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Which turned out to be a bad choice. When she had herself properly scared and deliciously tingling, the spirits tended to come to her, whether she wanted them to or not. They were different here in the South, whispering of different pasts and different secrets than the ghosts in her art studio in Vermont had. Not that she wanted to hear any of them.
Desperate to do anything to stave off the insistent murmurs in her mind, she gave in to an urge to read tarot cards. She didn’t consider herself particularly skilled with these sorts of readings, but shuffling and laying out the cards gave her restless hands something to do. She cleared the folding table she currently used for eating, painting and balancing business ledgers. The cards all but leaped out of her fingers into a traditional spread. They spoke of four men in her immediate future. A lover. A trickster. A villain. And a hero. But the cards stubbornly refused to tell her which one would win out in the end.
And that was why she didn’t like using cards. She couldn’t bully them into answering her the way she could stubborn spirits. She tried again, doing individual card turns. She turned over the Prince of Cups from the top of the deck. Then she pulled the Prince of Wands out of the middle of the deck. Then the Prince of Pentacles. She chose a fourth card with great reluctance.
No surprise. The Prince of Swords. What on earth? She would end up with all four men? That didn’t sound like her. She would be thrilled to land one man, let alone four. Although she supposed she could do without a trickster or a villain in her life. She’d already had enough of the influence of those affecting her, compliments of her birth father, whoever he might be.
Her mother never had remembered anything about the night she was drugged at a party and raped, resulting in Lissa’s birth. Or maybe her mother hadn’t wanted to remember. Not that Lissa blamed her. And not that she actually wanted to know who her birth father was.
Some people argued that Lissa’s gift was a result of the great trauma in her genetic past, and others said it was a curse visited on her. No matter its source, she would be glad to be rid of it.
Sometimes, when she’d been little, she’d been able to conjure a shadowy image of a man’s face when she thought of her birth father, but she’d never been able to see more than that. The fates had long made it clear that further knowledge of the man was not for her.
As she stared down at the four tarot cards on the table, another man’s face swam into view in her mind—this time as sharp and clear as her father’s had been indistinct. He had short blond hair, light green-gold eyes that were reluctant to smile and a world of hurts accumulated on his handsome brow. She would love to know what had added such weight to Max Smith’s spirit at such a young age. He couldn’t be much more than thirty years old. Either that, or the man had the moisturizing regimen of a god.
His face still lingered clear and strong in her mind’s eye when she fell asleep. It even followed her into her dreams, promising to protect her and keep her safe.
And maybe that was why she didn’t scream when she woke up and heard the noises coming from downstairs.
* * *
Max woke groggily as his cell phone exploded into sound. Cripes. What time was it? The face of the phone said it was nearly 3:00 a.m. The caller ID named L. Clearmont as the caller. What the hell?
“Lissa? What’s up?”
A frantic whisper replied. “There’s someone in the shop. And it sounds like he’s busting up everything.”
Max lurched fully awake. “Go into your bathroom. Lock the door or barricade it with a chair. Crawl into the bathtub, cover yourself with a white towel if there’s one in there to make yourself harder to see and be very still and quiet. I’ll call nine-one-one. Don’t come out until the police identify themselves. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He leaped out of bed and yanked on jeans and a T-shirt, still rattling off instructions to her. “If you have something heavy like a hammer or a wrench at hand, take it with you. Pound the crap out of any bastard who tries to lay a finger on you. Fight like a wildcat if they try to drag you out of there. And scream your head off. Wake up the whole damned neighborhood.”
He grabbed his car keys and sprinted for Lola. “I’m getting in my car now. Hang on, Lissa. I’ll be there as soon as I can and will kick their asses for you.”
He tossed the phone, on speaker, onto the car seat beside him and peeled out, leaving expensive Italian racing rubber on the pavement. It was a fifteen-minute drive normally, but he made it in a shade under eight. The cops were still not there, the bastards.
The Saints had won their play-off game, and the partying on Bourbon Street had to be worse than usual, but still. Lissa lived in this town. She deserved a fast response from the NOPD to a break-in. Especially after the violent attack on her the day before. He’d no sooner had the thought than a pair of squad cars careened around the corner, sirens and lights screaming.
The cops advanced on the store, guns drawn, and he wasted no time moving up behind them.
“I’m a friend of the owner. She’s locked in the upstairs bathroom. While you gentlemen clear the main floor and the basement, I’m going for her.”
“Sir, we need to clear the entire building before you enter the premises—”
“Just don’t shoot me,” he tossed over his shoulder, his own pistol drawn from its shoulder holster and at the ready before him in a trained shooter’s grip. “I’ve got the left quadrant and stairs.” And with that he spun through the smashed front door.
The cops must have recognized a trained operative, for they let him precede them and ceded the left third of the store to his search.
“Clear!” he called after racing up and down the first few rows of smashed curio cabinets and overturned display cases. “I’m going upstairs.”
“Roger that,” one of the cops called back. “Holler if you need backup.”
“You’ll know if you hear gunshots,” he bit out. If whoever had trashed the store had laid a hand on Lissa, there would be no fight. There would be lead flying and dead bastards bleeding out on her floor.
He moved quickly and silently up the stairs and spun into her living room, low and lethal. No movement. He pointed his weapon at each dark corner of the room, searching quickly for man-size shadows or any hint of movement. He’d told her to take Mr. Jackson with her into the bathroom if she could find the cat without having to go looking for him. He’d also suggested that she use the cat as a weapon, to throw it at anyone who tried to break through the bathroom door.
The living room was clear. He spun into the guest room and her bedroom, pausing to check under the bed and behind the armoire before moving to her bathroom door.
“Lissa, it’s Max. The police are here, and the intruders have left. It’s safe to come—” The door flew open and a soft, slight body flew into his arms, knocking him back a step with the force of her rush.
“I knew you’d come for me. I knew you’d save me. You were there in my head, both of your faces smiling down at me and telling me everything would be fine...”
What the hell was she talking about? Both of his faces?
“We clear up here?” someone called from over by the staircase.
“All clear,” Max called back to the cop. “I’ve got the owner of the store with me, and she’s fine. She’ll be down in a second to make a statement.”
But for now he was just going to hold her and let their mutual panic subside a little. He was startled to realize his heartbeat was galloping madly and adrenaline screamed through his veins. He hadn’t gotten this rattled since he was a kid, before his father starting training him seriously in how to be an undercover field operative. Spies didn’t have strong emotions. Or if they did, they certainly didn’t let those emotions get the best of them.
Damned if Max’s knees didn’t feel a little wobbly, though. Was he really that smitten with this woman he barely knew? He lifted his chin off the top of her head to stare down at her, and she leaned back enough to stare up at him. There it was again. That rope of electric attraction hovering right at the edge of his vision, drawing them together.
“Kiss me, Max.”
“I don’t take advantage of women under duress—”
“Kiss me, dammit, or bend down here so I can kiss you.”
“You’re bossy for a little thing—”
She looped her hands around the back of his neck and tugged his head down to hers while she stood on tiptoe. And then she kissed him.
He’d had some fine kisses in his day, but this was something else altogether. A movie of their future life together unfolded in his head almost too quickly to process. An entire symphony sound track played in the background, and his soul left his body, joined hers, twined with it. Then both leaped back into his body in the space of time it took to blink once.
Laughter. Love. Loss. Generations before and generations to come all crowded into his brain and then fled again, consumed by the fiery passion that exploded between him and Lissa the moment their lips touched.
She groaned and pressed herself closer to him as his arms tightened around her delicate frame. Although she didn’t feel delicate right now. She felt like an untamed tiger in his embrace. And he felt like the one being consumed as she inhaled his soul into herself, stripping him bare and leaving him wide-open to her.
She staggered back from him with a gasp. “I... I’m so sorry... I know better than to cut loose like that.”
“What are you apologizing for? Laying the hottest kiss on me I’ve ever experienced?” He blinked down at her, stunned. “That was incredible.”
“You’re not scared?” she asked in a small voice.
“Should I be?”
“Well, most people would be a little freaked out by the...intensity...of that.”
“Passion is nothing to be afraid of. I mean, I could see some guys being afraid of it. But it takes a lot to scare me...” He trailed off, not entirely certain what they were talking about.
“You have a point.” She sounded bemused. A little distracted even, as if she was pondering something else altogether.
“What’s going on in that complicated head of yours?” he asked lightly, even though the question was dead serious.
“That’s the second time the floodgates have opened around you.” She didn’t explain her comment.
“Should I know what you’re talking about?” he asked.
“No, of course not. I’m just rambling on about nothing.”
“What floodgates?” he persisted.
A police officer’s voice interjected from by the stairwell. “Ma’am, if you could come downstairs, we need you to make a statement.”
Thank God. Saved by the cops.
“Yes, Officer, I know the drill. I was attacked last night on the street.”
“Someone got it in for you, ma’am?”
Max froze at the question. He’d been too panicked on his way over there to make the obvious connection between the two attacks. He looked down at her, still nestled in his arms. “Who wants to hurt you? Do you have enemies?”
“Not here. I just got to New Orleans.”
Did that mean she had enemies elsewhere? Mad enough to follow her and take their revenge on her in the Big Easy? “We need to talk,” he murmured.
She nodded once, reluctantly.
The vandals had been kind enough to leave a calling card in the form of gang symbols spray painted on the walls and windows of the shop. This was retaliation for Julio G.’s capture. Max’s jaw went hard as he stared at the damage. Julio G. wasn’t the only guy in town who could call in muscle to make a point.
He asked the police tersely, “Do you know where this gang has its headquarters?”
“Hey, now, buddy. We don’t want no retaliation from the likes of you. Besides, these punks are a big, powerful gang. Lots of guys. Lots of guns. You stay away from them. Ya heah’?”
“I hear,” he replied evenly. He ignored, but he heard. Julio G. and his boys were about to deeply regret messing with one Lissa Clearmont.
Tonight’s police interview took considerably longer than last night’s. Not only were the police less concerned about her mental well-being, since she hadn’t been physically attacked this time, but they were highly suspicious of two attacks by a notorious gang in such quick succession. They probed at length for some connection between her and a gang member, some enemy, some ex-lover or disgruntled customer who could have caused Julio G. and his boys to target her.
Dawn was breaking by the time the last law enforcement professional packed up his tools and left. Max carried down a sheet of plywood from upstairs and sawed it to fit in the frame of the broken shop door. “You’re going to need a new door. While you’re at it, you should upgrade to something with a wrought iron security grill.”
“I’d have no idea how to go about finding something like that.”
“Then you’re in luck. I know every antique and secondhand dealer in town. We’ll find you something. But first, breakfast.”
* * *
Lissa looked around the interior of one of New Orleans’s most famous restaurants in dismay. They were the only customers. “Is this place even open for breakfast?”
“It’s open for us. I did the owner a favor a while back.”
“What kind of favor?”
Max grinned across the white linen tablecloth at her. “A big one, chère.”
She subsided, knowing an evasion when she heard one. Max ordered eggs Benedict, bacon, sausage, grits and fresh fruit for two, and then leaned back to study her intently enough that she started to squirm a bit.
“About that kiss last night,” he started.
Oh, Lord. She’d been hoping he wouldn’t bring that up. She had no idea why such a massive flood of impressions, images and information had come over her when they’d kissed. Her big visions were always tied to violence, not to hot kisses.
Maybe it had been her own fear that triggered the sudden onslaught of psychic emanations in her head. She’d probably just been too scared to put a lid on the vivid emotions that had flooded her. That was all it had been—emotion. Physical attraction and arousal. Not anything psychic. She was done with opening herself to those energies.
Max leaned forward curiously. “What happened? Is that what it’s always like to kiss you?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never kissed myself.”
“Something happened when you kissed me, Lissa.”
He hadn’t picked up on some of the visions that had shot through her when they’d kissed, had he? “You mean the earth moved under your feet?” she joked.
He frowned across the table at her. “I’m serious.”
She really wished he would drop the line of questioning, but she sensed there wasn’t a chance in hell he would do that. Instead she asked, a shade shortly, “Describe something.”
“It was like my imagination went crazy. I saw all kinds of images and felt all kinds of feelings. Hell, I even thought I heard music. But it all happened in, like, a millisecond.”
She swore under her breath. Did he have a gift of his own, then? Most mundanes were lucky to catch tiny snatches of her vision flow. Nobody saw the whole unedited show inside her skull. She leaned forward. “Has anyone ever told you you’re empathic?”
He frowned. “As in the woo-woo kind? An empath?”
She smiled broadly. “That, or merely that you have a talent for picking up on other peoples’ emotions.”
He leaned back hard in his chair. “I’m a—” He broke off and started again. “I have some experience in watching other people’s body language. Reading facial expressions. But that doesn’t make me some kind of psychic.”
He said the word as if it were filthy. A momentary knife of pain twisted in her gut. No. It was all right. She wasn’t part of that world anymore. He could despise it and not despise the most important piece of her.
“Are you a cop?” she blurted.
“No,” he answered promptly.
He wasn’t an FBI agent, was he? That would be disastrous. He’d be an easy phone call away from talking to the feds she’d worked with in the Northeast, finding kidnapping victims and murder victims over the years. Heck, he would probably already know some guys out of the Boston office.
“Are you FBI?” she asked reluctantly.
“Nope.”
Thank goodness. But then her confusion returned, bigger than before. “Then how did you know how to drop Julio G., and how did you know all that stuff you told me to do on the phone last night? And now that I think about it, you came into the store at the same time as the police. How did they let you do that?”
“I got to your place first. They just followed me in.”
She sensed evasion in his voice. “And the other stuff? About how I should hide and defend myself from an intruder in my house. How did you know about all that?”
He grinned at her. “Easy. I watch a lot of cop shows on TV.”
That was totally more evasion. She started to challenge him but was interrupted by the arrival of their breakfast. The food was beyond delicious, and she dug in with gusto.
Eventually Max said, “Tell me more about your aunt. I gather she was some sort of psychic? What’s up with that? That stuff’s not real, is it?”
She’d had this argument so many times over the years that she’d long ago learned just not to go there in conversation. “I am no scientific authority and can’t comment on that one way or another. Each person sees and believes whatever they want to regarding psychic phenomena. As for my aunt, most people who knew her believed she was not only psychic but very psychic.”
“And you? Do you believe that?”
She shrugged noncommittally. “She knew some stuff that was awfully hard to explain any other way.”
“There’s always an explanation. Scientists can always successfully debunk anyone who claims to be psychic.”
She stared at him intently, willing him to understand. “Many people use mundane skills to pass themselves off as psychics. The technique is generally referred to as cold reading. I do think that some people who actually cold read believe themselves to be genuinely psychic. In point of fact, they’re picking up on subtle body language signals from their subjects.”
“Like your aunt?”
He sounded as if he was trying to make a joke, but she answered seriously. “Most people who saw her in action believed she had a genuine gift. It’s not possible to cold read the future, but she could predict it spot-on. She could give uncannily accurate readings to people she’d never met, over the phone, in a different part of the country from her. And she never did it as a parlor trick or for financial gain.”
To his credit, Max didn’t make any snarky comments. He actually seemed to take her at her word when she claimed her aunt had possessed out-of-the-ordinary skills. At least he didn’t disbelieve her outright. That was more than she could have asked from him.
“If you’re not psychic,” he remarked lightly, “then I guess you’re simply a spectacular kisser.”
She shot him a damning look. “You don’t believe that.”
“I dunno. That was a pretty hot kiss you laid on me. Perhaps we ought to try it again and see if the same thing happens.”
“We’re in a restaurant, sitting in front of the window on a crowded street!”
“All those folks out there have seen kissing before.”
“I’m still hungry,” she declared, her stomach doing flip-flops at the idea of kissing him again. And this time when she wasn’t scared out of her mind.
“Afraid to kiss me?” he teased her.
“You have a sister, don’t you?” she accused.
He glanced at her a shade too quickly. “Did your psychic powers tell you that?”
“No. That annoying big-brother tone you just took with me told me,” she retorted.
Grinning, he lifted his orange juice to her. “Touché.”
An urge filled her to know this man, to understand what made him tick, to know how he’d become the confident, self-contained man seated before her today. “Tell me the three most important things that have ever happened to you,” she asked impulsively.
“You first,” he returned.
“Fair enough.” She thought for a moment. “In no particular order, the circumstances of my conception—”
He interrupted her. “Elaborate on that.”
“My mother was drugged and raped at a party when she was nineteen. Her attacker was never caught. I was the result of that event. But it means I never knew my birth father.” She added reluctantly, “And it means my mother was plagued by conflicted feelings about me and my existence throughout my entire upbringing.”
Which was the understatement of the century. No matter how hard her mother had wanted to love her, some part of her had never been able to break through the trauma of the rape to truly, unconditionally love Lissa. Her mother’s head was willing to love, but her heart was not entirely.
Max looked as though his mental wheels were turning a hundred miles an hour, and she continued hastily before he could ask her any more probing questions about that exceedingly unpleasant detail about her past.
“Number two most important life event—inheriting the shop from my aunt. It gave me an excuse to move across the country and start a new life.”
“Why didn’t you just sell the shop and stay where you were? That building has great bones and is in a neighborhood that’s gentrifying fast. You could turn a nice profit if you sold it.”
“I needed the new start more than I needed the money.”
“Why?”
She was careful not to even think about her real reasons for the abrupt move, lest they show on her face and Captain Perceptive Pants pick up on them. “My life wasn’t heading the direction I wanted it to in Vermont.”
“And what direction would that be?”
She shrugged. “The normal one. A decent living, some friends, a nice guy. Maybe settling down someday.” Suddenly panicked that he would think she was making a pass at him, she added in desperation, “You know. The whole 2.1 kids, dog and a Volvo station wagon routine.”
He smiled gently at her attempt at humor. “And the third most important thing to happen to you?”
“I’m still waiting for it.” She wasn’t about to admit that meeting him was rapidly climbing its way onto the list. And she bloody well wasn’t confessing that talking with dead people was the real third thing on her list. “Okay, your turn,” she blurted.
His facial expression went stone cold, locked and barred, no entrance. When he spoke, it was with great reluctance. “My parent’s divorce changed the course of my life. My father tried to steal my loyalty away from my mother, and the result was that he and I spent a lot of time together when I was a kid. He tried to teach me to be like him.”
She sensed darkness in that statement. Were she still a practicing psychic and he a client seeking a reading, she would dive into that darkness and explore it, but she was not and he was not. “Did your father succeed in making you like him?” she asked quietly.
“That’s an excellent question.”
Good grief. Wave upon wave of darkness shrouded that answer. Clearly Max was deeply conflicted about his father and not at all enamored at the idea of being like him. She noted that he declined to answer her. He continued with his list.
“The car accident that almost killed my mom and little sister was the second big milestone. It left my mother paralyzed from the neck down. I had to move back home from college and care for her around the clock for four years until she died of complications.”
“Oh, Max. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged casually, but she didn’t have to be psychic to feel the pain in the gesture.
“And the third event?”
He opened his mouth. Started to say something but stopped. A voice in her head filled in his unspoken words. Meeting you. Was that for real, or was that just her own desires whispering what she wanted to hear?
“My work, I suppose.”
“And what exactly is it that you do?”
“I’m a finder. I locate things for people with a lot of money burning a hole in their pockets. Art, antiques, furniture, information, you name it. I make connections and fulfill wishes.”