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    My favorite romantic heroes...  Hot Buttons   |
FORBIDDEN ANGEL CHAPTER ONE Rori Pierce gazed out the classroom window, and a terrible grayness in the sky warned her of the impending rain. She tried to ignore the whirling sound of helicopters, like the beating of her heart. Two nuns walked gravely toward the chapel in the distance and the bell tower remained silent until the next day’s morning mass. She sat at a desk in front of twenty-seven students and noted the false maturity of the adolescent boys she taught. Each boy had his head bowed either diligently completing, or diligently feigning to complete, the last geometry problem set of the week. She remembered well being a student and the blurry transition to the day she was qualified to sit in the teacher’s desk, but her life felt endlessly the same. Thirteen had not been a good age for her, but then neither had twelve or fourteen. Her students wore ill-fitting school uniforms because after a dozen years of stagnation, the young men started to develop at an alarming rate. Sleeves were either too long or too short, and the same for the navy trousers and neck ties. She envied this awkward, but needed, phase of transformation. The only thing that had ever changed in her life was her shoe size. Rori held her hand steady when she wanted to tap her fingers anxiously against the desk. Teachers and students alike tried to ignore the sound of helicopters circling the campus, because it was a sound they had heard constantly the past three days. The shadow of a helicopter passed over the window. A warning, she thought, because omens she believed in. The mobile phone on her desk had been displaying incoming calls all day, but each time the caller and number were listed as Unknown. She kept the ringer silent during class and in between sessions she would try to answer fast enough to catch the phone call, but each time she picked up, no one was on the other end. Another bad sign. The first call came in at four o’clock in the morning. Startled awake by the phone, Rori lay in bed with her heart pounding for several moments trying to recall her forgotten dream. Something had been chasing her, and if she had continued sleeping the thing in her dream would have caught her. She was convinced that even though it wasn’t real, she wouldn’t have been able to get away. The four a.m. call had startled her out of danger, and she'd snatched up the phone gratefully. But the line held only silence before a series of taps, as though metal was striking metal. Then two bursts of static and silence again. Every call since had been the same. It was approaching three o’clock in the afternoon and the last bit of colorless sunlight disappeared behind the clouds. The message history on her phone displayed forty-seven unknown calls. Glancing around the solemn classroom, Rori sighed. For the past three days, she and the other teachers taught during day and worked as search party volunteers combing the extensive fields surrounding the school and seminary. She wished the unexplained calls had something to do with the search, but nothing had come of the calls except added frustration. She was tired and wanted to be home or out with her friends having drinks and laughing. Anything to get her thoughts off of the missing child, one of her students. She didn’t drink much, but she could almost taste an ice-cold shot of vodka drowning her throat, burning her chest, and clouding her mind. Her girlfriends would be encouraging and her male friends would playfully compliment her, but never think of taking her home for the night. She needed a man who wasn’t her friend. She needed a man who would throw the cursed ringing phone out the window and quiet the thumping whirr of the helicopter. A man with a shoulder she could rest her head on, a chest to wrap her arms around, and lips she could kiss without restraint. She rubbed her hands over her face before her thoughts went any further. Through the fingers that covered her eyes, she saw another shadow move across the doorway, its presence darkening the classroom. It moved quickly, in a way that made her snap her head in the direction of the stealthy apparition. The eyes of her students followed hers to the door, but instantly the shadow was gone… |
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