Believe It or Not

by Tawna Fenske

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2012 by Tawna Fenske

  Cover and internal design © 2012 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover photos © Getty/I Love Images; Getty/Aki Horluchi

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  An excerpt from Making Waves

  Back Cover

  For the Bend Book Bitches: Sheri Abbott,

  Larie Borden, Dianne Capozzola, Cherri Miller,

  J. J. Shew, Stephanie Anderson Stroup, Karen Tippetts,

  and Nancy Zurflu. Thank you for the love, laughter,

  and unwavering support. Without our summers

  of smut, none of this would have happened.

  Chapter 1

  Violet McGinn stormed into her mother’s hospital room with her hair on fire.

  Literally, as it almost happened.

  “Would you please put out that candle!” she snapped, batting flames away from her long, dark hair as she dodged the dreadlocked stranger. He sighed and retreated to a far corner of the room, where a tie-dyed huddle was chanting something that sounded suspiciously like pig Latin.

  “Violet!” Moonbeam cried. “Baby, you made it!”

  “Mom, my God!” Violet rushed forward and shoved a pile of silk scarves off the chair beside her mother’s bed. She dropped breathlessly into it and covered Moonbeam’s hand with her own. “I got on the first flight out of Maine after Butterfly called. What happened? Was it the stairs in front of the house? That one board I’ve been telling you to get fixed? How badly are you hurt?”

  Moonbeam patted Violet’s cheek. “That’s my girl, always seeking. You never could ask just one question at a time. It’s so good to see you, sweetie. How was your flight?”

  “Mom,” Violet said, trying not to grit her teeth. “What the hell happened?”

  “Well, I was just telling Salmonberry, it was exactly like what you predicted in your vision.”

  Violet frowned. “My vision?”

  “Of course. The psychic vision you had when you visited for the Invocation of Isis.”

  Violet stared at her mother, wondering what drugs they’d given her. And whether there was a dispenser in the cafeteria.

  “Mom, what are you talking about?”

  “You remember, dear. It was the last time you visited. We were outside on the porch and you were getting ready to leave and you had a psychic vision—”

  Realization dawned, and Violet shook her head. “Mom, we’ve been over this a hundred times. I’m an accountant. I’m not psychic. There’s no such thing as—”

  “Oh, Violet, don’t start this again. What happened today is irrefutable proof of what I’ve been saying for thirty-three years.”

  “It’s irrefutable proof that the board at the top of the stairs was loose,” Violet argued. “I just happened to notice it, that’s all.”

  She squeezed her mother’s hand, trying to get a grip. It was like this every time she visited home. Well, not exactly like this. Her mother wasn’t usually in the hospital, tethered to an IV pole, looking frail and bruised and a little stoned. Come to think of it, had Moonbeam ever been to a hospital? Even Violet’s birth had taken place at home.

  Violet cleared her throat. “I checked out the data online for this hospital, and I was glad to see that patient-satisfaction scores, infection rates, and reported patient falls are statistically—”

  “Oh, Violet,” Moonbeam interrupted. “Let’s not start with the numbers right now, sweetie. Tell me, is there a man in your life?”

  Violet resisted the urge to beat her forehead against her mother’s bedside table. Instead, she looked around the room for anyone else who might deserve a beating. It wasn’t difficult.

  “Would you please stop touching my mother?” Violet snapped, whirling to face the bespectacled man hovering behind her with a stick of incense in his hand. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to have anything on fire in here.”

  He smiled. “Yes, but the elemental serpentine energy of the human body lies coiled at the base of the body, and when you’re in touch with your Kundalani—”

  “Please don’t touch anyone’s Kundalani, right now. Please? Just give me a minute with Moonbeam, okay?” She turned back to her mother. “What are the doctors saying, Mom? Did you break anything? How long do you have to be here? Do we need to call a specialist?”

  “Oh, Violet, again with the questions!” Moonbeam smiled drunkenly as she pressed her fingers against the back of Violet’s hand. “Always seeking, that’s my girl.”

  Violet tried hard not to grit her teeth. “Mom—”

  “I’ve broken my pelvis and a couple bones in my left leg. Oh, and two bones in my right arm, but that’s all. No, wait. There was something with my toe, too. Do you think I could get a prescription for medical marijuana?”

  “Marijuana is beside the point right now. What does the doctor say?”

  “He wants to rush me into surgery, but I don’t think that’s necessary. I joined this group on attitudinal healing and I know a man who does biodynamic cranial therapy, so maybe if I just—”

  “Dammit, Moonbeam! You’ve broken at least half a dozen bones. A doctor told you that surgery is what you need. It doesn’t sound optional. Don’t you think maybe—”

  “Violet dear, I want to do this naturally. I want—”

  “It’s a major injury, Mom, not childbirth.”

  A bald woman sitting cross-legged on the floor at the foot of the bed cleared her throat. “Crystal power really is the best thing for restoration of universal life energy. Maybe if your mother waited for her ultradian healing response and then—”

  “Hey, Raven,” Violet interrupted. “When did you get your medical degree?”

  She brightened, looking like a happy chipmunk. “Actually, I was just recently certified as a divine spiritual healer online, and I think—”

  “Unless there is now an MD after your name, this is not helping.” She turned back to Moonbeam and squeezed her hand. “If an orthopedic specialist thinks surgery is the best thing, that’s what we need to do.”

  “But surgery is so invasive,” Moonbeam protested. “And I have readings booked out through December, so I need to make sure I’m there for my clients.”

  “Can’t Butter
fly take them?”

  “Too busy.”

  “Sunshine?”

  “Too unenlightened.”

  “Marzipan?”

  “Too mentally unstable.”

  This, coming from a woman who believed Vipassana meditation could cure cancer. Violet sighed and put her head in her hands. Her mother was kind. Her mother was sweet. Her mother was the most sought-after psychic in Portland, Oregon.

  And her mother was also a complete nut job. How was this going to work?

  “I’m so proud of you for having this vision, Violet,” her mother chattered. “I always said you had the gift. Raven, didn’t I always say Violet had the gift?”

  “You said Violet had the gift.”

  “See?”

  As Moonbeam prattled on about crystal power and chakra alignment, Violet felt the familiar trap closing around her. She considered gnawing off her own leg to escape.

  But she knew what she had to do instead.

  She pulled her head out of her hands and looked up at her mother, blinking against the cloud of smoking sage coming from somewhere behind her.

  “Okay, Moonbeam,” she said. “I’ve got a deal for you.”

  ***

  There was never a point in Drew Watson’s childhood where he stood before his third-grade class and announced, “When I grow up, I want to own a male strip club.”

  Yet here he was, thirty-five years old, making a damn good living doing just that.

  Sort of.

  “It’s not a strip club,” he explained for the hundredth time to the hulking man seated at the bar without a shirt on. “It’s just a regular bar Sunday through Thursday. A nice place to listen to music and grab a drink.”

  “Right, but you do have strippers, right?”

  “Male exotic dancers,” Drew agreed, running a rag over the same spot on the bar he’d been wiping for the last ten minutes. “We started offering it on Friday and Saturday nights after we had a bit of success bringing in some Chippendales dancers for a one-night show.”

  At the other end of the bar, his dopey ex-brother-in-law grinned. “A lot of success. Tons! We made gobs of money. And now I get to dance. I always wanted to be a dancer, and now I get to be one.”

  “That you do, Jamie,” Drew agreed, saying a silent thank-you to his ex-wife’s brother for devising the plan that had saved the whole damn bar after the divorce.

  Not that Catherine had been pleased to have her younger brother stripping or her ex-husband running a bar where men threw their shirts at screaming women, but annoying his ex wasn’t necessarily a negative in Drew’s book. Plenty of other women were pleased. They flocked to the bar in droves, scheduling bachelorette parties and rowdy girls’ nights out, and slipping their phone numbers to Drew on a disturbingly regular basis.

  It was totally worth the ribbing from his buddies, the raised eyebrows at high school reunions, the eye rolls from his straitlaced ex-wife, the occasional picketer, and the constant disdain from the owner of Miss Moonbeam’s Psychic Pservices next door.

  “I sure would like a job,” sighed the shirtless stranger seated at the bar. “I’ve got my stage name all picked out and everything.”

  “Try next door,” Drew suggested. “They’re hiring.”

  “The psychic place? I’m not psychic.”

  “Neither is the owner, but that doesn’t seem to stop her,” Drew said. “I meant the tattoo place, though.”

  “But I want to be a stripper. I’d work really hard. You have all these cool lights and stages and poles and stuff, and it seems like a fuckin’ awesome place.”

  “It is,” Drew agreed, “and I’ll definitely keep your application on file in case something opens up. Hey, Jamie?” He turned to his ex-brother-in-law, feeling oddly on edge. “Have you seen Miss Moonbeam today?”

  Jamie shook his head. “Nuh-uh. I keep seeing people standing outside, staring at their watches and looking mad.”

  Drew had noticed the same thing, and it had him worried. Though he’d butted heads with the old bat quite a lot over the years, he didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. Not even if it meant he could nab her studio and expand the bar. Not even if it meant she’d stop harping on him about the exploitation of the human body. Not even after what she’d done four years ago, when—

  “Does she still have those pet mice?” he asked Jamie.

  “I think so. Why?”

  “If something’s happened to her, no one’s feeding them. I’d better check.”

  Jamie beamed. “That’s really nice of you, boss.”

  “That’s me,” Drew said, digging some food scraps out of a nearby bus tub. “A regular Mother Teresa.”

  The shirtless guy at the bar looked up. “Dude, you’re gay? I mean, I figured, with you running a male strip club and all, and I don’t have a problem with it or anything and I still really want to work here—”

  “I’m not gay,” Drew said as he moved toward the door that separated his shop from Miss Moonbeam’s. “And it’s also not a strip club. And I’m also not hiring. But thanks for coming by. I’ll call if something opens up.”

  “Promise?”

  “Sure.”

  Drew unlocked the door separating his bar from the psychic studio. As he stepped inside, he was greeted by a heavy wave of patchouli fragrance that nearly knocked him backward. Coughing a little, Drew stepped into the dimly lit shop. He detoured around the display of horoscope-themed key chains, lucky bamboo in colorful pots, and texts on telekinesis, moving toward the back where he’d seen the little white mice running in their wheel. He spotted them in the corner, their pink noses twitching in the dim red light that glowed from a lamp in the opposite corner.

  “Hey, guys,” Drew murmured, stepping closer to their cage. “Look, I brought you some peanuts and some leftover spaghetti and a piece of lettuce.”

  The mice stood on their hind legs, sniffing the air in anticipation. Drew pried the lid off and handed in the goods, arranging them in the green dish in the corner. The mice scurried over gratefully, selecting their first course with an obvious eagerness. Drew watched, smiling.

  “What happened to Moonbeam, huh?” he asked, pressing the lid back in place. “She wouldn’t just leave you guys here alone, and she always tells me when she’s going on vacation.”

  The mice looked up from their meal, contemplating the question. One of them dropped his noodle and pressed his front paws against the side of the cage, his whiskers twitching in response. Drew touched a finger to the glass.

  A door rattled behind him. Drew whirled around, alert to the sound of keys clattering against the front door. He squinted in the half darkness, watching as the door eased open, spilling light onto the dusty floor. A figure emerged through the doorway, sunlight streaming in behind her like a waterfall. A woman, Drew realized.

  A very pretty woman, he amended, noticing the long, dark hair, the perfect curve of her hips in fitted jeans that tapered down into tall boots with pointy heels like the ones his ex-wife used to wear. Cashmere sweater in a nice champagne hue, an expensive-looking leather jacket. Drew couldn’t tell what color her eyes were, but he could guess.

  Amber. Her eyes would be amber.

  He took two steps forward, ready to greet her. But the motion must have caught her by surprise. She screamed and grabbed a copper Buddha statue off the counter. He saw her eyes flash with aggression as she zeroed in on him in the dim light.

  “Who are you and what the hell are you doing in my mother’s shop?”

  Drew put his hands up in surrender. “Hey, relax.”

  He saw her blink in the dim light as she gripped the statue in one hand. “Who’s that? Are you looking for money? How did you get in here? What do you want?”

  He cocked his head to one side. “Drew. No. Key. Mice.”

  “What?”

  He offered a smile, trying to look nonthreatening but knowing he probably looked like an unshaven ax murderer with an unhealthy fondness for ’80s concert T-shirts. “I was answering your q
uestions. In the order you asked them.”

  “Are you mocking me?”

  “No. Are you going to kill me with Buddha? Because I think there might be a karmic law against that.”

  He watched her hesitate, then sigh. She set the statue on the counter and fumbled for the light switch beside the door. She flicked it on, but instead of a bright poof of illumination, the light trickled out in dim mauve hues.

  “Mood lighting,” she muttered, glancing up at the ceiling. “God bless Moonbeam.”

  Feeling more confident she wasn’t about to beat him to death with a religious symbol, Drew took a tentative step forward, hands still raised in surrender. “I’m sorry, did you say Moonbeam is your mother? You must be Violet. She talks about you all the time. I’m Drew. I own the business next door.”

  “You’re the tattoo artist?”

  “Not that business. The other one.”

  Her eyebrow quirked. “You own the male strip club?”

  He sighed. “It’s not a strip club; it’s a bar. We just happen to have male exotic dancers a few nights a week.”

  “I know all about it,” Violet said, giving him an appraising look. “Moonbeam wasn’t pleased when you started bringing in the strippers. She’s really not pleased you want to take over her studio space to bring in more strippers.”

  “Are you going to lecture me about my exploitation of the alpha body? Because if you are, can I at least put my hands down first? My arms are getting tired.”

  She was studying him in earnest now, her eyes flitting over his features with something he might have mistaken for interest if she hadn’t just been on the brink of beating him to death. He decided to study her as well, taking in the long, dark hair, the sternness of her features, the eyes that weren’t amber at all, but the most remarkable, breathtaking shade of violet.

  “Your eyes are amazing,” he said without thinking, then wanted to kick himself.

  She widened them in surprise and bit her lower lip. “Thank you. That’s how I got my name.” She cleared her throat, softening her voice a little. “You can put your hands down. Did you say Moonbeam gave you a key?”

  “We have keys to each other’s shops so we can use them in case of emergencies.”