Breaking the Rules

by Lewis, Jennifer

  But he looked curious. His broad shoulders shifted a little, as if he could rearrange the heavy burden they carried.

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  She shrugged, trying to lighten her own burden of responsibility, the obligation she’d shirked when she told him only half the reading. “I was young. I didn’t have faith in my ability to read accurately. I thought perhaps I was seeing what I wished to see.”

  “You wished to see yourself—with me?”

  “Perhaps.”

  What thirteen-year-old girl didn’t dream of walking arm in arm with a handsome boy? A carefree, healthy young man in a white sailor suit. He’d been the stuff of teenage fantasies back then, with his dark hair buzzed short, his handsome face shaved clean and his dark eyes shining with youthful optimism.

  Different from the man who stood before her now. The man whose lips parted as he struggled for words. The youthful optimism gone, replaced by a hard stare of accusation leveled at the world and at her in particular. His striking features marred by a semicircular scar that pierced one eyebrow, and the dark stubble shadowed under his jutting cheekbones.

  “Thirteen years old!” He shook his head. “And I listened to you as if you were the Oracle at Delphi. Don’t know why I did. I came into the storefront on a dare. I guess you told me what I wanted to hear, so I chose to believe it.”

  “You wanted to find love?” She spoke so softly her words almost disappeared in the smoke from the incense burner.

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “Who doesn’t?”

  “Do you still want to find love?” The words slipped out of her mouth before she had a chance to catch them. What was she doing?

  His reply was a dismissive snort. “No, no, no. I’m all done with love. No more for me, thanks.” He shook his head again, and a bitter, silent laugh racked him. “Love, hate and everything in between. I’m done with it. I’m not going to marry anybody or fight anybody ever again.”

  The glint of dark humor in his eyes surprised her. Susana struggled to keep her confusion from showing on her face.

  “Funny thought, isn’t it?” He let out a sharp choke of laughter. “I had the hots for you that night. While you were sitting there reading my fortune, I was thinking about your breasts.”

  Her breasts stirred under her black T-shirt as his eyes boldly dropped to survey them.

  “I’m thinking about them right now. Guess I don’t have any shame left any more.”

  Susana swallowed hard, trying to shove down the very unfamiliar sensation building underneath her baggy shirt, sliding hotly down into her long, black skirt.

  He glanced up and raised his eyebrows. “Do I disgust you?”

  “No.” She shook her head. She didn’t know what she was feeling, but disgust didn’t play any part in it.

  “I should have disgusted you back then. A big, horny twenty-year old boy eyeing a thirteen-year-old girl. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.” Bitter humor flashed in his eyes again. “Then again, maybe a jail term would have saved me some of the other trouble I had instead.”

  His eyes fell to her breasts again. Her nipples tightened, heating under his gaze.

  “What would you have said if I’d asked you out that night?”

  “I’d have had to say no.”

  “Why?”

  “I was engaged to be married.”

  “At thirteen?” His expression of shocked surprise almost made her smile.

  “It’s not unusual among my people.”

  “So you’re married?” His forehead creased as he asked the question.

  “No.” She shook her head. “The engagement was cancelled. My grandmother needed me to stay with her, to develop my gifts.”

  “And I was the lucky man you tried them out on for the first time.” He nodded grimly, a smile struggling to break across his lips. His body still taut, emotion and motion reined tightly as he watched her.

  “It wasn’t planned.” She shrugged, again trying to absolve herself of the growing sense of responsibility gnawing at her. “My grandmother was smoking a cigarette out back. She told me to step in for her.”

  “You were nervous, weren’t you?”

  “A little.”

  “I could see that. It made me like you. Made me see you as a person. Now I can see it should have made me nervous too.”

  One fist unclenched, and he rubbed a spot on his chest with the extended fingers. The action pulled his thin, white T-shirt tight across the thick curve of his pec, and again Susana’s body responded with an alarming flare of heat.

  “You were anxious, too.” A smile flickered across her lips at the memory of the strapping young man in his white sailor suit, shifting from foot to foot, waiting for her to emerge through the door.

  “Yeah? I guess most people are when they’re about to hear what the future has in store.”

  “Only if they plan to believe what they hear.”

  “Like I said, I just came in on a dare. I sat in that chair”—he gestured toward it—“and I wondered about your breasts.” Again his eyes flicked over them, and goose bumps rose over the swollen flesh. Susana tossed her head, lifting her chin, defying her body to respond to his crude gawking.

  “You misinterpreted the information I gave you.”

  “You withheld the information I needed.”

  He fixed her with his hard stare again, dark eyes holding hers as if a beam of black light shot between them. She faltered, wilting under the heat of his gaze.

  He was right. She had cheated him. Committed a sin of omission.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? Yeah? Well, I’m sorry, too.” He paused, unclenched his fists and settled his hands on his hips. The gesture enlarged him visually until he seemed to fill the entire space of the small storefront. “And I think you owe me.”

  He hissed the words quietly, and they slid into Susana’s ears, ruffling her nerves, undermining her carefully cultivated professional demeanor.

  “I owe you another reading?” She shivered. She didn’t want to do a reading for him now. Changed as he was, twisted and tormented by circumstance, she was afraid of what she’d see.

  Especially since his future had once been bound up with hers.

  “Hell, no. No more readings.” He held his head high, dark eyes unreadable in the smoky gloom. “You owe me my life back.”

  “Only you can shape your own life.” The words emerged with a quiver of apprehension. People always wanted more than she could give. She could only read the future, not make it happen. And fate was not a hard, immutable thing, but a frame of possibilities, constantly shifting, changing, as destiny and circumstance writhed together in their unscripted dance.

  “You owe me one night, then.” His low voice rumbled through the smoke and darkness, setting off a vibration that echoed deep inside her.

  “No.” She choked the word, hands fisting into her skirt. Smoking trails of heat simmered through her body where his eyes danced over her.

  “An evening. Dinner.” He tilted his head slightly, thoughtfully, as if contemplating an unfolding scroll of possibilities. That bitter laugh shook him. “Dinner and a movie, just like regular folks.”

  “It’s not a good idea.” Nerves all on edge, she resisted the urge to shrink away from him. Her nipples strained against the fabric of her shirt. Her fingertips hummed with unwelcome anticipation as she buried them in the folds of her skirt and struggled to stay totally still. To resist his power.

  “I don’t care if it’s a good idea. I did everything right and look where I am now. A bad idea is as good as any, as far as I’m concerned. Are you afraid of me?”

  Yes.

  “No.”

  “Then why not? You’ve got to eat. I’ll buy you a good dinner. I’ve got to eat, too. I guess that’s one thing we have in common.”

  Her nerves shrieked an alarm of warning. But woven through the wail of fear was an opposite call—a siren song bidding her to taste the dangerous and forbidden fruit of dinner
with the handsome boy she’d seen in her globe so long ago.

  To taste the freedom she craved.

  She consulted her sixth sense—her bread and butter, the precious gift she’d cultivated until it was stronger than her other senses.

  Silence and darkness. No answers forthcoming.

  “Come on.” He reached out a hand. Her eyes fell to the thick muscles of his forearm, the tan skin sprinkled with tiny dark hairs. Warm human flesh reaching out to her.

  “Okay.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The rumble of the corrugated metal awning shuddered through Susana’s body. It clanged to the ground with grim finality. She pulled the key out of the padlock with an ominous sense that she was leaving behind the safe little world she inhabited and stepping out into a fearsome new universe of possibility.

  She tucked the key into her pocket.

  Joe stood there, features thrown into relief by the harsh glare of the streetlights, hands shoved in his pockets, oblivious to the strangers pushing past him.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded. And swallowed. She’d never been to dinner with any man other than her cousins Janus and Roman. If they knew she was about to have dinner with a complete stranger–worse, a gadjo…

  They’d better not find out.

  She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

  “Where do you want to go?” Joe offered her his arm. The gesture startled her–formal, and yet so intimate. An invitation to touch him right there in the street. She lifted her elbow and cautiously threaded her arm though his.

  Tiny hairs stood on end, mingling as the crooks of their elbows intertwined. Susana struggled to keep her breathing shallow as the odd sensation of touching a man heated her blood and quickened her pulse.

  “Indian?” He turned his head to her. “We could go to Sixth Street. What kind of food do you like?”

  “Indian food sounds good.” It sounded good partly because her cousins disliked spicy food so she was unlikely to run into them there.

  And partly because she liked it.

  “Let’s go.” He flashed her a quick smile, and she instinctively smiled back. Weird. They set off walking at a slow pace, arm in arm.

  Her long skirt rustled about her legs and she wished she were wearing jeans. Granna always said fortune-tellers should dress the way people expected, as it inspired confidence. She’d prefer to have the accuracy of her predictions inspire confidence, but she knew better than to defy Granna.

  What on earth would Granna think of her accepting a stranger’s invitation to dinner? Or walking arm in arm with him down a public street?

  She caught her breath at the thought.

  “You okay?”

  “Of course.” She forced a quick smile. Granna was gone. She was on her own now and could make her own decisions.

  Shape her own destiny.

  She sneaked a glance at the tall man beside her. Head held high, chin jutting defiantly, Joe walked as if he owned the sidewalk.

  He had little in common with the fresh-faced boy who’d walked into the store ten years earlier. Time and circumstance had made his features bolder and his physique broader. The fine lines that etched his skin spoke of time spent under an unforgiving sun and the deepening of unique character traits.

  She felt a little flush of pride at walking arm in arm with such an attractive man. And a frisson of apprehension. Her old prediction had come true. He’d reached out to her and she’d taken his hand—his arm.

  She didn’t know what came next. At the time she hadn’t wanted to see. She’d been scared of the forbidden and dangerous vision that flickered in the globe. Scared of her own powers, so new and barely harnessed. Scared of Granna, too.

  Shocked and frightened, she’d wrapped up the reading and ushered him out of the store as quickly as she could.

  But he’d come back.

  “I don’t know your name,” she said with as much normalcy as she could muster.

  “Joe.” He turned to her. “Joe Figueroa. And yours?”

  “Susana Cigan.”

  He’d seen her looking furtively about as they walked along the sidewalk, shying from the stray glances of strangers, as if she didn’t want to be seen in public with him.

  No sweat. He didn’t want to be seen in public with himself, either. If disappearing into thin air could be done, he’d have tried it.

  Since he was still here, however, he had to eat. Why not look at a pretty girl while he did it?

  Susana lowered herself into a chair and arranged her long skirt around her legs. She shot him a shy smile. Like a girl on a date. Cute.

  Had he asked a girl out on a damn date? A witchy fortune-teller broad, no less? He was crazy all right, no doubt about that. But he couldn’t deny that, right now, the evening shimmered with all kinds of intriguing promise.

  A waiter handed them menus and he eased himself back in his chair. Susana opened her menu and studied it intently, lashes lowered and lips slightly parted.

  She was definitely a babe. Speaking of which…

  “So if you were thirteen back then, you’re twenty-three now.”

  She glanced up, startled. “Yes.”

  “You tell fortunes for a living?”

  “Yes. I used to work with my grandmother and I took over her business when she died.”

  “I don’t imagine it pays too well.”

  “I need little money to live.”

  Joe remembered the check in his pocket. A simple piece of folded paper worth nearly two million dollars.

  “Rent controlled apartment, huh?”

  “Yes.” She smiled slightly, revealing even rows of small white teeth. Everything about her was small and delicate. Except her hair. Thick and jet black, it fell in a gleaming sheet over her narrow shoulders.

  “So you’ve worked in that storefront since you were thirteen?”

  She nodded.

  “Didn’t you ever want to do anything else?”

  Susana blinked, her lashes so thick that her eyes appeared to be ringed by dark kohl. “It’s my life’s work to read fortunes.”

  “Is that what your grandmother told you?”

  “My grandmother was a very wise woman.”

  “And I’ll bet she ruled you with an iron fist.”

  “She didn’t have to. I’ve always been obedient.” She flashed a defiant glance at him, and he saw a spark of the fire that simmered beneath her calm surface.

  That fire excited him. He could feel its heat even as she maintained her cool composure.

  Are you a virgin?

  The question hummed on his lips but remained unspoken.

  “You’ve always done what your family wanted?”

  “Yes.” She picked up her glass and sipped her water, avoiding his glance.

  “But they wouldn’t want you to be here with me now, would they?”

  What was he doing? Trying to scare her off? Drive her away?

  Maybe.

  “No.” She answered quickly, holding his gaze.

  “And why are you?”

  “Because you asked me.” She said it simply, looking suddenly shy. On impulse he reached across the table, palm up, inviting her to take his hand.

  But she didn’t. She glanced at it, then up at him, and quickly back to her menu.

  He withdrew his hand.

  “What about your parents—where are they?”

  “My parents are dead.” She fixed him with a stony gaze that dared him to ask more. That warned him against it.

  He didn’t have the energy for anyone else’s sob story right now. “Mine, too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry about a lot of things, aren’t you?”

  She picked up her glass and took a hesitant sip, as if the liquid in it might be neat gin.

  “What do you want from me?” Her voice trembled slightly as she put her glass down, careful not to spill water on the white tablecloth.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want any more. E
xcept maybe tandoori chicken, aloo paratha and cucumber raita.”

  A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “That’s a start.”

  The waiter took their orders as costumed musicians climbed onto a tiny stage.

  One man began tapping on a traditional drum, and the rhythm pounded through the small restaurant. Susana broke off a small piece of poppadum and placed it on her tongue.

  “Spicy?”

  She swallowed it. “A little.”

  He watched her long, elegant fingers as she broke off another morsel.

  “Will you feed some to me?”

  She glanced up at him, regarded him warily. Then, with a deadly serious expression, she snapped off a fragment and extended it toward his mouth. Silver bracelets slid down her slim wrist, clanging together as she reached toward him.

  He parted his lips, surprised. He’d expected nothing more than a charming rejection. She placed the morsel right on his tongue, like a priest offering communion, holding his gaze while she did it.

  The pepper stung his tongue as arousal fired his body.

  She withdrew her arm, bracelets sliding back down as she broke off another piece for herself. Cool and calm, as if she fed a starving, desperate man every day of her life.

  And maybe she did. Feeding people tidbits of hope, tantalizing fragments of cherished dreams.

  “Do people usually have a specific question when they come for a reading?”

  “Often they do.”

  “I bet they have an answer they want, too.”

  “No doubt you’re right.” She paused, brushing crumbs from her slim fingers.

  “I guess that was my problem the day I showed up in your store. Even though it wasn’t my idea. I wanted to hear that everything was going to work out just the way I planned it. Happy ever after, you know.”

  “I suppose that’s what everyone wants.”

  “You too?”

  “Me?”

  “You’re human aren’t you?”

  She didn’t answer. Maybe she considered herself above the joys and troubles of ordinary mortals. She picked up her glass and took another sip, her solemn expression unreadable. Her lips the color of a bruise as they closed over the hard rim of her glass.

  She wasn’t like other people. She could see the future and choose whether to share her knowledge or keep it to herself.