day was airing their interview with the star. Yes, he was gorgeous. Ellie had to admit as much, though she did so only to herself. The actor was quite tall and trim and broad-shouldered and his thick, dark hair was slightly wavy where it hit the collar of his shirts and jackets. His nose was Roman, his chin strong but not too strong, and whether clean-shaven or darkened by a shadow of stubble, his face forced a double take.
    It’s his eyes , Ellie thought distractedly.
    Those eyes. Christopher Daniels had eyes of the lightest green she had ever seen. She had thought they were contact lenses when she’d first seen them on the big screen. But interview after interview, it was clear that the eye color was his own. Ellie had dreamed about those eyes a few times. Not that she would willingly share this information.
    He was most certainly a stunning man. His voice was smooth and he moved with a nearly unnatural grace. Ellie had to force herself not to gaze at his pictures when she passed them everywhere—on store windows, the sides of buses, in Walmart.
    Were the women of the world truly that desperate for a pretty face? Including herself? Since when did a handsome man trump a tragedy in the news? It was crazy.
    Ellie refused to play into that craziness. At least when she was awake.
    The walkie-talkie on the customer service desk a few aisles away came to static life and someone in the stockroom asked her if she was there. Eleanore finished shelving the books she had with her and strode to the desk to pick up the walkie-talkie. “I’m here, Shaun. What’s going on?”
    “The bigwigs are here. But they pulled up to the back door instead of the front door. You want me to tell Dianne or Mark? What should I do?”
    “Um . . .” Eleanore thought for a moment. Why would they have pulled up to the back? Were they hiding for some reason? Did they need to talk to a