Angels Among Us

Angels Among Us: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Gabe managed to make it back to his hotel, up the elevator and all the way to the foot of the king-sized bed in his room before letting himself think about how Joy's beautiful gray eyes widened when he kissed the back of her hand in parting.  

Old fashioned chivalry must not be a huge part of her life, he mused...then he kicked off his shoes, yanked his tie from around his neck, crawled to the middle of the bed, crashed face first, and slept for a solid twelve hours.

"Yo!  Gabe!"

Gabe jolted upright out of a very pleasant dream about gray-eyed angels...with white, feathery wings, halos, and everything.

"Dang it, Scott!" he groused loudly, seeing his assistant standing beside his bed.  "What's so wrong with knocking first?  How did you get in here anyway?"

"I did knock," Scott replied, scowling.  "I called, I texted, I had the front desk call.  When you didn’t answer after all that, the manager let me in."

Rubbing a hand over his face  Gabe asked, "What time is it?"

"Eight-thirty...P.M.  I've been trying to get ahold of you for an hour."

"Why?"

"Because Big Cheese has been trying to get ahold of you all day," Scott answered, referring to Gabe's grandfather.  Scott dropped down in a nearby chair, and Gabe blinked him into focus.  "It seems that Mrs. Murphy has become an instant celebrity.  That stunt she pulled this morning, with the Angel Tree has been all over the news...national news.  She started some kind of charitable trend.  People are fighting over the tree cards in every store across the country."

"Really?"  Gabe grinned.

"Don't look so happy," Scott growled.  "There's more.  Not only are they fighting over getting the cards from the trees, people are fighting to put more on them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Greed, Gabe,” Scott said.  “Everyone has gone crazy.  Because so many people are giving gifts to the needy today, lots of other people are taking advantage of that.  Big Cheese -- as pleased as he sounded about Mrs. Murphy’s generous heart -- is having a fit.  He’s threatening to take every Angle Tree down until all this passes.”

“He can’t do that!” Gabe exclaimed, jumping up from the mattress.  He still wore his clothes from that morning -- and from the night before -- and he really needed a shower, but that had to wait.  Reaching for his suit jacket, he searched the inside pocket for his cell phone, noticed that he had over twenty missed calls, several unanswered texts, and a few unopened emails from his grandfather.  Gabe blanched.  Big Cheese was  upset, that was for sure.  The Lockwood patriarch despised modern technology -- mostly in the form of pocket computers -- so the fact that Wallace Lockwood had attempted to contact Gabe this many times, in this many ways, through his cell phone, only meant one thing.

He was in trouble.

Scott stood up and gave Gabe a comforting look.  “I had room service send you up something to eat.  Get cleaned up, and then head over to my room.  Big Cheese is Skyping with you in an hour.”  Then he smiled.  “It’ll take him that long to figure out how to work the camera on his computer.”

Scott left Gabe alone to his thoughts.  Crap, was his first one.  Then he thought about Joy Murphy and her son.  Had she heard about people abusing the Angel Trees?  What was she thinking right now?

He had to call her, but did he dare?  Maybe he should hear what his grandfather had to say first.  This was his mess to clean up, and he knew Joy had enough on her plate to get her more involved than she was.  But to hear her voice again...