Chris snorted. He actually snorted at her declaration. “You quit right now?”
“I did. You gave up your solitude to let me camp here, and I gave up cigarettes.”
“I will believe it when I see it.” Chris rose from the patio chair and looked out over the yard. The birds were going crazy — again. Anytime Naomi stepped outside they sang, chirped, and fluttered from branch to branch. He began imagining he lived in a bird sanctuary.
Chris spent the entire day focused on a new case, and he was in a quiet mood. He had not talked to her since the day before, even though she lived thirty feet from his front door.
“Have you ever had a major head injury?” she asked.
He cast a barbed stare her direction and waited for her to get to the point. Innocent, she was not. He knew Naomi was having fun at his expense.
“If I have, I don’t have a recollection of it.”
She laughed and the sound mingled with the birds. “Good answer. So, I’ll say that you had a brain injury, and that would explain a lot about you.”
“You’re so kind,” he said with a hint of bitterness that wasn’t really bitter at all. She was probably correct in her assessment.
“I don’t have to be kind. You just told me you would never date a smoker.”
“And you told me you no longer are one.”
“Well, well, boyo, does that mean we are officially dating? I mean I have seen you naked and all. And I sort of approve if you wanted to take this… whatever this is.” She waved a slender hand in the air gesturing from him to her. “To the next level.”
“You have been staying the night in my house. I was under the impression we had moved to the next level.” Great Spirit help him. He would never understand the inner workings of the female mind.
“You just said you would never be in a relationship with someone who smoked.”
Naomi seemed confused.
He revised. “I have been trying to decide if you are a smoker. I have only seen you with clove cigarettes three times since we met six weeks ago.”
“Because I smoke occasionally, just like you do.”
“It is not like I do. I use tobacco for ceremonial purposes.”
“Haven’t we circled this block before?”
Chris eyed her from his peripheral vision. Her aura would suggest she was completely at ease. His aura, on the other hand, roiled in a colorful mess of emotions. No woman had ever bewildered him quite this much. One part of him could not take the turmoil and another part of him wanted more. It was all very confusing. The contentment he experienced when he woke up next to her in the morning felt solid, real, and lodged in his psyche. But she smoked. That turned him off as much as if she were addicted to gambling or alcohol.
“You’re right. We have. We are moving on to a new subject,” he said.
“Canoodling? We both like that subject.”
“No. I mean yes, no. Later. Maybe.” Flustered, he gave her a quizzical glance and frowned. “Where do you come up with these words?”
“Not everyone is as stiff and formal as you are, Mr. Deadpan Medicine Man.”
Chris ran a hand over his five o’clock shadow.
“So if we’re not snogging, what’s up?”
Thrown off course, Chris had to think for a second before remembering what he wanted to say. “Talks to the Wind told me about a vortex in the Four Corners region. He says it is largely unknown.”
“When did he tell you this?”
“Early this morning when I worked outside.”
“I’ve been meaning to thank you for asking him to not come inside when I’m here.”
“It is nothing. Very few spirits, you being one of them, and only my guides can enter my cabin without permission. Talks to the Wind can knock on the door like any other guest.”
“Still, it’s thoughtful of you. Tell him I appreciate it.”
“You can tell him. He will be back tomorrow. He wants to share his news with you. I told him you would not pass out again if he arrived in the form of a living person.”
Naomi cocked a brow. “Let me guess. Talks to the Wind said, ‘Why should I knock? I like scaring Fish Face.’”
Chris grinned. “You know him well already.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.” Naomi shifted her bag aside on the patio table and rose to her feet.
“Better to go with the flow when it comes to Talks to the Wind.”
“Go with the flow?” she mocked. “I think I’m starting to rub off on you.”
Chris scratched his head and didn’t remark on her observation. Instead, he returned to the subject of the vortex. “Will you try to find it?”
“A new power place? Yeah, absolutely. That’s why I’m out West. I want to find as many as I can.”
“When your car is finally fixed or before?” He didn’t want to think about her leaving. This realization equally surprised and worried him. Was he so attached to Naomi that the thought of her leaving town upset him?
Naomi stood in front of him and tipped her face up to his. She raised her hand and brushed her mass of curls away from her face. Her hair hung loosely today, instead of being held back with a headband or in braids. He liked it when she let it down. There was so much of it, like a black and sable mane around her stunning face.
“I don’t know when I’ll go. I never planned to stay in the mountains for the winter. The snow is already starting to stick to the ground. Camper trailers aren’t the warmest accommodations.”
He returned her gaze. Eye contact with Naomi was always extreme. She stared into him, and he wasn’t used to anyone seeing him naked.
“If I had a boyfriend, he might offer to go with me. If he had a truck, we could tow my trailer and camp together.”
The smile took him a moment, but before he let it show, he said, “That would be nice of your boyfriend. Do I know him? I would offer some advice on your nutritional habits or lack of them. Your fear of ghosts should be noted as well.”
Naomi’s lips tightened, and her eyes narrowed the slightest amount. He clearly saw the hot-tempered Korean blood she inherited from her mother. Getting a rise out of her could be so interesting. Her aura would shift from soft pastels that reached out toward him to sharp contrasting colors that poked and prodded at his etheric body.
She stood taller. “There is nothing wrong with what I like to eat.”
It took a lot of concentration to keep the grin from escaping. “You think eating a bag of cheese popcorn and drinking a mimosa is a healthy dinner — or breakfast.”
Her mouth popped open, and she did the “fish lips” thing. Chris hardened his jaw. Now he wanted to laugh aloud. Naomi huffed and started to walk away. Chris snagged her hand and reeled her in.
“I am joking with you, Fish Face.”
“Did I ever tell you not to call me that, buddy-boy?”
“Did I ever tell you I do not like being called anything other than Chris?” He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her against him. She didn’t pull away from the embrace.
“I’m sure you have, Mr. Sourpuss.”
Chris’s brows gathered as he considered her for a moment. She irked him. She didn’t cook. She was the most loosely connected person to the physical realm he’d ever met. She was currently unemployed and lived wherever the winds blew. Her magic astounded him and her irrational fear of spirits and other entities charmed him. He couldn’t get enough of her.
“I have an idea. Well, it wasn’t my idea. Rumor has it that I am not as smart as the person who came up with it. This person believes I suffered a closed head injury at some point in my life.”
Naomi suppressed a giggle. “I like this person. What did she say?”
“She thinks I should hook up my girlfriend’s camper trailer to my truck and go search for an energy vortex together.”
“Your girlfriend?” Naomi asked.
“That’s right. What do you think about that?”
“I think it’s an outstanding idea.�
��
The smile he held back finally escaped. Expectation and anticipation flashed through her bewitching eyes as she tipped her full lips up to his. He nearly missed her cue. Being in a relationship would probably kill him, but for Naomi, he was willing to try. He leaned down and kissed her before missing his chance. She responded to him with equal desire. He wanted this, he realized. He wanted her. And he looked forward to whatever the future held in store for them.
~ Thank you for reading ~
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Jody A. Kessler is a USA Today bestselling author. Her debut novel, Death Lies Between Us, book one in the An Angel Falls series, is the winner of the Readers’ Crown Award for Best Paranormal Romance. She writes contemporary romance, historical time travel fiction, and paranormal fiction. She is the author of the An Angel Falls series, Granite Lake Romance series, The Night Medicine and more.
When Jody isn’t navigating the terrain of her imagination and writing it down, she can be found exploring the wilderness of Colorado with her family, or in the kitchen baking cookies & brownies – and trying not to eat them all. She’s passionate about continuing to learn and reads anything and everything that catches her interest.
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Acknowledgements
To John and Nancy. My books would not exist without the two of you. I want to thank my family and friends for their continued support. Thank you to my beta readers and proofreaders—you know who you are. Lastly, I want to thank my readers. I appreciate every one of you.
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An Angel Falls ~ Book 1
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Best Paranormal Romance.
Chapter One: Getting Unsettled
Nathaniel
MAYBE IF I had been raised by people who cared, no, that really wasn’t fair. Maybe if they had been capable of caring, then perhaps, I would have become someone. Someone successful, someone who excelled and had a purpose in life. Instead… I became someone who died.
Thoughts of my childhood rarely come to the surface. They’re like those fish, you know, the ones everyone thinks have been extinct for a million years and then one floats to the surface to be rediscovered. I would rather those memories never rise up for examination. I close my eyes, making a vain attempt to shut the door on the past, and the world in front of me. It’s pathetic and unsuccessful. Opening them, I find loneliness has moved in to stand beside me. He becomes my new best friend, reminding me of who I am while I wait for the inevitable to happen.
In front of me is my new client.
She scratches her pen with fury across the paper. Her face is intent and her eyes are hidden under black lashes, but there’s something about the way she holds her head, the way her lips are pressed together as if sadness has sealed them. It tugs at a memory, the memory of being left in the car while my parents drank at their favorite bar, sealing my lips, setting my jaw in stubbornness while casting my eyes down to hide my feelings from my mother as she says, “stay in the car Nathaniel, your father and I will be right back,” then waking up hours later stuck to the vinyl seat and wondering if we’re going home now. I shake it off; that fish needs to stay buried beneath the sea.
Who is she? Why her? How long do we have? I ask myself these questions again and again, but this time I have a sense that I don’t want to know the answers, and I have no choice but to find them out.
Her focus on the notebook in her lap is complete. I can all but see the iron walls that surround her, but it doesn’t intimidate me. Intrigue has already washed through me for this girl, but for right now, I don’t cross her line.
Give her some time. She has so little of it left.
I wish she would look up and give me a small taste of what’s behind her curtain of black hair and under those lashes. If I could get a glimpse of her eyes, then I’d know if the intensity I feel is radiating from somewhere within her as I suspect it is. Their eyes always give me a hint of what to expect, after it happens. Will she struggle with her fate, or will she walk away with ease?
“Jules? Hey, Jules. What do you think of this?”
“Hmmm?” she asks, not looking up.
Surprised, I turn to see who’s speaking. He sits on the edge of a worn green velvet chair with a guitar in his hands. One long leg stretches out across the floor in front on him. He’s young, maybe eighteen or nineteen. I hadn’t noticed him. The ivory skinned girl in front of me, Jules, had been holding my attention to the exception of everything else.
“Listen,” he says. He strums out a melody and then follows it with an intricate solo on a midnight blue Gibson. “What do ya’ think?”
“Yeah, great, Jared. Just write that?” she mumbles. Her pen taps the paper. Her eyes flash his way but are gone again before I can see them with any real clarity.
He shakes his head at her and rolls his eyes. “Whatever, Jules. Sorry to interrupt your musings.”
“Shut up,” she says without any threat.
“You writing for the band?”
“No.”
“Too bad. We could use some new lyrics.”
She hunches back over her notebook. I look the guitar player over and then at her again, finding similarities. They have the same shiny black hair, high cheek bones, wide mouths, and straight noses. Jared is darker skinned and taller, and she is more delicate overall, but they are the male and female version of each other. Siblings, I would bet money on it.
Besides the obvious, the guitar, Jared is the picture of a rock star. His hair is tied back in a short tail; he’s wearing dark grungy jeans with the right shoes and there is the name of some obscure band on his concert T-shirt. The piercings in his ears and eyebrow are noticeable, but not obnoxious. He is the type of guy who will never have difficulty getting a date. He continues to thrum and pick at the strings. I would rate his intensity coming in just under hers.
The scratch of Jules’ pen continues.
I watch a while longer, trying to adjust to my new surroundings. This homey room is a far stretch from the stress-filled hospital scene I’ve just left behind. Jules sits on a double bed next to an old trunk. Potted plants cover the surface of a white dresser next to the velvet chair where Jared practices. The mirrored closet doors reflect the view of tall pines touching a perfect blue sky outside the only window in the room.
I don’t see myself in the mirror. I have no reflection. It’s something I may never get used to. My attention is brought back to the black trunk with its brass trim. A stereo with stacks of CDs cover most of its surface, but there are also a few books, a lamp, and a candle. The room is simple and uncluttered, reminding me of my own room, before… when I lived.
The bed creaks as Jules’ unfolds her jean clad legs. S
he straightens her rounded spine and sets her shoulders back. I step forward out of curiosity and lean down to read the paper. Spidery black scrawl covers everything but near the center of the page is a grouping of short lines, it resembles poetry. I can just make out the words, ‘he left us behind, when will it be my time,’ when Jules clears her throat. I lift my eyes to her face. She looks right at me. I take a half step back. Somber green eyes flecked with gold and rust stare into mine. Her irises bring to mind a red fox running through tall green grass, camouflaged, sleek, wild, and graceful. Her arched brows rise in unspoken question. I hear the sound of the notebook closing on her lap. Her eyes shift to the door and she frowns, making her look even more solemn.
Why the sadness? I wish I’d gotten a better look in her book.
“Go.”
I hear it as clear as if someone had spoken inside my head. Not my own voice, but female, her voice. Unsure, I take another step back, keeping my eyes on her, and not leaving. She stares out the door into a hallway, cool distance on her face. Anxious agitation crawls through me as I wonder what the implications are of being seen ahead of time. I’ve been seen before, not by one of my cases, and not often, but it has happened. I’ve found some people are more sensitive than others to my presence. Most of the people who do ‘see’ me are frightened, letting fear of the unknown control their emotions, but if I’m not mistaken, she had just nonverbally, and calmly, told me to get out. That has never happened before. Instead of leaving, I move closer, unable to resist the urge to see what she’ll do.
She turns away from me as if repelled by an unseen odor then shoves the notebook and pen into a black backpack. Sliding to the edge of the bed, she stands and moves toward the door.
“Jared, I’m going downstairs to eat. Do you want anything?”
She looks and sounds calm, but it did not escape my notice how swiftly she moved away from me. Loneliness starts to slide off my back. Maybe this time will be different.
The Misplaced: An Angel Falls Novella - book #3.5 - Ghost Hunting with Chris Abeyta Page 8
