Flirting With Fate (3 page)

She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

His grin was crooked. And wicked. “Only a precog
would call seeing something from the future
nothing
. It’s fascinating,
and I’m curious. Give me a hint?”

Chrissie snorted. “Don’t waste your breath. Josie
doesn’t share her visions of the future. She thinks it manipulates free will to
put that information out there.” She waved her hand. “Or something like that.”

Tanner turned back to Josie. Was it just her or
had he moved a little closer? “Is that true? You never share your visions?”

Josie shrugged. “Not never, but rarely.”

He took her left hand in both of his. “But you
can’t blame me for being curious. You’re seeing something?”

“Nothing I haven’t been seeing for months now,”
she said, studying him, and consciously blocking the visions pressing at the
back of her mind. She’d only have to open the slightest bit and they’d be
there.
He’d
be there.

The visions and her knowledge of what he could do
to her—and how well he could do it—would make her want him. On her, over
her...inside her. A girl could only have so much willpower.

His eyes locked with hers and the air sizzled
between them. Even without precognitive images of tangled limbs and moans of
pleasure, her pulsed kicked up.

Did he know his smooth shave was threatening to
turn to stubble? She wanted to run her fingers over it, feel it against her
neck as he nuzzled her, wanted to feel it leave its mark on her as he explored
her breasts. Then his lips would make a path over her belly and to her thighs
until she trembled.

Would he open her legs, placing his fingers on her
inner thighs and opening her with gentle pressure? Or would he slip his fingers
between thighs and over her clit, opening her with persuasion?

Her visions made two things clear: first, she and
Tanner had more than a simple love affair waiting for them. Paige had been
right on that account.

Second, what was bound to be complicated would
also be a damn good time.

“See, you’re smiling.” His thumbs drew circles on
the tender inside of her palms. “It can’t be that bad. Can you give me even a
hint?”

Didn’t she deserve a good time? Maybe it was the
martinis or maybe it was the thrill of knowing they’d just successfully brought
another case to a close, but she was ready to indulge. Knowing she shouldn’t
only heightened the temptation.

Josie relaxed the wall she’d erected. There was a
vision there. Waiting. Pressing against it. What would she see this time? His
hands on her? His mouth? And where would they be? Outside this very bar?

She dropped the wall but the vision she saw of his
future wasn’t the one she expected.

Tanner walked across Josie’s apartment, heading
straight to the rolltop desk in the corner of her living area.

“What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
he muttered, flipping through the papers there.

He picked up the leather-bound journal and flipped
through the pages.

An engine cut off outside and a door slammed.

“Crap.” He faded until he was invisible, then
Josie opened the door, stepping into her apartment and peeling off her clothes
as she headed toward the bedroom.

Josie dropped her hand and backed away as much as
the booth would allow.

“What do you see?” Tanner asked.

She sighed. She’d brought this on herself by
getting him involved in her private investigation, but when would these SIA
guys learn to mind their own business? “Nothing I haven’t seen before,” she
muttered, suddenly feeling a lot less uninhibited than she had moments before.

She should never have brought him in on this. He
would press her for the truth until she gave it or he found it on his own.

“Any time you want to tell me about it,” he said,
“you know where to find me.”

Yes, she did. He’d be helping her with a case
closer to her heart than any. She’d chosen him because he couldn’t get into her
head but he could get into secure areas of high tech laboratories.

Had it been a mistake?

Josie watched her own spitting image squeeze
through the crowd and thought,
That’s what my sister would look like.

Her second thought was that she was a nutcase who
needed to see her shrink again.

Under the table, she nudged Chrissie with her
foot. “Do you see her?” The question didn’t do much to make her sound any saner
than she felt, but she had to know.

They’d stayed hours longer than they’d intended.
The bar had begun its Monday night half-price margarita special, and the crowd
had thickened. At nearly ten, the bar was more packed than they’d ever seen it.
This was their after-work drinks destination. If they were making a night of
it, they chose a very different kind of scene. The kind with more dance floor
than bar and lots of bodies writhing to a sensual beat.

“Holy Christ,” Chrissie said, pointing to the
space between the pool tables where Paige and Darian were dancing. “Why don’t
they just get a room?”

Josie tore her gaze away from her could-be twin at
the bar to look for Paige, the bachelorette who, in two weeks, would marry her
perfect match. “They’re in love,” Josie explained, and Chrissie cocked a brow
as if to say Josie’s explanation didn’t follow.

“Sorry,” Chrissie said, “see who?”

“The girl at the—” Josie returned her attention to
the question of her sanity. She searched the crowd for her face. “The one who—”
She scanned the bar. The woman was gone. Frantically, Josie searched the
growing throngs of people milling around the pool table and karaoke area. She
took in face after face, but the bar was too busy, and even if she had seen
what she thought, she’d never find her again in this crowd.

She dropped her gaze to study her drink.
Let it
go.
But it wasn’t easy. She hadn’t thought about that particular childhood
delusion in years.

Josie excused herself, and Chrissie followed her.
Once they were in the bathroom, Chrissie threw the bolt to lock the door. “When
were you going to tell me about the fertility clinics?”

So much for keeping this from people who could get
in her head. Josie ran the water, watching it hit the porcelain as she waited
for it to warm. “What about them?”

“Why are you investigating them with Tanner? What
do you know? And why are you keeping us in the dark?” Chrissie’s tone made it
clear she wasn’t playing games.

Josie closed her eyes.

Chrissie put her hand on her shoulder. “Listen, it
worries me when you keep shit from us. What’s going on?”

She slid her hands under the water. It was too
hot, and she scrubbed at her skin, watching it redden, scrubbing all the way up
to the S-shaped scar on the inside of her wrist.

“You’re going to burn yourself.” Chrissie shut off
the water. “What did you read in that old book? What is it, a journal? What
does it have to do with fertility clinics?”

“Dear Santa,” Josie muttered, “all I want for
Christmas is some friends who won’t poke into my private thoughts.”

Chrissie folded her arms and set her jaw. Okay, so
no apology coming anytime soon.

Josie exhaled slowly. “I have a friend, a Special,
who works at a mental health center. She noticed a growing number of visits
from Specials who have recently discovered their powers.” Specials got their
powers after losing their virginity. Depending on the power, sometimes it
manifested right away, and other times the Special wouldn’t know she was
different until months down the road. Either way, if you didn’t know it was
coming, it was disconcerting, and her friend met a lot of young people who
thought they were crazy.

“Go on,” Chrissie prompted, arms folded.

Josie shook her head. “My friend is suspicious
about the growing numbers and suspicious about why there seem to be so many
more in this area than in others.” Josie would have looked into the case
regardless, but as it turned out, it was the perfect cover to get Tanner to
help with her personal mission.

Chrissie narrowed her eyes. “You think fertility
clinics are making Specials?”

Josie lifted her palms. “I don’t know where else
to start.” She’d distorted some data to have an excuse to get Tanner to go into
the clinics with her, but in truth she wasn’t too worried about growing numbers
of Specials. Like Tanner, she thought the numbers could be chalked up to
increased awareness, outreach through the Internet and any number of other
plausible factors. She just needed some answers about her past and an
explanation of what she’d found in her mother’s diary.

Chrissie still looked pissed. “So?”

“So, what?”

“Jesus, Josie, if that’s all there is to it, why
the hell didn’t you ask me and Paige? Why involve the fucking SIA?” When
Chrissie said it,
SIA
sounded like a dirty word.

She couldn’t answer that. Not without telling
Chrissie about memories of the sister she didn’t have. Not without telling
Chrissie about what she’d found in the journal.

“I just need you to let me do this on my own,” she
said. “I promise I’ll tell you more when I can.”

Chrissie wasn’t satisfied, but she said, “And the
journal you’ve been studying?”

Josie’s heart clenched. If Chrissie knew how
private this was, she wouldn’t be doing this. “I’ve had my mother’s journal
ever since...”

“Since your family was murdered,” Chrissie
supplied softly.

“Yeah, and I read it this weekend.” A distortion
of the truth. This weekend, she’d read the journal for what had to be the
twentieth time, but it was the first time she’d recognized the pattern in the
nonstandard capitalization. This weekend was the first time she’d found a
secret message from the mother she’d lost ten years ago.

“I saw you crying,” Chrissie said, her tone
softening.

Josie grabbed a paper towel and dried her hands.
“I’m pretty screwed up when it comes to this stuff. I don’t want you and Paige
looking at me like I’m a kicked puppy dog all the time.”

“What are you looking for? How does it connect to
the fertility clinics? We can help.”

Josie shook her head. “It doesn’t.”

Chrissie frowned. “Okay, but don’t expect me to be
happy about some SIA guy getting to help you when I’m not allowed.”

“Fair enough,” Josie said.

“Let’s blow this joint.”

Josie frowned at her reflection in the bathroom
mirror. At twenty-six, she could see age creeping into her face. Not in an
obvious way. Not yet. But the last ten years had taken its toll on her—first
the stress of her parents’ mysterious deaths, then a job she poured herself
into, heart and soul. She could see evidence of this around her mouth and eyes
when the makeup was gone.

Josie and Chrissie had gone back to Stilettos,
Inc. headquarters to hang out, and Josie’s friend Chad had called. He was in
town and wanted to hook up. She’d turned him down. Again. She wouldn’t be
surprised if he stopped calling. She hadn’t accepted his invitation in months.

Though she didn’t want to admit it, it had been
because of Tanner. Her visions of them together were so powerful and so real.
Even now that she’d decided she couldn’t be with Tanner, being with another man
felt wrong.

She groaned.
All the more reason to do it.

But she didn’t feel like playing the part of the
giggly, airheaded girl tonight, and she’d known that was what Chad would
expect. Better to turn him down than wear herself out. She had an investigation
to worry about. Wasn’t that why God made vibrators?

Something caught her attention in the edge of the
mirror, but it was gone as soon as it appeared. She stilled. She wasn’t alone.
She knew it as surely as she knew she wasn’t the same bombshell beauty with her
hair pulled into a ponytail and her makeup washed away.

She closed her eyes. How could she have forgotten?
She’d seen this when she touched Tanner earlier tonight. She’d seen him in her
apartment. She hadn’t known it would be tonight. Or had she? As pissed as she
was that he was going to look through her things without her permission, hadn’t
she gotten turned on by the thought of him lingering while she went about her
nightly routine? Hadn’t she liked the idea of him watching as she stripped out
of her clothes? Hadn’t it slipped into her thoughts all evening?

She had told herself she was turning down Chad
because she wasn’t up for company, but there was more to it. She wasn’t up for
Chad’s
company. She’d been more interested in the company of a certain green-eyed
special agent.

She pulled the tie from her hair to let it tumble
around her shoulders before sauntering into the bedroom. He wanted to spy on
her? She’d give him something to spy on.

Aware of every move, she pulled her T-shirt over her
head and wandered to her bookshelf in nothing but her bra and underwear. How
lucky that she had fantastic taste in lingerie. Tonight she wore a lace
demi-cup and matching thong in blush pink.

From the shelf, she selected Anais Nin’s
Delta
of Venus
—not that she needed it. With an invisible Wiley looking on, she
could come with nothing but forbidden lust to arouse her. She slid onto her bed
with the book, leaving the overhead light on. If she was going to give him a
show, she wanted him to see all of her. She wanted to know he could see all of
her. 

She leaned against the pillow and opened the
tattered paperback to where she’d last left off. Her fingertips trailed over
the bare skin of her midriff. She couldn’t focus on the words. Her thoughts
continually returned to Tanner. She’d wanted him since the first time they met.
He probably had that effect on most women, but Josie had never reacted to
another man as she had to Tanner.

He had a face of hard lines and sun-ravaged skin,
and despite the loneliness Josie sensed in him, he always appeared more at ease
than the other men in his unit. He had the complexion of a man who spent more
time living life and experiencing the world than doing paperwork behind a desk,
and had a body to match.