But he wasn’t able to do that with her. He didn’t have a clue why she was there. Angels shouldn’t have problems, should they? But something was sure distressing this one. Beyond that serene exterior, he could see it in her eyes. A deep-rooted sadness. If his heart hadn’t been made of shoe leather, it would have moved even him.
“I suppose I should start by telling you a little more about myself,” she said at last. She stood up and paced restlessly to the window. The sunlight filtering through the blinds haloed her hair and rendered her white cotton blouse almost transparent.
“Have you ever had a revelation, Mr. Parker?” she asked.
“No,” Mike croaked. But he was having one now. She wasn’t wearing a bra. He could see the shadow of her small, full breasts quite clearly, down to the pert outline of her nipples.
His response was swift, inevitable and very male. Chewing his gum furiously, Mike forced himself to look away. This surge of attraction was unprofessional, but he couldn’t seem to help it. The life of a private detective was far from glamorous. It was pretty mundane most of the time. After months of pot-bellied men and little old ladies coming through his door, no wonder he was jolted by the sight of a beautiful young woman.
It was like something out of one of those hokey old detective movies that he had a sneaking fondness for. The mysterious dame swishes into the gumshoe’s office, innocent, but alluring, begging for his help.
There would be danger, hairbreadth escapes. Of course, he’d eventually save her life and she would be terribly grateful. Mike got to the point in his imaginings where Miss Sara Holyfield was demonstrating some of that gratitude, slipping that soft blouse off her even-softer shoulders, guiding his hands toward her—
Whoa! This ridiculous fantasy wasn’t doing anything to help his—er—condition. He actually felt beads of sweat gathering on his brow. Sara had finally started talking and he’d hardly registered a word of it.
“...and I realized I’d been wasting my life and talents. After I received the inheritance from my great-aunt Marilla, I walked out of my job at the bank and never looked back. I went to work for myself the very next day.”
Mike risked a peek at her. Mercifully she had stepped out of the revealing pool of sunlight. He didn’t know whether he was more relieved or disappointed.
She turned slowly to face him. “Which brings me to why I’m here. I need to hire you to collaborate with me on a case.”
Mike blinked. Boy, he must have really missed something when he’d been daydreaming. “You are a detective?”
“Of a sort.” Her chin tipped up a notch in an attitude that could have been pride or defiance. “I’m a psychic investigator.”
Mike swallowed his gum and damn near choked. “You—you mean like—like a ghost buster?”
“I don’t bust ghosts, Mr. Parker. I merely explore evidence of supernatural phenomenon.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“I also run a New Age book store and do psychic readings.”
Mike stared at her. She stared back, looking as calm as if she’d just told him she was a dental hygienist. He expelled his breath in a long sigh. Great. He’d finally gotten his alluring, mysterious dame, and with his usual luck, she turned out to be a nut case. Or else she was planning to pull off some incredible hustle on him. Life was so damned unfair.
Swiveling glumly back to the desk, he said, “Sorry, Miss Holyfield, but I don’t think I can help you. I always confine my investigations to this side of the grave.”
“I don’t expect you to go ghost hunting with me, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I have no trouble with that.”
“I’ll bet,” Mike mumbled under his breath.
Bracing her hands upon his desk, she leaned forward. Mike was assaulted again by the scent of her perfume, the soft rise and fall of her breasts.
What a waste. He stifled a groan.
She peered down at him earnestly. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I haven’t been making myself all that clear. I’m here on behalf of a Miss Mamie Patrick. She’s trying to find her son.”
“Oh. A missing-persons case. Why didn’t you say so to begin with? That’s different. That’s—” Normal Mike almost added. It wasn’t the first time someone like this Patrick woman was misguided or desperate enough to consult a psychic to recover their missing child. Mike wasn’t sure he wanted to get mixed-up in this business. But his interest was piqued enough to reach for his notepad again.
“Okay, sit down,” he said to Sara. “And this time give-it to me straight without the psychic bull—that is, just give me the cold, hard facts.”
Sara sank back into her chair, folding her hands primly. “Well, Mamie—Miss Patrick—first made contact with me about two weeks ago. Her only son, John Francis, was put up for adoption when he was six years old. For her own peace of mind, she desperately needs to see him again.”
Mike noted the name of the Patrick kid on his pad. “And how long has it been since she last saw the boy?”
“John Patrick would be somewhere in his late thirties by now.” Sara added anxiously, “Do you think there’s any real hope that you can find him after all this time, Mr. Parker?”
“Anything’s possible. Although I have to warn you, adoption records in New Jersey are sealed.” Mike shrugged. “I’ll have to talk to this Miss Patrick myself and see what leads she can give me, but frankly, I think you should make sure she really wants this matter pursued. These tender family reunions you watch on the talk shows are not always what they’re cracked up to be. After all this time, Mamie Patrick might be better off forgetting about her son and getting on with her life.”
“That would be difficult,” Sara said quietly. “She’s dead.”
“What!” Mike pressed down so hard with the pen, he punctured the paper.
“Mamie Patrick died over thirty years ago.”
“You mean...you’re telling me this client of yours is—is a—”
“A supernatural manifestation.”
“Let’s use plain English here. You mean a ghost.”
“Well... yes.”
“Ah, jeez!” Mike ripped off the sheet of notebook paper he’d been filling out and crumpled it into a ball that he arced into his metal waste can. Shoving to his feet, he stalked around the desk.
Sara shrank back, looking mildly alarmed as Mike’s hands closed around her arms. He tugged her to her feet.
“Mr. Parker! Mike, what—what are you doing?”
“It’s not what I’m doing, doll. It’s what you’re doing. Leaving.”
He started hustling her toward the door, but Sara dug in her heels. “What’s the matter? Have I said something wrong?”
Mike rolled his eyes. “No, nothing much. You just waltzed in here and asked me to go to work for some woman who kicked the bucket over a quarter of a century ago.”
“Oh, so that’s it.” Sara managed to wriggle free of his grasp. She angled a challenging glance up at him. “You don’t believe in ghosts?”
“No, I sure as hell don’t.”
“But you just said a moment ago that anything’s possible.”
“I meant anything normal, not things that go bump in the night. I don’t believe in anything that I can’t see, hear, smell or feel.”
“Then that means that you don’t believe in intuition. Or faith. Or even love.” She exuded a soft sigh. “That’s very sad.”
“Yeah, tragic.” She was the one ready for a straitjacket and yet she had the nerve to stand there looking as though she felt sorry for him.
Stepping around her, he swung open the door. “Sorry I can’t be of service, but I’m sure you and Miss Patrick will manage just swell without me. Maybe you can locate the guy in your crystal ball.”
“I don’t have a crystal ball,” Sara said reproachfully. “If I had that much psychic power, I wouldn’t need you to help Mamie.”
“If she’s a ghost, why doesn’t Miss Mamie just fly off and find the kid herself?”
“She’s restricte
d to the old Pine Top Inn, the last place she lived before she died. Manifestations usually cannot go wherever they want to.”
“Ghosts have rules?”
“Everyone has rules, Mr. Parker.”
“And one of mine happens to be I don’t take on any client where I have to hold a seance to present my bill. So if you don’t mind—” Mike indicated the door with a sweeping gesture, but Sara ignored him, fishing inside her purse instead.
“If you’re worried about being paid, you needn’t be,” she said. “I can write you a check right now.”
Mike pressed one hand to his brow. This woman just wasn’t getting the message. As she started to drag out her checkbook, he covered her hand to stop her.
“Look, honey, save your dough. I have a feeling you’re going to need it. Good psychiatric care is expensive these days.”
She flinched as though he’d struck her “I was hoping that you would be much more open-minded, Mr. Parker.”
“Whatever gave you an idea like that?”
“It was your picture in the paper. Your face...it seemed so wise and accepting. And kind.”
“That was my dazed look. A flashbulb had just gone off in my eyes.”
“But I was so certain you were the one to help,” Sara murmured almost to herself. “I could sense it, and when I trust my instincts, I’m almost never wrong.”
Pressing her lips in a stubborn line, she gazed up at Mike again. “Would you mind letting me feel your aura?”
“Feel my what?” Mike’s pulses rioted with the possibilities. But it was only his hand she reached for. She turned it palm upward.
He tugged free of her grasp, but she begged, “Please. Just let me run this one little test. Then I promise I’ll go away and leave you alone.”
Mike opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again as she looked up at him, pleading. Why was he always such a sucker for big blue eyes?
Grimacing, he held out his hand. “This test isn’t going to involve voodoo pins or anything like that?”
“Of course not.” She cupped his hand in her own smaller fragile one. “Now close your eyes.”
“What for?” he asked suspiciously.
“I’m not going to hurt you. Trust me.”
It had been a damned long time since Mike had trusted anyone, but he gave a long-suffering sigh and shut his eyes. She ran her fingertips lightly across his open palm.
“Just relax, Mr. Parker.”
Mike sucked in his breath. That wasn’t what was going to happen if she kept stroking him in that slow, sensual fashion. When her soft fingers danced across his wrist, his pulse gave an erratic leap. He was starting to really enjoy this when, to his disappointment, she stopped.
“Now I’m going to close my eyes and lower my hand toward yours. If we do this right, as I get closer, you should feel a surge of power between us.”
“This is stupid,” Mike grumbled. He wished she’d go back to the caressing part again. He felt like a total idiot standing here with his hand held out like a bellboy hoping for a tip.
“Please, Mr. Parker. Concentrate and keep your eyes closed.”
Mike tried to, but he’d always had the same problem not peeking whenever he played hide-and-seek as a kid. He cracked one eye open and realized that whatever else Sara might be, she wasn’t a con artist. She really believed in all this mumbo jumbo.
Her smooth brow was furrowed in earnest concentration. Her purse balanced in her left hand, her right one hovered barely an inch above his own. There was something strangely arousing about standing so close to her, just short of touching. He had only to reach out to bury his fingers in her ripples of silky gold hair, trace the line of that fairy chain along the smooth white column of her throat.
With her eyes closed, a delicate flush coloring her cheeks, she almost appeared as though she were in some sort of trance, like that sleeping princess in those sappy stories his one foster mom had insisted upon reading to him. If Sleeping Beauty had looked anything like Sara, no wonder that dopey prince had risked burning his a—fighting dragons to get to her bedroom.
“Are you experiencing anything yet, Mr. Parker?” she asked.
“Not a blessed thing,” Mike denied, but he was disturbed to notice his hand begin to tremble. A tingling sensation started in his fingertips, quickly spreading along his arm, through the rest of his body to become the most intoxicating rush of desire he’d ever known.
Sara’s eyes fluttered open to stare straight into his. She frowned. “You haven’t really been trying. Didn’t you feel any impulse at all?”
Mike shook his head. Oh, he was having plenty of impulses all right, but none, he feared, that Sara would approve of.
“Let’s try it again,” he murmured. “Close your eyes.”
She looked a little wary, but obeyed. She stood before him, her lips half-parted in unconscious invitation. This was too easy, Mike thought with a groan. He should be ashamed of himself. He should resist the temptation, but he didn’t seem able to help himself.
Bending forward, he covered her mouth with his own. He felt Sara stiffen with surprise, but then he was a little surprised himself. He’d never kissed any woman this gently before. At least, it started out that way.
But when Sara didn’t resist, he folded her in his arms, deepening the embrace. She tasted and felt just like she smelled—all softness, innocence and seduction. He kissed her with increasing hunger, passion and heat rushing through him, warming places inside him that he had not even realized had gone cold.
Two
Sara clung to Mike’s shoulders, his mouth wreaking havoc with her senses, even her sixth one. Since she’d set foot in the door, this interview had gone nothing like she’d anticipated. Not only had Mike Parker turned out to be more rough-edged than she’d expected, he was now kissing her in a way to make her curls stand on end.
Any protest she should have voiced was swept away beneath the hot mastery of Mike’s lips on hers. Her purse dropped from her nerveless fingers, hitting the carpet with a soft thud. She melted closer, her head reeling. Her mind felt like she was floating, her body like it was on fire.
It was only when his tongue breached her lips, exploring her mouth with even greater intimacy, that alarm set in. Struggling to be free, she insinuated her hands between them, breaking off the heated contact of their mouths.
His breathing ragged, Mike blinked at her. For a moment, he looked as dazed as she felt. She had never experienced a kiss like that in her whole life. It would have been rather wonderful... if only he had really meant it.
But Mike was already making a rapid recovery. The tender set of his mouth hardened into the familiar sarcastic smirk.
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess my psychic—um—gizmo got a little out of control.”
Sara felt her cheeks heat, but this time with humiliation. Mike’s arms were still wrapped loosely about her waist. Bracing both hands against his chest, she squirmed away from him.
“You don’t have to believe in the same things I do, Mr. Parker,” she said. “But you don’t have to make fun of me, either.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you.”
“Then what do you call this?” Sara raised a trembling finger to her bruised lips.
“I was kissing you.” A shade of irritation crept into Mike’s voice. “You can’t go feeling up a guy’s aura and not expect him to react.”
“That wasn’t the sort of reaction you were supposed to—Oh, never mind.” Sara bent down to retrieve her purse from the carpet, gathering up the tattered remains of her dignity, as well. By the time she straightened, she managed to face Mike with some degree of calm.
“I’m sorry you’re such an unhappy man, Mr. Parker. But that doesn’t give you the right to mock and hurt other people.”
“I’m not unhappy, just hung over. So if you don’t mind, close the door quietly on your way out.”
“I’ll go,” Sara said. “But that doesn’t change anything. You’re a miserable and lonely man with a ve
ry disturbed aura, full of bitterness and a pain that’s as old as—as your wound.”
“Wound?” Mike scowled at her. “What wound?”
Sara blinked as she realized the words she’d just blurted out. She stared at Mike and suddenly an image came to her of Mike’s bare chest in all its glorious detail—hard-sculpted muscle from the flat plane of his stomach to the broad reach of his shoulders, smooth skin as bronzed and warm as sunlight. Except for—
“You—you have a scar on your left shoulder,” Sara said haltingly.
Mike’s eyes widened. “What have you got, X-ray vision or something?”
“N-no.” Sara flushed, feeling as if she’d been caught sneaking peeks at Mike naked in his shower. “I told you I was psychic, didn’t I? Sometimes these perceptions just come to me. That scar on your shoulder goes as deep as your soul, Mike Parker. It was made by something cold...something sharp.” Sara shivered. “A knife perhaps? With a long—”
“Enough, already,” Mike snarled, breaking her concentration. “Who the hell put you up to this?”
“Put me up to—Why, no one. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Either some jerk with a warped sense of humor sent you here to yank my chain or else you really are one total spook. Either way, I want you out of my office. Now!”
Sara took a hasty step back at Mike’s menacing approach. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, but I assure you no one sent me. I came to you because I honestly needed your help, Mr. Parker. What am I supposed to do about finding John Patrick? If you won’t take the case, could you at least—”
“Out!”
Before Sara could say another word, she found herself being roughly shoved into the tiny outer office. Mike slammed the door closed between them with a bang that was both loud and final.
“Recommend another detective?” Sara finished weakly, realizing she was addressing dead silence. She sensed that Mike Parker had just closed more doors than the one to his office. Any extrasensory perceptions she’d been having about Mike had ceased as abruptly as a phone line being disconnected.