Free Midwinter Magic by Katie Spark Page B

was bleak. “You of all people should know the world isn’t fair.”
    “So, what then? I just go about trying to save as much of the world as I can for the rest of my mortal life, knowing there’s an invisible presence who could help out, but won’t?”
    “Not if I can help it,” she said with feeling.
    The first ray of hope pierced the gloom spreading inside him. “Really?”
    “Of course. All this gallivanting around third-world countries is far too dangerous. What you should do is stay home.”
    The oxygen evaporated from his lungs, as months of improbable bad luck replayed through his brain. The inexplicable flat tires. The permanently delayed flights. The nightmares with Customs. The inability to rent cars or hotels or anything else he needed. The equally improbable reversal of fortune the moment he decided to head home. Direct flights with first-class upgrades. Limos flooding the streets. Zero traffic.
    “ You were responsible for the burlap sacks?” he asked inanely.
    “No, I was responsible for the exploding crates. I wanted you to go home . I still do. I’ve saved your life a dozen times since you landed, and it’s barely been a week. If I’d seen the burlap sacks before you did, I’d have gotten rid of them, too.”
    Jack turned on his dirt-caked heel and stalked away before he came unglued.
    She’d rather guard him from Starbucks spills back in Malibu than help him save undernourished children in Bolivia?
    Well, too fucking bad.
    Now that he knew she was contractually obligated to keep his ass alive, he planned to risk it as much and as often as necessary in order to keep improving lives. If she had to save him from falling logs and insurgent gunfire forty-six times a day just so he could keep making a difference, then so be it. Why not risk his life to save someone else’s?
    After all, he had a guardian angel.

Chapter Eight

     
    S ARAH STARED at the new community center without moving a muscle. Jack was on the roof, a power drill tucked into his waistband, as he teetered on the apex.
    They hadn’t spoken in days. Not that there’d been time for speaking. Jack had been far too busy throwing himself in harm’s way at every possible opportunity. The projects were moving faster than ever, but if she so much as blinked, her stubbornly altruistic human was going to gore himself on his own drill. Or snap his spine falling off the roof. Or tumble headfirst into a pile of machetes. Or all of the above.
    He’d been hard enough to protect when he hadn’t had the slightest notion of her existence. Now that he knew the truth, he was all but impossible. She felt like she was the one balanced at the edge of a precipice. She needed to do everything in her power to salvage as much of the situation as possible before meeting her superiors. And now that her cover was blown, she really ought to go back to being invisible.
    But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not now. Not anymore. Why should she?
    She was so fired at her end-of-month debriefing, it wasn’t even funny. This would not only be her last assignment, it was also the last time she’d be allowed on Earth. The clock was ticking. Every day closer to Christmas was another day closer to being stripped of all privileges, if not outright shackled to a cloud. There was no way she was spending her last days with Jack as nothing more than an invisible specter. Not when an eternity of being shunned was the only thing awaiting her back home.
    Plus. . . she didn’t want to leave him like this. Hating her. Angry. Resentful.
    If she could somehow save the whole world and him, she’d be all over it. But she couldn’t. So, here she was. Watching over him.
    While she still could.
    At the moment, he and most of the men from the village and the neighboring pueblos were hard at work patching up the death bridge with strips of wood and leftover roof bits and plenty of sun-bleached rope. He was currently hanging upside down, sinking counter-nails into the