by Liv Morris
She nodded vigorously. “Oh yes. I know we are. I can feel the upheaval and terror in this room. I know something evil happened here, and I just know whatever’s happening is not finished.”
What a load of crap. Did she seriously buy into all this nonsense she was spouting? “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“I just know we’re going to see something tonight.”
“Look, I don’t claim to have any spiritual Spidey sense like you do, but I do believe in intuition and trusting my gut. And my gut is telling me that stuff happened because an actual person, that’s still alive, broke in and tossed our offices.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” She settled in next to him against the wall. “And speaking of guts, I’m getting hungry. You ready for a snack?”
“Sure.” He reached for the cooler and pulled out a container of sliced veggies and an expensive bottle of water.
She eyed the bottle. “I thought you said you only ate sunflower seeds and drank coffee.”
“I do. But I thought you might like this stuff.”
“Oh.”
Her mouth formed a perfect O, and his thoughts went to dark ideas of taking those lips as his.
She grinned and broke the spell. “You bought this stuff for me? That is soooo sweet.” She picked up the fancy bottle of water and read the label. “This water is from a natural spring somewhere in Europe. Judging from the price tag, you could’ve skipped the water and just brought us a bottle of wine.”
“I’ll remember that for next time.” Next time? Who said anything about a next time? Next time their offices were ransacked and they had to do a midnight stakeout? He frowned and pointed at her bag. “What did you bring?”
She dumped her bag on the blanket in front of them. He gaped at the collection of cheese puffs, potato chips, candy bars, and chocolate cupcakes. “I’m afraid my snack choices are a little less healthy than yours.”
She did that thing again where she wrinkled her nose and grinned, and he couldn’t help but smile back.
His office had been next to hers for months and he’d never taken the time to even have a conversation with her. He’d made up his mind and thought he knew everything about her before he’d had a chance to get to know her. And his snap judgments were turning out to be dead wrong. She’d brought cheese puffs, for crap’s sake. “You really eat all this stuff?”
She laughed and reached for a candy bar, totally at ease with eating the junk food. “Oh yeah, I love all this stuff. I’ll punish myself on the treadmill later or take a hike, but it’s worth it.” She took a bite of chocolate then closed her eyes and groaned in ecstasy. “So worth it.”
Geez. What was going on with him? Maybe instead of a shot of espresso, she’d put horny potion in that pumpkin spice thing, because her eating that candy bar was totally turning him on. Watching her eyes close and that groan. Holy mother.
The way she tipped back her head gave him a clear view of her pale skin, and he ached to bury his face against her neck. His own pulse picked up a beat as he imagined the feel of hers pulsing under his lips as he ravaged her throat with passionate kisses.
He felt like a teenage boy. His hands were even beginning to sweat. He did not react this way to women. To anyone. She had to have spiked his drink with some hocus-pocus. Or maybe those weren’t ordinary incense sticks she was burning earlier. His mind reached for any explanation rather than the obvious one. That he was falling for her.
And that was not going to happen. He cleared his throat and reached for his thermos of coffee. “I think I’ll just stick to coffee for now.”
She shrugged. “Suit yourself. I brought pop too.” She hauled out a six-pack of highly caffeinated soda. Not even diet. Who was this woman? “It’s not expensive mountain spring water, but it’s got caffeine and carbonation.”
She laughed, but he knew it was with him and not at him, and something about the sound of her laughter touched him. She seemed so genuine. He wanted to believe in her. But he’d been burned before, and with fatal consequences. It was hard for him to believe she could be this nice. Hard to believe anyone could be this positive.
In his line of work, he’d seen the worst in humanity. He’d seen terrible things that people had done to each other out of greed or jealousy or even in the name of love. His life might seem boring to her, but he liked it that way. And it helped in his work. Standing on the outside gave him the chance to see things objectively, rationally, without all the emotions getting involved.
He knew people could lie and cheat and steal and pretend to be something they weren’t. He’d dated plenty of women, but most were superficial and only out for themselves. Maybe those were the ones he picked on purpose, because he knew he could keep them at arm’s length and not get emotionally attached. Life was easier that way. Don’t get attached. Don’t get involved. Don’t get hurt.
So what was he doing up in the middle of the night, sitting on a girly throw pillow, grinning like an idiot at a woman who claimed to be a psychic? A psychic, for frick’s sake. And why the hell had he made a special trip to a fancy grocery store to buy her a twelve-dollar bottle of freaking water?
He shifted on the pillow and forced a frown.
She arched an eyebrow at him. “Uh oh. What just happened? You were easy and funny a second ago, and you just shut down. What’s going on?”
“Oh yeah. Did you see that in your crystal ball?” That was a low blow, and he felt like a jackass as he watched a flicker of hurt cross her eyes. Better that than the goo-goo eyes she was making at him a minute ago that were causing a crazy commotion in his gut.
“No. It doesn’t take a psychic to see what you’re feeling. Besides, I’m a woman. We’re skilled at reading emotions. And your emotions are all over your face. Your expression just went from amused to angry in two seconds flat. So what’s up? What just made you so pissy?”
“I do not get pissy.”
“Okay, guarded, then. Or just plain pissed. Are those manly enough adjectives for you?”
“Look, I just don’t buy in to all this psychic fortune-telling stuff. I don’t trust what I can’t see and prove. I’ve seen too much fraud and too many scams with this stuff.”
“There’s fraud and scams in plenty of things. Check-writing fraud and fake lotteries are huge scams, but you believe those exist.”
“But lottery scams don’t get people killed.” He sighed and rubbed his hand through his hair. “Look, before I went into private investigations, I was a cop. I left the police force after a child was kidnapped and we couldn’t solve the case. In a kidnapping case, timing is everything. You have this short window to follow the tracks and try to find the kid. They brought in this so-called psychic to help on the case, and after a hellish night of false leads and a wild-goose chase she led us on, we finally found the kid.”
“So the psychic helped?”
“No. She kept giving us these wild leads and we threw all our resources at tracking them down. We wasted so much time on her stupid guesses and false tips that by the time we really found the kid, it was too late. He was dead.”
Zia gasped. “Oh no.”
“Oh yeah. If we would have just followed standard procedure, tracked down actual clues and solid leads, we might have saved that boy’s life.” His chest tightened as the long-buried feelings of frustration and anger threatened to bubble to the surface. He closed his eyes against the memory of the child’s lifeless body still clad in the blue pajamas he’d worn to bed the night he’d been abducted.
He flinched as Zia gently touched his arm then relaxed as he felt the warmth of her hand seep into his skin. Not sure if it was the soft lighting or the nearness of the woman and the open expression of kindness on her face, but he felt like he could talk to her. Open up and tell her the horrible sadness of the situation.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I’m sorry too. I left the force after that. Decided I wanted to be in charge of my own investigations
. I wanted to call the shots and not be at the mercy of someone else’s decisions. And I sure as hell wouldn’t ever again let myself buy in to some crackpot claiming to be a psychic.” He grimaced and put his hand on top of hers. “No offense.”
“None taken. You’re not the first person to take a shot at my profession. And you won’t be the last. Finn, there are frauds in this field, and plenty of them. But there are frauds in lots of professions. There’s always going to be people that take advantage of those in need for their own selfish gain. And there are all different levels of expertise in this field as well. Just like in sports, there are people who know how to throw a football around and then there are professional ball players who get paid a lot of money. But they both consider themselves football players.”
“Saying you can catch a football is a little bit different than claiming you can read people’s minds.”
“I don’t claim to be a mind reader, but I do believe that I can read people. That I am attuned to their feelings. I also use tools that help me. Tarot cards and crystals for healing. And I do believe in ghosts and spirits, and I know that at times, I have the ability to connect to them.”
He scoffed. “You’ve talked to ghosts?”
“Yes.”
“Like who? Ben Franklin? Marilyn Monroe? Elvis? Who are these ghosts you’ve talked to?”
Her eyes took on a sorrowful gaze, and her next words were so soft that Finn had to lean closer to hear them. “My husband, for one.”
He blinked. “I didn’t know you were married.”
“I’m not. Now. But I was. We met in college and fell madly in love. We got married as soon as we graduated. We’d been married about three years and had been up in the mountains to visit his parents for Christmas break. We got a late start home, and by the time we came down the pass, it was dark and a storm had set in. The snow was blinding and the roads were icy and treacherous. We came around a bend and a deer was standing in the middle of the road. My husband swerved to miss it, slid on the ice, and our car went off the side of the road and plummeted partway down the cliff.”
“You could have been killed.”
“I almost was.” Her eyes took on a faraway gaze, as if she were watching the scene in the past. “The windshield shattered as the car crashed through trees, and a branch from a tree stabbed through my shoulder, impaling me to the seat. I couldn’t move and I was losing a lot of blood. My husband was bleeding from a head wound, and I can remember how bright red the blood was against his white shirt. I had this crazy thought that it would be a good shade to paint the trim in our kitchen. We had this whole black-and-white theme going, with red accents. Isn’t that a funny thing to be thinking about? I was dying and yet contemplating what shade of red to paint our kitchen.”
He touched her arm lightly, wanting to offer some kind of support for such a terrible experience. The look of pure pain in her eyes shot through him, as if he were the one who had been impaled. “People do all sorts of things in crisis situations. It’s the brain’s way of helping them to cope.”
She looked at him, her eyes brimming with tears, and the corners of her mouth tipped up a little in a mournful smile. “What helped me cope was the strength of my husband and his unfailing support. He applied pressure to my wound and kept me talking. I can remember clearly the way he encouraged me to hang on and stay with him. He kept talking about these funny memories of our time together, and I can even remember the stupid jokes he told. He was covered in blood, so much blood, but he wouldn’t let me give up. Wouldn’t let me surrender to the pain.
“I don’t know exactly how long we were trapped. Witnesses later said it took the ambulance twenty minutes to get to us, and at least another ten minutes to get me out of the car. I lost consciousness as soon as I heard the sirens and knew help was on the way. The last thing I remember was him holding my hand and telling me to stay. To not give up.”
“He must have loved you very much.”
She nodded, a slight bob of her head. Her next words were choked with emotion. “I woke up in the hospital the next day. I asked the nurses where my husband was and if he was okay. They told me that he had died on impact. That he’d broken his neck in the fall and died instantly.”
His heart stopped at her statement, and his breath caught in his throat. She turned to look at him, really look in his eyes, and he thought his heart could break at the pain evident in them. He didn’t know if he fully believed the story, but he knew she believed it. It was clear that she believed every word. And she wanted him to believe her.
She swiped at the lone tear rolling down her cheek. “I’ve only told that story to a few people. Honestly, I don’t know why I even just told you. I guess I just wanted you to understand. It’s not hocus-pocus nonsense to me. Connecting with the other side is very real to me. And having gone through the pain of losing someone so close, having survived such a tragedy helps me to be able to connect to people, to see their pain and to work with them to try to heal.”
He didn’t know how to react, and couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands. He wanted to touch her. To hold her. To protect her from her pain. To tell her he was sorry, but he couldn’t open his mouth. He didn’t know what to say.
She stared at him. “Well, say something. Don’t just stare at me. Tell me what you’re thinking. What you’re feeling.”
“First of all, I don’t talk about my feelings, and second of all, I don’t know what the hell I’m feeling. I want to wrap you in my arms and protect you and never let you get hurt again. And at the same time, I want to rip your clothes off and kiss you senseless and make you forget you’ve ever had a sad moment in your life.”
She laughed. A laugh choked with tears. “Now that’s a feeling I understand. You drive me insane with your close-mindedness, and I feel like the best choice for me is to walk away from you. But my hands are itching to touch you, and all I want to do is dig into that shell of yours and uncover the man who’s afraid to believe in things he can’t prove.”
“I’m not afraid. I just have a hard time believing it.”
“I know. And I can’t figure out how to feel about that. I like you, but you infuriate me. You make my insides go a little gooey at the same time you get my back up in frustration. As much as I’ve been thinking about kissing you and fantasizing about your hands on me, I’m not sure what I can do about it. How can I be with someone that doesn’t believe in the most important life-changing event of my life?”
Did she just say she’d been fantasizing about his hands on her? Everything else in the room fell away. Everything except this woman, with her cascades of long, dark hair that he was itching to drive his hands through. Everything but her. Her pain-filled eyes and her full lips.
Her scent swirled around him, enveloping him in a cloak of musky tones full of sex and femininity. He heard his throat click as he swallowed. His mouth dry, his words soft and full of want. “I don’t know. How can you?”
She hesitated, only a moment, searching his eyes. He felt like she could see into his very soul as she reached up to touch his cheek. A shiver ran through him as she whispered, “I guess like this.” She leaned forward, and his breath caught at the nearness of her.
He reached for her, and the silky softness of her hair caressed his hand as he slid it around her neck and pulled her closer to him. Her mouth was so close to his. All he had to do was lean a little closer and her lips would be his. He hesitated, savoring the sweet moment of anticipation.
So close, he gently touched her lips. One soft, sweet kiss. A kiss that elicited a low sigh of pleasure that went straight to his gut. His stomach was turning circles, and he ached to dive in and take her, but the moment was too good to rush. Indulging in the decadent promise of what was to come. Just a small taste. A little nibble before the richness of the bite.
He knew this was probably a bad idea. Knew he was just getting caught up in the moment. The stakeout, a gorgeous woman, and cupcakes. What man wouldn’t be turned on?
But he knew it was more. More than a momentary lapse of judgment. This woman had somehow seeped into his soul. With her positive spirit and her easy laugh. And her generous curves. Lord help him, her curves. And he was inches away from touching those curves now. Did he dare?
He was normally so cautious, thinking through every decision, making the wise choice. She lightly licked his bottom lip, and that was it. All rationale disappeared.
He reached for her and pulled her body into his lap, and finally his hands were on her. He feasted on her lips, taking her mouth in ravenous hunger as he filled his hands with her. Touching every inch of her. Caressing and stroking.
She tasted like chocolate and coffee, and he could not stop kissing her. The feel of her hands in his hair and clutching his back almost sent him over the edge with desire. Having her in his lap allowed him to wrap her in his arms and still touch and feel and explore her body.
Dipping his head to her neck, he laid a hot trail of kisses down her throat. Inhaling her scent, he slowed, savoring the softness of her skin as his kisses moved down her neck. She sighed again and arched her back as he brushed his lips against the tops of her breasts.
“You feel so good,” he growled, his voice husky with want.
He could have wept with the ache of wanting her beneath him. He shifted their bodies, holding her against him as he eased her onto the floor, resting her head on one of the pillows. Her long hair spread out across the floor like a silken pool of black liquid, dark and lush.
She looked up at him, her eyes full of desire and vulnerability. Like she was trusting him not to hurt her. Not to break her heart. He pulled back. What if he couldn’t be the man she needed? The man she wanted?
She reached up and ran her fingers along the leather strap of his gun holster. “That was pretty sexy the way you pulled your gun this morning and pushed me behind you to protect me.” Her words were playful, flirty. He could handle playful, but he was terrible at flirting. It made him feel like a dork and that he was always doing it wrong. But she did say she thought he looked sexy.
