by Lucy Score
“Four dates?” Riley whistled, then grinned at him.
He caught her gloved hand in his own and stepped her against the wall. “Say the word, Thorn, and we can have our own fun little fling,” he reminded her. “If we’re that good at kissing each other, imagine how good we’d be at everything else.”
“About that—”
They both heard it at the same time. Car tires crunching on gravel.
“Shit,” Nick said, cutting the lights in the apartment.
“Who’s coming here at two a.m.?” she hissed.
Together they peered through the film of filth on the window to the parking lot below. He made a mental note to see if his cousin Deb was still doing cleaning jobs and if she’d give his own windows a scrubbing.
A dark sedan pulled into the side lot and parked with its engine on and lights off. “Recognize the car?” he asked.
“No.”
A figure dressed all in black emerged from the car.
“We need to get out of here,” he said.
27
2:01 a.m., Saturday, June 27
Nick produced a very official looking gun from the waistband of his pajama pants, and Riley’s mouth went dry.
As he dragged her out of Dickie’s apartment and into the hall, she thought about how very much she didn’t mind the manhandling. She also didn’t mind when he pinned her against the wall with his hips, gun trained on the stairs.
She was in the middle of her own romantic suspense movie with the handsome hero when the sound of the front door creaking open three floors below dragged her out of the fantasy and back to the actual real-life danger. Had one of her dingbat neighbors left the front door unlocked again? Had the killer come back? Did they have some unfinished business here in the house? Was there hidden treasure tucked away within these dusty, crumbling walls?
The plot for every Nancy Drew book she’d read as a kid cycled through her head.
Nick clamped a gloved hand over her mouth. “Stay quiet,” he whispered in a gravelly, authoritative voice.
When she nodded, he removed his hand but kept his body pressed against hers.
There was most definitely a noise coming from somewhere within the house. A shuffling. Like someone trying to move quietly. It was hard to hear over the racket her own heartbeat was making as it pounded away in her chest. Fear and the weight of Nick’s body pressing into hers were doing wild, confusing things to her hormones.
She was acutely aware of her breath—it was loud—and her nipples. They were painfully hard.
Lily never locked her bedroom door. What if the intruder tried that one? What if Mr. Willicott took another middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom? Was she about to hear one of her poor, sweet neighbors that she’d miss much more than Dickie Frick yell “Cabbage Casserole”?
There was a noise on the stairs, and Nick stiffened. Riley’s heart kicked into overdrive, and her nipples tried to drill their way out of her shirt. Subtle, nipples. Really subtle.
Nick’s fingers flexed on the gun. It wasn’t his only weapon. As best she could tell, the man was also armed with a raging hard-on. Or a large flashlight stuffed in his pajama pants.
She hadn’t known bosoms could actually heave, but that’s exactly what hers was doing against his chest.
Was it weird that she was terrified and turned on at the same time? Could Nick fight off an intruder if most of his blood was in his pants?
A sound came again, this time on the worn tread of the stairs. It was… familiar. Shuffle clunk. Shuffle clunk.
Like someone walking with a—
She heard a wooden scrape followed by the telltale creak and then a door on the second floor closed.
“Just Mrs. Penny,” she whispered. She could feel Nick’s breath on her cheek, his heart beating steadily against her own chest. The hand he had at her waist fisted on the hem of her shirt as if he were fighting some conflicting urge.
She felt his hard-on pulse against her and nearly blacked out. Was the danger over, or was it only just beginning?
“Stay here,” he ordered.
She had to obey. Her knees had turned to overcooked spaghetti. Walking was not an option.
He left her propped against the wall and silently crossed to the staircase. She felt light-headed, weak-kneed, and really, really ready to get naked. Peeking out of the alcove, she watched him descend to the second floor, the light casting his shadow on the rose and fern wallpaper.
In silhouette, his erection looked like it could take out someone’s eye.
She took a moment to calm her breathing and think about anything but Nick’s penis. Oops. She was thinking about it again.
“What the hell is an eighty-year-old doing sneaking around at two a.m.?” Nick’s harsh whisper startled her. Yelping as her knees buckled, she reached out to catch herself… and caught the waistband of his pajama pants instead.
She—and the pants—went down.
“Thorn?”
“Uh. Yeah.” She wanted to look him in the eye. But she couldn’t tear her gaze away from another body part that was demanding her attention.
“About the platonic part of this sleepover…”
“Uh-huh?” she breathed. In this exact moment, she would be fine with having sex right here against the wall. She could be quiet. Probably.
“We should really focus on that,” he said, interrupting her fantasy.
“Huh?” She looked past his proudly jutting erection to his face.
He reached down and helped her to her feet. Only then did he pull his pants back up.
“We’ve got a good thing going here,” he said, knotting his drawstring. “Maybe we shouldn’t complicate things.”
“Two questions,” she said. “Did you not just offer up a fun little fling three minutes ago? And is that a flashlight shoved down your pants?”
“Uh. Yes, I did. And no, it is not.”
“So you’re saying you’ve got that going on—” She pointed to his heroic hard-on. “—and you definitely want to keep things platonic.”
He scratched the back of his head. “Yeah.”
“You are the worst fake boyfriend I’ve ever had,” she whispered, stomping to her door.
“Come on. Don’t be like that, Thorn,” he said, following her. “I’m trying to be the good guy here. You’re not making it easy.”
Thorn women had never been accused of making anything easy. It looked as though she was finally living up to her genetics in more ways than one.
“I’m going down to check that the doors are locked and to make sure that really is Mrs. Penny in her room,” Nick said, tucking the gun into the back of his pants.
“You’re not knocking on her door like that, are you?” Riley asked, eyeing his erection.
He held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor. I’m just going to listen creepily at her door.”
He wouldn’t be the first person to do that in this house, she mused. Defeated, turned on, pissed off, and suddenly exhausted, she went into her apartment and got ready for bed.
While Nick secured the perimeter or interior or whatever the hell he was doing, she poured them both glasses of water and set out a pillow and blankets on the couch for him. There was no way Mr. I Changed My Mind was getting anywhere near her bed tonight. She ducked into the hall bathroom to brush her teeth and nearly shrieked when she ran into his warm, solid torso outside the door. “Crap, Nick. Did you go to ninja school?” she asked, pushing past him.
He gave her a friendly slap on the ass. “Everything’s locked up tight, and Mrs. Penny is in her room watching The Price is Right. Your guy Gabe sleeps to a soundtrack of monks chanting.”
“Great,” she said, too tired to feign interest.
He closed and locked the door behind him, then tucked his gun under the coffee table within arm’s reach.
“You could just go home, you know,” she said with a yawn.
“I could. But how would that look to your roommates at breakfast tomorrow? They might thin
k we had a fight and broke up.”
“Or that you were bad in bed and we broke up,” she shot back, padding over to her bed and pulling back the covers.
He laughed softly. “Yeah, they’d never buy that.”
She shook her head. “Go to sleep,” she said grumpily.
He stripped out of his shirt and threw it on her coffee table. She pulled the blanket over her head and refused to be his audience.
“Hey, Thorn?”
“Mmm.”
“We’re even now.”
“Even?”
“I saw you topless. You saw me bottomless.”
“I did?” She feigned innocence. “Huh. I forgot all about that.”
“Liar.” The affection and amusement in his tone hung in the dark between them.
28
11:00 a.m., Saturday, June 27
“When did spandex come back in style?”
“… run six miles and still can’t get rid of this bra fat.”
“Gah! I sucked in a bug…”
“Is that the drunk girl from the bar last night?”
“Now that guy works out…”
“Seriously. How do I block this stuff out?” Riley asked Gabe, holding her hands over her ears. For the second time in twenty-four hours, she was strolling City Island with a very attractive man. But instead of whisking her away for a sunset make-out session, Gabe had talked her into going for a run. Something about physical exertion making it easier for the mind to focus. She’d been fueled by enough annoyed sexual frustration to agree.
She’d lasted a whole quarter of a mile before she stopped to almost throw up breakfast. A breakfast that she and Nick had rushed through, awkwardly surrounded by elderly people who assumed they’d had sex last night.
“First, you must decide what you’re willing to accept,” Gabe said sagely.
If he kept talking like that, she was definitely calling for a ride home.
The couple behind them was bickering about dinner plans. And subconsciously broadcasting their real issues to lucky Riley. He had an online porn addiction, and she had been flirting with a co-worker at the mall for two months. This was the downside to finding out she was psychic and not crazy. She was privy to some things that she would have preferred not knowing.
“I mean, can I block stuff out? And if I do, can I open back up? And if I do, can I filter what comes in? And why hasn’t Dickie sent me any messages from the beyond? Is his spirit not speaking to me because I didn’t do enough to keep him alive? I mean, could I have kept him alive? Should I have tried harder?”
Gabe’s smile was blinding.
“What are you so happy about?” she demanded. “I’m basically an accessory to murder.”
“I am happy you are taking an interest in your gifts,” he said, a little smugly for a spiritual advisor in her opinion. He had her grandmother’s fingerprints all over him.
“Are you reporting back to my grandmother?” Riley asked with suspicion.
He shook his head. “Your spiritual journey is a personal one. I report to no one.”
Good. She hated to think there was some guild committee poring over notes on her half-assed tiptoe into clairvoyance.
“I am merely a guide, not an authority here to discipline,” he continued.
“Okay. So guide me then,” she said, surrendering.
“Let’s sit over there. We can stretch and talk,” he suggested, pointing at a swath of grass bathed in sunshine.
They sat, and she followed him through a series of stretches that felt kind of okay.
Her burly spiritual guide was taking his fake personal training duties seriously.
A group of moms pushing children of varying ages in strollers slowed to eyeball Gabe’s butt as he flowed back and forth from down dog to plank pose.
One of the women fanned herself with a burp cloth. “I’d take out a second mortgage if that meant I could have him as a personal trainer.”
But he was too busy stretching his gigantic muscles and beaming at Riley to notice his fan club.
She studied Gabe as she followed him in the stretches. He was preternaturally attractive. There wasn’t a single imperfection about his physical appearance. Plus, he had the personality of Santa Claus. Yet he had zero effect on her hormone levels.
And then there was Nick Santiago, who had winked at her over hash browns and coffee that morning, causing a rainforest in her underwear.
Gabe finished stretching and settled into a meditative posture with a spine so straight it would have brought tears of joy to Wander’s eyes.
“Wait. Are we starting?” Riley asked.
“I am ready to begin,” he answered.
“Here?”
“Is there something wrong with here?”
“Well, for one thing, we’re in public.” A group of runners in short shorts and not much else paraded past, illustrating her point.
“Humans always find something wrong with the here and now,” Gabe said mysteriously.
“When you say stuff like that, it makes me think you’re not a human,” she told him.
His laugh drew more eyes. Every woman—and several of the men—in a 100-yard radius stopped what they were doing and looked in their direction.
He didn’t seem to notice.
“Can you read my mind?” she asked him.
“Only if you allow me,” he said mysteriously.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that you have much more control over your gifts than you believe. It is not an always on or always off experience. There are ways of refining and filtering what you open yourself to.”
“You’re saying I could get to a point where I don’t get messages just walking down the street? Where I don’t get any messages ever?”
Gabe nodded his perfectly shaped head. “If that is what you wish. Yes.”
“Great. Teach me that.” She flopped into a cross-legged sit in front of him. She could handle these strangers thinking she was a weirdo if it meant never having to pre-witness another murder.
“In order to learn to close yourself off, you must first learn to open yourself up,” her spiritual guide said in a magnanimous, Disney-quality baritone.
“Fortune cookie me later, Mufasa.”
“You really must explain what this fortune cookie is.”
“I’ll take you for Chinese,” she promised. “Hurry up and teach me stuff.”
“Your enthusiasm both pleases me and makes me suspicious.”
“As it should.”
After another long, suspicion-filled look, he closed his eyes. She followed suit.
“Breathe in the fresh air. Fill your lungs with it,” Gabe said, his voice low and soothing.
The guy could make a living recording guided meditations, Riley thought.
“Relax into the present moment. Accepting it as it is. Feel the sun on your skin.”
She felt an ant strolling up her thigh and brushed it away.
“Smell the river. The scents of this world.”
She smelled fish and… dog crap? She opened one eye and spotted a Cocker Spaniel doing her dirty business a few feet away under a tree.
“Now, listen to the sounds that surround you,” Gabe continued, clearly immune to feces fumes.
There were sounds. Her breath. The buzz of a lawn mower on the soccer field above them. A kid shrieking from the playground. There was the hum from a fishing boat out on the river. People. Voices. Laughter.
Thoughts.
She felt it in her stomach. The swoop from normal senses upward to a different place. At least this time it wasn’t as vertigo-inducing. More of a stomach-tickling lift like a hill on a roller coaster… or kissing Nick. Once again, she found herself surrounded by those puffy pastel clouds.
“If I don’t get this job, I’m going to lose the house.”
“Candy. Candy. Candy. CANDY!”
“Am I raising a future diabetic? This kid is only happy when he’s inhaling sugar.”
“Eggs. Chocolate chips. Flour. Don’t forget the flour.”
“Am I a bad parent?”
“That guy over there has thighs bigger than tree trunks. I want to bite them.”
“She seemed really stressed last night. Should I be a good husband and do the laundry today? What if I don’t do it the right way? Then she’ll end up redoing it.”
“Why do my ankles itch when I sweat? Is that some symptom of a rare, fatal disease? Should I tell someone about it? What if I keel over from itchy ankle blood clots and no one ever knows why?”
“How do you feel?” Gabe’s disembodied voice floated to her.
“I didn’t feel sick or dizzy this time,” she told him.
“It is because your mind was calm. Exercise is good for the brain,” he explained smugly.
“People sure have busy minds,” Riley complained as she dodged another onslaught of internal dialogue from a group of dog walkers.
“Don’t poop. Don’t poop. I forgot the poop bags again. Don’t poop. Ah, crap.”
“What now?” Riley asked.
“Use this opportunity to define what you want your guides to share with you.” His voice echoed ethereally around her cotton candy clouds.
“Explain it like I’m five, Gabe.”
“You may choose to have your guides filter the messages you receive.”
“Hang on. You mean like a spam filter on email?” She was excited. Could it possibly be that easy?
“I do not know what spam or email is,” Echoey Gabe confessed.
“Of course you don’t,” she said dryly. “Like a bouncer at a club then? They keep the riff-raff out.”
“Yes. This simile seems appropriate.”
She swooped her hand through a pinky, purpley cloud. “So all I have to do is tell them that I don’t want any more messages ever?”
“If that is what you wish.” Echo Gabe sounded disappointed.
Duh. That’s all she’d ever wished.
“As long as you do not want any answers to who murdered your neighbor, that is exactly what you should do,” he added.