Running Hot (11 page)

So what the hell had happened to him out there on the path? The thought that he might be losing his edge at the grand old age of fifty-nine was depressing. His father and grandfather had worked into their seventies. Sure, they had slowed down a little with the passage of the years, but experience had more than compensated for what they lost in raw speed and psychic sensitivity. In the end it wasn’t a decline in talent that had forced them into retirement. They had both been dragged into it, kicking and screaming, by their wives.

“How’s Theresa doing?” he asked.

“She’s fine, just a little impatient. She’s more concerned about Nick. He’s turning into a basket case. It’s been a long nine months for him.”

He smiled. His eldest son was a stone-cold hunter when he was working but when it came to his beloved wife and his soon-to-be firstborn kid, there was nothing icy about him. Nick had scheduled his jobs so that he could attend prenatal classes with Theresa. He had devoured every book on the subject of birth and parenting that he could find on the Internet. He had even insisted on hiring a decorator to design the baby’s room in order to create what one of the texts had called a “nurturing environment.” Now he was determined to assist at the birth.

“He’ll survive,” Harry said. “I did.”

“Hah. Every time you came into the delivery room with me, I was afraid you would faint.”

“Okay, maybe I got a little pale around the edges but I didn’t keel over.”

They chatted for a few more minutes and then signed off with their customary ritual.

“Good night, Gorgeous.”

“Good night, Handsome.”

The phone went silent in his hand. He dropped it into his pocket and stood looking out at the black mirror of the ocean. Something had definitely happened back there on the path. He tried to remember exactly when his other senses had shut down. He had passed an elderly couple who had been holding hands. Next he’d noticed a man using a cane and a woman. They had been walking side by side, not touching. Something about the man had drawn his attention. His jacked-up hunter instincts had recognized another potential predator. But an instant later he had lost interest.

The next thing he knew he was several yards down the path, cranked back to normal. Relaxed on a job when he had no business being relaxed.

ELEVEN

The dream was familiar, one of a handful of repeat nightmares connected to the day she killed Martin Crocker. But there was something different about it this time. For one thing, she was aware that she was dreaming. The most striking aspect, however, was that she was not afraid.

. . . Martin was coming toward her, only a couple of yards away. The bags of groceries had fallen from his arms. A loaf of bread, a package of coffee beans and a plastic bag filled with lettuce lay scattered on the dock. She wanted to run but she could not. Soon the pain would slash across her senses. Martin would reach down to take hold of her.

But something was wrong. She was not stricken with fear. Instead she felt calm. That wasn’t right. She should be mortally afraid, not only of Martin but of what she was about to do. . . .

“No.”

She pushed through the veil of unnatural serenity, searching for the right emotion.

She came awake suddenly but her heart was not pounding the way it usually did after the dock scene dream. She wasn’t even breathless, and her nightgown was not stuck to her skin with icy sweat.

She opened her eyes and looked out through the sliding glass doors. The outline of the lanai railing and part of a lounge chair were etched against the pale gray light of dawn.
You’re not in Eclipse Bay anymore.

Right. She was in Maui; here on a mission for J&J and, oh, by the way, trying to learn to live in the moment.

“Are you okay?” Luther said from the doorway.

Startled, she sat up and turned to look at him. He had put on his pants but that left a lot of him uncovered. She was intensely aware of his bare feet and the broad expanse of his strong shoulders and well-muscled chest. Clearly, the fact that he used a cane did not keep him from working out.

Vivid memories of how those shoulders and that chest had felt beneath her fingers the night before cascaded through her.

Sex. She’d had
sex
with this man. The most intimate kind of human contact. Okay, technically there had been no penetration, at least not by the portion of the male anatomy that was, by tradition and in legal terms, generally considered the penetrating object. “Heavy petting” was probably the correct term. Still, there had been a lot of skin-to-skin contact. Also an overwhelmingly powerful climax, at least for her. She felt a little guilty about that part.

The truth was, she had been too shattered by the experience to reciprocate. Just staying on her feet had required most of her strength and willpower. The whole experience had left her oddly disoriented, balanced precariously on a knife edge of exquisite relief and anxious amazement. Was she cured of her phobia or had last night been some bizarre interlude created by the close brush with the hunter?

Luther seemed to have understood. Either that, or he had lost interest when she had collapsed, crying on his chest. Men were not keen on dealing with tearful women. That probably went double when it came to women who cried after an orgasm. She couldn’t blame him.

Whatever the answer, he had seen to it that they returned immediately to the hotel. The elevator had been empty, thank goodness. She didn’t think she could have managed the stairs. When they reached the suite, he’d ushered her into the bedroom and then closed the door very deliberately.

Obviously at some point during the night he’d opened the door. Well, he was a bodyguard, after all.

“I’m fine,” she said. She drew her knees up under the bedding and wrapped her arms around them. “Just a bad dream.” Alarm sparked through her. If she had awakened him, she must have cried out. “Did I say anything?”

“No.”

“Good.” She relaxed a little.

“You said no,” he explained. “You were thrashing around a lot and you said no a couple of times. Must have been bad.”

“Well, it wasn’t terribly pleasant.” She sank back against the pillows. At least she hadn’t mumbled Martin’s name in her sleep. But there was no getting around the fact that it had been a very close call.

“Probably brought on by that brush with the hunter last night,” Luther suggested. “That kind of thing can affect the dream state in people like us.”

“People like us?”

“Sensitives.”

“Right.”

But it wasn’t the hunter who had invaded her dreams. The memory of the way her nerves had quieted when he went past returned in a rush. She had been too occupied with other things, including her first orgasm in longer than she cared to recall, to think about what had happened out there on the path. But now it occurred to her that last night she had experienced the same eerie, unnatural sense of calm that had made the dream feel so very different. In both instances the ratcheting down of the panic had been unnatural. She had fought it instinctively.

“If you’re sure you’re okay, I’m going to finish getting dressed,” Luther said. He started to retreat into the other room.

“Hold it right there.”

Obediently he paused. “Something wrong?”

“Yes, I think there is something wrong.” She pushed aside the covers, got to her feet and faced him across the tumbled bed. “I want an explanation.”

“Of what?”

“You used your aura energy to squelch some of mine out there on the path last night, didn’t you? Admit it. I’ll bet you did it again a few minutes ago while I was dreaming. How
dare
you?”

He stood very still in the doorway. “Take it easy, you’ve had a long day and you’ve just come out of a nightmare. Your nerves are probably still a little unsettled.”

“My nerves are fine, thank you very much. What did you do to me?”

“You felt it?” he asked, frowning a little as if he was not certain that he had heard her correctly.

“Well, of course I did. I didn’t have time to think about it last night because I was focused on the hunter and the fact that he wasn’t paying any attention to us and—” She broke off, astonishment shooting through her. “Good grief, you did it to him, too, didn’t you? You defused him or—or something. He was running hot and you cooled him down. You used your own aura to suppress his.”

“You seem to have figured it out pretty damn fast.” He watched her with a shuttered, wary expression. “No one else ever has, with the possible exception of Fallon Jones.”

“He’s aware of what you can do?”

“There’s no telling what Fallon knows.”

“Well, it certainly explains your success as a bodyguard.” She thought about it. “And as a cop and a bartender, too, I suppose. No wonder you don’t like guns. You don’t need them. All you have to do is focus on a bad guy and just switch him off.”

His hand clenched around the handle of the cane. “Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The effect diminishes rapidly with distance. If the bad guy is too far away from me, I can’t do much except try to talk him into range. I couldn’t suppress the aura of a sniper on a rooftop.”

She smiled a little. “How many of your clients need protection from professional snipers?”

“Doesn’t come up a lot in my line,” he admitted. “The threat is usually much closer to home.”

“Your ability must have been useful when you were a cop.”

“My talent was why I quit the force,” he said without inflection.

“I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t it have been helpful?”

“It’s a long story.”

“And you’re not in the mood to tell it?”

“No,” he said.

He had a right to his secrets, she thought. She was certainly keeping some of her own. She slipped into her other senses and studied his aura. There was a lot of tension in it, much of it sexual. She felt herself redden.

He smiled faintly. “See anything interesting?”

Shocked, she opened her mouth, closed it, then finally opened it again. “You can tell when I’m looking at your aura?”

“Sure. Don’t you know when I’m viewing yours?”

Appalled, she could only stare at him. “Uh, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” he repeated, disbelief underscoring every word.

She swallowed hard. “I mean, sometimes when I’m near you I sense an unfamiliar kind of energy, but I thought it had something to do with, uh—” She broke off, mortified.

“Something to do with the fact that we’re attracted to each other?” He shrugged. “Maybe it does. You must have felt me watching you yesterday at the airport. I didn’t know who you were but I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. I remember thinking that you looked like some kind of incredibly brilliant psychic butterfly.”

“Oh, jeez, I didn’t realize what the sensation meant.”

She thought about the excitement and anticipation she had experienced the day before when she first noticed him on the concourse. Her cheeks got warmer. How much had he seen? Not that it mattered, given what had happened last night. He’d obviously known from the start that she was attracted to him.

No one had ever been able to read her. She had always been the one who did the reading; the one who knew what others were going to do, sometimes before they did. That was how she had kept her secrets secure.

“Well, this is awkward,” she said, cheeks burning.

He looked amused. “Takes some getting used to but I’m okay with it if you are.”

This was very dangerous ground. She had to be careful. She could not afford to jeopardize the new life she had so carefully crafted.

“I need to think about it a little more,” she said weakly.

“You do that. Meanwhile, why don’t you tell me your real Jones Scale number?”

Thoroughly rattled now, she tried to compose herself.

“Didn’t Mr. Jones tell you?” she said.

“He gave me some line about you being a level seven with an unusual ability to profile the auras you read. That’s a flat-out lie, though, isn’t it? I’m betting you’re a level ten, at least. Wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve got an asterisk after your number, too. You’re an exotic.”

She could not afford to panic, she reminded herself. Anger was a much safer response.

“I don’t know where you got that idea,” she said coldly. “My level seven is as official as your level eight.”

He nodded, satisfied. “Like I said, a flat-out lie.”

“You admit it?” she demanded, incredulous.

“Where’s the harm? You probably already know it, being such a hotshot talent and all. I doubt that you’re going to run around telling everyone you meet.”

“Well, no. It’s just that Mr. Jones assured me that you were an eight.”

“The sooner you learn that Fallon Jones lies through his teeth whenever it suits him the better off you’ll be.”

She sank down on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped in her lap, her back to him. She looked out at the lanai. “I don’t think he lied for the sake of it. I think he was trying to protect your secret.”

“You want to be careful about attributing good intentions to Fallon Jones. His only priority is protecting the Society’s secrets. He’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish that objective.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said. She wondered uneasily how much Fallon knew or suspected about her own Jones Scale number.

“Fallon tweaked my file to make sure my rank stayed under the radar,” Luther said. “He wanted to keep my abilities under wraps. But how the hell did you manage to alter your own number?”

“What makes you think that I did?”

“Because I can see your power wavelengths,” he said quietly. “I can feel them. Whatever you are, you’re no seven.”

Maybe she could finesse this.

“I told you, my mother died when I was thirteen, shortly before I was due to be tested at Arcane House. I went straight into the foster care system where no one knew or cared about the Society. The result was that I wasn’t tested until I applied to join the Bureau. By then I knew how to control my talent. It was no big deal to make sure I scored a seven. You know how people react to nines and tens within the Society.”