Flirting With Fate (9 page)

Greyly nodded. “Where is your friend now?”

Josie cast a surreptitious glance around the room,
making Tanner chuckle silently. She was no fool. “In the lobby, I presume.”

“I think I’ll go ask him a few questions. In the
meantime, I’ll send an officer out to your apartment to survey the damage.” He
pulled out his card. “Give me a call if you remember anything that could help
us.”

Greyly took a step toward the door then stopped.
He was watching her again. He rubbed the back of his neck before asking, “
Depuis
quand avez-vous bougé aux États
?”

Josie wrinkled her brow. “I’ve lived in the U.S.
my whole life.”

“But you speak French.” It wasn’t a question.

She shrugged. “I understand more than I speak.
Dabbling in languages comes in handy in my line of work.”

He dropped his eyes to his notes. “PI work?”

“Something like that.”

Watch out, girl. He’s gonna see that you’re
defensive about your job.

Tanner shifted as Greyly studied her again. She
wasn’t a goddamn lab rat, but he studied her like her face might hold the
answer to some great mystery. “Take care, then.”

Greyly walked to the door and was reaching for the
handle when he said, “Mallory?”

Josie’s head shot up and they locked eyes for a
long beat. She took in a shaky breath. “What did you just call me?”

Greyly looked down at his papers, smooth as all
hell but not fooling Tanner for a second. He was trying to get her to reveal
something. “I’m sorry. I thought my notes said you sometimes went by the name
Mallory.”

Josie’s jaw worked for a minute but finally she
shook her head. “No. I’ve never gone by that name. Your notes must have me
confused with someone else.”

Josie averted her gaze, and Greyly left the room
with a nod.

When he was gone, her face was drawn, worried.
Tanner materialized and squeezed her hand. “The man who attacked you, he was a
Special?”

“Yeah.” She turned, and Tanner must have had a
look in his eyes because she drew in a sharp breath. “Don’t be stupid, Wiley.
Whoever he is, he’s gone and it’s over. Anyway, we know nothing about him.
Don’t go on some mission trying to find him.”

“What did he want from you?” He braced himself for
a lie.

“He wanted my mother’s journal.” She blinked and
fresh, hot tears streamed down her face. “And he got it.”

Tanner frowned. “What would he want with her
journal?”

She shook her head.

Okay, so she would only give him part of the
truth. So be it. For now, he’d take what he could get. “Who’s Mallory?” he
whispered.

“She’s no one,” she said, dropping her eyes to her
hands.

“Josie, please stop—”

“You better get out there,” she said, not bothering
to look up. “The officer will be looking for you.”

Collin Raines had fucked up a lot in his life. On
the top of his list of fuck-ups was the way he’d left Paige, which was why,
when she slipped into his bed before dawn, he knew he must be dreaming.

“You don’t mind?” She scooted into him so that his
body spooned hers.

Of course he didn’t mind. That was like asking a
thirsty man if he minded a tall glass of water.

Pulling her against him, he forced himself to
relax. He didn’t want this dream to end. “Stay,” he murmured against her neck.

Her little body felt so good in his arms—her ass
pressed into his growing erection, her breasts nestled against his arm.

She turned to face him and ran her fingertips
along his jaw line. “I’ll stay as long as you’ll have me.”

Collin blinked and she stayed right where she was.
“This is no dream,” he said, knowing it was true, but that didn’t explain why
Paige was in his bed.

Had she left Darian? When? Why? And though the selfish
part of him wanted her in his bed now—wanted her to stay—in the back of his
mind, he grieved. She deserved better than him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he finally said.

“Do you want me to go?”

She belonged with Darian. Collin didn’t deserve
her. He knew these things as well as he knew that he wasn’t strong enough to
ask her to leave. “No.”

He pressed his lips to hers then, because he was
too weak to resist. He knew immediately that it had been too long since he’d
tasted her. There was nothing familiar about her flavor.

He dug his hands into her thick dark hair and
pulled her closer.

As he rolled her under him, she groaned and clawed
at his shirt. She spread her legs so his thigh settled between them and had him
immediately thinking of sliding into her, feeling her slick heat squeeze his
cock.

This was about more than sex. This was about
having the only woman who had ever truly loved him. She was back in his arms,
and he was so afraid she might disappear, he wanted to consume her, taste every
inch of her.

He had to slow down.

He buried his face in her neck and took a long,
slow breath. She still loved him, despite everything.

He froze and inhaled again. She didn’t smell like
Paige.

Didn’t smell like Paige, didn’t taste like Paige.
And she was in his bed and therefore not
acting
like Paige. It was time
to stop fooling himself.

He ran his hands down her arms and threaded his
fingers with hers. A small sigh escaped her lips, then he slammed her hands
against the bed on either side of her head and pinned them there.

He pulled away, jaw set. “Who the fuck are you,
and what are you doing here?”

Fear flashed in her eyes. “Collin?” she whispered.
“It’s me, Paige.”

“You’re a horrible liar.”

“Just kiss me,” she said. Pleaded was more like
it. “Kiss me, Collin.”

He tightened his grip on her hands and she winced.
“I don’t know who you are, but you should know patience is not one of my many
strong points.”

“You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

He set his jaw, mentally ticking off the
weaknesses in his apartment’s security. Even Paige shouldn’t have been able to
get past the doorman.

He focused just enough to activate his power,
which allowed him to steal and block the power of any Special he touched.

He blinked and suddenly it was Tara in his arms,
sweet, selfless, naïve Tara underneath him, biting her bottom lip and rocking
her fucking hips to grind into his erection.

Her gaze dropped to his lips, and he
thought—fucking rotten bastard that he was—he really thought about accepting
that invitation. It wasn’t as though this was the first time he’d been tempted.
Tempted by a child.

He was the lowest of pond scum.

He rolled off her and found his jeans. “What the
fuck, Tara?” She was a child, he reminded himself—reminded his fucking hard on—a
child whom he’d already exploited, and until he could forgive himself for that,
he wasn’t ready to move on to the next royal fuck-up.

The woman on the bed morphed into the blond,
voluptuous Josie. “I don’t see any Tara here,” she said. She spread her legs
and pressed her breasts forward provocatively. “I can be anyone you want me to
be.” But she couldn’t. He’d taken enough of her power that she couldn’t hold
the shift and her eyes and face were already shifting back.

Collin growled. “You’re a fool.”

“Josie” rolled her eyes before shifting completely
back into Tara’s form. “What do you think of my new skills?”

He studied her, watching her eyes. It was
definitely Tara. Which meant— “Shit,” he muttered. She’d warned him, hadn’t
she? “Who the hell—” He cut himself off, better he not react at all.

“I’m not a little girl anymore.”

He closed his eyes and swallowed. Not a little
girl. Yeah, he could vouch for that. He’d felt every inch of her
not a
little girl
against him, and his dick was still thinking about it.

He opened his eyes and focused on her face,
determined not to give into the temptation to study those curves he’d somehow
missed until these last months, determined to focus instead on the short dark
hair that had come in thick again after months of chemo and the eyes that
reflected her innocence.

His cell phone rang and he looked at the clock—not
even six in the morning.

The display on his phone told him it was his
brother, Rider.

“Hello?”

“Collin, I just got word that Josie broke into
Martin’s lab tonight.”

Fuck. He’d worried about this when he’d seen she’d
been nosing around fertility clinics. “What did she find?”

“She shouldn’t have found anything,” Rider said.
“I removed her file last year.”

“But she knows something,” Collin said, more to
himself than to his brother. “I’ll be in touch.”

He disconnected the call and turned to Tara. If
she was going to be throwing herself into trouble, he might as well direct her
toward something productive. “You interested in using your powers for good
instead of evil?”

Her eyes lit up and she grinned, looking far too
damn excited. And innocent.

He sighed. “How long can you hold a shift?”

“Depends,” she said, frowning. “Are you going to
use that power-sucker thing on me?” She rolled her shoulders and rubbed her
neck. “I’m drained and feel like crap. That’s from you, isn’t it?”

He ignored the question. She knew the answer
anyway. “How long under normal circumstances?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I can find out.”

He nodded. “Show me your Josie again. I need to
see how believable it is.”

Her apartment had been torn to pieces, and Josie
was hurting too much to do more than watch as Tanner did his best to put it
back together again.

The first of the morning’s light slipped in the
windows as he swept glass off the floor. Her mother’s crystal. Every broken
shard was a reminder of what she didn’t have. As the pieces clinked together in
the waste basket, she counted her losses.

Clink.

No father to walk her down the aisle at her
wedding.

Clink.

 No mother to hold her hand as she gave birth to
her child.

Clink-clink.

No chance to apologize to her mother for the hell
she’d put her through as a teen.

Tanner looked up. “Will you please take some pain
meds?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Alyson is on her way. The
pain meds make it harder for her to work.”

Tanner dropped the dust pan then crossed to her.
She didn’t realize she was crying until he wiped the tears from her face.
Another vision came with the touch, but this one was as tender as it was
passionate.

She looked into his eyes as he slid inside her.
He framed her face with his hands and kissed her brow to jaw line. She threaded
her fingers in his hair and brought his mouth to hers.

She blinked back the vision and raised her wall.
What was that she’d felt? Surely not love...

“Can you tell me something, Josie?”

She closed her eyes. “That all depends on what you
want to know.”

With a sigh, Tanner settled next to her on the
couch. “Did you see this coming? Did you have any idea that man was going to
attack you?”

She shook her head and licked the salty tears from
her lips, thinking,
Now that there’s no journal maybe I can keep my life.
Maybe I can risk falling for this man.

But she couldn’t risk letting the Ascendants rise
to power. She still had to find the doctor. “I didn’t see it coming.”

Tanner watched her, worry filling his eyes. “Would
you have told me if you had?”

If she had known someone was coming for her
mother’s journal, what would she have done? She wouldn’t have been so stupid as
to keep it in her purse. She would have found a safer place. “Probably not.”

He winced but didn’t reprimand her for what he
likely saw as foolishness. He hadn’t lived with this ability. He hadn’t seen
the consequences of sharing pieces of the future. He couldn’t possibly
understand.

He took her hand in his and squeezed it, and she
had to concentrate on holding the wall against the visions that threatened to
tumble in. “At the bar the other night, Chrissie said something about you never
sharing your visions. Is that because of what happened to your family?”

Pain lashed across her heart. Before her parents
were killed, her power had been so new, and she hadn’t understood what she was
seeing. Would it have mattered if she’d not said a word?

She exhaled slowly and considered the best way to
explain. “Imagine I have a vision of you winning the lottery. I’m not
omniscient. I don’t know how or when, but I just see this image of you
celebrating with your family after you win. Then, imagine I tell you about that
vision. What would you do?”

Tanner shrugged. “Buy a lottery ticket.”

“Exactly, but now you’re buying it because of what
I said, so I’ve interfered. You won’t buy the same ticket or have the same
numbers. Everything changes, and it’s my fault.”

“That makes sense,” Tanner said, reaching for her
hand. “There would be a new outcome, but I’m still the one who made the
decision to buy the ticket. Only I can take responsibility for that.” He
started at her for a long beat. “You’re not responsible for what happened to
your family. The person who murdered them is.”

Josie dropped her eyes, afraid she’d cry more if
she kept looking into his.

“Whoever did that, Josie, they would have found a
way.”

Tears ran hot tracks over her cheeks. “Before they
were killed, I saw us running away, changing our identities. I don’t know why
we were running, but when I told my parents about the vision, they set things
into motion sooner than they would have otherwise.” She looked back up at
Tanner and shook her head. “If I hadn’t said anything, I’d still have a
family.”

He squeezed her hand again. “No one is to blame
but the people who murdered your family,” he said. “Seeing the future doesn’t
make you responsible for it.”