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all actions that cause another person pain or sadness. If we believed, even for a moment, that you would ever force a woman to submit sexually, this conversation wouldn’t be taking place.”
    Gabe scratched behind his ear, a habit of his when he grew confused. “Pardon me for saying so, but up until now, you boys didn’t seem to hold me in very high regard.”
    “You’re basically a good man,” Gabriel assured him. “You’ve simply never had much opportunity to prove it. That is precisely why you are being given this second chance. How you handle Nan Hoffman will be entirely up to you, just as it would have been before you died. Everyone has carte blanche in life to do whatever he pleases and in whatever fashion he chooses. This situation is no different, except that, because of time constraints, you will be armed with a good deal of knowledge about Nan, so you’ll have a better chance of accomplishing your mission within a month.”
    Michael added, “Matters of the heart between a man and woman come with all kinds of unspoken rules. If you don’t know what they are, then God and both of us have misjudged you.”
    Gabe decided this was no time to plead ignorance of unspoken rules. The closest he’d ever come to tugging a woman’s heartstrings was when he paid a working girl double her usual rate. Recalling his brief little dance in hellfire, Gabe sighed. “I’ll agree to the stipulations. Of the three lost souls you’ve shown me, Nan Hoffman is the most appealing, and I think I stand a better chance of success with her than I would with the other two.”
    Gabe no sooner agreed than the angels began cramming his head with knowledge about Nan’s past. The scene at Gabe’s feet changed, showing a much younger Nan being cruelly harangued by a man named Martin Sullivan whom Gabe soon deduced was her father, which gave him cause to wonder if maybe he hadn’t actually been lucky to be ignored by his own sire. As Gabe watched Nan’s life flash by, he began to seethe with anger. Little wonder she shied away from men. Scene after scene unfolded, revealing bits and pieces of her past, none of them pretty. Her father constantly accused her of being stupid, ugly, clumsy. The list of faults went on and on. Gabe could only marvel that the young woman had gathered enough self-confidence to run away from home in the first place, let alone start a business of her own and manage to make a success of it.
    Gabe soon realized he was no longer trying to catch glimpses of Nan’s delectable figure and instead was becoming entranced by her lovely gray eyes, which seemed to darken with shadows year by year until they began to look haunted and bruised. By the time the angels concluded the viewing, his throat felt oddly tight.
    Gabe turned to face the robed men. “So that fat old bastard Horace Barclay didn’t die, and Nancy has been hiding all these years for nothing?”
    “Do you truly feel her hiding all this time has been for naught?” Gabriel asked with a mysterious smile. “Sometimes God works in strange ways. Because of Nan’s flight from home, her little sister, Laney, has been spared the ordeal of growing up in her father’s household. She is consequently a happy, well-adjusted girl who might otherwise have been only a shadow of her present self. Now our heavenly Father feels it is Nan’s turn to be happy. Are you ready to return to earth and see to that for Him?”
    Gabe nodded his agreement. The next instant, a strange, dizzy sensation came over him, he became lost in a whirlpool of darkness, and he felt as if he were falling. Then everything went black.

Chapter Three
    G abe jerked awake to face total darkness. Had the angels double-crossed him and routed him straight to the nether regions after all? But no, hell was hot and he was drenched in icy sweat. So where had those two jokers landed him? Blindly, he groped the surfaces around him. Blankets and sheets? Afraid to move, he lay there for a moment until his