All her life she’d felt a little apart from other people. No, to be brutally honest she’d felt a lot apart. People made connections that she simply couldn’t manage herself.
Over the years she’d had lovers. The physical part had been all right, but she’d longed to find a soul mate–someone who would understand her and be there for her no matter what happened.
It had never come to pass. Somehow, she always put emotional distance between herself and other people because it felt like something was missing in the relationship. Did she create that? Or was she missing some cues about human relations that came easily to everyone else?
When she and Jake Harper had met on the street, whenthey’d touched, she’d felt a zing of awareness that was totally alien to her.
She’d wanted to burrow into his arms. At the same time, she’d wanted to run from him. But she’d gone back to his restaurant, and when he’d started stroking her and kissing her, everything from the encounter on the street had only become more vivid.
She’d felt a need for him that burned in her brain and in her blood. Even though it had frightened her, she’d clung to him.
The need had been the same with him. She knew it from the way he’d kissed her with an urgency that took her breath away. And from what she’d read in his mind. He was a man, and lust should have been enough to keep him focused on what they were doing.
Instead, when he’d stumbled on the information that Rachel had anticipated Evelyn’s death, he’d pulled away.
Because he was shocked that she hadn’t warned the woman? Or because the intimacy had triggered that Vulcan mind meld thing, and he’d been as confounded by it as she?
She wanted to ask him. At the same time she heard an inner warning to stay as far away from him as she could.
And then there was the headache. Had the intimate contact been responsible for that, too? And made it hard to think clearly?
Trying to wrest her mind away from Jake, she crossed the room and turned on the television set. The hotel death had made the evening news.
But there wasn’t much more information than they’d picked up on the street. A woman had been found dead in her hotel room when the maid had come in to turn down the bed and put a piece of chocolate on the pillow.
Rachel fired up her laptop and got a Web account of the incident. When she didn’t find anything new, she picked adeck of Tarot cards from the shelf beside her easy chair. She had collected them over the years. There were modern interpretations. Fantasy versions. A Gothic deck with witches and vampires. But she usually ended up going back to the Rider-Waite deck because that was what she’d learned on, and she knew the cards so well.
She had never been good at doing readings for herself. Particularly anything formal. Instead of laying out one of the classic patterns, she shuffled the cards and cut, pulling out one at random.
The lover. Oh great. Apparently she couldn’t get away from the heated scene between herself and Jake Harper.
Were they getting together again?
She shuffled a second time, and got the Magician. Did that mean she wanted to find a new direction in life? The card said that everything she needed was there–if she wasn’t afraid to reach for what she wanted. She had the tools and the power. Or did she?
In Baltimore, Maryland, Mickey Delaney sat in front of the television set, waiting for Kira to come home from one of her shopping trips. She liked to buy things. A lot of the time it was things she didn’t need, like clothing or jewelry, but he didn’t complain. What was the harm? If it made her happy, let her spend money. They could always get more.
“Yeah, money’s not a problem,” he said aloud just before an item on CNN caught his attention.
He’d turned it on because he liked to keep up with stuff. Now one of the talking heads was giving an account of a murder in New Orleans.
“The woman found dead in her New Orleans hotel room yesterday has been identified as . . .”
”Evelyn Morgan,” Mickey said.
The name had leaped into his head before the guy said it.He didn’t know why, but he waited to see if the announcer said the same thing.
“Evelyn Morgan.”
“Okay!”
“She has no known relatives, and her reasons for being in the city have not been established, but it appears that robbery was the motive.”
Mickey was still focused on the way he’d picked up her name. It was like knowing the phone was going to ring and knowing who would be on the other end of the line, but this seemed more important than a phone call.
A little jolt of fear sizzled through him.
Was Evelyn Morgan going to mess up what he and Kira had? Was that why he’d known her name?
