She regarded him for so long he thought she’d gone catatonic. Except that her cold, hard eyes had slowly melted, so he knew she was thinking. And that maybe he had a chance.
At length, she said, “Even if that’s true… You don’t understand, Kyle. There’s more. Things that—” She shook her head. “There are too many secrets.”
“So tell me. Tell me you’re intuitive or psychic. Do you really think that would matter to me? I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I didn’t notice after four years that my partner and lover always knows what I’m thinking even before I do. And we both know I’m very good at my job. Otherwise, I’d never have accepted Cat’s hunch and found you and Becca in the first place.”
“Intuition is one thing…”
“Gut feelings, psychic abilities, they all come from the same place.”
Her eyes narrowed, as though she were sifting through his mind, and not liking what she saw. “Do you truly understand what you heard Becca say about what we did with Cat?”
“You mean the whole telepath-empath thing? How it works? No. Not really. But does it matter?”
She looked at him as though he had sprouted horns. “Uh, yeah it matters.”
He shrugged modestly. “Well. Not to me.”
She snapped her mouth shut. Shook her head. “Cute. But it’s obvious you don’t understand the full implications, or you wouldn’t be standing there looking so smug.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Okay, then. Explain it to me.”
Her stance turned almost belligerent. As though she were ready to do battle. “All right. I’m an empath, Kyle. My sisters and I. I can read emotions, feel people’s—feel your feelings, for instance. Sometimes your emotions wash over me so intensely I can barely figure out where yours start and mine end. I feel your anger raging so hot it burns me up, and your disappointment leaves me cold and shaken. Right now, I can feel your disbelief, and the fear mushrooming within you.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Fear that what I’m saying is that I can read your mind.”
He took an uncertain step backward. “And can you? Read my mind?”
“I can read your emotions, which is just as invasive, and just as telling.”
He blinked. Speechless. Unlike inside his mind and body, where the emotions felt like an orchestra tuning up sounded. A pure cacophony. And she could read that mess? Hell, she was welcome to it.
“Okay,” he said. “No big deal.”
“Nice try,” she said witheringly. “Second thoughts?”
He remained silent while he tried to gather his thoughts, to tell her how he really felt. But she didn’t give him the chance.
“Hard to love someone who can crawl inside your head, isn’t it?”
He swallowed. No. No, it didn’t matter. He could live with this. People who love each other shouldn’t hide their thoughts from one another anyway.
“I love you. For you, for us, I can handle this.”
The corner of her mouth lifted. “You might be able to convince yourself for a nanosecond that you can live with it, but the truth is you won’t be able to. Never being able to keep anything from me. Never being able to have a private feeling. I know you, Kyle. And right now, as much as you don’t want to admit it, you want to turn around and run.”
No, he wouldn’t admit it. “Cat manages it,” he argued. “She’s married, and they seem really happy.”
“Cat’s husband doesn’t know.”
He was taken aback, and then appalled. “She’s never told him she can—”
“No. And for the sake of their marriage, she never will. Don’t you get that?” She pushed out a long breath and gave him an unhappy look. “There. Now you know the whole truth about my abilities. Surely, you have to realize we can never be together. That we can never have the picture-perfect forever you’re envisioning for us.”
“I don’t want picture-perfect. I just want you,” he said, taking a tentative step toward her.
She made an impatient gesture. “No. You do want that perfect-picture marriage; you always have. You see? I can feel what you want more easily than you’ll admit even to yourself. And that’s why it can’t work for us. I can’t give you the perfect marriage. And you won’t be able to lie to me that you’re okay with that. You won’t even be able to lie to yourself because I’ll know. And trust me, we all need to lie. We all need our secrets.”
“You’re wrong, Genie. You’re the one who can’t live without your secrets, not me.”
She turned away then, and walked down the long hospital corridor, back to her sisters.
And leaving him alone, once again.
Because in the end, the one who needed to hold onto her certainty that she could never lead a normal life, could never make love work, was Genie. Kyle didn’t need to be psychic to read that loud and clear.
…
It had been two days since Genie had come home, but it seemed like a year. As she walked through her father’s house, drifting from room to room, she wondered how she was ever going to live here. It was too big, too full of memories. The master bedroom was still exactly as it had been when her mother was alive. Her mom’s out-of-date clothes still hung in the closet; her shriveled makeup was still in the bathroom. Her father had never moved past her death, even to the point of sleeping in the guest room downstairs next to his study. He never got over her. Never moved on. Because of guilt?
And who did that remind her of?
Genie hadn’t done experiments on Kyle, nor had she killed anyone. But she was just as guilty. She’d broken his heart, and killed his hope. That was almost worse. Okay, not really. But she felt just as guilty. And so damn alone.
Cat had gone back to her family. Who knew where Becca had skipped off to? But they’d both seemed okay when they’d parted at the hospital. More than okay. Like they’d gotten closure. And then there was the big gaping hole her dad left in her life. Even though Genie hadn’t been with him all the time, she had always known he was there for her. And now…now he wasn’t.
No one was.
Genie closed her eyes against the sadness and loneliness that washed over her. The walls of her father’s home reeked of solitude, making the air so thick she could barely breathe. She wanted to be here, to feel closer to her dad, to her family, to what she’d lost. But it wasn’t helping. The house didn’t bring her comfort. How could it? The happiness she’d once had here was just a whisper in the wind, a shadow in time.
She should sell this house. Let a happy family move in. Give it a chance to exorcise the ghosts once and for all.
And her? Would she ever be happy again? Or would she live like her dad had, alone and stuck in the past, throwing herself into her work just to forget… If she actually had any work.
Kyle’s perceptive blue gaze crept into her mind. She shook her head, pushing the image away. Like her dad, happy relationships were not in the cards for her. In their world, people they loved paid the price, people who loved them—died.
Not that Kyle couldn’t take care of himself. He could. Couldn’t he?
She pushed the doubts out of her mind and wandered into her father’s study and sat down in the leather chair behind his massive desk. Her gaze wandered around the room, lingering on all the little trinkets and knick-knacks from his travels. Things. Pretty. Valuable. But nothing meaningful. It struck her, there was nothing personal in this room. Not a single photo of her mother, or her sisters, or herself. Nothing to prove Cat’s kids, little Mark and Annie, even existed. Nothing to remind him of the family he’d thrown away, the one he could have had back again if only he’d let himself reach out.
At the thought of his rejection, a dart of pain struck her square in the heart. Oh, she knew now that it wasn’t really a rejection. His actions had been far more complicated than that. But it hadn’t hurt any less.
Was that how Kyle was feeling? Kyle, the man she loved with all her boarded-up heart, and the hurtful rejection she’d dealt to him. According to Becca she’d thrown away the per
fect man because she was scared shitless. That she was destined to be just like Daddy, miserable and alone.
Maybe Becca was right.
She glanced at the desktop again and imagined a photo of Kyle’s handsome face sitting there in a silver frame. Or one of the two of them, laughing and embracing on some far-off, sunny beach. Or of him in a gray morning suit and her in a lacy white gown…
Her eyes filled.
Was she making exactly the same bad choices as her dad? Letting him control her life, even after he’d gone? It was a sobering—and depressing—thought.
Was she destined to be alone?
She took off her mother’s necklace and dropped it in the top drawer. The truth was, she’d lost her father a long time ago. On the night her mother had died, she’d lost her entire family. She just hadn’t known it. She sat absolutely still in the silence, watching the room darken with the setting of the sun, blending into the woodwork, her body becoming just another piece of the furniture.
And it felt good to sit like that. Not to see, not to feel…anything.
Honestly. It did.
The tears crested, and broke over her lashes.
Her watery gaze went to the corner of the desk and the imaginary photo sitting there. Brilliant blue eyes gazed back at her.
Becca wasn’t right. Genie deserved more than this. She deserved to be happy. To have a happily ever after. She deserved Kyle.
…
Winded, and sporting a good-sized blister on her heel, Genie ran into the bar, her sandals sinking into the thick carpet. She longed to slip off her shoes as she rushed past the round, thick leather booths and toward the long mahogany bar where Kyle sat, perched over a scotch on the rocks.
“Well, well. The prodigal daughter,” Kyle said as Genie sucked in a deep breath of relief. She’d finally tracked him down. It had taken her three phone calls to Johnny, a miserable plane ride, and two pairs of shoes that were ruined by the Las Vegas sidewalks. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” He raised a half-empty tumbler and downed the contents, then motioned for another.
Genie gripped the bar stool, kicking off the second pair of strappy sandals with a grateful sigh. That’s what she got for wanting to look sexy when she found him.
“Do you know how many bars there are in this casino?” she groaned.
“Eight.”
“Nine.” She plopped onto the stool next to him and eyed him closely. “You tried them all, huh?”
“All but one, apparently.”
Genie took in his haggard face and tired eyes. He looked like shit. She swallowed a twinge of guilt and said, “Damn, boy. Whoever she was, she must have done a helluva number on you.”
“You have no friggin’ idea.”
“Sorry,” she muttered. It wasn’t enough, but it was all she had.
“Yeah.”
“No. Really. I’m sorry, Kyle. I was…a jerk.”
He turned and looked at her. Really looked. Gave a tired shrug. “You were grieving.”
“I was. My dad.” How could she explain? She couldn’t. “He was my rock. But he was wrong. And so was I. About so much.”
“What will you have?” the bartender asked, approaching from the far end of the bar.
“Vodka tonic,” she told him, and then turned back to Kyle as the bartender gave them their drinks.
“How’d you get here?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you were right. You’re always right. I love you. I want to make it work between us. No more secrets. No more lies. Just me, plain and simple. If you’ll have me,” she said tentatively, her heart slipping right out there on her sleeve.
He hesitated. “You could never be plain, or simple.”
She gave a hesitant smile, but it faltered as she took a long pull off the drink the bartender placed in front of her.
Kyle watched her, his blue gaze wary. Guarded. She wouldn’t read him. If this was going to work between them, she’d have to respect his boundaries.
“I don’t know,” Kyle said. “I’ve thought a lot about what you said.”
She winced. She’d said so much. “You mean that we all need to have secrets?”
“Yes.”
“I agree. And I can promise to try not to read you. To keep that wall up between us.”
“And if you can’t? If the temptation is too great? The emotions too strong?”
“Well, I’ve thought about that, too. There is a way around that.” Her heart skipped a beat.
“Is there?” He stared down into his glass as if he could care less. But he did care. A lot. She just had to convince him they were worth the risk. That she was worth taking a chance on.
She placed a hand on his arm. “Yep.”
“How?” He looked skeptical.
She took a leap of faith and leaned into him, pressing her mouth against his, sweeping her tongue inside to spar with his, raising her trembling hand to his chest. Tasting the scotch. Tasting his hope. Tasting his wariness. After a breathless moment, she pulled away.
He stared at her, his eyebrows raised in question.
“Whenever you don’t want me to know how you’re feeling, I want you to think about that kiss,” she said quickly, hoping to give him something to think about other than sending her away.
He took another sip of scotch and regarded her. “I think you need to do it again, just to make sure I don’t forget.”
She kissed him again. Hard. Pressing her mouth against his, terrified that if she stopped, she would slip away, and for them there would be no hope.
“Are you sure?” he asked, when she finally came up for air. “Because I can’t go down that road again, Genie. I can’t open myself up to you, give you my heart on a silver platter, only to watch you pulverize it and walk away. Nope, won’t do that again.” He took another long swig, finishing the last of the amber liquid.
“Kyle, I won’t walk away. Not again. I promise. I’ve learned how it feels to be alone, to be lost and vulnerable. I don’t want to live like that, not when we have so much to live for. We’re good together. Great together. Trust me, I’m more sure about this, about us, than I have been about anything for a very long time.”
“Trust you?” he almost laughed, but it died somewhere on his lips.
“Yes, trust me. Because I’m trusting you. For the first time in my life, I’m trusting you with all of my secrets and fears, my hopes and my dreams. With my heart. All of it. Because that’s what I believe love is—giving all of yourself to a person and believing they will protect and treasure you. And I will, Kyle. I will cherish our life together. I will cherish you.
He moved toward her, slowly, tentatively, and then he kissed her. Gentle at first, tasting, searching, and then the kiss deepened. He grabbed hold of her and pulled her to him, roughly almost desperately squeezing until finally he pulled back, but didn’t let her go. “I believe you,” he rasped.
And as he said the words, hope filled a dark place inside her.
“I do love you,” he insisted. He looked deeply into her eyes, holding her captive as the tips of his fingers grazed the bruises around her cheekbone. She could feel his pain, his hope, his overwhelming love for her filling every cell in his body so strong and raw it almost scared her. And in that moment, she knew what Cat had missed by turning off her abilities. In that moment, Genie felt everything Kyle felt for her, emotions he would never be able to say or express or hide. No, their abilities were not a curse. They were a gift.
She smiled for the first time in days. “Not more than I love you.”
“What do you say we move this conversation up to my room?”
Her heart hiccupped with anticipation. “I thought you’d never ask.”
He paid the tab, and before they’d even made it out of their chairs, Kyle’s cell rang.
Genie groaned as she picked up her sandals and slipped them back on her feet.
“What’s up?” Kyle asked, trying to hide his annoyance. He looked at Genie. “They’ve got a l
ead on Emerich. You ready to jump back into the fire?”
“Now?” she asked, pushing away her disappointment.
“Johnny and Becca are in the bird on the roof.”
“This roof? Together?”
“Yep. You game?”
“You tell me?” she asked, her mouth twisting into a grin. “We always were a great team.”
He grabbed her hand. “We still are, babe, and we always will be.”
About the Author
Cynthia Cooke is an award-winning, multi-published author who has published 11 books and short stories for Harlequin/Silhouette and Steeple Hill. Her latest book, Deadly Secrets, Loving Lies, is the teaser book for Nina Bruhns’ Dead Sexy Romantic Suspense line at Entangled Publishing. Cynthia is best known for writing page-turners that will keep you up at night. So, if you choose to take that ride, over the edge and into the dark, don’t forget to turn on the lights. Cynthia’s books aren’t sweet—and they aren’t for the faint of heart.
Enjoy the Dark Seduction
Visit Cynthia at her website
http://www.CynthiaCooke.com
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