Jinxed

by Beth Ciotta

  “I can see that.”

  He heard the scrape of metal against tile and glanced over his shoulder to find her adjusting the placement of one of the three pans. Plop. Plop. He waited for a snide comment regarding his leaky ceiling but, naturally, she disappointed him.

  She motioned toward the receipts. “How’s it going?”

  “Not good.”

  “Oh.” She worried her full, naturally pink bottom lip while sitting down on the stool next to him. Just his luck she didn’t have a favorite afternoon soap opera. “So I guess you found some incriminating evidence,” she said, her disappointment as evident as the welt beneath her eye.

  “Just the opposite. I found zip.” A surge of protectiveness washed over him. Accident or not, Billy had clocked her good. “How’s your eye?”

  She glanced sideways at him. “You’re not going to get riled again, are you?”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Four years old, huh?”

  She quirked a lopsided grin. “He was defending himself. Someone called him a sissy.”

  “Ah, well in that case …” He resisted the urge to touch her, to kiss away the pain. Touching was bad. Kissing was worse. “I’ll get you some ice.” He escaped toward the freezer and some frosty air.

  “I like the way you decorated your kitchen. It’s …”

  “Rustic?”

  “Homey.”

  He found it hard to believe that she actually like the scarred walnut table and mismatched wicker chairs. The appliances were ancient. The collection of old-fashioned kitchen utensils a flea-market whim. Then again little-rich-girl was full of surprises. He returned with a folded dishcloth full of ice cubes. “Here. Try this.”

  “Thank you.” She pressed the makeshift icepack to her cheek.

  He focused back on the receipts, silently cursing the flowery scent wafting from her glistening clean skin. That’s what he got for setting out the soap Joni had given him, one of her perpetual housewarming gifts. “What if you have a female guest,” she’d said, “like me. If you think I’m using your manly deodorant bar on my sensitive skin, you’re nuts.” He wished to Christ he’d tossed his sister’s advice along with that flowery-smelling “guest” soap.

  “So Rivelli’s trash was,” she shrugged, “clean?”

  “No empty drug or liquor bottles,” he said, biting back a smile, “or hefty receipts to suggest he’s a drug or alcohol abuser. Not even a wine bottle to suggest casual drinking.”

  “Or an intimate dinner for two,” Afia added. “No love letters?”

  “Nope. No condom wrappers or empty tubes of spermicide, which implies no sex, unless he’s having unsafe sex.”

  “Or unless she’s on the pill. That’s assuming there is a she other than his fiancée. Did you question Ms. Brannigan about her choice of birth control?”

  “No, I did not. Good call, Jinx.” He glanced sideways, impressed by her reasoning, intrigued by the tinge of pink in her cheeks. Either she was pissed off by the nickname (Good. Insurance that she’d keep her distance) or she was embarrassed by the topic of discussion. The woman had been married twice, and she was possibly, probably screwing around with her ex-chauffeur. Surely birth control had been addressed. She was childless after all. So what method did she prefer? He wondered. The pill? The ring? A diaphragm? Not that it mattered, because they were not going to have sex. And even if they did he’d still wear a condom. He didn’t bed hop, but he did have a healthy sex life and a string of casual girlfriends. Protection was second nature and a matter of respect for one’s self and one’s partner.

  He wondered if biker boy wore a pocket rocket.

  He wondered a lot of things about that guy. He knew through Joni that Afia had bought him that limousine. What kind of a man accepted a gift like that from a woman? A gigolo? A gold digger? A lazy bum? She’d claimed that a four year old had given her that shiner, but how did he know for sure? Was her relationship with Gallow on the rocks now that she’d lost her fortune? He’d only met the man once, but he’d bet his P.I. license Rudy Gallow’s interest in Afia wasn’t rooted in her feminine charms.

  Jake clenched his jaw, cursing his obsession with Afia’s mysterious “friend.” He’d known this woman all of two days, and he was acting like an overprotective, over-possessive ass. He couldn’t help wondering if she’d affected her father and husbands this way. First they lost their minds, next their lives.

  Jinxed.

  “Didn’t find a phone bill,” he said, smoothing his palm over Velma’s exposed belly in a bid to calm his nerves. “And there’s nothing suspect about the receipts I did find.”

  Velma stretched out, bumping her paws against Afia’s elbow.

  Using her free hand, she reached across the table and scratched the cat’s head with her fingertips. “Maybe Rivelli’s not having an affair.” Velma purred, and Afia grew bold, using her entire hand to massage the tiger’s furry neck. “Maybe Ms. Brannigan’s unduly insecure.”

  “It’s possible,” he said, flinching when her hand connected with his.

  “But not probable?” she asked, pulling away and fisting her hand in her lap.

  “I still have another bag of trash to go through.” He rose to check on the rain-catcher pans. “We’ll see.” Dammit, if she didn’t abandon the ice pack to follow him, sliding a spare pan into position while he emptied a full one into the sink.

  “I guess your line of work has made you cynical,” she said, from behind him. “That’s understandable, but people aren’t always what they seem.”

  “I’ll agree with you there.”

  “I mean sometimes they have secrets, but it’s because they’re embarrassed about something, not because they’ve done anything immoral or illegal.”

  Thunder rattled the kitchen windowpanes as a different kind of tension charged the air. This was no longer about sexual awareness. This was about deceit. Intrigued, Jake abandoned the pan, turned and caught Afia stroking that damned bracelet. A practice she indulged in whenever she was nervous, which bothered the hell out of him because it suggested she was relying on a superstitious talisman rather than self-confidence. He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “Are we still talking about Rivelli?”

  “I wasn’t bored,” she blurted.

  “Excuse me?”

  She stepped in next to him, avoiding eye contact, and turned on the faucet. “I told you that I wanted this job because I was bored. That’s a lie.” She soaped up a sponge and attacked the stainless steel saucepan. The way she scrubbed you’d think it had been filled with burnt pudding instead of rainwater. “My business manager embezzled all of my money. I’m … I’m … ” she scrubbed harder. “Well, I don’t have any money. I need to work to pay off my bills and I wanted to work for you because I thought maybe …”

  “Yes?”

  “I was hoping to acquire the skills to … ”

  “What?”

  “To track down the man who stole my money.”

  “I see.”

  She scrunched her brow. “You’re being very calm about this.”

  “Very little surprises me, sweetheart.” Actually, she had surprised him. He’d expected a confession regarding her ex-chauffeur, not her traitorous accountant. He would have preferred to know where she stood with Gallow, as he already knew the specifics of her financial status. Of course,she didn’t know that he knew. He had two choices: play dumb or fess up about Harmon. Since Harmon had hired him, and the man therefore was a client making Jake’s “assignment” confidential, the latter was not an option. “So you’re embarrassed because you’re broke?”

  “No!” She jerked back, soaking the front of her shirt with soapy water. “I’m embarrassed because I was stupid enough to give Henry Glick power of attorney.”

  Jake relieved her of the pan, trying not to stare at her chest, because, dammit, she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples pebbled against the thin, wet cotton, teasing him, taunting him. Hell. “Intelligent people get ripped off all the time, Af
ia.” You weren’t the only one who was conned by Glick, he wanted to say. He was a trusted acquaintance of your mother’s. Instead he said, “Look at it as a life lesson.” How lame was that?

  But she wasn’t paying attention to him. She was hyperventilating. “Oh … my … God … my …”

  Jake’s heart pounded as he watched her fingering her bracelet and gasping for air. He wrenched open the door beneath the sink and yanked out a paper bag. “Breathe into this.” He placed the bag over her mouth. “Slow. Easy.”

  She knocked away his hand and the bag and felt around the sudsy bottom of the sink. “Charm … lost …”

  “I’ll find it.” Heart in throat, he maneuvered Afia onto a kitchen chair and forced the bag over her mouth. “You breathe.”

  Some seductress. Not that she’d been in the actual process of seducing, but she’d been laying the groundwork, tearing down one possible barrier by coming clean about her finances or lack thereof.

  She’d gotten flustered.

  She’d lost a charm.

  Now she sat in a cushioned wicker chair, red-faced with humiliation, a paper bag crumpled in her lap. Three weeks ago she’d come close to losing it, but she’d never suffered a full-blown panic attack. Not even when Randy had collapsed on top of her in the middle of sex. She’d been frantic on the inside, of course, but she’d reacted in a calm, clear-headed manner. She’d bottled her anxiety. She was very good at that. At least she used to be.

  Afia massaged the tightness in her chest, watching as Jake wielded a wrench to loosen the kitchen drainpipe. He’d said he’d find her charm, and he seemed determined. Probably feared she’d freak out if he didn’t produce. She wouldn’t freak because, in the three lung-crushing minutes that she’d been gasping for air, she’d resigned herself to the notion that the charm was forever lost. She felt it in her bones. In her heart.

  The hamsa hand. The magical charm that served as protection from the evil eye. The sentimental loss was nearly as crushing as the symbolic significance.

  “It’s not here,” Jake said, thoroughly inspecting the pipe. He shot her a cautious glance, as if braced for a psychotic outburst. “Maybe you lost it upstairs,” he said calmly. “Did you wear the bracelet in the bath?”

  “No. I took it off. I …” she pressed her lips together, tears blurring her eyes as a thought occurred. “I probably lost it in the dumpster when I was rummaging through all that trash. And it’s too late to go back and look because you said the disposal truck was on its way.”

  Jake secured the drainpipe then shimmied out from under the sink. “That was over an hour ago. Wouldn’t you have missed it before now?”

  “I had other things on my mind.” Like trying to get you in bed. What had seemed difficult before, now seemed impossible. As if he’d want to have a fling with a hyperventilating flake. Not that sex was even the issue. She hated that she’d lost control. “I’m sorry I overreacted,” she said, brushing away a renegade tear. “It’s just that it was a shock and a disappointment and … the hamsa hand.”

  “I take it the hamsa hand is a charm of major significance?”

  Velma rubbed up against her ankle. Afia reached down and stroked her fur, feeling oddly calmed by the action. “It’s a magical charm that serves as protection against the evil eye.”

  Jake dabbed a towel to his water-splattered T-shirt and then walked over and pulled up the wicker chair opposite Afia. He sat, jammed his hands through his spiky hair. “So now you think you’re open season for this … evil eye? Is that why you got so upset?”

  Velma trotted off toward another room, leaving Afia alone with the stern-faced P.I. She frowned, easing her knees away from his. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No,” he said, leaning forward and bracing his forearms on his thighs. “Just trying to understand.”

  Though compassion shimmered in his emerald eyes, she knew he was a realist and not easily swayed by ancient superstitions. Her mother’s rendition of the evil eye was too lengthy and dramatic, so she opted for a passage she’d read in an academic essay. “The evil eye is in essence a transmitted sickness. When an envious person gazes upon a coveted person, object, or animal too long, they’re giving the evil eye, dooming said object to ‘dry up.’ ”

  He angled his head. “What do you mean ‘dry up’?”

  “Fruit withers on orchard trees. Children vomit. Nursing mothers or livestock lose their ability to produce milk. Men lose potency.”

  His brow furrowed in disbelief. “Damn.”

  She bristled. “I’m not making this up. It’s an ancient belief.”

  “Superstition, you mean.”

  “In Sicily and Southern Italy they believe there are those who have the power to deliberately cast the evil eye,” she plowed on, “while other cultures consider the act unintentional.”

  He raised a lone eyebrow. “At the risk of insulting you, you don’t actually believe that you’re in danger of drying up just because you lost that charm.”

  “The hamsa hand,” she repeated with a shiver. The thought of “drying up” and never having children had been enough to incite that panic attack. “I don’t know what to believe, Jake.” She settled back in her chair with an exhausted sigh and studied her bracelet. “My dad gave me this bracelet on my thirteenth birthday. It had thirteen charms based on the concept that unlucky thirteen represents reversed bad luck. Each charm provided protection against one of my mother’s pet curses or offered plain ‘good fortune.’ ” She quirked a sad smile. “He figured I needed all the luck on earth.”

  “Because you were born on Friday the thirteenth?”

  “Because I was born to Giselle St. John, a fanatically superstitious woman. My name, Afia, means ‘born on Friday.’ I guess she didn’t want me to forget, as if I could. Anyway, Lord knows I’ve had my share of misfortune. The last few years have been … difficult, but I managed.” Thanks to shopping and Rudy. “Then three weeks ago I lost my moneybag charm, the same day I learned Henry Glick had absconded with my fortune.”

  “Coincidence.” Jake took her hands in his and rubbed his thumbs over her knuckles.

  Her pulse fluttered. If only he would pull her onto his lap, into his arms. This moment she longed to feel safe, coddled. A dangerous thing for a woman striving not to need a man. She cleared her throat, quirked a crooked smile. “You sound like Rudy. Actually his exact words were, ‘Your life is out of control because you have no control in your life.’ Hence the Glick incident.”

  Jake tightened his grasp on her hands, glanced up, and rattled her with a piercing glare. “How can you be with that guy?”

  “My mother recommended him and—”

  “Not Glick.” He practically growled the name. “Gallow.”

  Afia’s mouth went dry. “You sound as if you don’t like Rudy.”

  “I don’t.”

  Her heart hammered against her chest, her breathing quickened. “But you don’t even know him.”

  “I know his kind. That’s enough.”

  So, what? He’d sized him up in one look? Caught a “vibe?” Mortified, she snatched back her hand. She knew Jake was alpha and macho and all that, but he had cats, and he liked antiques, and … her heart shriveled. He didn’t even know Rudy, and yet he was judging his lifestyle? “Well,” she said, rising with as much dignity as she could muster while wearing sweatpants and a soaked tee, “I may be superstitious, but you’re …” A homophobe? A bastard? “… a narrow-minded jerk!”

  “Hold up.” Jake stood and towered over her.

  “I can’t work for you.”

  He looked incredulous. “What? Wait a minute. I’m just trying to help—”

  “By insulting Rudy and his kind?” She turned on her heel, too fast she realized too late. Lightheaded, she toppled back against his hard body. “Let me go,” she snapped, trying to squirm out of his embrace.

  “If I let you go, you’ll fall. You’re still dizzy from that attack.” He tightened his hold, dropped his mouth close to her ear. “
I’m sorry,” he said, his warm breath fanning her neck. “I spoke out of turn. Your relationship with Gallow is none of my business.”

  Her knees weakened at the feel of his moist breath and scent of herbal shampoo. She closed her eyes and took a deep, resolving breath. She refused to be attracted to this man. “Rudy’s a wonderful, warm-hearted human being.” Her limbs trembled with conviction.

  “I’ll take your word for it.” He turned her in his arms and eased her back down onto the wicker chair. “Let’s back up and pretend that I didn’t insult your … friend. And that you didn’t quit.”

  She shook her head, a lump the size of the Hope diamond wedged in her throat. “I can’t work for you.”

  “You can’t leave me high and dry without an assistant.” He cocked his head, his voice low and seductive, his eyes shining with a combination of stubbornness and desperation. “Give me two weeks notice at least.”

  “I can’t—”

  “I’ll help you find Glick.”

  Her heart pounded against her ribs, thunder boomed, lightning cracked, and a cat howled low and long from the room beyond as Afia slowly nodded her agreement.

  God help her, she’d just made a pact with a jerk.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Have you got the stuff?”

  Jake ducked a giant moth as it zoomed toward the motion detecting security lamp and then held up a white paper sack. “Double cheeseburger with extra pickles, large order of onion rings.” He held up a second bag. “A quart of Rocky Road.”

  Joni narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t get that low-fat frozen yogurt crap, did you?”

  “God forbid.”

  She threw open the front door, snatched the bags out of his hands and then bid him inside the McNichols’ small, but tidy, two-bedroom apartment. The country-style décor, a pleasant mix of checks, stripes and flowered print, echoed the softer side of his sister’s personality. “What took you so long?” she snapped, easing herself down onto her red and white checked sofa. “I’m starving.”