Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69025 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69025 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
The next thing he remembered was looking down on himself from above. He would never hold his wife again, and he wouldn’t be there to see his children grow up. An ache, stronger than any physical pain he’d ever experienced, gripped him.
Then Brandi burst into the ER in hysterics. One of the nurses turned to escort her out of the room. He followed them to the lobby where Rodney was waiting. Damon watched helplessly as his former friend comforted his wife.
“Brandi! Stay away from him,” he shouted, but she couldn’t hear him. He swung at his enemy, but his blows would not connect.
Then Damon found himself engulfed in a bright light.
CHAPTER ONE
Two years later…
“Don’t tell me to calm down when that bastard is going to marry my wife and raise my children! I can’t let that happen!” Damon yelled in frustration.
“I feel for you, man, but there’s nothing you can do about it.” Paul touched his friend’s shoulder in a sympathetic gesture.
“So you say.” Damon hung his head in despair as the sheer sense of futility swept through him.
“Just because they’re engaged, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the marriage will happen. Brandi is a perceptive woman. She’ll soon realize what kind of man he is.”
Damon found those words comforting, but it wasn’t enough. He looked at his friend and sighed. In the short time they were Watchers together, the two men became close. They shared a lot in common. Both men heavily volunteered in their respective communities, and they each had dangerous careers when they were alive. Paul had been a firefighter and Damon a police officer. It was why they had been chosen to be Watchers. The living referred to them as guardian angels.
Some of the other angels had even commented that they looked alike, which Damon found amusing because other than them both being tall African American men, their physical similarities ended.
They were also, still madly in love with their wives, but all they could do was watch their loved ones from the other side.
Paul had been a Watcher longer than Damon and had more time to adjust to the fact that his wife moved on with her life which included a new husband and family. But there was no way Damon could get used to the fact that his wife was going to marry the man who murdered him.
He could remember that fateful night as if it just happened rather than two years ago. There wasn’t a day that he didn’t think about it, and he felt raw and empty inside every time the details played in his mind.
Now he was here, watching his wife at her engagement party. For nearly two years he had to sit back and watch Rodney ingratiate himself into her life, stalk her, and finally seduce her. It just wasn’t right.
Paul broke into his thoughts. “I sense your pain, but what’s done is done.”
“Why? My family doesn’t deserve this. Please!” Damon pleaded. If it were possible, he would have cried to release some of his pain, but he was spitting mad.
“I think I might know of a way,” Paul said hesitantly.
“What? Tell me!”
“I have to talk it over with Peter first but….”
“But what?”
“There are certain conditions you would need to agree to first.”
“You look beautiful tonight.” Rodney came up behind his fiancée, pulling her soft body against his. The smell of freesia and honeydew filled his nostrils. His pulse quickened. She’d always had this effect on him, from the first time he laid eyes on her.
Rodney found everything about her appealing: the way the corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled, her soft husky voice, and the tiny cute gap between her front teeth. Her chocolate-brown eyes slanted upward, giving her an exotic, feline look, and her closely cropped hair accentuated her perfectly shaped head and high cheekbones. She was an ebony goddess in a pint-sized package. No woman ever made him react as strongly as she did.
He loved to watch her. It didn’t matter what she did; he enjoyed looking at her beautiful face while she slept, ate, and showered. Of course, Brandi didn’t realize that he watched her all the time, but that was just fine. He loved her, so that gave him the right. His love meant he could clip souvenir locks of her hair while she slept, to take articles of her clothing to hold close to him when he went to sleep at night. It also gave him the right to be with her by any means necessary. He would kill, and had killed, for her.
Rodney bent down to press a soft kiss on the nape of her neck, reveling in the feel of her silky skin beneath his lips. He felt as if he had waited forever to hold her in his arms like this. In his heart, he knew Brandi belonged to him and only him. He didn’t care that she was already someone else’s wife when they met. When she smiled at him so sweetly, he knew he had to have her.