by Meg Ripley
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Her face flushed slightly, and she batted her long eyelashes. “I thought maybe you were looking for something for your little one. You must be one of the guys who actually knows what he’s doing with kids.” She cast a quick glance at Finn and then looked back at Holden.
He watched her for a moment, his brows furrowed as he tried to understand what she was saying. Then he remembered that the males of the species weren’t often the caretakers of the younglings. It happened, and Xander said there was more of a trend toward it now than there had been in human history, but it still wasn’t the norm.
Looking down at Finn, he wondered how that could possibly be. The child wasn’t his biologically, but he was part of Holden’s clan, nevertheless. He had made a commitment to care for the little one, and he would do everything in his power to follow through. If human males weren’t like that, then he felt sorry for the women who had to deal with them.
“Do you always do the shopping, or does your wife?” the woman asked.
Holden realized what was happening: he was being hit on. It was flattering, in a way, but he wasn’t interested in anyone who wasn’t his mate, the woman who could be his partner in life and in raising this child. He didn’t know anything about this lady, but he could feel she most definitely wasn’t the one.
“I do.” Holden answered, continuing past the woman, down the aisle. There was a mutter behind him, but he ignored it. Holden grabbed a random box from the shelf labeled Captain Crunch and turned down the next aisle.
When he had made his way to the back of the store, he stared at the plastic packages in the meat department with disgust. There was no telling how old the food was, but it was obviously not fresh. Finn babbled constantly to himself and was getting louder and louder, distracting Holden from trying to decipher the difference between chuck roast and rib roast. “Easy there, little one,” he crooned. “We’ll be moving again in a minute.”
But Finn continued, and he hopped up and down in the constraint of the cart seat.
Holden turned to see the boy pointing at something on the other side of the store. The child practically screeched with excitement, and Holden knew the other customers were beginning to stare. He didn’t want to call attention to himself, and he definitely didn’t want the impromptu help of strange women who thought him incapable of his fatherly duties. He grabbed Finn’s stuffed bear and waggled it in the air. “Here you go. Why don’t you talk to your bear for a minute?”
Finn quieted down for a moment, and Holden turned back to the shelves of meat. He was working his way through trying different cuts and different recipes, trying to find something that not only reminded him of the food on Charok, but would be acceptable to any humans who might decide to drop by. He’d made the mistake once before of cooking chunks of meat over an open flame. The smoke that had poured out the windows of his home had brought his neighbors running. Fortunately, they had laughed it off and chalked it up to Holden being a single dad who didn’t know any better. An older lady from down the street had offered to give him cooking lessons, should he decide he wanted them, and that had been the end of it. But that wouldn’t be good enough forever, and so Holden had persisted.
“La la la. La! La la! LA LA LA LA!” Finn was hollering at the top of his lungs, and he was once again pointing.
Holden was tempted to lean down and explain to the boy that it wasn’t nice to point. That was what he had seen other parents do, but it didn’t seem right. Finn had made it very clear that he had something to say, and Holden saw no reason to ignore him. “Alright, what is it?”
He turned around and bumped right into another shopper, stepping back instantly, and automatically apologized. “I’m sorry. I was talking to my son and I didn’t see you.”
“That’s quite alright.”
He recognized the voice. He’d only caught a snippet of it a few nights ago, and she wasn’t nearly as out of breath as she had been back at The Parlor, but there was no doubt it was her. Holden blinked and found the woman he had rescued at the bar standing right in front of him. She was pushing a cart full of fresh vegetables and bread from the bakery, and she wore her hair down. The woman had stared up at him with wonder once he had chased off her attacker, but now her cerulean gaze was set only on Finn.
“What a handsome little man you are,” she murmured. “Are you out shopping with your daddy?”
Finn grinned and clapped his hands, and then pointed at her once again. “La la!”
“How did you know my name was Leah?” the woman asked with a smile. It was only then that she happened to glance up at Holden, and the smile instantly disappeared. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hi.” Holden felt his body reacting the same way it had when he’d seen her before. He had wanted desperately to shift once he’d seen her and caught her scent, but it had been even worse once he’d jumped in to protect her. She brought out the inner dragon in him, and it was likely that she didn’t even know it. He sucked in a breath and willed his body to remain in its current form. It had been a fight to stay human ever since he had arrived on Earth, and he had a feeling he would have to sneak down to the basement later that night and let his body have its way for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” the woman—Leah—said as she turned to leave. “You just have such an adorable child, and I wasn’t paying any attention. I’m sorry.”
He was losing his chance, and there was no guarantee that he would see her again. He had her first name now, but he doubted that would be enough to track her down. Holden racked his brain, trying to remember what he was supposed to do next. He smiled and tried to look confident. “That’s alright. You can make it up to me by having dinner with me tonight.”
A wave of red crept up her neck, to her face, and all the way to her hairline. Leah flapped her hands at her sides and shook her head as she took a few steps backwards. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” She gazed at Finn for one final, long moment before grabbing her cart and hurtling down the aisle.
Holden stared after her, wondering exactly what he had done wrong. It was going to be a long time before he understood what women really wanted. “Come on, Finn,” he said soberly as he put a package labeled stew meat in his cart, and then grabbed a roast as well. “We’ll try something new for dinner.” When he reached the checkout, he saw the same cart Leah had been pushing abandoned at the front of the store. She had been so eager to get away from him that she hadn’t even bothered to buy her groceries.
5
Leah pressed her hands to her forehead. It had been a long week, and it was one she hoped to forget very soon. She’d already been flustered when that mysterious man had saved her back at the bar, and then she had gone and completely embarrassed herself in front of him only a few days later. Leah couldn’t even quite explain to herself why she had felt so humiliated. He was the one who had stepped in front of her as he turned around, and it hadn’t been her fault that she’d bumped into him. She’d been so preoccupied with her grocery shopping, trying to remember everything she needed, that she hadn’t even noticed him until she’d already carried on an entire conversation with his tot. Now there was a reason to be embarrassed. Leah didn’t know anything about kids, and yet she had stopped and talked to that little guy like he was an old friend.
It had been weird and awkward, and she was doing her best to throw herself into her work. Living in an apartment over her office made for an easy commute to work, and she headed down the stairs Wednesday morning to put in her online hours and check her email.
A request popped up almost as soon as she logged on. A woman in Phoenix wanted to know if she should change jobs. Leah flipped on her webcam and smiled, prepared to put her mind in the right place to help her client. Video chats never gave her quite the same connection she got from meeting someone in person, but it was nice to be able to help people from all over the world.
“I think my husband might not be happy in our marriage anymore,” the woman on the other end explained. She had identified herself as
Vivian, although Leah knew that probably wasn’t her real name. “He seems to be losing interest.”
Leah shuffled a deck of tarot cards as she reached out mentally to this woman. “Even the best of relationships can be difficult,” she said softly. “But we’ll see what we can find out. Would you like to tell me why you think your husband isn’t happy?”
Most people imagined that simply because she was psychic, she would instantly know everything about their lives. It happened occasionally, when she had the chance to touch someone who carried particularly powerful energies with them. Pete from the bar was a good example. But it wasn’t always that clear, and the more she knew about a person, the easier it was to give them an accurate reading. Leah never pressured anyone to reveal details, but they almost always wanted to.
“Well, let’s see.” Vivian looked down at her hands. Her webcam only gave a fuzzy picture, but Leah could just make out the small apartment behind her. “He works all the time these days. It used to be that he’d come home right after work, but now he always has extra meetings or paperwork he has to do, and he doesn’t get home until after dinner.”
“Have you tried talking to him about it?” Leah began laying out her cards. Sometimes, people just wanted someone to listen to their problems. They didn’t necessarily need a psychic to know they had issues that needed to be resolved, and they were too embarrassed to go to those they knew personally.
Vivian shifted in her chair. “Yes, but he always says I think about things too much and that I shouldn’t worry. He just blows me off.”
“I see.” Leah felt the doors of her mind opening, letting her understand the elements of life and the universe that most people didn’t have access to. She reached out across the miles to Vivian, and it didn’t matter that Leah didn’t know her physical address or her real name. This woman was calling to her for help, and she was able to answer.
But just as she was about to understand the truth of her client’s plight, the doors shut. And they did it with such ferocity, she thought she could hear them slam, and she jumped in her chair at the noise.
“What is it?” Vivian asked nervously. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” Leah assured her. “I’m just having a little bit of an off day.”
“Oh,” the woman breathed. “I thought you might have seen something terrible in the cards.”
Leah smiled. “Forgive me. I might be a psychic, but I’m still human. I didn’t mean to frighten you.” With no direct access to her client’s energy, she focused on the cards. Sometimes they were just a showpiece, but right now, they were going to save her. “The Temperance card is in the most prominent position. This is a symbol of coming together, of two forces working together as one.”
Vivian bit her lip. “Does that mean my husband and I will be okay?”
Leah was nothing if not honest, especially when it came to her clients. “Well, there are different ways to interpret this card. It can mean two people working together, such as yourself and your husband. But we can also look at it as you confronting the inner parts of yourself that you haven’t been willing to bring out into the light.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Have you always had fears that your husband would leave you?”
Her client started to shake her head, but she stopped. “Yes, to be honest. I’ve been cheated on before, and even though I felt like I could trust him, I was always worried that he would turn out to be like the rest of them.”
“Your fears can manifest themselves if you concentrate on them too much, or at the very least, it can seem that they’re manifesting. It might be that everything in your relationship is fine, but your worries make you concentrate on everything that’s gone wrong. You need to sit down and really talk to him. Not right when he’s come in the door or when you only have a little bit of time, but when you can really take the time to understand each other. Let him know how you feel. I have a feeling that he’s not just brushing you off when he says everything is fine.”
“You really think so?” Vivian had tears in her eyes.
“I really do.” It was frustrating to not be able to give the fullest psychic experience possible, but Leah knew it was at least more genuine than what Vivian would have gotten if she had gone to someone else. There were plenty of frauds out there, and no one had a way of distinguishing who was real and who was just a paid actor.
She bid Vivian the best of luck and clicked off the chat window, not even paying attention to how much she had earned from their conversation. Money was great, but she was just glad that she had been able to help someone. The shutting down of her mind, though, that was disturbing.
Leah had the chance to redeem herself when a woman walked into her office. She was young, probably in her early twenties, and she glanced nervously over her shoulder when the door shut behind her.
“Come on in,” Leah called from her desk. She stood up and came around, walking into the foyer. She had done her best to make the office feel warm and welcoming, like a trip to the spa instead of some voodoo tent full of smoke. There were a few patrons who had gone away disappointed when Leah hadn’t appeared with a crystal ball and wearing a scarf around her head, but most people seemed to appreciate it. “What can I do for you?”
“I just, um, I want to know a few things.” She looked at the door again.
“It’s okay.” The aura of fear was highly charged around this woman. She was genuinely scared, but not of Leah. “Why don’t you come back here where things are more private?” Leah led her behind a partition wall and gestured for her to have a seat on a plush couch. “Start by telling me your name.”
“Josey.” She pulled her pale brown hair over her shoulder and wrung it between her hands. “I had a friend who told me I should come to you. Can you tell me what you charge?”
“It all depends on how much time we spend together and how in-depth we need to go, but here’s a price list that should give you a general idea. You don’t have to pay anything until we’re done.” She handed over the list, knowing that Josey wouldn’t walk out without paying. No one had yet.
The new client glanced over it and nodded. “Okay. Well, I’ll try to make it quick. Can you tell me if I’m in danger?”
Leah hadn’t been surprised by this question, and she didn’t need to be a psychic to know it was coming. She sat down across from her and reached out her hand. “Give me your hand, and I’ll see what I can find out.”
The young woman looked at her doubtfully. “No crystal ball?”
“Only when I need it, but I get the best results when I can actually touch someone or an object that belongs to them. Scientists call is psychometry, others refer to it as The Touch. You can call it whatever you’d like, but it seems to help.” She smiled, hoping she could make this poor girl relax a little.
“Left or right?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Josey set her hand inside Leah’s and waited. Leah could feel her heartbeat fluttering in her wrist, and she closed her eyes. She could only hope that she didn’t have the same experience she’d had with Vivian. It had been easy enough to save the day with the tarot cards for an online reading, but that would be more difficult in person. Besides, if she couldn’t get a good reading from touching the client’s own hand, then she really wasn’t as good as she thought she was.
She took a deep breath and let her body relax. Josey’s energy just needed to link into her own, and then she would know everything. She rested the fingertips of her left hand gently on the young woman’s palm and supported her hand with her right. There were walls Leah put up throughout her normal day to block out the psychic energy that would barrage her otherwise. She slowly brought them down, one by one, to allow Josey in.
The first thing she understood was that she was being honest about her name. People tended to do that more often when they came in. The next thing she knew was that Josey’s fears were real. She saw an image of a man, tall and broad, but not in a pleasant way
like the guy from the bar and the grocery store. He was a hulk, and he carried a menacing air about him that would make anyone worry. He was fearsome enough that Leah nearly let go of Josey’s hand, but she couldn’t just leave her new client to deal with this on her own. There was a distinct sense of being followed, and it made the fine hairs on the back of Leah’s neck stand up.
“There’s a man,” she murmured. “He’s big, with dark hair and a scar on his cheek. He knows you well, but he’s not friendly.”
“I knew it. It’s my ex. He’s been stalking me.” By the sound of Josey’s voice, she was crying.
Leah nodded. “That sounds about right. He’s angry with you, and you feel that he might have a right to be.” The visions changed, and Leah could see Josey with a different man. “You cheated on him?”
Josey yanked her hand back, and Leah opened her eyes. The young woman’s face was red and blotchy, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I just…I hadn’t been happy, and I knew he wasn’t either, and then Dylan took me out for dinner…”
Leah still felt the terrifying vibrations she had picked up from Josey. She didn’t like them, and she wanted to flick her fingers across her skin as though she could get rid of the sensation that way. But she reached out for her hand once again. “I’m not sure that’s the important part. There’s more. Let’s try this one more time.”
But Josey kept her hands clasped to her stomach, and she had sunk so far into the couch that she looked like a small, frightened child. “I don’t think I want to. I came here on a whim, but I thought you would just be some scam artist who would tell me everything would be okay. Now I’m not so sure I want to know any more.”
Pressing her lips together, Leah tried to think of the best thing to say next. She would have to tread carefully, and she had a strong and scary feeling that it was vital she finish this reading. There was something going on between Josey and this man in the vision. “I understand. The truth can be hard to take. I’m not here to judge you; I only want to help. You’re scared, and maybe between the two of us we can figure out how to keep you safe.”