Spotlight & Giveaway: Calling All Angels by Barbara Ankrum

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Barbara Ankrum to HJ!

Hi Barbara and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Calling All Angels!

To start off, can you please tell us a little bit about this book?:

CALLING ALL ANGELS centers on a young woman, EMMA JAMES, who’s been in a bad car wreck. In a coma, she finds herself caught somewhere in the in-between. As if this isn’t disorienting enough, a hot Scottish man who claims to be her guardian angel shows up to guide her through this nightmare—hopefully as quickly as possible. But some other, long ago lifetime stands between them and though Emma has no memory of her past life betrayal, CONNOR remembers her all too well—and not in a good way. Stir in the mystery involving Emma’s accident, the rush to solve it before anyone else is hurt and the inexorable soul mate pull between them and you have a big dilemma. Does she stay? Or does she go? Because angels and humans cannot cross that boundary. Can they?

While this book is connected to the other two in the series, it’s a stand alone read.
 

Please share your favorite lines or quote(s) from this book:

1. “For the record, he didn’t appreciate noticing the way the light settled across the soft curve of her cheek and glimmered in her eyes. He especially resented the way his body reacted to the sight—in direct opposition to the very thing he needed most: to be rid of her. But sensations were brewing inside him out of nowhere, distracting him from his bitterness. He frowned. His business.”

2. “Still holding her, his face only a breath from hers, he spoke to her without saying a word aloud. “Dinna think I haven’t imagined this every day for centuries. Dinna think I haven’t wanted to taste ye again. And now I have.”

3. “A woman like you isn’a meant to be alone, Emma.”
She forced a smile. “Well, you see? Just my luck that the one man who’s been in a love/hate relationship with me for centuries, my soul mate, isn’t even human. What chance does a girl have?” She dared to look up at him then, and despite her answer, her eyes brimmed with emotion.”

What inspired this book?

I will say that the isolation of the last couple of years, the pandemic, inspired the whole Guardian Angel Chronicles. Mortality. Our better angels appearing and disappearing. It got me wondering about the other side and how many people were stuck in the in-between during the pandemic. Alone. And if those on the other side—out angels–missed those connections, too? If the isolation and sameness there ever got to be too much? And how those two worlds could intersect? Seriously, that’s how it came about, but as I began this series and delved further into these questions, this book took it to the next level. In a way, I was trying to answer those questions for myself. CALLING ALL ANGELS was a challenge and a little outside the box for me as a storyteller, but I couldn’t not write it. And honestly, now it’s one of my favorite books.

How did you ‘get to know’ your main characters? Did they ever surprise you?

I did kind of discover these characters as I wrote them. I had a couple of scenes in mind when I began writing, but these two revealed themselves through their dialogue. Conner being a Scot was a surprise. I knew I wanted him to have (once upon a time) died in a duel, but his brogue was clear to me as he began to speak. And since I’ve always been a fan of Scottish historicals, I’ve always wanted to write a hero like Connor. He’s strong and sexy and full of restrained empathy even though he’s worked very hard not to show it. Emma is strong-willed and independent as her history had made her, and I immediately loved her and knew her. She’s made mistakes and underestimated her choices. But she struggles to overcome everything. So often our characters reflect our own lives thematically and that’s the case with this book for me. We don’t all get second chances but you’ll have to read the book to find out whether or not Emma does.

What was your favorite scene to write?

Aside from the initial meeting between them (one of my faves) or discovering how much angels loved 4th of July fireworks shows, it would have to be Emma and Connor’s time in Scotland on the estate where Connor once lived.

“Where are we?” Emma asked, scanning the unfamiliar landscape in surprise. “Is this…heaven?”
He laughed, the sound shockingly unfamiliar to her, but it brought a smile to her lips.
“No,” he said, gazing out at the spectacle before them. “’Tis Scotland.”
Emma’s eyes widened. “Scotland? But how…?”
“Ye must disremember all the limits ye know for now,” he said. “There’s nothing bindin’ ye to the way things were.”
He was right about that. There was nothing familiar in the way things worked in this in-between world. Connor’s steady presence was her only anchor to the life she’d known. Yet she could still feel the brush of heather against her legs. Take in the heady fragrance of the sea and the mossy sweetness of the summer bloom. Feel his skin against her own when he held her hand. Somehow, she’d imagined—when she’d even allowed herself to imagine such things—that all those things would disappear in spirit, that it would all be more ephemeral. That she would never look at a man the way she did Connor and long for him to touch her again.
She stared out at the endless blue sea beyond the cliffs and the road that cut across the moor. A solitary car—the only sign that they had not left the real world behind them—was making its way toward an impressive looking, centuries-old estate atop the enormous cliffs that spilled into the sea, two miles away.
Connor stood beside her, knee deep in those purple flowers, staring, too. He looked like he belonged here, in this very picture of what she’d always imagined Scotland to be.

What was the most difficult scene to write?

Probably the hardest to write was a late turning point scene that I don’t really want to give away. Suffice it to say that it was Connor’s moment to find some healing. But emotionally, for me it was the black moment. Oh, there were tears.

“You must come now. It’s time.” Marguerite held out her hand to Emma.
Inexplicably compelled, Emma obliged, and Marguerite’s fingers closed around hers. They felt so different from his but still comforting somehow. The woman pulled Emma to her feet. The dog leapt up, too, wagging his way over to stand beside Connor.
“But…wait!” she stammered. “I—I’m not ready!”
Beside her, Connor’s jaw worked. She could see him fighting what he wanted to say. Instead, his eyes met hers with a kind of desperation. Desperation and surrender.
“But you are,” Marguerite argued. “You’re more than ready now.”
“’Twill be all right, mo ghràdh,” Connor told Emma, his mouth still bruised by her kiss. “She’s right. Ye must go. Ye’ll be all right now.” But he wore an expression she’d never seen on him before, and it scared her. Where was she going?”

Would you say this book showcases your writing style or is it a departure for you?

My editor at Tule claimed that Connor was one of her top five favorite heroes ever. (That sound is me trying not to cry!) I thank her for supporting me in getting to tell this story. She was this book’s champion when I first pitched it. It’s definitely a departure for me, genre-wise, into the magical realism/fantasy realm, but my readers should feel comfortable knowing that this book is still very much me and written in my voice that will be familiar to them. It’s a romance, first and foremost. Like the other two books in this series, this one is under option for film to MGM studios. (Fingers crossed!)

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

I hope readers will enjoy the read and the escape of this book and find it hopeful. Because we can all use a little of that right now. Whether or not you believe in angels, this story is still a romance but with a twist. And if it makes you wonder and imagine how angels are working in our lives, that won’t hurt my feelings either. Because I think it’s always fun to imagine. I’d love to hear what you think if you do read it, so please drop a review somewhere and let me know.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

I’m starting a new series for Tule set in their favorite town, Marietta, Montana. It’s cowboys, mostly, but with a few runaway brides thrown in for good measure. I hope you’ll stay tuned. Also, having had one book (Holiday Hearts) turned into a Hallmark Movies and Mysteries movie, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my pandemic-delayed next optioned book (Every Time A Bell Rings—Book 1 of the Guardian Angel Chronicles) makes it to the screen soon!

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: An ebook copy of Calling All Angels & 3 Tule ebooks

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Do you believe in angels? If not, maybe you’ve intersected with a human-version guardian angel? And are we sure we know the difference?

 
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Excerpt from Calling All Angels:

Emma James’s grandmother had once told her that memories, like dreams, were as fluid as water. Some swirled up unbidden, like the tide rushing in. Others got pulled out like a riptide—tumbling, secretive, and eventually far away.
But some memories, she said, survive everything. Even death.
But let’s face it, Gran was a little crazy. Or in Emma’s mother’s words, a little woo-woo. Gran was a free spirit soul. Her best friends were people who believed in things like soul circles and past lives. All the topics that drove Emma’s pragmatic father nuts when she sat with them around their dinner table, talking her “nonsense.” They wouldn’t argue, but before long, her father would politely—but pointedly—change the subject. Eventually, she stopped talking about things like that with them, but in Emma, she had a captive audience of one. Whether winding yarn around dreamcatchers together, studying cloud formations, or hunting for healing crystal geodes, her grandmother did her best to counteract her parents’ eyebrow raising.
“Your parents are doing the best they can,” her grandmother had whispered in seven-year-old Emma’s ear as she kissed her goodbye the last time she ever saw her. “But all they know is what they know. Nothing more. There is a whole world out there you can’t even see, Emmalyn.”
Emma had adored her and humored her, though when she was grown, she’d ultimately sided with her father on the woo-woo stuff. Even though, true to her word, Emma’s late grandmother would swirl up in her memories at odd times, gently nudging her to look again. Reminding her that, indeed, some memories survived even death. Because during the worst of Emma’s breakups, her many failures, and even her wildest successes, there her grandma would be, rushing up in her memory.
Now as Emma stood in the rain on that dark, grassy bank above the shallow ravine, watching the EMTs work to extract that poor woman from her overturned car at the bottom, she felt her grandmother beside her, whispering in her ear to remember this moment. That it was important.
Maybe, Emma decided, this was one of those moments she’d like the sea to take with its riptides and undertows. She didn’t want to remember the loneliness of this place or imagine what that woman’s family would soon be going through.
Emma wanted to forget the grinding sound of the car’s wheels spinning in the air and the sight of the deep ruts cut in the wet, grassy bank that slashed through the headlights of the ambulance parked nearby, the smell of fuel littering the grassy shoulder of the road.
She wondered who had called 911. Probably one of the other drivers who’d stopped, like her, standing a few feet away.
Was the woman alive?
Oh, she hoped so.
As the EMTs began to pull the woman out, Emma caught glimpses of the woman’s hair, a similar auburn color and shoulder-length like Emma’s own. There was blood. Poor thing.
“Get a collar on her,” she heard one of them say.
“Do we have a pulse?”
“Thready. BP’s seventy over forty,” another replied, half under his breath. “We’re going to lose her if we don’t get her stabilized now.”
A hollow feeling hit the pit of her stomach. That didn’t sound good. Strange that she could hear their voices so plainly, even as she stood watching like an idiot, a good fifty feet away in the shin-deep wet grass on the bank.
She should offer to help. Hold that woman’s hand. Call her family for her. Something. But of course, the EMTs had this handled. Getting in the middle would only put her in the way.
No, she should walk back to her car. Get out of this drizzle. Drive away. Put this awful memory behind her. After all, she couldn’t even tell them what happened. She hadn’t actually seen the accident that had sent that woman over the edge.
No, no. She’d arrived after the fact. Now there was nothing she could do here but be a spectator.
But—she turned to look at the road, at the debris scattered across it, the deep scar of tracks leading over the edge—where was her car?
Parked on the road were only the EMT vehicles, the fire truck, and two other cars—not hers. Their drivers—men, strangers—stood overlooking the bank as well. They were speaking together in hushed tones.
“…guy spooked as soon as I stopped. I didn’t get a good look at him—it was so dark. He was trying to help her, I think. But he took off,” the younger one in the gray hoodie told the other, a man in his sixties with a paunchy belly. “I asked him if he’d called 911, but he said he didn’t have a phone on him. Said he couldn’t wait. Just took off. So, I called. They got here quick.”
“Man,” the other one said. “That’s cold. Good thing you stopped.”
“Yeah, people are weird in a crisis.” The man in the hoodie still had blood on his hands. He bent down to wipe them off in the wet grass. “I did what I could, but…”
“Might have saved that woman’s life. If she makes it. These guys know what they’re doing,” the older one answered. “My brother-in-law was a paramedic. He…”
The man droned on, but Emma stopped listening as she searched the dark road with increasing worry. Her car was…nowhere.
Silly. Of course it was here…somewhere. She was always losing something. Her keys, her purse. Her peace of mind. The car must’ve been parked behind the fire truck, she supposed. Walking in that direction, she moved past the two men who were still deep in conversation about the woman below. They didn’t seem to notice her or make any attempt to include her in their discussion, which was fine with her, really. That seemed gruesome. Instead, she focused on the feel of the rain-slick grass slapping at her ankles as the EMT workers lifted the woman out of her car onto a backboard. Don’t look, she told herself. You don’t want to remember this.
When she got to the other side of the fire truck, her car was nowhere to be seen.
Emma rubbed her damp, aching temples. This evening was turning into a nightmare. She’d misplaced her car, and now she was going to be late for her meeting with—she frowned, the name momentarily eluding her—with…right…with Dan Gainer, the real-estate investor she and her niece, Aubrey, had been wooing for months about the Bayside penthouse property. A meeting she was last-minute taking for Aubrey who had a surprise dinner with Jacob’s parents, who were in town.
Emma reached for her phone. Oh no. Her phone was in her purse. Apparently, she’d left that, along with her brain, inside her missing car.
Starting to feel panicky, she spun back toward the two men watching the EMTs carry the woman up the hill. “Excuse me,” she called to them. “Excuse me. Can you help me? I seem to have misplaced my—”
“Yeah, this road has always been bad,” the older guy was saying to Sweatshirt Hoodie Guy. “My wife has appealed to the city for some streetlights out on this road, but nothin’. Claimed it was too rural. Wasn’t it just last month that motorcyclist ate it on this curve? Such a shame.”
“I’m sorry,” Emma began again, “I don’t mean to interrupt, but—”
“Tell me about it,” said the younger one. “I like motorcycles as much as the next guy, but you won’t catch me out here at night on one.”
Emma pressed her lips together and walked up practically between them. “Excuse me. I-I seem to have misplaced my car.”
“Even a car won’t protect you out here,” said the one with the paunchy belly. He nodded toward the EMTs carrying the woman up the hill. “Oh, look. Here they come. I suppose we should give ’em our names. In case she makes it. Jeez Louise. Looks bad.”
“I don’t think you should count her out just yet, do you?” Emma said, feeling a little indignant at being ignored. At least she hoped the woman would be—
“What kind of car is that anyway?” Paunch asked. “A Lexus SUV?”
Emma blinked. She turned her attention back to the battered, upside-down car. Her car was a Lexus SUV.
“Hard to tell,” Hoodie mused. “It’s so messed up, but yeah. Might be.”
Cold seeped into her. Glancing down at her feet, she noticed one of her shoes was missing. She curled her bare toes into the muddy grass.
Okay, stop it now. This is just getting weird.
Something more than simple curiosity drew her haltingly toward the woman on the backboard the EMTs had struggled up the hill with and were now carrying across the road. Emma still couldn’t get a good look at her, circled as she was by emergency workers. Except for the glimpse of her right hand, the glint of silver on her fourth finger.
A simple silver band exactly like Emma’s own ring.
She froze. Her thoughts tilted. Wait. No.
That can’t be right. But—
“Looks like her name is…uh…Emma. Emma James,” said the EMT holding a wallet. Her wallet. From her purse as the others moved toward the ambulance.
Emma sucked in a breath. No. She squeezed her eyes shut. No, no, no. This can’t be happening!
“Emma, can you hear me?” the female EMT asked, leaning over that other Emma. The one that wasn’t her.
“I can hear you! I’m Emma. I can hear you. I’m right here!” she practically shouted.
“Her pulse is—”
“Charge the defib.”
A strange whining sound cranked inside her head. Wait! This is all wrong. Am I—? I-Is she—?
“Charging!”
No. I don’t have time for this. My life is too full, too busy! We’re leaving first thing in the morning for Turks and Caicos. The whole team. This is ridiculous—
“Stay with us, Emma,” implored another as they loaded the other Emma onto the ambulance.
Wake up, Emma. Wake up! This is all a bad dream. Just wake up!
Water dripped off her nose as she jerked a look to her right, to the men still standing on the bank shaking their heads as they spoke to the police officer about the accident. And to the left where two firemen tidied the ropes they’d used in the rescue.
Alone as she’d ever been, there in the dark, she spun around to suddenly find another man—one she hadn’t seen before—watching her. Seeing her with something close to astonishment. He looked vaguely familiar, like some figure out of a film she’d once seen, but the memory blinked away as soon as he met her eyes. He took a tentative step in her direction, looking nothing like the others, who were all business and urgency, but quite separate from all that. She couldn’t make out why. Except for the fact that his odd clothing… Black leather pants, knee-high boots, and loose linen shirt—did not fit here. Just as she didn’t fit.
He shook his head, confused, taking one more step in her direction, his voice a hoarse, familiar if disbelieving whisper. “Violet?”
Emma blinked as something like lightning scored through her—a memory, a flash of something searingly hot and far away.
Then, everything went black.

“Ye should’a warned me it was her,” he growled, staring at the woman lying on the ICU bed across the hall. “’Twas wrong of you, Marguerite. You know it.”
“Je suis désolé, Connor? Who exactly?”
Marguerite Ciel, Connor’s erstwhile mentor and overall pain in his arse, feigning innocence at his question with her Cajun charm, would be amusing if it wasn’t so predictable. Over the last few centuries, she’d had her hand in every turn of his development as a guardian. But mostly she’d thrown doors in front of him disguised as walls. Most of those doors had opened peacefully. With this one, however, she’d gone too far. Clearly, she knew it.
“Violet,” he answered. “My Violet.” No, not his—ever actually—but at least a woman who was the image of her.
Corralling her small, fluffy dog, Enoch, Marguerite lifted him into her arms and tucked him against her, possibly as protection from Connor’s wrath. Glancing toward the bed that held the woman from the accident last night, she replied, “I believe her name is Emma. Emma James—”
“Ye know it’s her as well as I do. Or some twenty-first century version of her.”
“You know it’s her because…?”
“Because I’d know her in the dark,” he snapped. “I’d know her in any century or on any continent. Whether we understood each other or not. I’d know her.”
“Ah.” Marguerite sniffed. “Your point is…?”
“My point is ye had no business pairin’ me up wi’ her when you know my feelin’s on the subject.” He stalked past her down the hospital corridor of St. Elias, contemplating all the ways in which walking away from this assignment—as he should, by rights, do—would burn his chances for the Council seat he’d been eying for longer than he cared to recall. Not that he gave a flyin’ flock about that now. Not when he’d found himself face-to-face with Violet again. Whether she remembered him or not wasn’t important. Though, for the briefest of moments out there in the dark last night, he imaged she had.
Marguerite was tight on his heels. “Roland approved the assignment. How was I to know Violet—or who this Emma person once was—was still such a peekon in your side?”
A thorn, indeed, that still poked him under his skin after all these years. Marguerite knew full well, of course, his feelings about Violet. If this was some kind of test, then he was bound to fail it. Because he wouldna be paired up with the likes of that woman again. Even if it was merely to escort her home, deposit her at the Gates, and bid her a fare-thee-well.
“As a third degree,” he argued, “I shouldn’t have to—”
“You’ll have to take that up with Roland, you know,” she interrupted, knowing Connor would get nowhere with the senior head of the Council. Roland was fair but famously unmovable when it came to changing his mind.
He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “Aye, I’ll do that. Then I’ll take a sharp stick to the eye. Just to prove I enjoy losin’.”
Enoch barked in his direction, a yippie little sound that Connor interpreted as opinionated. He narrowed a glare at the little dog. “Did I ask for your thoughts on the matter?”
“Roland’s not all that bad,” Marguerite pointed out, peering over Connor’s shoulder at the woman. “Why, look what happened with Elspeth Aloysius.”
Elspeth. Elle. A guardian/friend several ranks below him who had recently taken matters into her own hands and gone against every rule Roland had set up for her. Connor had to admit, he admired her for that. He secretly envied her outcome. But on this matter, he felt certain that if Roland had deemed it so, there would be no recourse. Even when he’d gotten the assignment, there had been a crimson flag of urgency attached to it. To turn it down could only hurt him in his quest for a Council seat.
“Fine,” he bit out. “I’ll escort her. But I’m not doin’ a lick more than is required of me. Don’t expect me to do orientation or take her through first steps at intake.”
She pressed a finger to her lips and glanced toward Emma’s room, where she lay surrounded by beeping machines and tubes. “Bein’ sure of yourself has always been one of your greatest strengths. But also one of your basic weaknesses, Connor. Who said her outcome is already determined?”
Not determined? “Isn’t it? Don’t play with me, Marguerite. We know each other too well.”
“This is no game, Connor. Our path—our job—as guardians is as deep as the bayou is wide. It’s filled with things that’ll either eat or sustain you. You get to choose which.”
A sigh welled up from inside him. “I know I’m in trouble when you begin talkin’ in metaphors.”
A smile eased the serious expression on her face. “’Twas you who said you wanted that seat on the Council, no? Do this, I can pretty much guarantee you will get what you need, Boo. C’est’ tout. It’s time for me to go. Be seein’ you soon, eh?”
“But wait!” he said. “What about—?”
Too late. She was gone.
Frustrated, Connor glanced down at the glowing dial on his inner wrist. A clock, of sorts, that measured not time but instead the completion of intention. It was a senior guardian tool, one he knew intimately.
His dial read -4 percent. He gave his wrist a few unproductive taps with his finger, then sucked a sigh through his teeth. Never before had he had a negative reading of completion on his wrist dial. If the thing wasn’t broken—which was technically impossible—that could only mean he was somehow losing ground in getting Emma where she needed to go, instead of making headway. With a 100 percent completion rating required for this job to be signed off by Marguerite, clearly, this was already going badly.
Stubborn woman. But that was no surprise. Emma James—or whoever she was—had better hurry it up and get her head around her situation. Because he had better things to do than sit around waiting for her to—
He whirled at the touch of someone’s hand on his arm to find her standing beside him, her wide-eyed gaze every bit as shocked as his own.
“Oh!” Emma cried hoarsely, pulling her hand away as if he’d burned her. “You—you are real. I mean—” She stared down at her fingers, flexing them in a testing sort of way. “You can see me. Right?”
Violet’s voice with a twenty-first century inflection.
Balls.
“Aye,” he bit out. “I can.” To him, her spirit looked every bit as corporeal as he himself did. Even though he wasn’t, in fact, corporeal at all, as evidenced by the nurse who had just walked right between the two of them.
Shocked, Emma stared down at herself. “Am I…dead, then?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what is this?” She gestured at the transmutability of her body, at him. At this other place they occupied.
This, Connor decided, was apparently Hell.
Because, just as he had the night before, he was momentarily incapable of pulling his gaze from the familiarity of her mouth or reconcile the effect the sound of her voice had on him or quit remembering the feel of Violet’s cheek against the backs of his fingers. In spirit, she bore none of the bruises or abrasions her body had suffered in the crash. Except she was minus one shoe, of course, and her auburn hair was a bit of a mess.
Which, to his chagrin, only hardened her appeal.
Oh, aye, he would have words for Roland the next time he saw him for forcing him into this—
Looking suddenly paler than pale, she reached out again, her fingers gripping his forearm, as if he could somehow keep her from falling, which she looked in very real danger of doing. He stiffened at her touch.
“I feel so…odd,” she said.
“Ye willna faint,” he told her. “It’s only the adjustment that yer feelin’.”
Her eyes were suddenly shiny with tears as she released her grip on him and backed against a wall. “The adjustment to…what?”
Still transfixed by this apparition from a long-ago life, Connor hesitated. He could almost remember when she was the one he could count on. Trust, even.
“Adjustment to what?” she repeated.
“To the in-between,” he said, hardening himself to the stricken look in her eyes.
“In between…what exactly?”
“That world,” he explained slowly, indicating her body in the bed, “and the next.”
“Oh!” she cried. “I am dead!”
“Calm yerself. Yer not dead. Yet. Nor are ye quite all there on the other side, either.”
“Don’t tell me to calm myself! Hasn’t anyone ever told you that’s the wrong thing to say to a woman in a moment of crisis?”
“Not precisely, no.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating. “Okay.” The spitting image of Violet nodded unconvincingly. “And so…you’re also in this…in-between?”
“No. I’ve definitely chosen sides.”
Her gaze slid over him, taking in every inch of his features. “I…I don’t understand.”
“Ye will.”
Suspicion clouded her expression. “And…who are you?”
“Name’s Connor.” He watched her closely to see if his name sparked any memories. It did not seem to.
“Connor,” she repeated, testing the sound of it on her tongue. “I’m Emma.”
“I know who ye are.” He just stared at the hand she’d extended until she dropped it back to her side.
“Something tells me I don’t want to know how you know that.” Rubbing her temples, she squeezed her eyes shut again. “However, maybe you can tell me how I get back to my side of things?” She gestured at her body in the bed.
“I canna help ye there. Sorry.”
She tilted a look at him, then slowly nodded. “Ahhh. Of course you can’t. Because everybody knows you never really solve problems in dreams.”
This revelation seemed to both relieve and excite her. She paced around the small room. The dream explanation was all too common among these mortals, who rarely accepted their fate when the time came. Sometimes, it took weeks. Denial was powerful. Connor folded his arms.
“I mean…” she continued, “in dreams, you just go round and round until you finally figure it out by some kind of…magical realization what the whole point is of seeing yourself lying in that bed looking like…that. I mean, maybe I’ve been working too hard lately or…it’s like that awful one where I’ve overslept for a college exam and I’ve actually forgotten to go to class for the whole semester? Or…or maybe it was that Law of Attraction podcast I listened to that messed my sleep up for months last year coming back to bite me again, considering”—she waved a finger at him—“you. Here. Looking…like that. Hot, actually.” She blushed a little. “See? That’s something I would never say in real life. Alas, you’re not real. In dreams nothing gets resolved and then you wake up. Voilà!”
Amused, or oddly flattered, he narrowed a look at her.
“Yes. So, I’m going to wake up now. Goodbye, cute Scottish dream guy. Connor. Nothing personal.” She bowed slightly at the waist to him before she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to wake up. She spent a good thirty seconds at it.
But when she opened her eyes, nothing had changed.
“Wake up, Emma,” she told herself, slapping her cheek. Then again, harder. “Wake up.” Out of one eye, she peeked to see Connor still staring, his jaw cocked.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just more like a nightmare.”
“You dinna recall the accident?” Connor reminded. “Wi’ your automobile?”
Emma frowned at him. “That was part of this dream. I think.”
“I’m sorry t’ say ’tis no dream, Emma.”
“Okay, just stop it now. I’m just gonna—” She paced around from the foot of the bed, climbing down atop herself to align herself precisely with her body. “It’s probably just logistical.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she winced with the effort to make something happen, but of course, nothing did. Nothing at all. The monitors attached to her body kept right on beeping, albeit at a more erratic pace. But not a finger or an eyelash moved.
He folded his arms, leaning back against the wall. “Go on, then.”
She lifted her head, scanning her still comatose body. “When I want something, I…I make it happen.”
Absently, he glanced at his wrist again. The dial read -5 percent. Och. This is going in the wrong direction.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at him. “Am I keeping you from something important?”
“Matter of fact,” he mumbled but didn’t finish the thought aloud.
She sent him an offended look just as the nurse whose name tag read Katrina spun through the room, checking the IV and beeping machines beside her body.
“There you go,” Katrina soothed. “That’ll make you more comfortable now.”
“No! I’m not comfortable at all!” Emma practically shouted, sitting up. “I’m right here! I just need to wake up. Can you help me? I’m dreaming. I can’t seem to…” Waving her hand at the nurse, it passed right through the other woman without notice. Emma shook her hand. “Oh. This is bad.” Sitting up, she scooted off the edge of the bed. “Very bad.”
“They canna see us. Either of us,” he told her.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Okay, just for argument’s sake, let’s say you’re right. I’m not dreaming and I’m in this…this in-between but you’re…not. So, what are you? Some kind of”—she swallowed thickly—“ghost?”
He shook his head, restraining a laugh.
Eyeing his clothes, she ventured, “Time traveler?”
He frowned with a look down at his apparel.
“Angel?”
He gave her a pistol-point with his index finger. “Guardian, more accurately.”
Again, she narrowed a look at him, apparently gauging his veracity. “My guardian, I suppose you’re going to tell me?”
“Technicality,” he said, gritting his teeth. “It’s a temporary assignment.”
“Oh. I see. Well. To be perfectly honest, I…don’t really believe in any of that stuff. Angels—sorry, guardians. Crop circles and all that.”
“Is that right?”
“Uh-huh. Or ghosts even. My gran did, but she was a little…you know.” She whirled a finger around her temple. “I believe that nonsense is just people trying to justify—”
“Their complicated existence?”
“Yes. No. Trying to…I don’t know…hope. That’s all.”
“Hope, is it?” he said. “And ye don’t? Hope?”
Glancing about the room, she replied, “Is that a trick question?”
“The Scots say: Were it not for hope the heart would break.”
“My heart,” she pointed out, “is none of your business.”
“And you not believin’ what’s happenin’ does make this whole situation a bit of a dilemma for ye now, does it not?”
“Maybe.” She moved around the room, trailing a finger along the surfaces of the machines, though, again, not exactly touching them. “Anyway, I can’t quite recall how it all—the accident… How it—”
“Happened? That’s irrelevant, isn’t it, at this point?”
“Irrelevant?”
“Aye. ’Tis of no matter now how but where ye go from here.”
“Maybe to you it’s irrelevant. But it’s not to me. I mean, look at me. I’m…I’m invisible. How did that accident happen? Why, for heaven’s sake? I’m a good driver. The best driver.”
“I meant irrelevant in the sense that the crash happened. Now you’re here. With me. In the in-between. See how that works?” He didn’t mean to mock her exactly. But speaking to Violet brought out the worst in him.
She considered him. “You’re a bit cranky as guardian angels go, aren’t you? I mean, in the traditional sense.”
He cocked his jaw. “I’m only here to facilitate.”
“Okay, I’ll play along. Facilitate what, exactly? My…death?”
“Most likely.”
“Wait…” She stopped with a puzzled look. “Wait. In my dream, I saw you before, didn’t I? Back on the road? In the dark. You called me by some other name.”
Slowly, he unfolded his arms, scowling at her.
“What was it again? Velvet? Veronica?”
He ground his teeth together.
“No. Violet. That was it. You called me Violet. Didn’t you?”
“No.” He couldn’t meet her eye now. “Maybe. That’s no’ important.”
“I think perhaps it is. Maybe that’s the key to my dream. Who is this Violet person?”
“Nobody.”
“Hmmm.” She eyed him for a full ten seconds before she walked closer to him, coming practically under his nose. She gave a sniff as if she were testing out his scent, scanning the full length of him from the ground up until her gaze landed on his face.
He felt the rake of her gaze rush through him like the heat of a flame.
“I thought angels couldn’t lie.”
“And I thought you didn’t believe in angels.”
Emma tapped her steepled fingertips together thoughtfully. “Show me your wings.”
A bark of laughter escaped him. “What? Why?”
“To prove to me you are who you say you are. You could be anyone. You could be—” She pointed downward. “Why should I trust you? I mean, how do I know you’re here in my best interests?”
Connor glanced around the ICU, where medical personnel flitted in and out of the sliding glass-doored rooms past desperately ill patients, most of whom had their own stoic guardians posted nearby, a mixture of males and females. The constant sounds of the place were like the thrum of a hundred high-pitched drums, all disjointed and struggling. Even Emma James’s heart. “If I do show you, then what?”
“Then”—she swallowed thickly—“I-I don’t know.”
“Then, you’ll stop arguin’ wi’ me?”
“Maybe.”
He was much taller than she was. He loomed over her until she was forced, by his mere will, to take a step back, bumping into the bed before rounding it to the other side. She lifted her chin in direct defiance of his most practiced intimidating look. Whatever resolves this unpleasant reunion in the quickest way possible.
What compelled him, no doubt, was pride. Ego, even. Because he’d never shown his wings to any mortal before. But she wasn’t mortal, was she? Not exactly. So, in one effortless movement, he unfolded and stretched his wings.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

What if soulmates truly are forever?

Emma James isn’t sure if she’s dead, dreaming, or somewhere in-between after a car accident leaves her hospitalized in a coma. And the gorgeous but grumpy Scot with a sexy brogue claiming to be her “guardian angel” seems to have her confused with someone named Violet. After discovering her “accident” was no accident at all, Emma fears her niece may be in danger. Enlisting her reluctant guardian’s help to solve the mystery takes all her persuasion skills. But alarmingly, she finds herself falling for this centuries-old, grudge-holding immortal.

Connor Montrose instantly recognizes Emma as the woman who betrayed him two centuries ago—Violet MacLeish. Though Emma has no memory of that life, or the love they shared, she’s Violet’s doppelgänger and a pain in his tortured soul. He needs to help her cross over so he can get a long-awaited celestial promotion, but this new version of Violet is even more beguiling and stubborn than before, drawing him deeper into the human world he’d rather forget.

Stuck between life and death, can these two lost souls find common ground?

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Meet the Author:

Barbara Ankrum has a thing for the West and has written both historical and contemporary romances, all set in that magical place. Twice nominated for RWA’s RITA Award, her bestselling books are emotional, sexy rides with a touch of humor. Barbara’s married and raised two children in Southern California, which, in her mind, makes her a native Westerner.
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