MIND READER

by Hinze, Vicki

  “Unusual?”

  “Anything odd—for Decker,” Parker clarified.

  Ina clicked her tongue. “Tuesday night, I did. Struck me more than odd, I don’t mind saying.”

  Caron tensed. “What?”

  “Well, I was sound asleep on the sofa. Dozed off watching the Tonight Show—after the monologue. It just ain’t the same without Johnny. Anyway, I heard a cat mewing. More like screeching, truth to tell. It woke me up. The Kleins, across the street, have a Persian, Fluffy. I figured she’d gotten stuck in Decker’s yard again. Fluffy and Killer don’t exactly get along. He trees her on the shed roof pretty often. Anyway, I looked out my living room window, and I saw Decker outside. He was getting something out of the trunk of his car.”

  Parker leaned forward, over the table. “What was it?”

  “Well, it didn’t make sense then, and it don’t now. Decker don’t have a wife or kids, just Linda—his sister who lives in town—but he was getting a lavender bicycle out of that trunk.”

  Caron’s stomach sank to her knees. Tuesday was the day she’d first imaged the little girl being abducted—off a lavender bike.

  Parker poured hot coffee over the cold in his cup and reached for a second roll. “Could the bike belong to one of Linda’s kids?”

  “Shoot, Linda don’t have any children, boy. She wouldn’t ruin her figure. Married herself a highfalutin man from downtown.” Ina dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “They say he’s richer than that Trump fellow, but I can’t say that for sure. Don’t see him much. Linda comes around every Tuesday, though, regular as clockwork and dressed up fancy.”

  “Was Linda there this past Tuesday?” Caron gave Parker an I-told-you-so glare that clearly annoyed him.

  “Sure was,” Ina said. “I was out working in my flower bed, getting it ready for planting, when she drove up. Smiled and talked real friendly, like usual. But when she left, she sure wasn’t smiling. She was fighting mad, and yelling at Decker that he must have lost his mind.”

  “About what?” Parker asked. “Do you know?”

  “No, I didn’t hear it. But Lily Mae—she lives on the other side of Decker—says she bets it’s got something to do with Linda’s husband. Lily Mae’s seldom wrong about things like that. She’s got this friend, Mary Beth, who works down at the diner near the man’s office. We drop by for lunch sometimes, and from what I’ve overheard, he’d make a fine snake-oil salesman.” She winked and dipped her chin to confirm what she’d said. “Slick tongue.”

  Caron passed the woman a second card. “Here’s my phone number, Ina. If you think of anything else, or see anything odd, will you call?”

  “Sure will. As long as you don’t tell Decker. I don’t need any more trouble with him. Last time we had a run-in, he stomped my irises. Ain’t much of a man who stomps a woman’s irises, if you ask me.”

  Caron agreed.

  Parker smiled, and when Ina escorted them out, then shut the door, he said, “I think Ina Erickson can hold her own.”

  Caron would’ve answered. But she couldn’t get her voice to work. She’d never seen Parker relaxed and at ease. His smile touched his eyes, and the accusing gray glints had softened to soft gray glimmers.

  “Caron?”

  His amused tone had her snapping to; he was holding the door open. She avoided his eyes and slid into the car, flatly refusing to accept what was happening. She couldn’t be attracted to him. Not to Parker Simms. The man was insulting and rude—and he didn’t even think there was a case!

  He folded himself into the car, and the smell of his cologne and rain mingled with the scent of leather. Her throat felt thick. Parker Simms was guilty on all counts. But he was also the first man in a long time who had her hormones humming louder than a swarm of droning bees.

  She didn’t care for the feeling; actually, she hated it. But only a fool would deny it. And only a fool would fail to accept that under the circumstances being attracted to Parker Simms was stupid and crazy.

  Knowing that, she must have misjudged her reactions to him. Checking to make sure, she gave him another look. The flutters came back to her stomach, and that little tingle of anticipation danced along her nerves. He smiled, and her hormones zipped into overdrive. There was no mistake; she was attracted.

  And stupid and crazy.

  Chapter 3

  Caron shivered.

  Sitting in her parked Chevy about three houses down from Decker’s, she pulled her raincoat closer around her and looked up at the streetlight. Through the rain, it glowed hazy. The lights inside the houses did, too. But the street itself was eerily dark between the amber lamps, and quiet.

  Caron locked the car door with her elbow, then reached for the box of tissues. Her breath had the window fogging, blocking her view. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees since dark.

  A tap sounded on her window. Caron gasped.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Parker.” She relaxed. He’d gone to get them something to eat. She reached over and unlatched the passenger door. “Go around.”

  He did. Caron watched him through the smeared windshield. He was holding a paper bag.

  Parker cracked the door open, mashed the button to keep the dome light off, then slid in. “It’s really coming down.”

  Rain slicked his hair and ran in rivulets down his face to his throat and disappeared inside his jacket. Watching it, Caron felt her throat muscles tighten and heard her stomach growl.

  “Good.” Parker slid her a grin. “You are hungry.” He dug inside a crackling sack, then held out something wrapped in white paper. “Hamburger.”

  Caron’s mouth watered. She could smell the still-sizzling meat, the mustard and dill pickles. She loved dill pickles. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” He pulled a cup from the bag and passed it, too. “Coffee. Black coffee.”

  “Observant.” Caron set the cup on the dash and lifted the top. Steam rose from it and fogged the windshield again. She unwrapped the crinkling white paper from the burger and took a bite. Mmm, it was good. Hot and juicy, just the way she liked. The Butterfinger she’d had for lunch had worn off a long time ago, and it was already after 9:00 p.m.

  Parker pulled a carton from the sack. “Egg fu young,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d like it. So I got you the burger.”

  He’d made the right decision; she wouldn’t have liked it. “I hate vegetables.”

  She took another bite. It didn’t want to go down. There was something too intimate about sharing a meal in a dark car on a rainy night with Parker Simms.

  Parker opened the carton and stabbed his fork into his egg fu young. He splashed brown gravy onto his finger and licked it off.

  Great hands. Long, competent fingers. She stopped eating long enough to sip the coffee. It warmed her throat, and she stopped shivering. But the overall temperature seemed to have spiked fifty degrees, and, she admitted, it had nothing to do with the coffee or with Mother Nature’s whims. Caron gave Parker a wary look. “You’re a health food nut, then? Only vegetables?” It fit. He was a big man, powerfully built.

  “Not really. I just don’t dump chocolate into my body twenty-four hours a day.” He shifted and pulled a candy wrapper from the seat beneath him. “Do you ever eat anything besides Butterfingers?”

  “Not if I can help it.” Despite an explicit decision not to, she smiled. Inwardly groaning at her weakness, she swung her gaze to Decker’s front door, determined to keep it there and her mind off Parker Simms’s attack on her senses.

  “I guess I owe you an apology, don’t I?”

  Caron turned back to Parker. “An apology?”

  “I’m sorry I clammed up about Charley.”

  She waited, but he didn’t say any more. “And I’m sorry you lost your dad, Parker.” Maybe his pain was worse than her own. He had a lifetime of memories of his father to recall. She had only seven years.

  “He was a good man. I admired him.”

  She wanted to say so
mething, but feared that if she did Parker would stop talking.

  “He was shot,” Parker said softly. “You asked how he died.”

  “That must have been hard. No time for goodbyes.”

  Parker frowned, his gaze on his food. “My mother had a really hard time accepting it. So did my sister, Megan.”

  So had he. Caron brushed a raindrop off his neck. “How old were you?”

  “Twenty. Megan was fifteen.”

  There was bitterness here, deep-rooted and blinding. “What happened?”

  Parker’s shrug brushed their shoulders. “Megan had just started dating. Her first boyfriend came around to pick her up. They were going to the movies.”

  He paused for a second. Caron didn’t push.

  “Charley recognized the guy and refused to let Megan go. He was a hood, Caron. Charley wouldn’t have interfered if he’d been a decent guy.”

  “He was protecting his daughter.”

  “Yes.” Parker put the carton on the dash. “Megan was angry and upset. Charley tried to calm her down. So did Mom. But she wasn’t ready to be calmed.”

  “At fifteen, a girl holds a lot of righteous indignation when people get into her love life.”

  “Exactly,” he said, sounding relieved. “Anyway, when Charley left for work, Megan still wasn’t speaking to him.

  And about four the next morning, the officers came to tell us that Charley had been shot.”

  Caron could only imagine the horrible shock and pain of that visit. She reached out and touched Parker’s sleeve. “It was Megan’s date, wasn’t it? He shot Charley.”

  Parker nodded, and for an instant she saw pain flash in his eyes. It was gone so quickly, at first she thought she’d imagined it. But she felt him tremble under her hand and she knew that she hadn’t. Parker had been very close to his father, and she would have bet her life that he hadn’t shared his grief or loss with many others.

  She’d been wrong about him, thinking he was cold and lacked compassion. He wasn’t. He was one of those men who lived close to the bone, kept things that mattered private. Boy, did she relate.

  A porch light across the street from Decker’s flicked on. Parker grunted. “That’s the third time.”

  “I haven’t seen it.”

  “You’ve been watching me and not seeing anything else. Tunnel vision.”

  Caron wished that weren’t true. Then she wouldn’t have glimpsed inside Parker Simms and become even more attracted to him. But she had. “Not guilty,” she lied. “I’ve been fixed on Decker’s.”

  “Right.”

  Knowing she’d never swallow another bite after telling that whopper and having it disputed, she wrapped the uneaten half of the burger and put it on the dash. “What have I missed?”

  “Two doors back, left side of the street. There’s a couple in the car, arguing.”

  Caron looked back. The car was parked directly under the streetlamp, and she could see the outlines of two people inside.

  “That dog,” Parker went on, pointing half a block up the street, “is making hash of somebody’s garbage. He’s strewing it all over the place.”

  “What dog?”

  Parker leaned closer. “That one.”

  His body heat flowed to her, seeping deep inside her. She moved away. “Okay, so I’ve been fixed on Decker’s,” she said defensively, and not honestly. “But that’s why we’re here.”

  Parker gave her a look she couldn’t see well in the dim light, though she sure could feel it. “You’ve got to learn to expand, Caron. Not to fixate on one thing at a time.”

  “I have to focus,” she said, gripping the steering wheel. “Otherwise, I might miss something important.”

  The porch light flickered on a fourth time, and a woman peeked out through a curtained window. “She’s noticed us.”

  “Yes.” Parker dumped his empty carton into the sack, crunched it, and set it on the floorboard. “Her husband will be out in a minute.”

  As if on cue, the front door opened and a man stepped out onto the porch, wearing a yellow slicker and Mud Boots. The woman stood behind him, watching. He walked down the steps and headed toward them.

  Parker waited until the guy passed the end of the box hedge and turned onto the sidewalk. Then he pulled Caron into his arms and dipped his head to kiss her. Near her mouth, he paused and brushed her lips with his fingertip. Her eyes stretched wide. Very pretty, that. “Mustard,” he whispered, then covered her mouth with his.

  She let out a little gasp and pushed against his chest.

  “Shh, kiss me, Caron,” Parker said, and as if she understood his motives then, she stilled her hands and let them just rest against his chest. Beneath her fingers, he felt his heart pound. God, but her lips were soft. And she smelled so good. So warm and sweet. He’d wanted to kiss her at least a hundred times today.

  Her fingers began moving, rubbing tiny strokes against his jacket. She flattened her hand against it, as if the creamy leather were seducing her palm. She wanted to touch him. Parker groaned and thrust his tongue deep into her mouth. She tried pulling back, but he buried his hands in her hair and held her firmly to him, crushing his lips down on hers.

  “Parker,” she gritted out between sweeps of his tongue. “Knock it off.”

  “Shh.” He pulled back far enough to talk, but his voice was as shaky as an old woman’s. “Make it look good, or have your answers ready.”

  From the corner of her eye, Caron saw the man near the front of the car, and again fused her mouth with Parker’s. His lips were gentle, soft and heated, and he tasted faintly of shrimp and brown gravy. She loved shrimp and smooth, hot brown gravy. He smelled wonderful, too. Like fresh air, rain, and some heavenly cologne she’d didn’t recognize. Very masculine. Very inviting. Very, very tempting.

  He caught her lower lip and tugged, then plunged his tongue deep into her mouth. White heat washed through her body, and Caron nearly melted into the seat. His throaty groan told her he had noticed her reaction, too. And, determined that he not make a one-sided issue of the matter later, she wound her arms around his neck, her fingers into the silky curls at his nape. Never in her life had she felt anything so sensual as that silky curl wrapping around her finger while the back of her hand caressingly brushed against warm male skin.

  A tapping on the window grew insistent.

  Parker cranked down the glass without breaking their kiss, then looked over at the man. “Yes?”

  “What are you two doing out here?”

  Parker thought that was obvious. Every window in the car was steamed up. Caron tried to move away. He should let her—their kiss had served its purpose and more. But he held her to him. “We had a little disagreement,” he told the man in an unsteady voice. “But everything’s fine now.”

  The man gave Parker a totally male look. “Well, find a motel. My old lady’s breaking her neck watching you two.”

  Parker rolled the glass back up, then glanced at Caron. Her hand rested in a fist against his chest. She kept her gaze fixed on his neck, but even in the dim light he could see that she was blushing.

  “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said from between gritted teeth. She pulled away, shifted over on the seat, and gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles stood raised like knobs. “Not ever.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.” Parker ignored the daggers she was sending his way. “I’ll admit you could use a little practice. But you don’t kiss that bad.” If she’d been any better, he’d have been making love with her on the front seat. That lack of control over his own body infuriated him. Of all the women in the world, this one he didn’t want. The trouble was, his body did want her. And it wanted her badly.

  “Shut up, Simms.”

  “What did I do?” He knew exactly, of course. Her breathing hadn’t yet steadied, either. The aroused male in him loved that; he knew from watching her that she didn’t often come unglued in a man’s arms. But she’d come un-glued in his.

  “Would you just shu
t up?” She grabbed a tissue and began swiping at the windows.

  She didn’t look vulnerable now. She looked ready to scratch his eyes out. Knowing she’d been just as affected as he took away some of the sting. His body had betrayed him. But hers had betrayed her, too. Lust was tough on the ego, and on the conscience. It demanded tackling before it could be dismissed. So, Parker told himself, he’d tackle. “What did you think?”

  “About what?”

  If she kept rubbing that same spot as hard as she was, she’d wear a hole in the windshield. He covered her hand with his and held it still. “About the kiss, Caron.”

  She drew in a sharp breath, then let it out slowly. She didn’t fight him, didn’t try to free her hand. It felt small, nearly fitting into his palm. And warm. So warm.

  “I didn’t like it.”

  Her breath warmed his face. He smiled into her eyes. Passion still lurked there. She’d liked it...too much. “Good. I didn’t like it, either.”

  That frosted her voice. “You don’t make sense. Has anyone ever told you that? You kiss like an inferno, then claim you’re an iceberg. Are you always like this?”

  He brushed her hair back over her shoulder. Her flesh quivered under his hand. “Look, honey, let’s cut to the chase.”

  “I’m not your honey.”

  “No, you aren’t. But for some reason neither one of us can figure, our bodies have been whispering sweet nothings to each other all day and half the night. No, don’t deny it. I’m not dull, and neither are you.”

  “Okay, I won’t. I can be honest about my feelings,” she said, strongly implying that he couldn’t. “You’re a gorgeous hunk. What woman wouldn’t react to that? But I don’t like you, Parker. And I hate myself for knowing that and yet still finding you appealing. Inside, you’re as phony as they come.”

  “Phony?” He frowned, genuinely surprised. “Me?”

  “You,” she insisted. “You weren’t any more attracted to Meriam Meyer than you are to me, yet you were able to cozy up to her as though she was irresistible.”

  His jaw hung loose. Where did she come off, saying he was a phony? “In case you didn’t notice, Snow White, it was our plan for me to keep Meriam occupied so you could have some privacy to steal the book.”