by Luna Joya
“Why did you choose a sea turtle?” She led the conversation back to where they’d been.
“They stand for longevity. That’s for Grandma Corraza. She’ll be full of life no matter what age she reaches. She dances every day to talk with nature spirits. See.” He touched the tip of her nose. “You’re not the only one with mystic stuff in the family.”
“And what’s all this below in the spiral pattern?” Her curls brushed his skin. She’d distracted him so much he had to look down at his chest to remember his own tattoos.
“A fishhook and a chieftain’s club are signs of respect for my grandpa, Pops. The feather is for Joe since he’s a writer. Shark teeth for power, spearheads for strength, and sun for success.”
He dipped his head toward his right arm. “The stingray is for Lottie. She’s fierce like your sisters.”
“What about your parents? Are they here?” She slid her fingers down his chest.
“No.” His voice was firm and unbending.
She kissed his shoulder before laying her head on him again. “And this?”
“The ocean. The first real home I had.”
She burrowed against him. As her curls bobbed under his nose, he breathed in and could smell the familiar scents of the ocean—salt water, driftwood, seaweed. Sam recognized it as the same sensation he’d had the very first time he’d talked to her at his restaurant. Then again the first time they’d made love.
“The smell and feel of the ocean in my room the first night? That was you,” he whispered. “The feeling of paddling out on the waves. The anticipation, the thrill. All of it? You created it.”
She nodded. “The power can be harder to control or suppress with strong emotion. Desire, anger, fear.”
He heard the change in her voice. She didn’t want to talk about the anger or fear part. She lay her hand on his collarbone above his heart where ink curved away inches before the unmarked skin. “Why nothing here?”
“I’m saving that space.”
“For what?”
The hell with it. Might as well tell her the truth. “My future wife.”
She slid closer, and he curled her tightly against him.
“Thank you for this. The room, your understanding.” She grazed her lips against his skin. “All of this.”
He kissed her upturned face then brushed his lips down her jaw. He wrapped a delicate curl around his finger.
“Sam, can I ask you for something?”
Anything. He’d give her any single thing she wanted. “What is it, sweetheart?”
“I’d love a bath.”
He chuckled. Here he was ready to hand her the world, and she simply wanted to soak in the massive tub. The visual image of her naked in a bath with bubbles popping over all the right places had him hard again. He rolled away.
“I’ll go start the water. Be back in a minute.”
He turned on both taps, poured soap, and watched the hot foam rise before striding to the bed to haul her up against him. She laughed and threw her arms around his neck. He jostled her, enjoying the bounce and jiggle of naked curves in his arms as he carried her to the tub.
She protested as he leaned to slide her into the water. “You’ll get wet.”
Like that would stop him. Especially when he heard her sigh as her skin hit the warm water. It was a sound of ecstasy before she slipped lower into the tub.
He took a towel to his damp skin and stood there without a stitch of clothing on, completely comfortable as he watched her bathe. The tips of her curls waved and tightened from the steam. She was adorable and so fucking hot. She ran her fingers down one leg and then the other, stretching and relaxing deeper into the water.
“A true water sprite. Nude and all.”
She smirked and the next thing he knew, he had water splashed in his face. From four feet away. Without her moving. It was impossible. Or was it?
“Did you do that?” he asked.
She nodded with a wicked sly smile.
He couldn’t help but grin back at those devilish dimples. “Do it again.”
She raised a hand above the bubbles and flicked her fingers. The water in the tub started spiraling as though there were jets beneath, but there weren’t. He’d checked. She snapped her fingers and another small stream leapt to splash him again.
“I’ll be damned.” He was amazed. He wouldn’t believe it if he hadn’t seen it, felt it. “That’s unreal.” He grabbed the towel again to dry himself where the drops had smacked against him.
She lifted a shoulder. “Tricks I’ve played since I was a kid. Nothing special.”
“You underestimate yourself.” He meant it. She bit her lip. Pink from the heat of the bath rose up her cheeks. He stopped and dropped the towel.
“Mind if I join you?” He didn’t wait for a response before he walked the few steps to the tub to stand over her and watched the blush deepen in color. He was imagining the fun he could have with her in that tub when someone knocked loudly at the door despite the “do not disturb” sign. He’d decided to ignore it, but the beating grew louder.
“What is with people pounding on doors when I’m with you?” He couldn’t stop the grumble.
Her gaze darted to the door. “Mina,” she whispered and started to rise.
Enjoying the last glimpse of her naked wet body, Sam tugged on pants, padded barefoot to the door, and looked out the keyhole. “It’s your sister,” he called and drew the bedroom and bathroom doors closed before yanking the suite door open.
Seconds later, Cami rushed from the bathroom wrapped in a robe with her skin still glistening and damp. Her sister had the worst timing. He shifted uncomfortably and grabbed for Cami.
Mina seemed oblivious to whatever she’d just interrupted. She jogged inside and dropped to a chair.
“I’ve got it.” The excitement in Mina’s voice contradicted her closed eyes and the sag to her shoulders. “I saw Sunny Sol and her gangster at the Brown Derby a couple months before her death. Wait until you hear this.”
Chapter Eighteen
“That’s incredible.” Sam slid more cilantro rice across the table to Mina, who had already devoured the tacos, street corn, and carne asada fries he’d had delivered from a local trendy place. She’d chronicled what she’d seen through Sunny Sol’s eyes at the old Brown Derby. “To be able to see history. To live it.”
“I don’t live it.” Mina shook the hot sauce bottle with a vengeance. “I’m not actually there. They can’t see or hear me. I only get one person’s impressions of the moment. It’s not for real time travel.”
“You sense what Sunny was thinking. You’re in her head. Can you not see how amazing that is?”
Cami patted his thigh. She’d picked through some ceviche while they listened but didn’t say much. “Mina’s been doing this her entire life. What is a true marvel for us is her normal. It’s overwhelming to us outsiders, but not to her.”
“But it’s like a peephole into the past.” He put an arm around her shoulders. “This is science fiction stuff. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to experience that for a day. Let alone an entire lifetime.”
“I’m getting better at it.” Mina grinned, apparently not completely immune to his flattery, and shoveled down rice.
Cami smiled. “Yes, you are.” She tucked her legs beneath the robe on the seat next to him.
He refused to let either of them trivialize Mina’s slip. “You know exactly what Sunny is observing, what she’s feeling.”
“Sunny had this intense fear of the man, and still she couldn’t resist goading him on. I could have peeked in his head, but I got enough from Sunny and her sass.”
Cami agreed. “That fits with our research as far as her personality. You’re saying what you saw through Sunny’s eyes in this slip happened a few months before her death?”
Mina nodded. “He told Sunny he’d open a few gaming tables upstairs above her restaurant. Sunny said something like ‘over my dead body,’ and Felix Fortuno told her that can
be arranged. So Sunny told him to go tread water to his barge or crawl back to Vegas since it’d turned out so well the last time.”
Sam scratched his jaw before glancing at Cami, who nodded. He reached for his phone, ran a quick search, and showed a photo of Felix Fortuno to Mina. “That him?”
“No.” Mina frowned. She took the photo and zoomed in on the image. “The mouth and nose are wrong. The hairline too.”
“Not Felix Fortuno.”
Mina sputtered in response. “But he talked about making her see the value of the profit they’d make off illegal gambling. He threatened her. He came off total mobster. Sunny didn’t think or say his name, but if he wasn’t Felix Fortuno, who the hell was he?”
He understood why Mina was pissed off. Based on what she’d said, she’d tried so hard, fought until she was exhausted to isolate that one moment in history. “He wore a hat? At the table? Inside the restaurant?”
“Yeah. And a suit. A nice one.”
“Any real man wore a suit in those days. But she specifically mentioned his hat? And you saw it?” He gestured for her to keep eating.
“Yeah.”
He pieced through the rest of the conversation she’d recounted. “Sunny talked about something floating?”
Mina finished eating and tossed a napkin. “He was a dancer. She talked about his foxtrot, said she’d heard his foxtrot hadn’t been so graceful of a float lately.”
“He wasn’t a dancer. Not foxtrot the dance. Foxtrot was the name of his ship. She was talking about his ship, an illegal floating casino.” He searched on his phone and showed Mina another image. “This the guy?”
“That’s him.” She jabbed her finger at the photo. “Who is he?”
“Arturo Davino. Also known as Artie the Hat.”
“Your hunch about the photographs with him in the background was right.” Cami pushed curls out of her face. “Looks like Sunny’s mother had good reason to worry.”
He lifted his hand to tuck the wayward strand behind her ear. “I need to follow up on the lead. See if I can find us a contact.”
“Think Marilyn or Joe might have connections to someone who knows the family history?”
He shrugged. “Maybe my family history as well.”
Cami opened her mouth, but Mina interrupted.
“Who are you two talking about?” Her gaze cut between them.
Sam probably should’ve been sympathetic to the fact he and Cami had shared enough in only a few weeks, they could communicate without everyone else in the room understanding what they said. Perhaps he was greedy, but he loved knowing what Cami meant when even her sister didn’t.
Cami left his questions about his mystery uncle alone. “Remember when Sam told us he works on screenplays with his brother? Sam researches the local history.”
He stretched an arm over the back of her chair. “My brother Joe specializes in Hollywood noir. Mafia stuff sells, especially mob stories from about 1910 through the 1940s. He’s a big picture thinker. Good at dialogue. Great at action scenes. Not so good at historical detail and accuracy. My sister Lottie keeps him in check on clothes, makeup, hair, all the fashion stuff. The important details that’ll give away a time period if they’re wrong. I work on the straight history part. Who knew who. Who ran what. Connections, how the system worked then in Los Angeles, people in the news. People like Artie the Hat.”
Mina glared at Cami. “You apparently haven’t told us everything about your research.”
“I haven’t had a chance to. I’ve been…” She paused, looking at him. “I’ve been busy.” She cleared her throat and looked across the room at something else, anything else.
He grinned. Her evasiveness was cute, as she obviously thought about what they’d already done in this room and she’d immediately glanced at him when she’d mentioned she’d been otherwise occupied. Not her work. Not her board certification. She was as distracted from her regular life as he was by their intense relationship. Good to know. He tugged her closer.
“What do you mean by mafia connections?” Mina asked.
He shrugged. “Organized crime infiltrated all parts of Hollywood, police, and government in Los Angeles then.”
“How so?” She settled back into her chair.
“Studios owned the actors and directors. Criminals either outright owned the studios or banked their films. Every movie needed stage crew and transport staff. Those were union. Guess who ran the unions?” He stopped Cami before she could pick up the dirty food containers.
“Mobsters.”
He tossed everything from the table into a bin. “Exactly. Those are only a couple of examples in one industry. The crime organization was pervasive.” Tying off the bag, he carried it to the door.
“What else do you know about Sunny Sol’s death and the time period that my sister hasn’t shared?” Mina asked. She and Cami moved to the couches in the living room.
He glanced over his shoulder from the mini bar sink where he washed up. “How long you got?”
Mina rubbed her hands together. “You’re definitely coming to South Pasadena next weekend. Wait until Delia hears this. It’ll be another murder case she can work up. Plus Ruby’s got great insight on death and disease and maiming.”
Sam laughed and sprawled on the couch next to Cami.
She groaned and buried her face against his shoulder. “Mina,” she scolded. “Learn to filter that kind of talk. Most families don’t have a DA who specializes in sex crimes and homicides or a paramedic who talks about her gunshot wound victims and traffic fatalities every day. Sam’s going to think he’s dating into an insane family.”
Mina rolled her eyes. “But he already knows we are witches.”
Cami hid her face behind her hand. He saw the other tightened around the sash of her robe. “Mina!” She lapsed into fast Spanish, not sounding the least bit sweet.
Sam laughed and hugged her when she glanced up between her fingers. He shook his head. How could he not be crazy about this woman? “I’m in.”
A week later, Cami wondered if Sam knew exactly what he had gotten himself into. He sat in the backyard of her parents’ house in South Pasadena, surrounded by her mother Ama, her sisters, and little Rose passed out asleep in Ruby’s lap.
Rose’s flushed face was slack with a bit of drool at the edge of her rosebud mouth. Ruby rubbed her baby’s back in soothing lazy circles. Ama went inside the house for a pitcher of sangria. Cami leaned against Sam with his arm around her shoulders. Bogart flopped at her feet. This was the life.
“Parrots are out,” Delia commented. Yellow-headed Amazons called from the trees above the high plank fence.
“Of course they are,” Ama said as she returned and passed the sangria pitcher. “Cami’s here. The wild parrots flock to our home when she’s around.”
“Wait.” Sam pointed to the birds. “Are you saying those parrots come here because of Cami?”
“Absolutely. There have been wild parrots in South Pasadena for years, but they go and come as they like. They are drawn to our girl.” She turned and gave Cami a searching and censuring look. “Haven’t you told him about your abilities? Mina said he knew.”
“I did, Ama, but we can’t expect people to know the oddities we’ve lived with for a lifetime in a matter of weeks.”
Ama clicked her tongue. “There’s nothing odd about magic. Witchcraft is as old or older than humanity, and Sam should know more about his own people.”
He leaned forward like he was going to ask questions. She certainly had some of her own. What exactly did Ama mean about his people?
“It’ll keep,” Ama assured them. “Today my Kemina wants to speak of Sunny Sol.”
“But I want to hear about Cami and Sam,” Ruby said and jostled Rose. “Come on. I don’t have a romance, and my sisters haven’t had love lives lately to share.”
Cami shook her head. Ruby had experienced enough adventure for three lifetimes, but she’d matched for magical strengths to pass onto her children, not love.
“How did you two meet?” Ruby shifted Rose lower in her lap.
“Delia, Mina, and I had breakfast at his restaurant.” She didn’t mention Mina’s slip or anything incriminating with Ama this close.
“That’s it?” Ruby crinkled her nose. “That’s all I get?”
Cami didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to risk what she and Sam had pieced back together after the magic reveal. No matter what this was to him, whether he considered it a fling or an infatuation, she liked it. Loved it really. But she needed to figure out where this was going before she let it go too far.
Her board certification was over two years and a whole lot of work away. She didn’t know what she feared more—failing at her own plans or losing precious time with Sam? And that alone scared the crap out of her. She scheduled her entire day around a few extra minutes to spend with him.
What if he dumped her? Nerves shot straight to her stomach.
He apparently didn’t share her fears. “Later the same night I hauled Bogart into the animal hospital, and Cami took care of him.”
“Nothing wrong with Bogart, right?” Mina scratched the dog’s head between his ears.
He shook his head. “I still haven’t figured out what happened to spill drain cleaner in the bathroom, but Cami said he didn’t lick any off the floor.”
“My sweet girl would know,” Ama said. “More sangria, Sam?”
“Please. I’d love to get your recipe if you’d share it, Ama.”
Cami tightened her hold on his thigh at the nickname coming from Sam’s lips. She tried to remember if she’d told him that Ama was their version of mommy.
“Of course,” Ama said with a dazzling smile. “The trick’s in the soak and the chill.”
“What?” he whispered when Ama moved away.
“Did I mention Ama is what we call her for mom?”
“So what am I supposed to call her?” he asked quietly.
Nothing escaped Ama’s amazing hearing. She should’ve known better. Her mother gave Sam a gentle smile. “My given name is Eleuia, but feel free to call me Mom if Ama doesn’t suit.”