The soothing smells of Akasha wafted slowly into her psyche, like a balm to her soul. The wind chimes she’d hung all over the place tinkled magically. And she knew, no matter what consequences she might face, that she had done the right thing.
Chapter Three
The house wasn’t theirs. Not yet. They were still renting, while they waited for the loan to be approved. With her sterling reputation, thriving business, and healthy financial state, Brigit had been looking forward to a quick approval.
But it wouldn’t happen now, would it?
No, Brigit realized as her bare feet sank into the grass at the edge of the driveway. Her shoes dangled from the two fingers of her left hand. No, the loan wouldn’t be approved, not if Zaslow was as good as his threats. Not if he exposed her as a thief. A forger. A criminal.
She bit her lip as the wind stirred the dead leaves at her feet, and carried their scent up to twirl it around her face. The porch swing swayed, emitting a lonely creak. It was a small porch, little white railing all the way around. She’d always wanted a porch swing. And a neat white house with black shutters. It was the kind of place she’d dreamed about when she’d been a lonely little girl at St. Mary’s. The kind of place she’d imagined she might live in one day, when she had a real family. The family she’d fantasized about had never come to adopt her. But she had the house now. And she had Raze. He was her family.
She liked to think that if her sister were real, she’d have found a place like this, and a dreamworld family to go along with it. If she were real. Seemed less likely all the time, though.
Brigit had tried once, a few years ago, to check into the records in Albany, to find out for sure if she’d had a twin. But she’d been told the records were sealed and that was that. She would probably never know.
There were window boxes on the front of her little house. She’d grown riots of pansies in them every summer since she and Raze had moved in here.
She tried to swallow and couldn’t, so she settled on blinking her eyes dry and mounting the steps. The screen door squeaked when she opened it, banged closed again when she let it go. The stairs right in front of her led up to the bedrooms. The living room lay on her left, the dining room on her right. Raze wasn’t in either of them.
“Raze? Are you here?”
No answer. She dropped the shoes to the floor, frowning, and walked the full circle, through the living room, into the kitchen that took up the entire rear third of the house, around into the dining room and back to the front door. Growing more worried by the second, she called out again. Raze was getting old. The thought of him hurt...or sick...turned her stomach to a vat of bubbling corrosives. She headed upstairs.
“Raze?”
Brigit’s heart jumped into her throat when there was still no answer. She checked both bedrooms and the bathroom, panic taking a firm hold.
There was a thud below. Seconds later, a motor roared and revved like a frustrated bull. Brigit lurched into motion, racing through the hallway and swinging around the corner and down the stairs. The front door stood wide open, and she launched herself through it. “Raze! Where are you? What’s—”
The car’s tires spun on the dry pavement, sending the stench of hot rubber into the air. She glimpsed two forms in the front seat, and the one on the passenger side was stooped. The face silhouetted, the whiskers familiar and dear. The car sped away, red taillights shrinking rapidly.
“Raze!” Brigit screamed, racing down the steps, across the front lawn and into the street, running for all she was worth. As if she stood a chance of overtaking a speeding car. “No! Nooo!”
Only when the vehicle was no longer visible did she stop. Her entire body trembled, and her knees were shaking with the effort of remaining locked. Tears burned twin trails down her face. God, she had to do something!
She turned, making her way back to the house, though it was an effort with the dizziness of shock and the way her body seemed to want to turn to liquid. Looking up from the bottom of the front steps, she stopped in her tracks.
There, on the door, was Raze’s Mets cap, pinned to the wood by the blade of a knife. A small square of white paper fluttered there, too, like a butterfly trying to escape the pin. It was held over the cap by the same blade. Sinking slowly to her knees, trembling all over, Brigit realized what was happening. She didn’t even need to see words scrawled carelessly across that slip of paper. But she leaned closer, and read them anyway. Two words.
Do it!
Nothing more. But what more was needed?
***
Adam paced the admissions office like a prisoner awaiting a parole board decision. Maxine, at the desk, was in no such nervous state. She seemed to derive incredible amounts of pleasure from the slow dipping of her doughnut into her coffee. Getting it just soggy enough. Then snatching it up to her mouth to catch the moist end before it fell into a blob on her desk.
So far she was two for three.
And in between bites, she glanced into her huge black book, where everything that went on in this office was recorded.
“Well?”
“No record of a new student signing up for your class yesterday, Adam. Sorry.” She moved the doughnut to the cup again.
“She didn’t sign up,” he snapped, then regretted it when her hand froze in mid-dunk, and a large portion of doughnut dissolved and disappeared into the murky black depths of her coffee. “Sorry. But I told you that once. She came to ask about signing up and I told her I was out of room.”
Maxine lifted the doughnut from the cup, shaking her head and clucking her tongue as she surveyed the damage. She peered into the cup, brows furrowing. “Well, what did you tell her that for? You’re not, are you?” One finger plumbed the coffee sea, in search of survivors, he figured.
“I thought I was, but then I checked my roster last night and realized I have room after all.” Bald-faced lie, yes, but he was desperate.
Desperate, and damned if he knew why, to see that woman again. He hadn’t slept. Instead he’d tossed and turned in his bed all night, alternately sweating and shivering, seeing her face every time he closed his eyes.
Something about the woman had grabbed him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. And if he didn’t get to the bottom of this he was going to go insane!
“Adam?”
He cleared his throat, straightened his tie. “I was hoping she left her name or an address or something. She must have had to sign in somewhere. All visitors do, don’t they?”
Maxine’s forefinger emerged from her coffee cup at last, with a globule of doughnut mush coating it. She popped it into her mouth. And when she pulled her now clean finger out again, it was with a loud smacking sound.
“Well, there’s nothing in my notes. What did you say she looked like?”
What did she look like? Adam lowered his head, picturing her again in his mind. It was easy. Because her face wasn’t strange to him. It was eerily familiar, and that was part of what was driving him nuts about this. He knew he knew her. He just couldn’t place her. “Small,” he said, and his voice was a little softer than it had been before. “Delicate.” The word slipped out before he gave it much thought. “And she has these eyes that just...”
He brought his head up. Maxine had lost interest in the doughnut. Her attention was all his now. Brown eyebrows which had never been dyed to match the copper-red hair rose in twin arches. “Well, now. Isn’t that interesting? She had eyes, you say?”
Her voice was full of speculation, and her double chin damn near quivered with amusement. “Ebony eyes,” he said, careful to keep his voice cool and detached. “Hair to match, long and curly. When she left, she seemed a little...distraught.”
She’d been distraught all right. Almost as if looking at him—touching him—had shaken her as much as looking at and touching her had shaken him. Why, though? Why?
What did she really want with him?
A little voice inside whispered a warning, once again. But it was quieter now. This need
to see her again had all but drowned it out. Still, he heard it, recognized it. A woman with this kind of power over him—one he sensed was lying—was the last thing Adam needed in his life right now.
But despite the very real, icy fear that writhed in the pit of his stomach at the thought of seeing her, Adam was convinced he could handle this thing. He could keep his feelings in check, talk to her as if she were just a stranger. Hell, he only wanted to see her long enough to make her tell him where they’d met before.
Liar!
As much as he detested dishonest women, he figured he could stand her that long. Unless she decided to lie about that, too.
Maxine puckered her brows and sighed. “I just don’t remember seeing anyone like that in here yesterday. Sounds...pretty, though.” Reaching for her doughnut with one hand, she flipped a few pages in her book with the other. Then stopped abruptly. “Well, what do you know? Here she is. Hmm, that’s not my writing. She must have stopped in while I was out to lunch. You were right, someone stuck her name on the visitors list.”
“Well?”
She turned the book around and Adam leaned down. Brigit Malone. Akasha, The Commons. That was all it said. “What the hell is Akasha?”
“Akasha?” The male voice from behind Adam made him turn around to see his best student, Michael Sullivan, lounging in the doorway. “Oh, come on, Mr. Reid. Akasha. You know, the fifth element. The omnipresent spiritual power that permeates the universe and all that.”
Adam frowned. “I was talking real life, kid, not religious myth.”
“Skeptic,” Michael accused. Then he shrugged. “Well, in real life it doubles as a flower shop on the Commons. Great place. You ought to check it out.”
Adam nodded slowly. “I think I will.”
“Uh, can you do us a favor and wait ‘til after class? Everyone’s waiting on you, Mr. Reid. I got elected to come looking.”
Jerking his wrist up to eye level, Adam blinked in surprise. He was never late for anything. He was the most notoriously prompt, the most organized man on campus. He never got distracted like this.
“Anything wrong, Mr. Reid?”
“No.” He looked at his watch again, confirming he was ten minutes late for his own class. Distractedly, he started for the door.
“You’re forgetting your briefcase, Adam.”
He turned to Maxine, saw her plump finger pointing to the floor where he’d set it down. Shaking his head, he bent to pick it up.
“You’re not yourself,” Maxine whispered at him. She sent him a wink. “Must be those eyes.”
Maybe it was. More likely, though, it was this niggling feeling, half-anticipation, half-dread, when he thought about seeing her again.
He managed to get through class, but he was thinking about seeing her, getting the answers to his questions, the whole time. He couldn’t seem to carry a thought to completion before he lost the thread. Couldn’t seem to concentrate, wasn’t focused. The kids tossed their theories at him as to the origin of the Celtic text, and he listened. Didn’t argue, didn’t question. Just listened.
It seemed to take forever, but the class finally ended. His timer bell pinged and he walked out, just like that. Papers strewn over the desktop. Drawers unlocked. And ten minutes later, he was at the front door of Akasha.
The sign said closed. But as he peered through the glass, he saw movement, so he tried the door and found it unlocked.
He stepped through and into what seemed like another world. The place sparkled. The place actually sparkled. And it wasn’t just the crystal prisms turning slowly in the windows, and reflecting rainbows of color that danced with a life of their own, touching everything. It wasn’t just the many windows that seemed not only to admit golden sunlight, but to enhance it somehow. Or the plants that lined every available bit of space. The place smelled magical. A mingling of incredible perfumes, plants and flowers, and some sort of incense, too, he thought, permeated it. And the sound of it sparkled, too. Mystical music floating softly on fragrant air, touching him, caressing him. Those wind chimes that came alive with the slightest change in the air currents, whispering, tinkling whenever he moved.
He stood still, just inside the door, lost in sensations for several moments, before he gave his head a shake and reminded himself why he’d come here. To see her and figure out why he felt he knew her. It was important, somehow. He’d sensed that from his first glimpse of her.
No one stood behind the counter. He heard something. A sniffle. A sob. Adam was still holding the door in one hand, and he let it go now, stepping farther inside, scanning the aisles in search of her. The door swung closed, tinkling the chimes overhead as it passed.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not really open today.”
It was her voice, but not deep and resonant as it had been yesterday. It was tear-choked and hoarse. It came from somewhere beyond the slightly opened door in the back. And he moved toward it, an odd sensation snaking around in his stomach.
“I just came in to take care of a few things,” she went on, guiding him in, drawing him nearer. He thought of sirens, and wondered if he were about to crash on the rocks. “And then I’m going...”
He nudged the door open and stepped through it, into the warmth and light and humidity of a small room made completely of glass. Her greenhouse.
She stopped speaking as if she sensed him there. Lowering the watering pot to a bare spot between several ferns, she lifted her head, met his gaze. And behind the round glasses, those black eyes were as mysterious as ever, more so even, because they glimmered beneath an ocean of tears. She wore a green silk blouse, tucked into a modest black skirt that hung loosely on her, and skimmed the tops of her knees. Her wild hair was caught up in a tight French braid that hung down to the middle of her back. This was her costume. He knew it instinctively. Yesterday she’d taken it off, and tried to look like one of his students. And he thought maybe she didn’t even realize that she’d been more herself in jeans and a crop top with her hair wild and free, than she was now in her uniform of propriety.
And why the hell was he thinking as if he knew her better than she knew herself? He hadn’t even met her, yet, technically speaking,
“And then you’re going...?”
She blinked, averting her face and removing her glasses long enough to swipe the back of one hand over her wet eyes and tear-stained cheeks. “Never mind. It’s...not important.”
“Looks pretty damned important to me.”
He moved closer, because he couldn’t stop himself. And she stood perfectly still, watching him, quickly slipping those glasses back on as if to hide behind them. Fear and—God, was that longing?—mixed in her eyes, and he almost believed she couldn’t have moved away if she’d wanted to. He reached out, unable to control the impulse to brush at a tear she’d missed—or was it simply because he had to touch her again? He ran his thumb across her cheek, his other fingers spreading gently over her face. And there was something. Something that sent his heart slamming against his ribs and made his throat close off. Something potent and startling and unexpected. Though it shouldn’t have been. He’d reacted much the same yesterday, hadn’t he? It was as if he fell under some kind of spell every time he looked into her eyes. And yet he couldn’t seem to resist looking into them anyway.
The way her eyes widened, the way she sucked in a sharp gasp and pulled away from his touch, he was well on the way to convincing himself she’d felt it too, whatever the hell it was.
His hand hovered in the air for a moment longer. Then he lowered it, feeling like a fool. And he searched for something to say. What did you say to a beautiful, weeping stranger?
“Is there anything I can do to help?” She held his gaze with those moist, mesmerizing, soul-searching eyes of hers...and very slowly, she nodded.
Chapter Four
She tried not to look into his eyes. She couldn’t afford to feel his pain, or to see the other things coming to life in those deep blue gemstones. Other things. Like the way he looked at her
. As if he were seeing the epitome of his fondest dream. As if she were something precious, rare, something he’d never thought he’d see.
She was nothing. Less than nothing. A criminal unworthy of even a passing glance from this man.
Brigit strained, for once, to find the girl she’d been years ago. The one who had been willing to do whatever was necessary to survive. The one who’d felt—as lousy as the world had treated her—that it had no right to expect anything better in return. The one who’d lived in a condemned building, and who’d sold her soul without batting an eye, to save the life of the old man who’d once saved hers. Right now, instead of denying the existence of that wild thing inside her, she longed to hide behind it. To be ruthless and clever and devious, the way she’d been then, when she’d done whatever was necessary to survive.
She had no choice but to do it again. And it was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done. She told herself it shouldn’t be. That she need only think of Raze in the hands of that monster Zaslow, think of the things Zaslow might do to him if she failed. It would give her the strength to go through with this. She’d do whatever she had to. She’d forge the damned painting.
How, though? How the hell was she going to lie her way into Adam Reid’s house? Into his life?
She dared a glance at him. He stood there, waiting for her to speak. Okay, then. There was no more putting this off. She knuckled her eyes dry again, and replaced her glasses with careful deliberation. She straightened her spine.
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t usually greet my customers with tears.”
He tried for a smile, but it was unconvincing. He wore the baffled, confused expression he’d always worn in her dreams of him. “Maybe I should come back another time.”
“No. I’m fine now, really.”
He looked at her, one golden brow arched in disbelief.
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