It Must Be Magic (14 page)

She imagined him sitting at the head of a boardroom table telling everyone when, what, where and how they were going to act. And everyone jumped to his bidding.

Lili couldn’t stop staring at him. He turned his head and smiled. Her heart beat faster, harder, so loud she could hear it in her ears. He implied true belief. As if it were a foregone conclusion that if
she
told him, then it had to be true.

It didn’t matter that Tanner didn’t believe. His action was almost more meaningful
because
he didn’t believe.

Sheriff Gresswell put his elbows on the arms of his desk chair and steepled his fingers. “So you didn’t just stumble across the victim while you were out hiking?”

Tanner didn’t bat an eyelash. “No. We were looking for a body.”

The sheriff tapped those steepled fingers against his chin. “But you didn’t tell my deputies or me when we talked to you.”

It wasn’t a question, but Tanner spoke as if it had been. “At the time, I felt that my cat’s information wasn’t going to be of any use.”

“Let me be the judge of that.” Sheriff Gresswell turned to Lili. “What exactly did the cat tell you?”

Tanner had given her the courage to tell it all. “Fluffy didn’t exactly tell me anything, he shared an image. That’s how I talk to animals. We share images between us.”

The sheriff gave her an encouraging smile. “Then feel free to share it with me.”

Lili decided to take the smile at face value. “He was in a tree by a meadow, and he saw a man wearing a helmet hitting something on the ground with a stick. He was very frightened, Fluffy, I mean.”

Sheriff Gresswell stroked his chin, his gaze on the desk a moment, then back to her. “A military helmet? Or more like a motorcycle helmet?”

Lili tipped her head. “I’m not sure. It wasn’t one of those full helmets like motorcycle racers use. It was more like one of those flower pot ones the Harley riders wear that don’t cover their faces.”

The sheriff flattened his lips as if that meant something. Or he was stifling laughter at her description. God forbid she should ever describe a Harley helmet that way down at the local biker hangout outside of town. “Anything else important about the helmet?”

“It
looked
gray, but cats see differently than humans, so I can’t say for sure that it
was
gray.”

The sheriff took that in, nodding to himself. “Now about the stick you say you saw. Can you describe it?”

“It was a branch with a knot on the end.” Nothing she said offered a sudden breakthrough that would solve the crime. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

“That’s helpful enough, believe me.”

Believe me.
The man actually believed
her.
Didn’t he?

“Now, is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” He gave her a penetrating look, as if his eyes were alien probes that could see right into her head.

“I think Lady Dreadlock, I mean, Patsy, might have been in the field the morning after the murder, too. I just saw her over in the county park, and we had this little talk, and that’s what I gleaned from the conversation.” Lili hoped that if the sheriff did find Lady D. in the park, she at least had her clothes on.

“Very interesting.” He tapped his desk and stood. “I appreciate the tip about Patsy. I’ll make it my number-one priority to talk with her.” Then he stuck his hand out and shook first hers, then Tanner’s.

Lili couldn’t let it go at that. “I know this all must sound incredible to you.”

“You’d be surprised what sounds incredible. After all, look at the county we live in.”

Weirdo capital of the world. But that was part of why Lili loved it so much. Especially since she was one of the weirdos.

There was one more thing. “Manny over at the Coffee Stain says you think Buddy Welch had something to do with it.”

“I never make snap judgments without corroborating evidence.” He smiled sweetly, or at least as sweetly as a cop could. “If I did, someone who said a cat told her about a murder might make my antennae go up.”

Lili couldn’t swallow over the sudden lump in her throat.

Tanner grabbed her hand. “Then we’re very glad you don’t make snap judgments, aren’t we, Lili?”

Plus, there weren’t any antennae poking out of the sheriff’s head.

“Besides,” Gresswell said, “you helped my brother-in-law’s sister stop her goat from running away every other day. I figure that’s worth at least a benefit of the doubt. So why don’t you try talking to our cat witness again and see if you learn anything new. At this point, I could use the help.”

D
ID THE SHERIFF REALLY
believe Lili? Or was he humoring her, and within two seconds after they left, would he be asking everyone in town what they knew about her?

That was by far the strangest conversation Tanner had ever been party to. Even that first night he’d walked into Lili’s kitchen, Lili’s
world,
he’d at least been prepared.

He hadn’t been prepared for the sheriff’s matter-of-fact tone, simple questions and total lack of skepticism.

Despite his reservations, Tanner had been ready to leap to Lili’s rescue if the sheriff so much as hinted she might have either known the body was there beforehand or, God forbid, that she’d had something to do with the murder. Instead, he felt as if someone had thrown him to the ground and stomped the wind out of him. He was waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop.

Who’d have thought a goat would make all the difference? Or maybe it was Lili herself, with her natural air of innocence.

Lili unlocked the door of Flowers By Nature and preceded him inside. “He believed me,” she said as she locked up again.

And you didn’t.
He heard the rest of it even if she hadn’t said it.

In the same spot they’d left the cat, Einstein glared from beneath a leaf as if it had heard Lili’s unspoken comment.

Lili blew it a kiss. “Everything worked out perfectly,” she said, and he was pretty sure she was talking to the cat, not him.

The shop was cool, fragrant and moist, the scent of damp earth rising like a mist. He followed Lili through the green jungle into the back room where they’d left her bike.

She turned on him just inside the doorway. “That was sweet of you to jump in there when I was having trouble figuring out how to say it all. You made it sound so —” she hunched her shoulders “— reasonable. That was the only reason he believed me. Because you said it so well.”

“Lili, I —”

She cut him off. He suspected she simply didn’t want to hear what he had to say. “I guess we should talk about last night. Not the first part, but the second part, right before I asked you to leave.” She backed up, turned, trailed a hand along the edge of the workbench then faced him again. “I understand how it would be hard for you to just
accept
everything I said.”

“Lili, I —”

She glared at him, a militant glare he wouldn’t have thought she was capable of. When Lili wanted to have her say, she wanted it without interruption. He put his hands up in surrender.

“I judged what you said based on the fact that you know me, but I’ve been thinking about it. You really
don’t
know me. The sheriff doesn’t know me, either, but then he’s a different kind of person than you, and I’m sure he’s come across everything in the course of his job, and, well —” she shrugged “— you haven’t.”

“Are you making excuses for me, Lili?”

“I’m thinking about what you always tell Erika.”

“And that is?” He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what she was referring to, because, he had to admit, there were a lot of things he was always telling Erika. That was part of being a parent.

“Don’t confuse efforts with results. That one.”

“That relates to the sheriff —” he spread his hands “— how?”

“It’s what you’re really saying with that statement. It doesn’t matter how hard a person tries, it only matters that they succeed. It’s sort of closed-minded.”

“I’m not closed-minded.” Though he’d been thinking the same thing yesterday. He
was
closed-minded, about some things.

She smiled. Sadly. Like a pet owner who’d found that their elderly cat had once again peed just outside the box.

Debating the point wouldn’t get them anywhere. “Fine. I’m closed-minded. I still don’t have any idea how my perfectly good axiom relates to the sheriff.”

“Because it relates to your closed-mindedness. Not everything is about the result. It’s about how hard a person tries, even if they don’t achieve the desired result.”

“That isn’t what I’m saying. It simply means that without maximum effort, you don’t get the result you want, and therefore all the hard work is negated.”

Yet was that what Erika understood it to mean? She was smart, and she tried so damn hard, he couldn’t be more proud of her. But in
his
effort to get her to give one hundred percent to everything she did, was the result too much pressure?

Maybe. Probably. What was he doing to his daughter?

He looked at Lili, really looked at her, and remembered what Erika had said that morning. Lili was a bit of an airhead at first glance, maybe second and third glance, too, but beneath that flyaway black hair and behind those oddly colored eyes, she harbored an utterly profound view of life.

“Anyway,” she went on as if she didn’t have a clue how she’d turned his universe upside down
again,
“we were talking about the sheriff and how he’s open-minded and you’re closed-minded, which doesn’t make you a bad person, but what I was getting to is that it means a lot more to me that you stepped right in there and told him the story as if you believed me.”

“I was trying to speed things up.” He’d been trying to shield her and turn the sheriff in his direction instead of hers, if the shit hit the fan.

“But you could have told him what you really thought.”

If he could have taken last night’s words back…as it was, he needed her to say it. He needed to hear how bad it had sounded to her. “What is it I really think?”

She huffed out an exasperated breath. “That Fluffy didn’t tell me anything, I knew about it already and I made you go out with me to get a bunch of attention so everyone would believe I could talk to animals.”

He took a breath to say
something,
then shut his mouth. Whatever came out would be wrong.

“Last night, it bothered me.” She touched her braid. “But I’ve had time to think about it, and if you don’t believe there’s all this wonderful magic going on in the world because you can’t see it, well, then it’s natural that you’d believe the worst.”

He put a hand to her cheek, then slid it back into her braided hair and held her. Her ear was cold, but her neck warmed beneath his touch. She smelled of cinnamon and chocolate and fresh air.

“I don’t believe you’d do that.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t?”

“Erika and I talked about you this morning. She said that either she had to believe you could talk to animals or she had to decide you weren’t a nice person.” That was the essence of it.

“Oh.” She blinked.

“Do you want to know what she said?”

Lili swallowed. “Yes.”

“She said she wanted to believe because you’re a good person.”

“Oh,” she said again, the sound stretching out, and a slight mistiness growing in her eyes.

“Erika said it exactly right.”

“So you believe me?”

“I choose not to accept the other alternatives. You couldn’t hurt anyone, and you wouldn’t use a cat or a victim of crime to make yourself look better in anyone else’s eyes.”

“But you’ve only known me since Thursday.”

It felt a helluva lot longer. He cupped her cheeks, breathed her in, reveled in her. “Four days is more than long enough to realize I have faith in who you are.”

T
ANNER RUBBED HIS FINGERS
lightly against her neck, then slid his hand down her back and tugged on her braid.

Lili couldn’t say a word. That was the absolute nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. She’d always been the woman who could talk to animals, or
thought
she could. As if she were a thing instead of a person. Tanner had chosen to believe in her because of the kind of person he thought she was.

If there was magic in the world, and she definitely believed there was, then this was the most magical moment she’d ever known.

Tanner tugged the elastic from her braid, and Lili suddenly realized she was full-body plastered against him.

“I forgive you for what you said last night,” she whispered.

“I was an ass last night.”

“But you’re not an ass anymore?”

He chuckled. “I’m probably still an ass. It’s hard to kick the habit just like that.”

He threaded his fingers through her braid, pulling it apart until her hair fell across her shoulders, and he shoved his hands through the mass of it.

“I love your hair.” He bent down and nuzzled her throat, rubbing the strands all over his face.

She’d never had a man do that. It felt magical, too.

“It smells like summer rain,” he murmured.

“That’s the shampoo I use. It’s called Summer Rain.”

His laugh vibrated against her throat, then he nipped her, and heat streaked straight through her body. Her nipples peaked; her toes tingled; her head swam and she was suddenly hot, wet and ready for…anything he wanted.

She pulled back, but couldn’t manage more than his name.

Running his fingers through the fall of hair, he held her head in both hands. “I won’t hurt you again.”

He kissed her before she had a chance to tell him not to make promises. She didn’t want promises. But by heavens, she wanted this.

She held on to his waist and opened her mouth to him. It was like last night, but better. He was slower, his lips moving gently over hers, his tongue testing, tasting, then taking her deeply, only to back off, change his angle and devour her all over again. It was as if the kiss was a goal unto itself, as if savoring her was the supreme satisfaction.

Except that he was hard against her.

Her heart racing, she eased back to meet his blue, blue gaze.

He touched noses with her. “I know this isn’t the time or place, but I want you anyway. I want you now. I think you should know that.”

“You mean kissing me isn’t enough?”

He nuzzled her ear. “No, kissing you isn’t enough.”

“Because it felt like you loved kissing me.”

“I did. I do. I’ve never loved kissing a woman more.” He held up his palm. “I swear it.” Then he ran his hands down her back to her butt and hauled her hard against him. “I want to make you come like you did last night.”

Wrapping one arm around his neck, she rose on her toes and kissed him, openmouthed, deep, fast, hard, then said, “No.”

He sagged against her. “No?”

She bit his earlobe lightly and whispered, “I want to taste you instead.”

He knew she wasn’t talking about another kiss, and he pulled back. “No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a thing a gentleman asks a lady to do when he’s standing on a concrete floor in a dank back room.”

It was something a man wanted his lover to do. Yet even though he’d said he loved her hair, loved the way it smelled, she couldn’t call herself his lover.

She couldn’t take it if he said it was only sex.

“Why is it different if you’re doing it to me? We’d still be in the same place.” She threw out a hand to encompass the shop’s back room, the design tables, the refrigerators and yes, the concrete floor.

“It just is, Lili.”

“I
am
a lady, Tanner, and I’ve never wanted to do anything more. For you.”

He stepped back farther so that he was no longer pressed against her. “I don’t want you to do it
for
me.”

“All right. Then let me do it for me. Because I want to.”

“Lili —”

She moved into him and covered his mouth with her hand. “It will make me feel like you felt last night when I let you.” She stroked across his cheek. “It’s the same thing.” Up on tiptoe, she kissed his eyelid. “It was wonderful.” She kissed his other eyelid. “It made you feel wonderful to do it to me. I want to feel that same way.”

He looked at her for the longest time, his gaze shifting, tracing her forehead, then her cheeks and landing on her mouth before finally coming back to meet her eyes. Locking gazes, he took her hand, placed it right over the bulge of his erection and rubbed himself in her palm.

“Please, Lili, make me feel wonderful,” he whispered, then put his head back, closed his eyes and thrust into her grip.

Lili felt the power.

She unbuckled his belt, unzipped his khakis, and the feel of him was raw and elemental. It was magic. He pulsed in her hand, and she didn’t let go of his midnight gaze as she went down on her knees.

He tasted like heaven itself. Hot, hard, sweet, salty, steel. She closed her eyes and savored his taste, the growl he made in his throat, his hands bunching in her hair and the thrust of his body as he took her and she took him. All of him.

Deep, then sliding back until she held only his tip. She teased him with her tongue, then her lips, then everything all over again until he shuddered against her, inside her mouth.

When he cried out, she held on to him even as she felt him trying to pull away. She would not let him go, not now.

She wanted everything, and in the next moment, he gave her his all.

H
E HADN’T WANTED HER DOWN
on her knees in a clammy warehouse on a dirty concrete floor, yet it had been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. One of the most beautiful things he’d ever experienced.

She stood, put his clothing back together, then kissed him full on the lips. He tasted himself, tasted her, and he knew he was utterly lost. She was so wrong for him and yet so right.

Lili made him feel things he hadn’t felt in a long time and was afraid to feel again. How did simply having faith that she wouldn’t make up a lie to support her bizarre telepathic animal ability suddenly transmute into…this? A complete loss of control of the situation.

Yet his heart tripped over itself simply holding her close.

“Was it good?” she murmured against his throat.

“Oh yeah.”

Tipping her head back, she stood silently in the circle of his arms, and he knew she needed more. “I…uh…” He drew in a shaky breath. “I’m stunned, actually. You blew a few fuses in my brain.” He heard how that sounded. She’d definitely blown something. “What I mean is that I —”

She put her hand over his mouth. He was starting to like that about her. It stopped him from saying something that would prove what an ass he was.

It wasn’t as if he were celibate. He had sex, and he’d indulged in that particular act. Yet Lili incited emotion. He was compelled to touch her, kiss her, but when it was over, he seemed to have lost his senses and the wrong words came out.

He couldn’t reconcile the emotions he had about her. Sex hadn’t involved emotion in a helluva long time.

“I promise not to confuse efforts with results,” she said, expression totally deadpan. Too deadpan.

Putting his forehead to hers, he smiled. “You get an A plus for the effort and another A plus for the result.” He skimmed his fingers over her cheek.

It took a moment, but she smiled back, a big, bright, glorious smile. “That means I’m an honor student.”

“It was beautiful, Lili.
You
are beautiful.” He fished the elastic band for her hair out of his pocket. “I’m going to give this back to you, but I don’t want you to put it on.” Bending to the hair at her ear, he closed his eyes and inhaled. “I like you this way.”

“Good.” Her smile was no less genuine than before, yet her eyes held a hint of seriousness. “Because this is the way I am.”

He was well aware of that. Maybe that was part of his problem, but then he was jumping forward to things that hadn’t happened between them yet, ascribing feelings to Lili that she might not even have.

For once, he decided simply to enjoy
this
moment instead of wondering how he was going to handle the next one.

T
ANNER WOULDN’T ALLOW HER
to ride her bike home, so they forced it into his trunk and tied the lid down with a piece of rope she found in the shop.

Einstein spent the ride in the back alternately growling low in her throat, sticking her claws in Tanner’s leather seats and sending unwanted messages.

Lili blocked her. At least until they got home, Tanner to his house, Lili to hers. He’d said something about needing to talk to Erika, but Lili feared it was more like running away.

Maybe he wasn’t ready for…
that.

That was disgusting.
Einstein started in on her instantly.

Lili wheeled her bike around to the front porch. “Were you watching?”

Einstein merely blinked.

“It isn’t nice to spy.”

With all the noise he was making back there, I thought you were killing him. It was my duty to see what was going on.

“Liar.”

I was traumatized.
Einstein sent an image of herself with her fur on end as if she’d stuck her tail in an electrical socket. She truly did look like the real Einstein.

“I’m afraid he thought the same thing. Even if he did try to make up for it at the very end.”

Einstein bumped Lili’s calf, then wound around her leg. Sometimes even Einstein knew when enough was enough, and a little comfort was the order of the day.

Lili scooped the cat into her arms and headed round to the back door. The front lock was tricky sometimes, and she didn’t feel like fiddling with it.

When Kate had suggested Lili should seduce Tanner into helping her — had that only been three days ago? — it was a joke. Sure, he was a hottie, and sure, she’d let herself have a few fantasies about him. She’d thought about kissing him, she’d even done it to test his ability to experience a little joie de vivre.

Only she’d gotten trapped in her own…trap.

She’d never done
that
with another man. Not the whole thing, taking his very essence. She’d never known it could create such utter oneness.

Or such utter loneliness when it was over.

“Okay, so let’s stop with the pity party.”

Einstein sneezed in agreement.

She almost stepped on Serenity, who was hunkered down on the first porch step.

“What are you doing out here?”

Serenity was a house cat in that she went outside to use the facilities and then skittered back inside where it was safe.

Lili got an image of a big, tall, hairy, black Bigfoot.

Or was that a man wearing a trench coat and a ski mask?

Einstein bared her teeth.
A man, you idiot human.

When Lili unlocked the door, Serenity was a flash of dark stripes against the checkerboard kitchen floor. Then Don Juan came slinking through, his belly low to the floor, his eyes darting, trying to take in every corner of the kitchen at once.

Rita and Ghost slipped in next, followed by the rest. All the cats had been outside. Waiting for her to come home. Their auras assaulted her eyes, muddy, dirty, terrified swirling blue. Like Fluffy’s.

Stopping on the doorsill, Lili set Einstein down and cocked her head. There was only the sound of kitty claws clicking on the hardwood.

But she could feel it. Someone unwelcome had been in her house. They might still be here.

I
F SOMEONE HAD BEEN IN
Lili’s house, Tanner couldn’t tell. The guy wasn’t here anymore. Nothing had been disturbed. Even Lili couldn’t find anything out of place. She’d stopped a couple of times as they’d walked through the house. Maybe that had been moved, or this, but she couldn’t remember for sure.

The house still smelled like Wanetta, rose water and talcum powder and a faintly musty odor as if she’d stored too many piles of newspaper for too long in the upstairs hallway.

The bedroom, however, was all Lili. The bedstead was brass, the comforter cream colored, the mountain of pillows vast. A man could lose his woman in all the pillows on that bed. Tanner had the strongest urge to throw her down among them and see how long it took to find her. Inch by inch.

He cleared his throat and adjusted his khakis.

Her bathroom wasn’t any easier to take. Her summer rain shampoo lingered, and all her womanly paraphernalia lay around the edge of the pedestal sink and on the small white wicker table beside it. He’d thought she was a woman of bare minimums, but she seemed to have every pot and tube known to man.

He imagined sitting on the rim of the claw-foot tub and watching her apply her daily regimen. While she was naked and within reach of his fingers, his mouth, his tongue.

Get a grip.
Her house had been broken into right after she’d found a body and the whole freaking town knew about it. Tanner suppressed a shudder of alarm. She was fine, she was safe; he was with her.

He turned sharply and found her standing right on his heels. Way too close for comfort. His father and daughter were downstairs, ostensibly soothing the distraught cats. He could not go back downstairs with a hard-on. Dammit.

With his hands on her shoulders, he set her back a couple of steps and walked out into the hallway. Better to smell the lingering must of old newspapers than the lingering essence of Lili’s shower.

“So. It was a man as large as Bigfoot wearing a trench coat and a ski mask.”

“I don’t know if he was as huge as Bigfoot, but he looked big to the cats.”

“Everyone looks big to a cat.”

“That’s why cats make bad witnesses. It’s hard to interpret what they’re telling you because they see things differently.”

“That makes sense.”

Tanner thought it was a perfectly innocuous comment, but Lili folded her arms beneath her breasts, a defensive posture, which left
him
defenseless. He wanted her up against the wall, down on the carpet, on her bed, in her tub. Damn, he needed to get his head out of his shorts. She was in
danger.