"You want me to keep an eye on her?" Wade Sutton pushed the café curtain aside and looked through the window to the only street in Dry Creek, Montana. Clumps of melting snow lined the rough asphalt road and the one vehicle in sight was an old motorcycle leaning against the corner of the hardware store. A tall, red-haired woman was walking toward that store right now, swinging her arms as if she was on some mission from God.

Wade grinned slightly as the edge of his hand pressed against the cold window. It was a cloudy December day and seeing the woman in her bulky, gray sweater and faded dress made his heart beat faster. He liked a strong woman and he could tell by the way she walked that she was a fine one.

Suddenly, a gust of wind blew the woman's skirt up to her knees. She caught the material before it could go any higher. Now, that was the problem with all the piety in this small town, he thought. What was the point of a woman wearing a dress if she didn't show more leg than that?

Wade leaned forward to see if the wind would blow again.

"Nice looking, isn't she?" Sheriff Carl Wall said, moving the toothpick in his mouth. The two men were sitting in the café with their empty breakfast plates on the table in front of them. It was ten o'clock in the morning and the waitress was back in the kitchen. No one else was around.

"She's a regular movie star." Wade let the curtain fall into place and turned his attention to the other man. He knew the woman couldn't be as pious as she looked. Not if the sheriff had asked him to come up from Idaho Falls to watch her. "What's her thing? Stolen property? Blackmail? Arson?"

Wade was ready to sink his teeth into a surveillance job. Until six months ago, when he'd injured his leg while taking down some drug dealers, he'd been the busiest independent private investigator in the Rocky Mountain area. Now, no one except his old friend here was willing to defy the doctors and consider hiring him while he was still in physical therapy.

"Jasmine Hunter hasn't done anything," the sheriff said as he leaned back. "In fact, she even agreed to be the angel in the Christmas pageant this year, so she's real popular around here."

Wade remembered those pageants. "Then she's just plain nuts."

The annual pageant was held in an old barn on the edge of Dry Creek. The angel traditionally flew over the crowd with the help of a pulley in the hayloft. Wade had been the last kid allowed to swing as the angel. Now, it was always an adult.

"They've retired that leather pulley system you used.

The pageant committee put in a whole new rope and wheel job. It's as safe as riding in an airplane."

Wade grunted. He'd take his chances with the old system; he didn't trust anything designed by a committee. Either way, it took nerve, though. Maybe that was why the sheriff had asked him here. "You want me to keep an eye on your angel so she doesn't skip town before the pageant? Is that it?"

"Very funny," the sheriff said without a smile as he leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice. "The truth is, I'm not worried about what she'll do, but what someone might do to her—if you get my meaning."

Wade didn't have a clue as to his meaning. The sheriff's square, homely face didn't give much away. Wade hadn't been able to read Carl's face forty years ago when they were boys, so he didn't know why the man thought he could do it now.

"Has she requested protection?" Wade finally asked. The woman out there walking in the wind didn't look like she'd welcome someone stepping into her business. "I don't think anyone would attack an angel, especially not before Christmas."

"It's got nothing to do with the pageant. And no, she hasn't asked for help. She's too proud. That's why you need to be discreet, so she doesn't know you're keeping an eye on her."

Wade wondered what the angel was up to in her spare time. "This better be good. What is it? Abusive husband? Witness protection? What?"

Wade hoped it wasn't a domestic problem. The holidays brought out the worst in some families. He should know. As a boy, he never had a list for Santa Claus. All he wanted for Christmas was a safe hiding place so he wouldn't meet up with his grandfather's fists.

"There's no husband," the sheriff said as he leaned back again. "Not even a boyfriend hanging around. It's just a hunch I have."

The room was silent.

"That's it?" Wade finally asked to be sure he wasn't missing something. It wasn't only a desire to get back to work that brought him here. His savings were almost gone so he really needed this job, but still—this was Carl. "I remember your hunches. They didn't always pan out."

"This one's different." The sheriff crossed his beefy arms. "You'll see."

Wade lifted an eyebrow. "Well, I hope you and your hunch are going to be around to post bail when this woman hauls me to court for following her around for no good reason. That's what will happen, you know. She'll call me a stalker. Just being worried is no excuse to put a tail on someone."

Wade didn' t have much, but he prided himself on being a fierce defender of the law. He didn't take bribes, he didn't look the other way and he sure didn't violate anyone's rights by surveilling an innocent woman for no reason—especially not one who was as good-looking as that redhead. She wouldn't be the only one who would think he was a stalker; he'd half believe it himself. Even Scrooge would hesitate to put a tail on the Christmas angel.

"Now, don't go getting ahead of yourself. I'm not asking you to follow her exactly. She's staying out at her father's place—Elmer Maynard. You remember him? I just thought you could keep an eye on her. There's no law against seeing what's in front of your face."

"Elmer doesn't have a daughter." He remembered more than he cared to about his days growing up in this small town. The Maynards owned on the place next to his grandfather's farm so he knew them well. The man didn't have any sons, either.

"It turns out Elmer had an affair back when we were kids. Not that he knew anything about Jasmine until she showed up in Dry Creek last fall, fully grown and cruising past forty."

So she was around his age, Wade thought in satisfaction. Of course, that didn't mean anything. He made it a point never to socialize with church women and he'd guess she was a staunch one if she'd agreed to swing on that rope in the pageant. Besides, he was here on business.

He went back to the sheriff's comment. "I bet the tongues are still wagging over Elmer having a daughter."

Even as a boy, Wade knew how much Elmer and his wife wanted children. Of course, Elmer's wife was dead now so she would never know that her husband had a kid all along.

The sheriff shrugged. "People can only talk about things like that for so long. By the time Jasmine found the three men who might have been her father and figured out Elmer was the one, well, people had sort of gotten used to her. And Edith Hargrove stood up for her, which helped a lot. She's Edith Nelson now that she married Charley, but I'm sure you remember her."

"Of course, I remember her."

Who could forget Edith? She was a warrior. When he was six, she had knocked on his grandfather's door and announced that Wade belonged in Sunday school. His grandfather had been too drunk to respond and Edith boldly took his silence for agreement. Every week after that, she stopped by to pick Wade up on her way to church. His grandfather never looked happy about it, but he didn't stop her.

Once Wade got over the miracle of someone going against his grandfather, he paid attention in church. For some strange reason, Edith saw potential in him when no one else did. Of course, he knew right from the start that he'd eventually disappoint her. No one could make themselves believe something they naturally didn't. Oh, he might have believed in God back then, but—like now— he just couldn't believe that God was of much use to anyone in this world. Frankly, Wade didn't trust Him.

The sheriff grinned. "Edith is some woman."

Wade nodded. "She's a force of nature, all right."

However, with the state of his bank account, he didn't have time to walk down memory lane.

"The problem is that you can't just pay me to follow someone around," Wade said, bringing the conversation back to what he needed to say. "Unless I'm in danger of getting shot, the county won't want to sign the check. They keep the safe stuff for their own people even if it means overtime."

Carl's face flushed. "About the money—the county doesn't exactly have a budget that—"

"Aww, man." Wade looked across the table at the closest thing he had to a friend. "You're joking, right? I drove all the way up here and you're telling me there's no money to pay for the job."

By now Carl's face was red, but he was sticking to his request. "Hold on. There's money. It's just coming from the city of Dry Creek instead of the county."

"When did Dry Creek become a city?" Wade glanced around in bewilderment. This café hadn't been here when he was a boy. Well, the building had been here, but it had been empty. There might be a couple of more houses behind the hardware store. And he heard they'd painted a mural on that old barn outside of town, hoping to get some tourists. He supposed it was progress, but— "It hasn't grown that much, has it?"

"We don't need to be big to have money."

"Enough to hire me?"

"Of course, you. We don't want a stranger poking around. And, if you're here, you can spend a few days at your grandfather's place. He's the only family you've got. Besides, he's having a hard time and it's Christmas. It'd be nice if you visited him."

Everything froze. Then Wade reached for his wallet. He'd pay for his breakfast and be out of here. "Christmas is just another date on the calendar as far as I'm concerned. If going to see my grandfather is part of the deal, then Dry Creek will have to find someone else."

"Now, don't be a fool," Carl said when he saw Wade's wallet. "I'm paying for breakfast. I know how it is when you can't work. And you're at least entitled to gas money for driving up here."

The sheriff pulled a wad of bills out of his jacket pocket.

Wade hadn't seen that kind of cash in months. "Don't tell me you carry that much money around. Is that the Dry Creek money?"

Carl flushed as he laid the well-worn bills on the table. "We don't have a checking account yet."

A suspicion started growing in Wade's mind. Those bills hadn't come fresh from a savings account, either. "Have you ever done this before? Collected money to hire someone?"

Carl was quiet.

"Well, that really settles it. I don't take charity," Wade said as he pushed back his chair. Pride was about all he had left and those bills told the story. Someone had passed the hat for him and he didn't like it. "You can tell everyone that I'm doing just fine."

The two men glared at each other for a minute.

"You can tell them yourself," the sheriff finally said. "If you're too stubborn to take honest work—"

"What's honest about it? I'm not going to follow some woman around just so you can give me money and make me think I earned it."

The sheriff's face softened. "It was either that or I'd have to deliver a carload of casseroles to your front step. You know the people around here help their own."

Just then the door to the café opened. Wade looked up and saw the red-haired woman walk into the room. A leather bag swung from her shoulder and the faint smell of some floral perfume swirled around her. As she took a few steps, he could see he'd underrated her looks. Her delicate porcelain skin was rosy from the cold and her auburn hair curled around her face, reminding him of a Botticelli angel with a halo. No wonder the people here wanted her in the Christmas pageant. She was like a picture in some museum.

And then she walked closer and he knew he was mistaken. She was too alive for a museum. Or any celestial gathering if it came to that. He'd never seen a woman like her. Her copper hair was spiked instead of curled like he'd thought at first. And her nose was slightly crooked. She wasn't the angel at the top of a Christmas tree; she was the angel who'd fallen just far enough off the top to be interesting to a flesh-and-blood man like him.

It was a good thing he was sitting down, because he felt a weakness in his knees. Suddenly, he wasn't so sure that he hadn't hit his head in the fight six months ago. He felt a little faint and his heart was acting up. But all he could do was gawk at her like the boy he used to be when he'd lived on the edge of this small town. That same feeling of watching his dreams from afar would pass, of course, but it annoyed him all the same. He didn't deal with dreams anymore in his life.

Jasmine felt her breath catch. Who was that man? He stared back at her for a few seconds before looking down at his coffee cup. In the moment she met his eyes she could tell he had something to hide. At least that's what it must be because he went pale at the sight of her.

For a second, she wondered if he recognized her from prison. She'd told the people around here that she'd spent time in jail, but she didn't want someone from her past to come and remind them of it. Not when she was trying to be a normal woman instead of an ex-con.

She stood still as she looked at the man more closely. He had a fine-looking face, one she was sure she would remember if she'd seen it before. A dark growth of whiskers covered his chin and his moss-green eyes studied the pattern in the checkered tablecloth. His blue flannel shirt and jeans were both well-worn, too, as though he spent a lot of time outdoors. And he had a black Stetson hat sitting on the chair next to him.