by Adrianne Lee
“That’s it exactly.”
“I see. And what happens if you can’t change the outcome?”
“Then I will die again and will have to be processed into Heaven despite it not being my time.”
His eyebrows danced and his eyes darkened. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You really believe this occurred.”
“I understand your incredulity. I wouldn’t believe this story, either, if I hadn’t lived it.” If there wasn’t a solid gold hourglass on an unbroken golden chain hanging around my neck. “But you can’t afford not to believe me.”
His sigh rang with pity…for her. “Why in hell would anyone buy this fantasy of yours?”
To stop him from another fit of laughter, she kept her voice stony. “On February twenty-seventh, one of us is going to be shot to death. This time, it is not going to be me.”
And I couldn’t bear for it to be you.
She stammered, “A-and…and Josh needs you.”
“Me? I’m the ‘hapless soul’ who was supposed to be shot?” he roared and jumped to his feet. “Me?”
“‘The hapless chef.’ Yes.”
His gaze was like a sword skewering her to the love seat. Red climbed his neck into his cheeks, and his voice held controlled fury. “If Wendy’s killer really shot you nine days ago, prove it. Tell me who it is.”
Livia winced. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything about my first time through this month. Nothing.”
Swearing, he spun away and paced the length of the room and back. He looked less disbelieving when he returned, finally taking her seriously, as seriously as the bullet hole in his kitchen window. “If this is supposed to come down on February twenty-seventh, why were we shot at today?”
Dear God, why had they been shot at today? She blanched as an upsetting possibility came to her. “My knowing that I was shot on the eve of my wedding has changed things. Altered events by…by—” By my caring for you. “By my realizing I can’t marry Reese. Maybe that’s sped up the time frame. Oh, God, maybe it means we have less time than I originally figured.”
She plucked the hourglass from beneath her sweater to check. The shimmery “sand” within had fallen to seventeen. This day slipping away.
Mark came to the edge of the love seat. “What’s that?”
She started to lift the chain over her head, got it as far as her ears and a hot charge, like touching an exposed wire, zapped her fingers. “Ouch.”
She released the chain, and the hourglass fell innocently to the spot between her breasts as she blew on her fingers.
“What happened?” Mark sat beside her.
“It shocked me. Apparently, I can’t take it off.”
“Bull. I’ll do it.” He grasped the chain, got as far as her ears and dropped it as fast as she had, cursing. “What the hell is that?”
“It appeared on my neck the morning after I died and the Processor granted me the gift of reliving this month. Do you understand? I didn’t put it on, it appeared.”
“It doesn’t hurt you?”
“Sometimes it vibrates, tingles, and other times it warms.”
Gingerly he lifted the hourglass and inspected it, the span of gold lay shiny and pure against the rough texture of his battered hand. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Not with all these demarcation lines. And what is that inside? It’s not sand.”
She shrugged. “My best guess is stardust.”
As fantastic as her suggestion was, he seemed less given to dismissing the possibility out of hand as he might have earlier. “If what you’ve told me is true, then no matter what we do, one of us will die at the end of the month.”
“Maybe that will be the outcome, maybe we can’t change our fates, but we can try. I mean, it can’t be impossible. I’ve already changed something—my intention to marry Reese. I’m sure I hadn’t done that before meeting the Processor because I was adamant that I was getting married the following morning.”
He tilted his head to one side, the boyish gesture charming, reminding her of Josh. “Wouldn’t it be easier to disappear until March?”
“Survival by avoidance? I tried that. Remember the day I fired you? You’d have none of it. You took to following me, even going so far as to enlisting my sister’s help, until it seemed no matter what I did, by trying to avoid the trouble, it was going to find me.”
He offered no apology, just a sheepish grin that said he’d do it again if need be.
She continued, “That’s when I realized I could only be in control if I confronted the danger head-on. I set out to discover who you were and why someone wanted to kill you. I figured knowledge would keep me safe.”
“Well, now you know all my secrets and you’re still in just as much danger.”
“We both are and running away won’t protect us.”
He was still holding the hourglass, staring at it with something between suspicion and disconcertion. She saw it move against his palm, saw his eyes widen. He lifted his gaze to hers and the heat she intuitively knew was warming his skin seemed to leap from the time-piece and into his eyes, awakening that eerie awareness that connected them on this plane and on that other, Heavenly one.
Several heartbeats clicked by, then Mark broke the silence. “Do you really think we can figure out who killed Wendy?”
“We have to. It’s our only hope. And time, as you can see, is slipping away.”
He released the hourglass, swallowed as it gently settled between her breasts, then dragged his gaze to her face. A nerve pulsed in his throat. “I’m not sure what we’re looking for, whether or not there is anything to find, or even where to start a search. Are you?”
“Maybe some of the articles I copied—” Livia broke off, struck by a stunning realization. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, my God, Mark. That’s why we were shot at today. There is something to find.”
Mark let out a whoop and grabbed her. She came into his embrace as though blown on an ethereal wind, moved by forces beyond her very will, her arms circling his neck, her mouth reaching up to meet his, and Livia felt as though she were being swept into an erotic tidal wave.
She slipped off Reese’s ring. She wanted nothing between herself and Mark. For this passion, this man, all hers for such a short time could not, would not, be denied. Not this time. Not when making love with him, even this once, might have to last her an eternity.
Chapter Ten
S’MORES
Any Sweet Dessert
For Two
Indulge Until Sated
Then, Have S’More
“Livia,” Mark moaned against her ear, her tender, delicate ear that was so soft and sweet he wanted to nibble it with his lips. He didn’t want to hurt her, just take her into himself, make her part of him.
The need roaring through his veins ached for release, fast and furious, a quick sampling that he knew would only have him returning for more, much, much more. He’d been too long without a woman he was actually attracted to, one who roused fantasies, invaded his dreams, engaged his interest, made his blood hum, his nerves zing.
Hell, had he ever had a woman like that?
Like Livia?
Her hand furrowed between the buttons of his shirt, her soft fingertips grazing his stomach, loosening something deep in his chest, as though a layer of the armor that encased his heart had given way at her touch, as though she possessed the powers of the angels. Did she? Was that story she’d told him actually true? Had she—could she have been shot with a bullet meant for him, then been given another chance at life?
Just as he’d been given another chance?
But had he really?
Had he gained his freedom, been offered this hope of clearing himself, only to lose in a couple of weeks the future he prayed would be his and his son’s? He gazed into her ardor-bright eyes and found his answer. The one thing he’d learned these past few years was that he couldn’t control the future, he could only survive in the moment, and this moment was all Livia.
; She began to unbutton his shirt and the sudden urge to live every second of whatever time he had in this skin entwined the need already coursing through him, making every breath, every sensation thrilling, exhilarating, intoxicating, cleansing from his mind all doubts, all concerns, anything that wasn’t Livia; for despite his denials to her, his denials to himself, she was already in his heart, had already laid claim to him.
Making love with her would only intensify her hold on him.
Despite the danger of that, the fact of that, he could not resist the taste of her neck, her ears, her mouth, the feel of her yielding body beneath his exploring hands.
“Oh, Mark,” Livia sighed as his shirt fell away, revealing the broad expanse of his chest. Buff bodies were her business, something she was used to seeing on a daily basis, but she’d never seen anything, anyone as beautiful as this man. Her memory of him naked had not done him justice. It wasn’t that he’d sculpted his muscles to perfection, but that God had created him with a symmetry no man could gain by diet and exercise. His beauty was natural. Scars couldn’t mar it, fat couldn’t mar it, growing old couldn’t mar it.
But would he grow old?
Would this chance to make love to him be her first and her last?
She laid her palm over his heart, felt it pounding beneath her fingers, the rhythm like the tap of a sexy dance step, quick, then quicker, mesmerizing, the beat vibrating into her, through her, heating the hourglass between her breasts, increasing the sense that this was the one man she’d been born to love, the one man with whom her fate entwined.
But were they destined to be star-crossed? One of them alive in this world, the other watching down from Heaven?
Mark’s hand went under her sweater, across her stomach, her back, and every worry for what the future held dissolved in the heat of the moment, in the here and now, in the awareness that was Mark. Every breath seemed sweeter than pure oxygen, richer than gourmet chocolate, headier than aged whiskey, all tinged with the unique male scent and whiff of vanilla that was totally Mark. She sighed his name again.
His hands were lighting flames on her skin, searing her nerves, her flesh, melting her clothes into a puddle at their feet. She had expected she might be shy, but his golden gaze grazed her naked body with an awe that seemed to say she was more than he’d imagined, more than he deserved.
“Livia, you’re so delicate, so lovely.” Need rasped his voice and raised goose bumps to shiver across her skin. As bold as he’d been with her clothes between them, now he was tentative as he reached a hand toward her breasts, hesitating as if he hadn’t the right, hadn’t permission, as if once he crossed this line there would be no going back for either of them.
“Do it, Mark. Please.” She caught his hand and brought it to her, leaning into his palm. The hourglass bumped against their joined hands and a flare of light radiated from within it, as glittery as a burst of stardust, as magical as the feel of his hand in hers. She kissed his lips, then his scarred hand, then brought his palm to her breasts, to her roused, sensitive nipples.
He closed his eyes, exhaling on a moan, then glanced at her as though he’d never touched a woman before, as though he were a virgin teen finally living his fantasies, eager with passion, timid with wonderment. Livia couldn’t get enough of the soft abrasive slide of his skin against hers. Every nerve ending was swelling, growing more sensitive by the second, twisting desire into an exquisite coil in the core of her.
She released a joyous murmur and with it Mark seemed released from some self-imposed restraint, from whatever had been holding him back from taking what he wanted. His mouth dipped to possess her breast, and her pleasure leapt higher, deeper, flooding her with a new fire, this one liquid, molten, incandescent.
Mark’s clothes joined hers on the floor and he eased her from the love seat to kneel upon them. He stood in front of her, fully aroused, more glorious than any man she’d ever seen, more glorious than he’d been last time she’d seen him disrobed, but this time she could touch him…and she did. The embers glowing red in the fireplace might be chips of ice compared to the heat emanating from his erection into her caressing hand.
She flicked her tongue against the tip of his arousal, then kissed him, licked him, took him into her mouth. Mark tensed, and gripped her shoulders with an urgency that, between lovers, needed no words.
Livia eased onto her back and lifted her arms to him. He settled between her parted knees, leaned over her, took her head in his hands and lifted her face to his. As their lips collided in a fierce kiss, she felt his need probing the dampness at the center of her and could not endure another second’s wait. She lifted as he plunged, and they came together with an explosive shock of sheer ecstasy that seemed to knock her world from its axis.
With every downward thrust, every near withdrawal, Livia felt as though she were spinning on a tornado of euphoria, lifted out of herself, rocketing with Mark toward the universe and into the stars beyond to burst through the Milky Way. Release came quick and hard, followed by myriad aftershocks, each one sweeter than the last, each leaving her breathless and clinging to Mark as he struggled to regain his own lost breath.
Livia was amazed that he made no move to disengage from her, as though he wanted their connection to last as much as she did. This was a new experience for her. In so many ways, she felt as if she’d never made love before, and she hadn’t, not like this. Not with more than her body. Not with all her heart and soul.
She wanted to do it again, and again. Mark rose up on his elbows and peered at her with something like fear, as though he’d only dreamed she was here and couldn’t quite believe this had actually happened. She lifted her hand and moved that wayward hank of hair from his forehead. “It was real, darling. It is real. As real as this hourglass.”
“As real as you.” He caressed her cheek, kissed her mouth.
She caught that whiff of vanilla again, and when he pulled back, she sighed. “God, you smell so…yummy…like vanilla.”
He seemed surprised. “You can smell it?”
She felt him growing hard inside her again, and murmured, “Yes, always.”
His eyebrows twitched and disconcertion flashed through his eyes, revealing for a brief second a private pain.
She whispered, “Tell me.”
A nerve pulsed at his temple. “The only way I seem able to eradicate the stench of prison that is seared into my olfactory senses is by putting a drop of vanilla right above my upper lip.”
He looked as though this might somehow lower him in her eyes, but though the mystery’s solution was less romantic than she’d imagined, it only made her care about him more. “Well, I love it. It’s the first thing I noticed about you, the first thing that attracted me to you.”
A slow smile tugged at his sensuous mouth and she realized he was fully aroused inside her. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For giving me a new perspective on my negative memories.”
They shared a smile, then she moved her hips against his. “If you’re really grateful…you could show me.”
And he did…several times.
THE NEXT AFTERNOON Mark felt like a teenager who’d lost his virginity and couldn’t wipe the grin from his face. He also had a new appreciation for sore muscles, though he ached in a good way. But in the cold light of day, without the bubble of rapture encasing him, he had to face and deal with the story Livia had told him.
It still seemed unreal, as though he’d been plunked into a sci-fi movie where all the players looked familiar but were actually cyborgs. He glanced at Livia, seated beside him in the catering van. She wore a pale blue turtleneck sweater and faded jeans beneath a sheepskin-lined denim jacket. Her frosted hair feathered her face, accentuating her aqua eyes, giving her an otherworldly, angelic glow.
Keeping him off balance.
Questioning his faith. His beliefs.
After the hell he’d been through, he’d no longer embraced the idea of Heaven
, God, or an afterlife. Then he’d touched that hourglass Livia wore around her neck, and everything he thought he knew had been tested again. But how could he accept that this vital, vibrant woman had died and been given a chance to relive time that had already passed?
Was it any wonder he was disinclined to trust what his eyes showed him as truth?
The crinkle of paper called his attention to her hands and he struggled to ignore the memory of what those hands had done to him last night, and deep into the morning, what he’d like them to do again. She’d been quiet, thoughtful since getting into the van, fiddling with the edges of the food list they’d drawn up until the paper was dog-eared. She wore Reese’s ring today, and he hated seeing it there even though it was necessary. They were headed to Rayburn Grocers to procure the items on the list for the wedding dinner, and he guessed she was mulling over what they were going to say and do once they arrived at the warehouse and began confronting suspects.
She surprised him by saying, “What we need to consider are motive, means and opportunity.”
Mark braked for a red light. He didn’t like this subject, but it was just as necessary as her wearing that ring. He fought to keep his voice even. “The means was a knife stolen from my restaurant kitchen.”
“Yes.” She tapped the now rolled shopping list against her palm. “Which is proof positive that Wendy’s murder was totally planned with you as the intended scapegoat.”
Her heart was in the right place, but her logic escaped him. “How does my knife being used to kill my wife prove my innocence?”
“It’s obvious.” Livia’s voice brooked no argument. “It takes smarts to be a better-than-average chef, right?”
“Agreed.”
“That’s right. And no chef at the level of competency you’ve reached would commit a crime with his favorite, uh, utensil, then leave it behind for the police to find, still stuck in his victim.”
It made sense. In fact, he and his lawyer had argued the same until they were hoarse; the police and the prosecutors hadn’t wanted to hear it. “The thing is, apparently cops deal every day with criminally inept idiots who commit exactly that kind of stupid error.”