"I'm sorry," Stone hurriedly said, raising his hands shoulder high. "I apologize. I've been acting like an ass, when I should've been proud of what you were doing. I would've come back today and told you how sorry I was."
"Sure," Tess sneered. "You can say that now, after I've spent all this time feeling like you'd stopped caring for me. Do you have any idea what I've gone through the last few days?"
"Yeah," Stone said in a soft voice. "I've been going through it, too."
"I don't much give a damn! Do you hear that? I could care less how you've been feeling. I've spent three days in hell, and to top that off, I've been shot at and ended up in a fight with a blond bimbo who thought she'd crawl into your bed as soon as I was dead. That same bed that you've been denying me because you think I'll get so lonely I'll crawl to you on my hands and knees and beg you to forgive me for something that I've got every right to do."
"I agree," Stone began, but Tess waved the rifle around and continued to yell.
"I pull my weight around that ranch. I cook your meals, wash your dirty clothing and teach my kids. Do you know how many buckets of water it takes from that stupid well to wash a week's worth of laundry?"
Stone did, but he wasn't about to try to tell her that — not with the rifle wavering in front of his face.
"I counted them yesterday," Tess went on. "Twenty buckets of water. And I'll bet you that well's a hundred feet deep."
"A hundred and twenty-five," Stone whispered to himself.
"So if you think I'm going to tell Sid to cancel that pipe order, I'm not!"
"O.K." Stone could feel his patience starting to slip. "But anything you buy with that damned money you've got had better be to make things easier on you and Flower. I don't want one penny of it spent on me."
The picture of the slipper toe sticking out of the toilet hole flashed in Tess's mind. "Fine," she agreed. "But I'm not going to come to you with my hat in my hand every time I want a few dollars to spend."
Suddenly Tess blinked and stared at the rifle, then glanced down at her finger.
"You either need to put that gun down or go ahead and shoot me," Stone said. "My arms are going to sleep."
Tess inched her finger away from the trigger guard and shifted the rifle into her arms. She tilted her head a little, studying Stone's face. "You can put your hands down now," she finally said.
Stone dropped his arms and took a step forward. Tess shook her head and backed away.
"We're not done talking yet," she insisted.
"Is that what we've been doing?" Stone asked. "I thought you were issuing ultimatums and I was agreeing with them."
"Was I?" Tess murmured. "Oh. Well, let's hear your side of it now."
"My side of it's just this. I love you. Whether you believe me or not, I've thought of you every second the past few days. I finally realized that part of the reason I fell in love with you was because I admired you and respected you. If I try to change you, you won't be the Tess I fell in love with." He chuckled wryly. "Not that I'd have any success at trying to do that anyway."
"Yes, you will." Tess threw the rifle aside and ran into his arms. "I love you. All I need to know is that you love me, too, and we can work anything out. I promise we can."
Stone buried his face in her hair and held her tightly. "God, I've been so miserable," he whispered. "And I was so damned scared when I found you out here. Not just because of Rose, either."
Tess jerked away, her eyes starting to flash again. "What's that supposed to mean? It didn't bother you that that bitch was trying to kill me?"
"Damn it! Of course it did. But you were taking care of that without any help from me. What really scared the daylights out of me was you being out here — like you were trying to find your way back to where you'd come from. Like you'd finally gotten fed up and wanted to leave me for good."
"Oh."
"Is that it? Oh?"
Tess shrugged her shoulders, and stared at the ground. "Well, it didn't work anyway. Dorothy and Toto had the Good Witch of the East to help them. I still haven't figured out who my good fairy is."
"Who are Dorothy and Toto?"
"Nobody, really. And I didn't really want to go, so maybe that's why it didn't work." She raised her head and laid a hand on his chest. "Let's go home, Stone. I want to go home."
"In a minute," Stone whispered as he pulled her close and kissed her.
But it was a lot longer than a minute. Michael had plenty of time to savor the success of his plan and explain to Angela just how he'd accomplished it as they drove around.
"I put blanks in both their rifles," he told his angel partner. "I didn't want to be a part of either one of them getting killed or wounded. I knew Stone was just over the hill there, and that the gunfire would bring him running. Not that Tess ended up needing him."
"It worked out beautifully," Angela admitted. "But what about that fight Tess and Rose had?"
"Hey, you can't blame that on me. That was all Tess's idea. She lost her temper and tore into Rose all on her own. Other than changing the bullets to blanks, all I did was help that slide out a little bit."
"I still can't believe Tess let that...that blond bimbo go."
"Angie," Michael said in mock horror. "Watch your language!"
Angela blushed prettily and dug her toes into the carpet on the floorboard. "Well, I can't. Stone heard Rose's confession, too. Wouldn't that have been enough to put her behind bars?"
"Tess evidently didn't think so, and she's the lawyer. 'Course, Tess is thinking in terms of law back in 1993. But you've gotta remember that, even though she chose to go into corporate law, she had training in the criminal end of it in law school. And sometimes even their corporate clients end up breaking other laws — or their kids do, and they come to the first lawyer they can think of when they need one."
"Maybe she handled Rose the best way," Angela mused. "Can you imagine living the rest of your life looking over your shoulder — knowing someone's always out there watching you — waiting for her to show up at any minute?" Angela gave a delicate shiver.
Michael broke out into guffaws. "Yeah, and what about looking in the mirror every morning and seeing that missing tooth? There ain't no dentists back here that know how to put a missing tooth back in. Anyway, Rose swallowed it. I don't imagine she'll...."
"Oh, hush, Michael," Angela said with a giggle. "You know," she continued when her giggles subsided, "you've been doing so well on this assignment that you really don't need my tutoring any longer."
"So what's that supposed to mean?" Michael asked in a worried voice.
"I thought you understood, Michael. My job's just to teach you what you need to know about using your powers, along with what is and isn't accepted behavior for guardian angels. Although I think I've learned a lot myself on this assignment. Anyway, when you're capable of carrying on alone, I'm supposed to go back and see who my next pupil is."
"You mean, leave me? Angie, honey, you can't do that!"
"But I...."
"Look, they can get hold of you if they need to, can't they?"
"Yes, but...."
"Don't you want to see what's going to happen with Tess and Stone? And don't they ever let angels work in pairs?"
"Of course I want to know if Tess stays back here, but you can tell me later. And it's very rare for two angels to work in a pair. I've only heard of one other case, and that was a husband and wife who were killed together in a car crash. Most of the time even husbands and wives have different interests. It sort of works out like it did when they were alive."
"They each go off and do their own thing, huh? Follow their own interests?"
"Not exactly like that. They see each other a lot."
Michael spun the steering wheel to head back toward Stone's ranch. He chewed on his cigar stub, frowning in disappointment. He'd thought they were doing pretty well together. And after all those lonely years on earth, he didn't really want to be on his own up here.
He supposed Angie wanted to get off to her next challenge, though. After all, she was a teacher and teachers like to teach. It would probably be awfully boring for her to spend her time with a pupil who didn't need any more training.
Angela stared down at the ground with a forlorn look, not making any effort to read Michael's thoughts. He would probably be glad to get rid of her. She wouldn't be around to always be telling him that he couldn't to this or shouldn't do that. Complain about the cigar stub in his mouth, even though she'd come to think it made him look sort of cute.
She'd learned just as much as she'd taught this time, though. She'd learned that her job could be fun — she didn't always have to take it so seriously. Always when she taught on earth, she had to remember that a teacher had to be a model of propriety — an example for her pupils. A frivolous teacher was frowned on by the school board.
Darn it, she'd never had any fun. And she'd learned to drive from Michael....
"You can't go yet, Angie," Michael said suddenly. "I'm still not comfortable with my wings. You haven't taught me how to fly yet."
"Oh," Angela said with a measure of relief. "You're right. We'll have to take care of that, won't we?"
"Darn right we will." Michael grinned to himself. He didn't have any intention of fluttering around like some...some angel. Not when he had a perfectly good set of wheels to carry him around.
***