Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2016 Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  “No. She never married. Although she did mention the great love of her life once. So, I know there was someone at some point.”

  “Ooh. A mysterious lover. Maybe it was a pirate ghost,” he teased.

  Lissa grinned widely. “I like how you think, Mr. Smith. Actually, my impression was that there was a lover, maybe a longtime romance. Given that they never got together formally, my guess is she had an affair with a married man.”

  “Either that, or he wasn’t in a position to be seen involved with a psychic.”

  “Like a politician or public figure with a reputation to protect?” Lissa asked.

  Max shrugged.

  Lissa’s face registered disappointment and hurt that he would suggest being around someone like her wasn’t respectable.

  He wanted to reach out to her. Take her in his arms and assure her that he thought no such thing, but with those damned cameras recording their every word and move, he couldn’t take the chance. He settled on announcing, “You, ma’am, are a hell of a fine cook. I have a friend or two who’d love to try some of that Yankee cuisine of yours.”

  She perked up a little, but the shadow remained at the back of her eyes. After supper, he suggested they head down into the shop and finish up the last of the painting down there. It had taken several layers of primer and paint to mostly cover up the graffiti left by Julio G.’s buddies.

  It took them less than a half hour to roll on one last layer of paint. And then Max commented, “Help me carry these paint cans down into the basement. I’ll show you how to seal and store them safely.”

  Lissa frowned, but she picked up one of the gallon cans of paint. He picked up the other one.

  Once they were in the basement, he looked around quickly, checking the corners and crates for any sign of hidden cameras. Sure enough, he found no sign of surveillance gear.

  He spoke low. “I’m fairly sure this used to be the bank’s vault. It’s probably steel lined and impervious to electronic monitoring. We can speak freely, but we’ll have to be careful not to spend too much time down here or else we’ll arouse the suspicions of our observers.”

  Lissa nodded and looked around the room nervously.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked quickly. He was startled to realize just how much he trusted her intuitions.

  “Nothing. It’s just that someone was down here recently and organized a bunch of the papers in those trunks. It’s got me a little spooked.”

  “That was me,” he confessed. “I was looking for your aunt’s client list in hopes that it might shed some light on why Julio attacked you.”

  “You don’t think it was random chance that he chose me as his victim, then?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “I do know he killed that girl whose picture I drew. And I also know she looked a lot like me. I think I happened to fit the profile of the kind of girl he likes to kidnap, torture and murder from time to time.”

  The idea of anyone doing any of those things to her made Max’s skin crawl. “You’re making it hard for me to deny that psychic abilities do exist.”

  She winced. “If it makes you feel any better, I’d love it if they didn’t.”

  He sighed. “Don’t feel like you have to be less than you are on my account.”

  Lissa turned slowly, staring at him as if he’d grown a second head. “Say that again,” she whispered.

  “What? That you don’t have to be less than you are to try to please me?”

  She exhaled slowly and looked as if a ten-ton weight had just been lifted off her.

  He frowned. “I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

  “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for someone—anyone—to say those words to me.”

  “Why? Isn’t it kind of obvious?”

  “Maybe to a man like you, who always sees more than meets the eye when he looks at people. Which is a pretty extraordinary skill in its own right, by the way,” she added.

  He frowned. Extraordinary was not an adjective he usually applied to himself. He was odd. An outsider. Strangely trained. But not extraordinary. At least not in the way she meant. Looking for a change, any change, of subject, he gestured at several big wooden crates stacked in a corner. “What’s in those?”

  “Callista’s personal effects. Stuff that got packed and moved out of her apartment in anticipation of my moving into it. Her attorney hired a company to come in and crate it up before I arrived.”

  Interesting. “Maybe that’s where her elusive client list is hiding.”

  Lissa glanced over at the boxes. “Maybe. I haven’t had the heart to face her stuff since I came down here.”

  He moved over to the crates to examine them. “I’ll bring a crowbar tomorrow, and we can have a look inside them. She had to have a client list somewhere. It would have been madness not to keep one.”

  “Madness as a descriptor would not be misapplied to my aunt.”

  “Tomorrow,” he promised.

  “We probably ought to head back upstairs if we don’t want the creepy peepers to get suspicious.”

  Grinning at her sobriquet for their watchers, he followed her upstairs to the shop. “It looks better since the break-in. It has a little more room to breathe.”

  She nodded and looked around. “It feels more like me now. I just hope that doesn’t drive off the regular clientele.”

  “Trust your instincts, Lissa.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Easy for you to say.”

  They spent the remainder of the evening installing light fixtures and sanding down window sashes. They called it a night early and both collapsed into her big bed, exhausted.

  * * *

  Lissa counted it a win that she slept through the night without any nightmares yanking her from her sleep. It helped greatly having Max sleep with her. She rested easy, knowing he was there to protect her.

  Frankly, she was amazed that he hadn’t run screaming from her and her oddities already. She could only pray he’d meant what he’d said last night about not wanting her to be less than she was on his account.

  Until he’d said it, she’d never realized that was exactly what she’d spent her whole life doing. She’d tried to be a good daughter—not only by suppressing her talents but by suppressing anything about herself that might remind her mother of her conception. She’d tried to be quiet, nonthreatening, to fade into the background as much as possible. No matter that being a dormouse was emphatically not who she really was.

  She’d ignored and shoved away all but the most insistent psychic demands, and only when she’d been a teen and able to hide much of it from her parents had she let the visions in. Of course, that had led her straight to the FBI. Ultimately, her gift had been too much to contain, and she’d alienated everyone she loved with it. Until Max. And he was still on the fence about it.

  Desperate need to contain her powers, to limit them, to seek and find normal washed over her. She couldn’t lose Max to her gift—her curse. She just couldn’t.

  Max left quickly after breakfast, citing errands to run. She felt bereft without him, and she moved downstairs quickly to open the shop. Thankfully, lots of customers distracted her through the day. He didn’t come back until nearly closing time.

  He pulled her into his arms and kissed her on the tip of the nose in front of a customer, which made her blush, before he asked, “How was your day?”

  “Good. But now it’s even better since you’re here.”

  He smiled against her temple. “I missed you, too.”

  He helped her close up and then led her to the basement door. “Let’s unpack that inventory in the basement, shall we?”

  It took her a second to realize he meant her aunt’s personal effects. “Right,” she agreed belatedly. They headed down into the
cramped, claustrophobic space, made all the more crowded tonight by copious spirits hovering close. She huffed at them. Were they out to ruin her fragile love life completely?

  “Which crate first?” he asked.

  She stared at the three big crates, and one of them had a distinct glow about it. She sighed and pointed at Mr. Glowy Crate. “That one.”

  Max pried open the lid, and she peered inside. Clothing, knickknacks, books and who knew what else were a tumbled mess within. Why the glow around this particular collection of stuff? She relaxed her mental guard, and immediately plunged her hand down into one corner of the box. Whatever she was supposed to find was buried...right...here...

  Her fingers closed on a cloth-covered book. She pulled it free of the crate and examined a cheap journal that had obviously seen better days. The cloth cover was a cheesy print straight out of the 1980s.

  “What have you got there?” Max asked.

  “Looks like a diary.”

  “Damn, you’re good.”

  She glanced up at Max, wincing at the chagrin in his words. Did he even know that tone had crept into his voice?

  “Whose is it?” he asked.

  She opened it to the first page. “Aunt Cal’s. It’s dated one year before I was born.” A chill of foreboding raced across her skin. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take this upstairs and glance through it.”

  “Of course. It belongs to you, after all. But before we head back up to the shop, is there anything in here you wouldn’t mind putting on the showroom floor to sell? We did talk about opening up crates of inventory before we came down here.”

  She gestured at a dozen porcelain figurines of birds.

  “Perfect,” he declared. “Help me carry them upstairs.”

  They deposited the statues on a shelf and headed up to her place. She slid over close to a lamp at the end of the couch and opened her aunt’s journal in the bright light. She frowned. “Look at this, Max.”

  He leaned close, and she was momentarily distracted by the masculine scent of his aftershave. “Dang, you smell good,” she breathed.

  He glanced over at her from a distance of about a foot, and she was arrested by the golden flecks in his hazel eyes. “Stop that,” she muttered.

  “Stop what?”

  “Distracting me.”

  A smile curved his beautiful mouth as he turned his attention to the journal. She exhaled carefully. Wow, he was hot.

  “Can you read this?” he murmured.

  “No. Can you?” It looked like regular cursive writing, but the letters were unlike any she’d ever seen before.

  “After a fashion. It’s cursive Russian.”

  “What does it say?”

  “How about I take it home with me and have a go at translating it for you?”

  “You have to go home?”

  He dropped a light, quick kiss on her lips, too fleeting to satisfy the ever-present craving pounding through her. Lord, the effect that man had on her.

  He murmured regretfully, “My dictionary is at home. I’m a phone call away. If you get scared or want some company, just call.”

  She couldn’t blame the man for wanting a break from her and her general weirdness. He surprised her, though, by wrapping her in his arms and laying a smoking-hot kiss on her. That was more like it. She felt boneless and pulsing from head to foot before he finally loosened his arms and set her gently away from him. At least he had the good grace to look regretful while he did it.

  “Call me before you go to bed, Lissa. I want to hear your voice one more time tonight.”

  She blinked up at him, thrilled and a little amazed. Was he really developing feelings for her, after all? She mumbled something affirmative as he swept out of her apartment. Moving to the window in a fog of desire, she watched him climb into Lola and disappear into the night like some sort of mysterious superhero. If only he weren’t so skeptical of her gift. Maybe they’d have a real chance. But if she was being totally honest with herself, she would admit that they were doomed, whether she liked it or not.

  * * *

  Max settled in at his desk with a mug of coffee and a strong work light. All right, Callista Clearmont. Time to cough up your secrets.

  He opened the journal and started reading the Russian script. It had been some time since he’d read the language, but it came back to him quickly. Before long, he was skimming through the pages rapidly.

  Callista was in love with a mysterious man she only referred to as Y. Max gathered the lover was Russian. Which maybe explained why Callista was writing the journal in Russian—to practice her rusty skills with the language. Indeed, the text was riddled with grammar errors and misspellings, and sometimes she resorted to writing English words in Cyrillic letters.

  A sad story unfolded before Max of her realization that her lover was both married and involved in criminal activity. But Callista went on at length about how beautiful his soul was in spite of his visible character flaws and how his spirit sang to hers. This was exactly why he worried about Lissa’s reliance on intuition and vague feelings to make important life decisions. The heart could so easily mislead the mind.

  He turned more pages and then came to a passage that made his blood go cold. He backed up and read the entry again. Callista was upset because a close friend of her lover had taken advantage of Callista’s little sister. The sister wasn’t named, but Max had a sneaking suspicion he was reading about the sexual assault of Lissa’s mother. The same assault that had resulted in Lissa’s birth.

  Near the end of the journal, there was a reconciliation between Callista and her lover. Y had apparently promised to make the rapist, who was never named in the journal, stay the hell away from Lissa’s mother and from the baby that had unfortunately been conceived in the attack. Callista expressed dismay over the fact that the rapist was not going to be brought to justice, but she had clearly failed to sway her lover into taking legal action. She railed in her journal about stupid codes of mutual protection among thieves. Apparently, Y had referred to the attacker as a prince of thieves and his brother, which had infuriated Callista. Personally, Max had to agree with her.

  But then it dawned on him. The Russian reference to a “prince of thieves” might very well refer to the man having been “royalty” within the Russian mafia brotherhood. Good Lord. The “prince” would be the heir apparent to the mafia empire, with only the “czar” or “king of thieves” outranking him. Was that why nothing was ever done about Lissa’s mother’s rape? Had the man who attacked her been at or near the very top of the mob organization and, hence, untouchable? Who in the hell was he?

  For once in his life, Max regretted that his father was dead. He’d known everyone in the Russian mob structure in southern Louisiana. If anyone could have identified both the mysterious Y and Lissa’s father—this prince of thieves—it would have been his old man.

  Which made him frown. Was it possible that his father had kept a written record of his mob contacts somewhere in his personal papers? Max knew the code that his father had used to make most of his personal notes. It was worth a try. He would have to ditch anyone who was following him before he drove to the storage unit where he’d stashed his father’s personal effects after his death. The materials that proved his father had been a spy for Russia were too incriminating for him to store inside his own home. He had no desire to go to jail for his father’s crimes. After all, he had his own crimes to answer for. Being a spy was a dirty business in the best of circumstances. But being a spy off the reservation and two years undercover with a mob outfit was an even dirtier business.

  The very last entry in the journal reported that Callista’s lover had started using her store to pass messages to his cronies and that he wasn’t aware she knew about it. Callista seemed to think it was humorous that her lover thought he could keep any secrets from her. Ma
x reread the final paragraph in the journal again, his blood running cold as he translated it in his mind.

  The more deeply Y tries to hide his secrets from me, the more clearly I see them. My gift cuts through every layer of deception and deceit, whether I want it to or not. If I love a person, I see everything about them. Everything.

  Could Lissa do the same to him? He didn’t dare let her love him and strip him bare. At all costs, he must prevent that.

  CHAPTER 11

  Lissa was busy in the shop the next morning, when a delivery truck arrived with her new kitchen cabinets, appliances and quartz countertops. How on earth had he pulled that off? She’d expected to wait weeks for her new kitchen furnishings. Knowing him, he’d called in some rich contact to get instant service. She instructed the crew to carry everything upstairs, and she didn’t pay much more attention to them because she had her hands full with customers.

  But when she finally closed the shop and stumbled upstairs that evening, exhausted, she rounded the corner into her digs and stopped in shock. The kitchen was fully installed. And it was gorgeous. Max had impeccable taste as it turned out. Stunned, she went over to the sink and turned on the faucet. Actual water ran out of the tap and disappeared down the drain. Delighted, she turned on the stove, opened the dishwasher and stuck her head in the brand-new cold stainless steel refrigerator.

  She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Max’s number. “Hi, Max. It’s me. Do you by any chance know anything about my kitchen being completely functional? I was under the impression the stuff was just supposed to be delivered, not fully installed.”

  “Merry Christmas a little early,” he replied. “I was tired of worrying that you were going to burn down your place every time you used that hot plate.”

  “I’d like to pick a fight with you over this, but I expect I’d lose.”

  “Did your Spidey sense tell you that?”

  “No. Plain old common sense.”

  “Smart girl. It’s done and paid for. Discussion closed.”

  She huffed. “Thank you, you wonderful, exasperating man.”