by Laura Leone
“How old is she?”
“No one knows. At least twenty-eight, certainly. She was full grown when, one day just before I was born, she walked into my father’s study in Chicago and introduced herself. She’s been with Felix ever since.”
Nick’s eyes widened. “You mean to say that that cat is... is...”
“At least as old as me. Probably older. The interesting thing is that our vet here estimates her age to be between three and five years—the same estimation as we got when she moved in with us, twenty-eight years ago.”
“Is that possible?”
“Since she’s here, I would have to say it is.”
He regarded her suspiciously. “You’re putting me on.”
“No. She’s the original. Even if Felix were given to subterfuge, you can always tell that she’s the real Ishtar because of a tiny crook halfway down her tail. I guess she broke it once during her youth.” Diana looked at him innocently.
“So Felix even has a wizard’s familiar,” Nick murmured.
“It’s certainly good for his image, isn’t it? But it happens to be true.”
“Why not?” Nick asked and sighed. “A lot of strange things happen around here that seem to be true. Do you know Felix walked up to me the other day and started explaining my nature as a Scorpio?”
“So?”
“So I never told him I was a Scorpio! I haven’t given you or anyone else my birth date since arriving. How did he know?”
Diana chuckled. “Oh, you’ll get used to that. He does it all the time. I have no idea how, but he knows, all right.”
Nick was about to say more, when he remembered he was posing as Felix’s acolyte. His rational questions and reasoning on the subject might make Diana suspicious. Once again she had made him forget why he was here.
“So how’s your reading coming?” Diana asked after a pause.
“Slowly. The ascendant and descendant axis. The upper and lower meridians. The houses of the planets, regeneration and reorientation, aspects of the zodiac—it’s pretty confusing,” he said truthfully. “I don’t see how it relates to the tarot, either.”
“That’s more advanced, I believe,” Diana told him. “Felix says you have to have a complete understanding of astrology and all its delineations before you can apply the tarot to it with any effectiveness.”
Nick looked at her, wondering how much she believed in her father’s mumbo jumbo. “Well, maybe I’ll catch on in the next life,” he said ruefully.
“There’s still plenty of time in this life.” She patted his hand.
He turned his hand over and closed his fingers over hers. Their eyes met. A new tension entered the soft evening air between them.
After her initial resistance, he could feel her hand relax in his.
“Diana...”
Her fingers tightened involuntarily around his. He realized they were both caught by this attraction they hadn’t invited. She was different from anyone he had ever known, a study in contrasts, logical and emotional, passionate and businesslike, temperamental and serene. She fascinated him in a way that was too personal, too dangerous. He couldn’t afford to care so much about exonerating her—and her father—when he still might be forced to expose them.
His throat filled with all the things he wanted to say to her, all the words that could tumble from his lips at the sight of this fiery woman in the moonlit twilight. All the things he had no right to say to her, because he was here on a case. He had come to her under false pretenses.
He licked his lips. She lowered her glowing green eyes to his mouth. His belly tightened.
Diana felt her chest rise and fall with shallow, rapid breaths. She felt the heat of Nick’s gaze on her breasts, felt the warmth of his palm, like smooth leather, pressed firmly against hers.
Who was he? Where had he come from? He had been here less than a week, yet he was already part of her life. He was so easy to talk to, so distracting to be near, so exciting to touch. His onyx hair gleamed in the light of the courtyard lamp. His dark lashes veiled his eyes, but not before she saw the flash of longing there—a longing for her that pulled her toward him with an irresistible force.
He hesitated, and she found that endearing in a man so handsome, so rugged, so sexy. She had no doubt there had been many women in his life. He had the aura of a man who understood women well; he moved with the sensual grace of a man who knew how to please a woman. And yet he looked a little shy and uncertain right now, even as his eyes burned through her comfortable exercise clothes.
Diana’s gaze drifted over his broad shoulders and down his slim waist to his hard, flat belly. His narrow hips were encased in tight jeans that molded his muscular thighs. She shivered with excitement.
He was a mystery. She knew nothing about him. She still sensed he had deeper reasons for being here, reasons he wouldn’t share with her. But he had promised he wouldn’t hurt her or Felix.
“You aren’t the one in the cards,” she murmured.
“What?” His voice was husky and low.
She trusted her instincts as she leaned forward invitingly and parted her lips. She heard his sudden intake of breath, then felt the warmth of his palm against her cheek as he guided her face toward his.
His lips were firm, his tongue satiny, his mouth sweet.
Gentle. She felt the tensing of his biceps under her hand and marveled that he could possess such power, yet be so gentle.
He tilted his head and moved closer, rubbing his moist lips against hers, drinking from her mouth in the stillness of the empty courtyard. She could hear traffic in the Quarter, laughter from the street, a saxophone in the distance, but she floated above the common noises of the city. The sound of Nick’s deep, uneven breathing filled her ears, just as his hot kisses and hard hands swayed her senses.
She heard a shaky moan rise from her chest as he tilted her head back and pressed his mouth against the hollow of her throat. His hands slid across her ribs, massaging, caressing, teasing. She had never realized that her ribs were an erogenous zone.
Diana sought his mouth again, and his tongue entered boldly as he kissed her deeply. Everything was dark and swirling around her, everything smelled and tasted of him, and she slid her trembling arms around his neck so she wouldn’t fall off the edge of a cliff and into the dark void beyond.
She could hardly breathe by the time she felt him tear his mouth away and press her head against his shoulder. She was gasping as if she had just run five miles. She didn’t know which way was up. He packed quite a punch.
It seemed a long time before she became aware of simple sensations again—the feel of his hand stroking her hair, the cotton fabric of his shirt against her forehead, the hard cast-iron seat under her bottom, the smooth cobblestones under her feet.
He gripped her shoulders and shifted her position, so that their foreheads rested against each other.
“Is the Moon in Venus tonight, or something?” he whispered.
“Must be,” she mumbled.
“Don’t you have a company policy about this?”
“Huh?”
“You know. Fraternization.”
“Is that what we’re doing?” She smiled with him.
“Not many places let a guy kiss the boss during business hours,” he explained as his hand wandered down her back.
“Actually, I think we’ve been closed for a few minutes. But I’ll write you a memo about it later.”
She pulled away gently, ending the moment, and met his eyes with her customary candor. His expression melted her for a moment, then she felt him withdraw. Whatever he intended to hide, he was hiding it again.
“Still mysterious,” she said.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He rose abruptly and moved away from their little table. She could see that he was troubled. Now she felt uneasy, too. Getting interested in a man who lived under her roof and worked in her employ was pretty foolish, particularly when that man obviously had problems he hadn
’t worked out and wouldn’t tell her about. Maybe she had just made a mistake.
They both jumped when they heard the door chimes. Felix and a customer were coming out of the shop. Felix bade the man goodnight and came over to sit with Diana.
“He was here awfully late,” Diana remarked to fill the silence.
“We were chatting,” Felix said. “Hey, is that rose-hip tea? Do you mind if I have a sip, Nick?”
“Please. Finish it.” Nick slouched into a chair across the table from Diana, avoiding her eyes.
Diana noticed the small silk bundle in Felix’s hands. “What’s that?”
“He came here to show me his mother’s tarot deck. She died recently. He didn’t want it, but it’s such a beautiful deck that he offered it to me.”
“As a gift?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very nice,” said Diana.
“He read about us in the city’s New Age Guide. He wanted to see Ishtar,” Felix explained.
“Ah,” said Nick.
“Let’s see the deck,” Diana said.
Felix spread the cards out before them, face up. It was indeed a beautiful deck. “I’ll have to do some research. I think this deck is old. Victorian, perhaps.”
“Really?” Nick asked, studying the cards with interest. “Does that make a difference?”
“In the readings? Sometimes,” Felix answered. “I’ll have to work with these cards privately for a while before I know if I’ve established a reliable empathy with them. I’d like to use these with clients eventually, though. They’re very unusual.”
He gathered up the cards and shuffled them with great concentration. “Let’s get started.”
Nick looked at him blankly.
“Practicing with them,” Felix clarified. “Diana?”
Felix spread the cards once more, this time facedown, in an even line, and gestured for Diana to pick one. She had done this for him more times in her life than she could remember, especially before exams and job interviews. Tonight, for some reason, she felt a curious reluctance. She didn’t want to disappoint him, however, or appear foolish, so she let her heart guide her and reached for a card. She flipped it over.
Her eyes met Nick’s.
“The Lovers,” he murmured.
“Sexual and spiritual love,” said Felix. “Someone important is entering your life, Diana.”
Chapter Four
THE MAGICIAN
Major Arcana
Meaning: Mastery of natural forces; eternity; opportunities and adventures unfolding.
Reversed: Destructive power; weakness of will.
Despite an inexplicable nervousness about the whole procedure, Nick listened attentively as Felix explained his birth chart to him the following evening.
“A very interesting chart,” Felix assured him as they sat at the kitchen table in Felix and Diana’s apartment.
“More chamomile tea, anyone?” Diana asked.
Nick made an involuntarily defensive gesture as she tried to pour some more of the stuff into his mug. “No, thanks.” Oh, for a cup of coffee, he thought. But no nasty stimulants like caffeine were allowed inside the House of Ishtar. Didn’t Felix and Diana realize that stimulants made the world go round?
“More tea? Yes, please,” Felix said.
Diana poured the tea, then sat down at the table with them. Felix spread out Nick’s birth chart before them, and Diana leaned forward to study it with interest.
“I thought these consultations were always private,” Nick said uneasily.
“Oh, but that’s for paying clients. Were all family here, aren’t we?” Diana said innocently. Then, with an evil look, she added, “Anyhow, you’ve got nothing to hide, have you, Nick?”
Felix was staring at the birth chart with fascinated absorption, and Nick could see he’d get no help from that quarter. He shrugged uneasily and asked Felix to explain the chart to him.
“This,” Felix said, indicating the round diagram, “is a depiction of the positions of the celestial bodies in the zodiac at the exact moment of your birth.”
Big deal, Nick thought. “Really? That must take a lot of work to track down and record, Felix.”
“Well, it takes an hour or two to do an accurate chart, and then more time to interpret the results, but I find it so fascinating that the time just flies by,” Felix told him.
Diana brushed a few long, shining strands of hair away from her face. Nick caught the movement out of the corner of his eye—the graceful flutter of her long fingers, the silken gleam of bright curls, and the way the movement exposed the creamy-white column of her smooth throat.
He found himself growing even more tense than he had been all day. A sleepless night, a subtly pulsing desire that filled his senses and clouded his mind, a sense of futility about this case as he puttered around the shop—it was all winding him up so tight, he could hardly breathe.
He tried to concentrate as Felix explained the concepts of sidereal time, the mid-heaven, the ascendant, and the mean position of the moon’s north node. Nick hoped there wouldn’t be a quiz later, because all he could think about was the full shape of Diana’s mouth, the intriguing flush of her cheeks when she caught his eye, and the jolt of electricity he felt when her foot accidentally brushed his under the table.
Felix was practically through explaining all of the exotic- looking symbols on the diagram when Diana hopped out of her chair, turned her back on Nick, and started emptying and washing the teapot as if it were the most important task in the world.
Through sheer strength of will, Nick managed not to stare at her straight, slim back or the beautifully shaped bottom defined by her faded blue jeans. But he sneaked a lot of peeks.
“Now, if you thought that was interesting,” Felix said enthusiastically, “wait till you hear this!”
“Uh-huh,” Nick grunted absently. He wondered if anyone else noticed how hot the room was getting.
“Now, of course, as a Scorpio, your sign is a fixed water sign.”
“Fixed water?” Nick repeated blankly.
“Yes. Fixed, as opposed to cardinal or mutable. Water, as opposed to earth, air, or fire. But I don’t want to repeat information, and I know you’ve already covered this in your reading,” Felix said confidently.
“Yeah. Right. I’m just a little confused.” That was true, at least.
“The three of us are all fixed signs. As an Aquarius, I am, of course, an air sign.”
“I believe that,” Nick said. He caught Diana’s sharp glance and held her gaze.
“Diana is a fire sign.”
Yeah, I’ll bet that’s right. Something hot rushed through him, as if Diana’s fire had reached out to sear him.
“Now, obviously, Mars rules Scorpio,” Felix went on, warming to his subject.
“Obviously,” Nick murmured. Diana was nervous, he realized. Not as calm and indifferent as she had pretended to be all day at work. He wondered how she had slept last night.
“Mars represents passion, desire,” Felix expounded.
“It sure does.” Nick definitely felt Mars dominating his system right now.
“Energy, assertiveness, courage, initiative,” Felix continued. “It energizes, intensifies, stimulates, inflames, aggravates.”
“Aggravates,” Diana repeated significantly as she wiped a clean counter and fiddled with a wall hanging that was already perfectly straight.
Felix fell silent and studied the chart with total absorption. Nick took advantage of the older man’s distraction. “Come sit with us, Diana.”
She obviously took it as a challenge. Maybe he had meant it that way. He wasn’t sure. He just knew he wanted her close to him, so near he could smell the jasmine oil on her skin.
She sat by him again and folded her long-fingered hands on top of the kitchen table. She obviously knew he was barely paying attention to the reading, and he could see that familiar spark of ambivalent humor in her expression.
Felix suddenly asked, “Nick, have y
ou ever considered investigative work?”
Nick nearly vaulted out of his chair. “What?” He almost choked on the word.
“It’s indicated with amazing strength,” Felix said. “Look here.” He pointed to some of his hieroglyphic notations. “The position of the sun gives you a natural talent for investigation. This is strengthened by Jupiter, which indicates superb deductive reasoning, coupled with natural curiosity. Mmm-hmm, look at this. Detective skills... a bearer of weapons... pursuit of justice... Of course, this is offset by an impulsive nature and several indications of enormous capacity for sensual passion. And just look at the position of Uranus!”
“What about it?” Nick croaked.
“It indicates an undeniable power to concentrate, probe, deduce and—ah-hah!”
“Ah-hah, what?” Nick said.
“There it is again. The Fourth House shows an overwhelming tendency to seek rational explanations. And the position of Venus confirms a relentlessly sensual nature.”
“Really?” Nick asked weakly.
“Are you sure about the time of your birth?” Felix asked.
He nodded.
Felix studied the chart for a few more moments. “This is extraordinary, Nick. There’s virtually nothing in the stars at the time of your birth to indicate you would be the kind of man you are.”
“How’s that?”
“Someone seeking spiritual growth and enlightenment.” Felix shook his head. “No, according to this, you should be some sort of beer-drinking, meat-eating, hotheaded, skirt-chasing, gun-toting private eye or something. Amazing! The stars have never misled me before.”
“Gee, how about that?” Nick tried to keep his voice calm. He didn’t know whether he was more chilled by the possibility of having his cover blown or by the disconcerting accuracy of Felix’s remarks. He could be exposed by a horoscope. A horoscope, for God’s sake! How much weirder could things get around here?
“What a challenge!” Felix exclaimed excitedly.
“You’ve got him going now,” Diana warned Nick.
