Finder's Keeper (28 page)

“The guy at the shop said he couldn’t make one,” Stephanie answered as she reappeared in the doorway. “It’s one of a kind.”

She held the watch up between them. It spun gently as it dangled on its golden chain, catching the light and throwing it back. Mia reached out and cradled the weight of the cold metal in her palm. Stephanie dropped the chain as if she couldn’t let go of it fast enough and took a hasty step back.

Mia studied the little trinket that had caused her so much grief in the last few weeks. And brought her Chase. She expected to feel some jolt of recognition, maybe a tingle of magic, or perhaps for Chase to come bursting in with a bucket of take-out food the instant it touched her skin. Instead there was nothing. No glimmer, no flicker, no magic. It felt lighter than she remembered. Less substantial. Almost…wrong. But she shook away the fancy that it was anything other than what it had always been. An old watch.

She pressed the latch and it popped open, the springs faster and smoother than she remembered. Perhaps Stephanie’s magician had fixed it somehow. The second hand continued to tick away, comfortingly constant. She snapped the case shut and folded her hand around it, taking her first deep breath in three weeks. Or perhaps all year.

She had the watch—with twenty-four hours to spare. She had a pair of assistants who were going to be working fanatically to suck up to her for the foreseeable future. And she had Chase.

Provided he wanted to be had.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I Think I Love You

Chase sat in his Subaru in the parking lot of Mia’s office and called himself a dozen different kinds of coward because he couldn’t make himself go inside. She was in there. Her car was in the lot and the lights in her office were still blazing, even though it was after nine.

He’d surfed until he lost the sun, then dragged himself out of the water, his muscles feeling like stretched rubber and his brain curiously empty. He’d driven to Mia’s office under the vague compulsion to settle things between them, but now that he was here, he had no idea what that meant. He didn’t want to break up with her, he just couldn’t figure out what he
did
want to do about her.

He ran his fingers along the pattern of cracks and lines in his steering wheel. He might have sat there stalling all night, but Mia emerged from the building—without a jacket in spite of the wind that had kicked up since sunset and holding Occam’s leash. The dog darted toward the bushes with single-minded desperation to empty his bladder, then raced back to tangle himself around Mia’s ankles.

But she wasn’t paying attention to the dog. She’d spotted his car, and likely the silhouette of his body in the driver’s seat beneath the light of the streetlamps that kept the lot brightly lit.

She started across the asphalt toward him, with Occam nearly tripping her with his joy at being walked. Her stride was straight, focused and determined. Chase had a sudden empathy for the dippy confused circles of the dog that spun around her ankles.

Then Mia was at his door and he had no choice but to open it. He straightened to stand beside the car. “Hey.”

She frowned. “What were you doing?” Typical Mia. No tact, all direct intellect.

“Just thinking. You still working?”

“I had a breakthrough of sorts today.” For some reason, that statement made her cheeks flush so brightly it was visible even in the low light of the lot. “And speaking of breakthroughs.” She transferred Occam’s leash to her left hand and dug her right into her pocket, drawing something out by a gold chain until it dangled between them.

Chase blinked uncomprehendingly at the gold blob spinning on the end of the chain for a moment before realization struck him between the eyes. “Is that the watch?
The
watch?”

“Turns out Stephanie and Nasrin ‘borrowed’ it to see if they could have it replicated. They meant to return it, but I never sent them back to the house to get anything else out of the safe.”

“You said no one had access.”

“I’d forgotten I gave them the code. It was only once, almost a year ago. They’ve had it since May.”

The magic watch, so innocuous and average to the naked eye, swayed hypnotically. Chase couldn’t look away. He never had found it. His first failure as a finder, but that wasn’t what made him feel like an elephant was doing push-ups on his lungs. “Quite a breakthrough.”

“It wasn’t just that.” The watch disappeared back into her pocket. “Come inside. I want to show you something.”

She turned and began tugging Occam gently toward the door. Chase followed, pulled just as inexorably on his own invisible leash.

In her office, Mia unclipped Occam, who darted off to investigate an invisible intruder underneath a desk, growling his ferocious tiny growl, before emerging with a piece of string that might have been a shoelace in a former life. Mia waved Chase toward the chair facing her desk as she rounded it to take her own. “Sit.”

The command was directed at Chase, but Occam plunked his butt down, wagging enthusiastically enough to shimmy his entire body. Mia patted the puppy who went into paroxysms of delight at the attention as Chase sat. She gave the dog a chew to distract him and then turned the full force of her focus on Chase. The frown on her face was familiar. He wanted to kiss her until it melted into a smile, but he couldn’t make himself move from the chair.

“I was distracted today.” It was an accusation.

A pretty response stuck in his throat. The hinges on his charm had rusted shut tonight.

Mia’s frown intensified at his lack of response. She carefully selected a printout from papers on her desk and slid it toward him. “This is my brain a month ago.”

Chase nodded, pretending to study the page. It could have been Occam’s brain for all he could tell.

Mia set another, slightly different printout next to it. “This is my brain this afternoon.”

She waited, obviously expecting something, so Chase made a “hm” noise and tapped the papers with his index finger.

“I realize this doesn’t mean anything to you,” she snapped impatiently. “But it’s all there.” She waved a hand at the pages. “It’s science.”

He usually felt like he had a good grasp on what Mia was driving at, even when she was at her most obscure, but tonight he was lost. “Okay, I give up. What’s all there?”

Her frown darkened until she looked mildly homicidal. “I’m in love with you.”

Chase stopped breathing.

She’d said it. She’d come right out and said it. He hadn’t thought she would. She’d seemed safe. Emotionally stunted. Work obsessed. Not that he’d pursued her because he’d known love would never enter the equation. He’d known they were leading up to this point, but hearing her say it made it real.

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t love her back. He just couldn’t make himself do it. He wouldn’t be able to handle needing her. His love life was a car accident on the side of the road.
Don’t look. Just drive past
. If he didn’t look, it wouldn’t be his car accident. It would be safely distant. Mia would be safely distant. She wouldn’t belong to him.

“Chase? Are you okay? You look like you might vomit.”

Only Mia could sound blithely unoffended when her profession of love was met with an I-might-hurl face. He would have smiled, but he didn’t have control of his facial muscles.

He’d been okay as long as she was freaked by love and running in the opposite direction, but as soon as she became confident, so damn
certain
, he lost his shit. He’d been talking her into loving him, but it had been an argument, not a reality. Reality changed things.

He could lose her.
She could die
.

Chase lurched up out of the chair and it crashed over backward. “I can’t.” He couldn’t form any other words, so he repeated those. “I can’t—”
take the idea of losing you
. “I can’t—”
go through that again.
“I can’t—”
let myself want anyone the way I want you.

“Chase.” She stood as well, frowning now in concern and confusion. He probably looked like a mental patient and he didn’t feel far from it.

There wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. He needed to get outside. Fresh air. He couldn’t breathe.

Chase bolted.

He heard Mia behind him, calling after him, starting to follow, so he moved faster, running now.

She’d had a busy fucking day. Finding the watch, figuring out how to love a damaged bastard like him. What had he done all day? Surfed and turned down an offer on the house and run like hell.

But even as a small voice inside him cursed his own cowardice, his body kept moving, running, fleeing. To the hallway, into the parking lot, in the car, down the freeway. Away. He had to get away.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Mr. Right Comes Calling

Watching Chase run like she’d just declared herself radioactive was hardly how she’d envisioned this particular encounter ending.

Occam growled and pounced on her shoe. Mia knelt next to him, sliding his fur through her fingers. “That could have gone better,” she confided. He panted up at her adoringly. At least one male in her life was free of emotional baggage.

She probably ought to feel heartbroken right now. She’d never actually done the whole professing-your-love schtick before and the goal certainly hadn’t been to reduce the object of her affections to blithering hysteria and send him fleeing the premises. As rejections went, it was pretty unequivocal.

So why wasn’t she the sobbing mess pop culture would insist she should be right now? Why did she feel…

She didn’t know how she felt. Certainly not hurt. She still loved him. At least, she was fairly certain she still loved him. And not in any angsty, agonized way. The thought of him was pleasant. Warm.

Maybe she just didn’t have a good handle on what love was. If she’d truly loved him, she’d be shattered right now, wouldn’t she? She’d seen all of her sisters in the midst of heartbreak and she didn’t feel even remotely as crushed as they’d been.

Compassion. That’s what she felt. She understood why this was hard for him. Why he’d run.

He’d be back. She couldn’t even worry about the possibility that he wouldn’t return because deep down, she had a strange certainty that he would.

Faith.

Mia, who’d never believed in anything, had faith in Chase.

The weight of the watch bumped against her thigh through the thin material of her pocket. She drew the watch out, cupping it in her palm and searching the plain gold for some trace of the miraculous.

Could it really be imbued with some romantic power? Was it possible that this old timepiece could somehow be responsible for finding her the one man who was perfect for her, who also happened to be the last man she would have picked?

If she put it on now, would he come back?

She needed him. And not just as a date for the anniversary party tomorrow.

Mia straightened from her crouch on the floor and went to the small bathroom off her office. Looking herself in the eye, she raised the chain over her head and, for the first time in her life, put on the watch.

It rested against her sternum. Inanimate. Unimpressive. Nothing more than a collection of gears and superstition.

A heavy knock sounded on the main door to the lab.

“
Chase
.”

Mia ran down the hall, Occam bouncing at her heels. She stopped at the door to smooth her hair in a futile attempt at composure.

The man she was meant to be with was on the other side of the door. Chase had shown her magic. He’d taught her how to believe in happily-ever-afters and meant-to-bes.

She reached for the handle and opened the door, simultaneously opening herself to the future she was meant to have.

He stood in the doorway, smiling affectionately. The man she was fated to be with. “Hello, Mia.” His voice was warm, wrapping lovingly around her name.

But it wasn’t Chase.

He was taller than Chase. Older. More distinguished. Her perfect match.

“Peter.”

Chapter Thirty

Karma Alarm

It was after ten when Chase arrived at Karmic Consultants, but the light was still on in Karma’s office. The curse of his life: workaholic women.

Tonight he was glad the front door was unlocked and she was easy to find behind the massive expanse of her desk. His boss didn’t bat an eye when he walked into her office without knocking.

“Chase.”

He arched a brow, trying for cheeky smartass but doubtless failing. It was hard to be cheeky when you felt like shit. “Were you expecting me?”

She shrugged, as cool, calm and put together as always, though when he looked closer her eyes were ringed with shadows and her mouth was pursed tighter than usual. “I had a hunch you might make an appearance.”

A hunch
. Karma’s hunches had achieved legendary status amongst the consultants in her employ, though she never openly admitted to any precognitive tendencies.

“You can take Mia Corregianni off the books. She found the watch.”

One carefully plucked eyebrow rose. “
She
found the watch. Without your assistance?”

“Not for lack of trying.”

“Ah.”

Just that syllable. A concise woman, Karma. She didn’t ask if there was another reason he was there. She let her silence ask for her.

Chase cleared his throat. “She’ll probably still want to do that study. On people with psychic abilities.”

Karma nodded. “I’ve been wanting to get a scientist’s view on our little family and she seemed quite intent.” One blood-red nail drew a circle on her desk. “I’m surprised she didn’t hit you up for a series of tests while she had you at her disposal.”

“You know she did.”

Karma spread her palm flat on the desk and leveled her gaze at him. “Are you here for another assignment? I don’t have anything for you at the moment.”

“Actually, I thought I might take some time off. The waves are good this time of year in Fiji. Or maybe Bali.” The intention hadn’t even been formed before he began to speak, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he liked the idea. The way he felt now, this icy-hot blade spinning inside his intestines, he never felt this way when the ocean was blue and perfect around him and the sun was beating all thoughts out of his head.