Accidentaly Divine by Dakota Cassidy (best large ereader .TXT) 📗

anyway? She had a million questions about it, but it felt like inviting more stuff she couldn’t process, so for now, she left it alone.

Either way, he had a valid point. “Do you think this trip she wants to take is like one last hurrah? I mean, who could blame her? If I were dying, I’d want to go somewhere warm and tropical with white sandy beaches, too, I suppose. She doesn’t have any family that I know of, but what does this have to do with me being her guardian angel, and why hasn’t Titus gotten back to you with deets about her?”

Dex shook his head. “I don’t know why I can’t get in touch with him. It’s very unusual. Though, I know he’s been busy lately. Either way, he’s never very far.”

She held up her cell phone. “Is there a hotline? Somebody upstairs I can call who can guide me so I can properly guide? 1-800-Pearly-Gates or something?”

Dex looked past her and clucked his tongue with a chuckle. “No hotline, but let me keep trying to find Titus. Until then, you’re just going to have to feel your way around Effie.”

“Oh, great,” she said on an exhale. “Do you think you’ll find him before or after Effie makes pate out of my liver and eats it on wafer-thin crackers.”

“With fava beans and a fine Chianti?” he teased with a wink.

She waved a finger under his nose the way she’d always done before she knew what and who he was, but being this close to him had a different vibe now. One she was going to do her damnedest to avoid.

She’d discovered she really wanted to get this one thing right. Just this one thing, and helping Effie was the start. It felt like she’d been given a purpose, and she didn’t want to screw it up with emotions best left alone for the time being.

And if nothing else, that she’d been given a job as a guardian quite possibly meant she wasn’t the worst person in the world—something she’d grappled with for a very long time.

You didn’t become a guardian angel if you were a bad person, right?

“You’re funny tonight, Mr. Angel. You gonna take this show on the road?” she asked over her shoulder with a cheeky grin, making her way down the aisle to the area where there was a silver rack of day-old bread to look through.

“I promise to do my best to find Titus and have all your questions answered. I have questions, too. For instance, why didn’t all of Effie’s info just pop into your head when Gilbert announced she was your assignment?”

George blinked, not wanting to make this about her, but the need to know outweighed her benevolence. “Is that how you learned everything about me?”

He gave her a sheepish glance and a slow nod. “It is. It’s how we find out about all of our assignments. Usually, everything you need to know is instantaneously dropped right into your brain.”

Right. She fought a squirm, trying to hide the extreme discomfort she felt. Knowing Dex knew everything about her and her sordid past always made her want to burrow under the nearest blanket and hide in shame.

“Well, I’ve been gypped and I want a refund from the Angel Store,” she joked. “No one dropped anything anywhere. Unless you count my wings, which fell from the sky without any prompting at all and frightened Effie almost into a coma.” She knocked on her head. “Still as empty as it ever was.”

“Then let’s hope we hear something soon. Until then, let me help next time, maybe?”

She sighed and looked at the rack of bread with guilty eyes. “I should have waited. I don’t know why I was so impulsive, Dex, especially now that I know how serious the circumstances are. I’m sorry.”

He put a hand on her arm. “You’re a good person, George. When you take on a task, you do it with all your heart. That’s not a bad quality to have, you know.” He tugged on her wool scarf, bringing her closer to him than ever before. So close, she could see he had skin as smooth as glass, not a pore to be seen. “Now, what are we looking for again?”

George cleared her throat and took a step back, eyeing the bread. “Day-old bread. Arch said a baguette makes the best stuffing for his chicken casserole and Mr. Sahmid, who owns the store, always has a rack of it in the back here. So look at the date. I don’t know about you, but even though we don’t get hungry, the way he described that casserole made my mouth water. I don’t want to miss it, especially if there’s no weight-gain involved.”

“See?” he said with a tilt of his head. “There are perks to this job.”

“Right. Perks,” she mumbled, lifting a loaf of bread to see the date just as a loud crash from the front of the store, startling them both.

“Put your hands up!” a gruff, yet oddly tired voice said.

George blinked and looked to Dex, who immediately moved in front of her. She grabbed the back of his jacket. “Can you see what’s going on?”

“I swear, if you don’t empty that cash register, I’m gonna shoot you, boy!”

Her breath caught in her throat as she looked to the big round mirror at the end of the aisle and saw a disheveled man with a gun, shaking it at the cashier.

George squinted and almost gasped out loud. “Is that…is that, Joe-Joe?”

“Who’s Joe-Joe?” he hissed, his brows smushing together.

Peeking over Dex’s shoulder, she craned her neck around his body and made sure she wasn’t seeing things. It was Joe-Joe. “He’s a homeless guy who hangs out by the coffee shop in town. He’s always looking for spare change to help feed his dog, Sauerkraut. She’s the sweetest thing. A big pit bull mix. He’s sweet, too. He’d never hurt a soul,” she whispered.

Dex put a protective arm around her, pushing her back