Elizabeth Armstrong believed in angels. And she thought maybe Jack Barnes was one.

She’d been sitting in the well-worn armchair in her living room, keeping watch over Emmett, wondering what to do to keep their lives from falling further apart. Emmett had shown up back at home sometime after five and was now crashed on the couch with his comforter thrown over him, which she’d brought from his bedroom. He was supposed to be at work by ten, and she needed to make sure that happened, in spite of his bruised and battered face. The problem was, Emmett slept like a log and she’d been unable to rouse him. He’d groaned and moaned but had yet to open his eyes and keep them open. She’d cajoled and lectured, but neither had done the trick.

Just when she was starting to worry about Emmett having a concussion, Jack Barnes knocked on the door.

Jack, who’d been such a decent guy at the scene of the accident. Who, when the police arrived, said Elizabeth couldn’t have been the driver. Who’d not put up much resistance when Theresa Harmon, Elizabeth’s wonderful lawyer, insisted that with a clear blood trail and footprints leading away from the Bronco, the real driver must have fled the scene. Jack hadn’t asked further questions after Theresa instructed Elizabeth to say nothing to the police before quickly hauling her out of there.

Jack, who was tall and broad-shouldered and exuded an air of competence and strength.

Jack, who came from a good family of honorable men—unlike her own.

He arrived shortly after eight o’clock and knocked on the door. Perhaps he’d tried the doorbell, but it was broken and had been for years. The house had already been old when Elizabeth’s parents bought it; she and Emmett managed to make the mortgage payments, but years had gone by with little to no maintenance done on the place.

When Elizabeth turned on the porch light and answered the knock, Jack stood there in the morning dark. The beating snow had slowed to a gentle flurry and looked pretty in the street lights.

Looking solemn, Jack held up a white bakery bag. “Cinnamon buns,” he said, handing her a bag from the North Star Café. “I thought you might be hungry.”

She accepted the bag, but she was far more drawn to his earthy brown eyes. Back on the highway, she hadn’t noticed their unique dark amber shade. Or the deep smile lines emanating from them. Or the waves in his dark brown hair that curled at the ends and which she’d like to twirl around her finger.

Jack Barnes was not only an angel, but he was a sexy angel.

“It’s kind of you to think of me,” she said. “But I don’t think I’m supposed to talk to you.”

She was under strict instructions from Theresa Harmon not to talk to anyone about the accident, especially anyone official.

“You don’t have to talk to me.” Jack gestured to an older man coming up the walkway, who gave her a friendly smile. He was short, packed a few more pounds than was good for him, and carried an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. “This is Doc Bauer, from the community health clinic. You can talk to him.”

“Oh! I, uh …” She glanced back at Emmett, lying prone and unconscious on the couch, and the men’s eyes went to the couch, too. An involuntary tightness crossed Jack’s face, and she imagined the thoughts going through his mind, branding her a liar and affirming the apple didn’t fall far from the tree where ethics and morals were concerned. “I don’t know …”

“Jack thought you might have difficulty getting your friend to the clinic, so we decided to bring the clinic to you,” Doc Bauer said. “My services are free and bound by doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“Oh!” That changed things. “I would like you to come in, then.” Doc Bauer slipped into the house and then into the living room, where Emmett finally was stirring. Elizabeth gave Jack a look of apology. “I don’t know if I should let you in, legal-wise.”

“As a paramedic, I’m bound by the same confidentiality,” he said. “But if it makes you more comfortable, pretend I’m not even here. Just let me pet your beautiful dog, and then I’ll be on my way.”

Elizabeth had to smile at how her friendly little Welsh Corgi, Rugby, had been looking eagerly at Jack ever since she’d opened the door, seeking his attention. She liked how Jack took off his glove, dropped to one knee, and offered his hand for Rugby to sniff and then lick, and she loved how Rugby jumped right into his arms as if he were an adored member of the family.

But she couldn’t possibly pretend Jack wasn’t there. The tall, muscular manliness of his presence was sending disconcerting buzzy feelings through her body.

Jack smiled up at her. “He’s quite the guard dog, I see.”

She laughed. “Hardly. But he reads people really well. I guess Rugby can see you’re one of the good guys.”

“I don’t know about that.” Jack stood. “But I do hope your boyfriend’s okay.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Elizabeth said. For some reason, she couldn’t stand to have him think that. “He’s my brother.”

* * *

Elizabeth bit her lip as she watched Jack make his way down the un-shoveled walkway, wishing there was a way to show him how much she appreciated his complete and utter decency. At the same time, she felt stupid for pushing on him the fact that Emmett was her brother and not her boyfriend.

What was she thinking? That Jack Barnes, a captain with the fire department who was established in life and came from one of the best families in town, would magically fall in love with her—an impoverished bartender from the most infamous family in town—when he learned she was not, in fact, dating the loser who’d left her on the highway?

Jack paused at the sight of Elizabeth’s Bronco in the driveway and then walked around it, eyeballing the damage. Chris Flattery, the husband of Elizabeth’s friend April, had towed it for her and deposited it in her driveway. The exterior wasn’t too bad; the left headlight was smashed, the driver’s side mirror was wrecked, and there was a shallow dent running along the length of the passenger side where the vehicle had sideswiped the roadway sign.

Jack looked up and saw her watching.

“Does it start?” he called.

She shook her head. “Hopefully it’s just a frozen battery.”

“More likely, the undercarriage has been damaged.”

“That sounds expensive,” she said.

“It can be.”

She gave a little goodbye wave, closed the door, and turned her attention to her brother and Doc Bauer. The doctor sat on the edge of the sofa and studied Emmett’s visible injuries, mostly gashes and bruises, at the same time he measured his heart rate.

“This is your brother, you said?” Doc Bauer asked.

“My older brother, yes. His name’s Emmett. I’d been trying to wake him, but he’s been pretty out of it. I was getting really worried, to be honest.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Elizabeth did. According to Emmett, once everyone had left the scene, he’d come out of hiding and flagged down the next car that came by. The driver was going in the opposite direction from Golden Falls, back toward the party they’d been at, so Emmett returned there, where the drunken stragglers cleaned him up as best they could. From there, he got a ride back home with a buddy, who hauled Emmett inside the house and left him on the couch, where he’d been ever since. In an abashed tone, she also told the doctor how Emmett had admitted to using drugs at some point before the accident.

Doc Bauer listened as if he’d heard it all before.

“He wasn’t always this way,” she added, looking at her brother’s pale, doughy face. What had happened to his discipline? His drive? His determination to rise above what life had doled out to him? “Emmett took care of me by himself ever since I was thirteen and our mom took off. He got me out the door for school. Made my lunches. Kept the lights on.” She sighed, knowing how hard it must have been for him. “He never got to be an irresponsible teenager because he always had to look out for me.”

Doc Bauer’s smile was kind. “And now he’s making up for lost time?”

“I guess so.”

Elizabeth appreciated that Doc Bauer didn’t ask about her parents. With Nate in prison and Donna off somewhere sowing her drunken oats with whatever barfly would put her up and ply her with booze and cigarettes, her family history was not one of which Elizabeth was proud. Donna, after half-heartedly playing the role of single mother for a few years after Nate went to prison, had abandoned them for a boyfriend who didn’t like kids when Emmett was eighteen and Elizabeth thirteen. Emmett filed for and got legal custody of Elizabeth, but for a few years Donna periodically showed up and made their lives miserable until Emmett changed the locks. Donna’s screaming tirades trying to get back in only ended after Emmett filed a restraining order against her. She’d been banned from the Sled Dog Brewery, too, and as far as Elizabeth knew, she now spent most of her time in the dive bars on the industrial east side of town, where the booze was cheapest.

“Elizabeth, would you get me a glass of water?” Doc Bauer asked.

“Sure.”

While filling a glass from the tap, she looked out the kitchen window and caught sight of Jack shoveling the sidewalk in front of her house. Her heart swelled and her throat constricted, and suddenly she very much wanted to cry. Witnessing kindness did that to her sometimes. Outside it was still dark and bitterly cold, and she knew Jack had just gotten off an overnight shift … and yet he was shoveling her sidewalk so she wouldn’t have to.

While Emmett slept his life away on the couch, leaving other people to clean up his messes.

“Enough,” she whispered.

She’d had it with her brother. She filled a second glass of water, went back to the living room, handed one to the doctor, and without saying a word poured the other glass of water on Emmett’s head. He jolted upright and glared at her, but she glared right back.

“I see his reflexes are all in order,” Doc Bauer said, amused.

“The doctor’s here to see you.” Elizabeth kept calm only because of the doctor’s presence. Otherwise, she would have yelled. “And you need to be to work by ten, so get up and shower once he’s done.”

Emmett worked in an entry-level position at CoCo’s Emporium, the trendy downtown grocery store. He’d only been hired by the store manager, a regular at the Sled Dog, as a favor to Elizabeth.

“I can’t work today, Lizzie Bean,” Emmett said as if the very suggestion was ridiculous. “I don’t think I can even move.”

“There’s a man out there shoveling our walkway,” she said, her finger shaking as she pointed in the direction of the front door. “I hope that embarrasses you as much as it embarrasses me. I’m done taking care of you, Emmett. I know I owe you for all the years you looked after me, but if you lose this job, you’re on your own. I must be enabling you, and I can’t do it anymore because it’s not doing either one of us any good.”

Something’s got to change, she thought. And that something is going to be me.

She turned and went back to the kitchen. She’d made a pot of coffee a couple of hours ago, half of which was still left, although tepid since the keep-hot plate had turned itself off. Deciding hardly-fresh coffee was better than no coffee, she asked Doc Bauer if he wanted some. He declined, saying he’d already had his fill, so she filled a sole mug and microwaved it, then added cream to mask the staleness.

She put her coat on and took her meager offering out to Jack.