Julie looked up from her desk with a smile. “Kylie! How nice to see you! Hey, C.J. tells me you’re doing an awesome job at Gallagher Investments. They miss you, and can’t wait until you’re back at work. You should be proud, girl. My husband doesn’t hand out compliments often.”
Kylie’s mouth dropped open. “C.J. Gallagher is your husband? How come I never knew that?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Julie laughed. “Maybe I’d better go take a look in his office. He’d better still have my picture on his desk!”
Kylie chuckled. “I’m sure he does. To be honest, I work almost solely with Clay. C.J.’s in and out—mostly out—and I don’t see him often. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever been inside his office.”
Julie rolled her eyes. “Sounds about right. My darling husband is not one to stay cooped up indoors if there’s any possibility whatsoever of being out. Clay’s so good about allowing C.J. to do most of the footwork in the company. I mean, I know he’d like to get out more often, as well.”
“Well, things click along pretty well over there. I’ve come to know my boss well enough to know he’d change things if he didn’t think what they’re doing is best for the company.” Kylie glanced at Julie’s appointment book, lying open on her desk. “Is Destiny busy? I don’t suppose there’s a chance I might see her for a moment?”
“She’s actually alone right now. If you’re quick, it shouldn’t be a problem. Our last appointment just left, and the next one isn’t due for another fifteen minutes or so.”
“I saw Dr. Connery on my way in. I’m glad he came.”
“You know Sean?”
“He took care of me after my accident. Destiny met him in my hospital room, while I was having myself a hysterical fit.”
“Too funny!” Julie chuckled, but looked a bit surprised at Kylie’s uncharacteristic candor. “Well, I don’t know how he is as a doctor, but he sure seems like a pleasant enough guy. Funny, nice, gentlemanly—and with a name like that, who knows what other fine qualities he might possess?”
They both laughed. The door behind Julie swung open and Destiny poked her head out. “Hey, no fun allowed!” Her eyes lit up when she saw Kylie. “Look who’s here! What a nice surprise. Did you want to see me, Kylie?”
“Yes, if you have a minute.”
“I just happen to have two of them.” Destiny laughed and motioned her forward. “Come on in.”
The mint-colored carpeting Kylie remembered from the visitor’s waiting room extended into the heart of Solomon’s Gate. Walls of a soft, soothing champagne color gave the medium-sized office a deceptively roomy appearance. Only a few pieces of furniture claimed space in the room. A gorgeous, cherry wood desk dominated the center of the area, and two wingback chairs faced it on the visitors’ side. Destiny and her husband obviously shared a penchant for ensuring the comfort of their guests.
Tucked into an alcove at one end, a couple of tall filing cabinets only a shade or two darker than the walls almost disappeared in the shadows. An assortment of similarly framed and matted Bible verses adorned the walls. Kylie scanned each of them, noticing that all of the scriptures were taken from Song of Solomon—except one.
Her gaze lingered on the wall behind the desk, where a large frame held a verse of scripture from Psalms 91:11. Graceful calligraphic lettering spelled out the familiar words: For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
“You’re trying to figure out why this scripture is different from all the others.” Destiny’s soft voice interrupted Kylie’s study of the room’s details. She started, and looked up to find the other woman watching her, a slight smile playing about her lips.
“I guess I am. Why is it different?” Kylie hurried to explain. “I mean, I love the verse—it’s beautiful, and reassuring. But it doesn’t seem to fit.”
“There’s a reason for that.”
“What is it?”
Destiny glanced at her watch. “I wish I had time to tell you about it, but my next appointment will be here in about ten—”
Julie stuck her head in the door. “Next one just postponed, boss. I rescheduled her for tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you, Julie.” Destiny’s green eyes twinkled when she smiled. “I get the feeling Solomon is at work again.”
Kylie shook her head. “I have to ask. What is the deal with Solomon? Rick’s little girl just mentioned his name yesterday. Apparently she and your Solomon have been having secret discussions.”
“Really?” Destiny’s lovely face took on a thoughtful, pensive expression. “I wonder…”
“Who is he?”
The redhead sat up a little straighter in her chair, then reached out and picked up a small, decorative bottle off her desk. She held the container in her hand, stroking it with her thumb while she studied Kylie for a moment. “Are you sure you’re ready to hear this? It can be hard to believe. You’ll need an open mind.”
“My mind is a gaping chasm.”
Still Destiny watched her for another long moment. Finally, she hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward the framed scripture behind her desk. “The truth about Solomon? That verse of scripture? Same story.”
Puzzled, Kylie read the scripture again. Her heart banged against her chest as the truth slammed her like a big, unavoidable boulder she should have seen coming.
“He’s not—” She swallowed hard. “You don’t mean—”
Destiny grinned, watching Kylie struggle with the truth. “I do mean.”
She shook her head. If she said it out loud, and she was wrong, Destiny would have a heyday with her gaffe. “Say it,” she demanded.
“You want me to say it? OK.” Destiny shrugged, as if it were no big deal. “Solomon is an angel.”
****
She came here to apologize. Instead, Kylie found herself mesmerized by a tale made up of events she would have written off as fiction just weeks ago. But Destiny and this agency had changed her, somehow. She’d met Solomon, felt his other-worldliness. Destiny’s faith-filled life had witnessed to her heart. There’d been that amazing presence in her kitchen the night of her first immersion. She’d faced her biggest fear and discovered a miracle.
And now she found herself believing in angels.
“It started the day my mother died,” Destiny began. “That was just over eight months ago.” She spun her chair around to look up at the scripture on the wall. “Some of her last words to me were the words in that verse. She said it was my scripture—that Jesus told her so.”
“I’m sorry—about your mother.” Kylie spoke quietly, almost feeling a need for reverence.
“Me, too. I miss her. But she left me an incredible legacy.” Destiny turned around to face Kylie again, then stood and rounded the desk to sit in the chair beside her. “I think I’d like to sit here beside you, if that’s OK.”
“Of course it is.” Kylie reached out a tentative hand to cover Destiny’s. Something told her this beautiful, confident woman needed a touch of human contact right now.
Destiny’s smile trembled. She turned her hand over and grasped Kylie’s. “Thanks. I needed that.” She cleared her throat and continued. “I was alone with Mama when she drew her last breath. I kissed her cheek and crossed the room, intending to walk out and call hospice, so they could handle sending someone to take her body away. But before I could reach the door, I heard something.” She paused, fixing her eyes on Kylie’s face, as if she wanted to see her reaction when she went on. “It was a loud whoosh of air, like the beating of huge wings.”
Kylie bit at her bottom lip, but didn’t dare drop her gaze. She had the feeling if she seemed uncomfortable with this story, Destiny would stop talking.
“I turned around and checked Mama first, thinking maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe she wasn’t really gone for good…she’d started breathing again, and that’s what I’d heard. Half hoping, you know? She looked so peaceful lying there, as if twenty years had literally dropped away. But she wasn’t breathing.”
“So what was it?”
“I went to the window, thinking perhaps a bird had managed to get into the room, but it was closed and locked. Then, even as I stood there, puzzled and half-scared, I felt something.” For the first time, Destiny seemed hesitant. “Kylie, please know that I would not lie to you.”
“I do know that.” She did, but it didn’t stop a tiny grain of doubt from surfacing. Destiny could be telling the truth as she remembered it, but she had just lost her mother. It was entirely possible she’d been distraught to the point of imagining things.
“I was completely calm, Kylie. You have to be thinking I was out of my mind with grief. I wasn’t. Mama’s illness was long and painful. Letting her go wasn’t easy, but in the end, it was something of a relief to know she wasn’t suffering any more. What I’m telling you happened—all of it.”
“OK.” Kylie nodded. “Go on.”
“I stood there by that window, trying to figure out what I’d heard, and I felt something wrap itself around me. It was soft, and yet unyielding—like huge wings. That’s exactly what came to my mind: massive wings. I went completely weak, and would have fallen, but that invisible hug held me up. Warmth spread throughout my body, and this incredible feeling of pure comfort washed over and through me. I’ve never felt such peace. Gradually, of course it faded, and the first thing I did was scoff at my own imagination.”
She dabbed at her eyes with the tip of one well-manicured finger and sent Kylie a weak smile. “Even I thought I’d had some kind of weird reaction to losing Mama.”
Spotting a box of tissue on the desk, Kylie moved it to a small table between their chairs. Destiny took one and sent her a grateful smile. Kylie snatched one out for her own use as the other woman continued.
“I met Clay at Mama’s funeral—although the poor man thought he was at his aunt’s service.”
Kylie couldn’t help a soft burst of laughter. “You’ll have to tell me more about that sometime.”
“I will,” Destiny promised. “What you need to know right now is that my meeting Clay provided the financial miracle I needed to get Solomon’s Gate up and going. I had no money, no job, no credit. And yet the bank gave me a loan. Can you believe that?”
“Only because you’re saying it’s true. That’s unheard of in today’s economic climate.”
“Clay made it happen. He was my benefactor, but the bank staff was sworn to secrecy.” She shook her head. “This could never have happened a hundred miles down the road, in a place like Sacramento.”
Kylie rolled her eyes and snorted, so caught up in the conversation that she forgot to be embarrassed by such an undignified response. “No kidding! So Clay financed Solomon’s Gate. What then?”
“Soon after I opened for business, I began receiving threats from someone who didn’t like what I was doing here. Thought I was ‘playing God,’ meddling in people’s lives. Clay was disturbed enough that he insisted I move in with his mother for a while. But the guy found me anyway, here at work.”
Kylie gasped. “What happened?”
“He tied Julie and me up and threatened us with a gun. But here’s the thing…he couldn’t use that weapon. I saw him gazing at the scripture above my desk, but I didn’t understand what was happening. Then his hand began to tremble. He tried to pull the trigger, Kylie. I saw him make the effort, but nothing happened. And before you ask—” She raised one hand, stopping the question trembling on Kylie’s lips. “No, the safety was not on. Much later, I had an opportunity to speak to that man under quite different circumstances. He said the words of the scripture above my desk glowed as if they were written in fire, and that he tried to pull the trigger but couldn’t.”
“What did he do?” Kylie knew her eyes had to be as round as a six-year-old’s. She didn’t care.
“He wrote a note and tied it into strands of my hair and Julie’s. Clay found us shortly after he left. A few days later, just when we were starting to feel halfway comfortable again, he dropped off one of my clients in the lobby—horribly beaten and barely alive.”
“Oh, no!”
Destiny pulled in a deep breath and nodded. “Apparently he had a crush on this woman, and imagined that he had a chance with her. But then she came to Solomon’s Gate, met a man through us, and fell in love with him. Someday I’ll tell you the whole story, but for now, here’s the thing. He tried more than once to hurt me, but never did. Once they had him in jail, he asked to see me, and told me an amazing story. He said every time he tried to get close to me, he was stopped by my ‘bodyguard.’ I had no clue what he meant. Even as I sat and talked with him in that jail cell, he insisted the bodyguard was with me, standing right behind me. He described him as very tall, blond, muscular—”
Kylie’s gasp interrupted her, and Destiny nodded. “Yes. Solomon, of course.”
“You knew it was Solomon? How did you know that?”
“Because I saw him in a dream before I ever opened this agency. He convinced me to go ahead with my plans, showed me what I could do to help my Seekers. It was that dream that gave me the name for the agency.”
“Solomon’s Gate,” Kylie murmured. “But you’d only seen him in a dream?”
Destiny chuckled. “That’s still true. Others are granted visitations—Lea is the second child who’s seen Solomon, that I’m aware of. Apparently only chosen people—like you—are granted a glimpse of my ‘doorkeeper.’” She tossed Kylie an amused look. “I tend to think of him as a gatekeeper myself. That’s how I saw him in my dream. But I have yet to visit with Solomon while I’m awake and lucid.”
Kylie shook her head. “What an amazing, beautiful, unbelievable story!”
“Believe it. Every word is true.”
“I know it is. For some reason, I don’t doubt you, even if I should. And besides, I saw Solomon, remember?” Her eyes welled with tears again. “Also, I—” She hadn’t told anyone about her experience the night of her first immersion experience. “I think I may have had a visitation of my own.”
“Tell me about it,” Destiny invited.
She nodded slowly. “I think I will.”