“A long time ago. I can’t remember how the book ends. I should reread it.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll tell you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Why was she attracted to a guy who didn’t care so much about her life as he did about how worthless and inconvenient her death would be? Not to mention that every time she thought they’d turned a corner and could be friends—he went back to being a cool customer.
The time blips had continued since Valentine’s Day. He was still saving her life—from being hit by cars, from being attacked by a dog, and from whatever was about to happen on that midnight trip out for ice cream.
But she never saw him.
She even went over to his place and pounded on his door, but he didn’t answer. Though he did turn off his lights and act like he wasn’t home.
“What would you do if you had nine months left to live?” she asked Candace as she walked by Lacey’s cube at work.
Candace backed up slowly. “Excuse me?”
Lacey met her startled gaze. “What would be on your bucket list?”
“Are you sick?”
“No, I just... feel like I should be seizing the day, you know?”
Her coworker frowned.
“So, I had this dream that I was going to die on New Year’s Eve…”
“Like your father.”
“Yes. Exactly. If you had that feeling that you should make the most of your time, what would you do?”
Candace shrugged. “Well, first, I’d see a shrink. Then, I’d do all those things that remind you that you’re alive. Skydiving. Rock-climbing. I’d go see the pyramids—ride a camel. Those sorts of things.”
Skydiving. If she tried skydiving, that’d have the added benefit of dragging Tempus to her side. He wouldn’t let her get away with risking her life like that without a confrontation.
Did she really want the hot immortal around? She was becoming a little obsessed with him. It wasn’t healthy. He was going to kill her eventually. Then again, she’d always suspected her love of food would kill her and that hadn’t stopped her from enjoying chocolate cake every time she got the chance.
Maybe she just wanted to discuss books with him again. That had been fun. He didn’t seem to want to buy his own books and had been “borrowing and never returning” hers—so they’d talked for nearly an hour about the books they shared in common on Valentine’s Day. It was the one topic that didn’t lead to an argument. Well, not as many arguments. His thoughts on The Da Vinci Code were fairly out there since he’d actually met Da Vinci. He also was adamant he was right because he had met the man. Stubborn immortal.
That was all she wanted to do. Sit down and talk about her mortality and books.
And to maybe kiss him again.
She couldn’t seem to keep her mind from wandering back to those kisses. It was all she dreamed about... during the day and night. She’d lost focus in the middle of a work meeting and fumbled a few questions about how to handle an aggressive combatant.
She had things to do, people to see. She couldn’t keep mooning over her neighbor. Her skin was pale enough that her colleagues probably noticed how flushed she was from these tawdry little fantasies she was having.
If she could kiss him again, maybe it would get him out of her system.
Though it was unlikely.
It was worth a shot.
So, skydiving. She turned to her laptop. It was on her bucket list anyway. And if it happened to bring a hot immortal running... even better.
What the hell was she thinking?
He shoved through the doors to the small business. Tempus looked at a sign that warned participants they would forfeit their deposit if they backed out with less than twenty-four hours’ notice. Oh, Lacey was about to forfeit that deposit. Then they were going to sit down and have a good long talk about the term “death-defying.”
The receptionist smiled widely at him. “Can I help you?”
“Beginners class. Now. You have someone with a... heart problem who shouldn’t be attempting this little... stunt.”
“A heart problem?” she repeated.
“Yes. It can stop beating if she isn’t careful. Her name is Lacey.”
The woman scurried off.
Unbelievable. Skydiving. Might as well bungee jump without a cord.
Lacey followed the receptionist back out with a scowl on her face. “I swear I don’t have a heart problem.” She saw Tempus and narrowed her eyes.
“Now, Lacey, you know after what happened to your father, you shouldn’t be taking these unnecessary risks,” he said for the receptionist’s benefit.
“We really can’t allow someone with a heart problem to take this class.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll go ahead and refund the deposit since you may have forgotten your little... problem.”
“I don’t have a heart problem.”
“How did your father die?”
Lacey rolled her eyes. “As far as I know, he died of getting too close to your brother’s wife.”
“A heart attack.”
Within a minute, Lacey had her deposit in her hand and was being shown the door.
Tempus waited until they were outside. “Do you have a death wish?”
“No. Skydiving was on my bucket list.”
“Well, take it off. Hell, put ‘fall in love’ back on there. At least that wouldn’t involve a terminal velocity splat that would put everyone around you in therapy.”
“You don’t know I was going to die trying it.”
“Uhh, actually, I do, and it was grisly. I have a mental image of you that I’ll take to my grave. Oh wait, I’m immortal, so thanks for that.”
“Oh what do you care? You kill people all the time.”
People were stopping to watch their fight. “She’s kidding.”
“Besides I told you that I didn’t want to hurt anyone else, so falling in love is off the table.” They’d started walking and she stopped in front of a sub shop. “I’m hungry.”
He opened the door for her. Tempus didn’t much like the idea of her falling in love either, but he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, pin down why that was. “Fine. Well, pick something less dangerous.”
“I’ve already done the less dangerous stuff on my bucket list.”
“I need to see this list of yours.”
“No.”
“Why not?” He glanced over the menu. “What does a meatball sub taste like? I’ve never had one of those.”
“It tastes like heaven. You should get it.”
“Heaven? What does that mean? Define it better than that. And why can’t I see your bucket list?”
“Oh just get the sandwich and you’ll see what it tastes like. That’s your problem, you know, you’re not willing to risk anything despite being immortal. You’re protecting yourself like you’re the one with eight months to live and cheating death.”
“You can’t cheat death—that’s what I’m telling you. You can delay it. You can avoid it, but not indefinitely. And, eventually, because you’re a mortal and your body began decaying at birth, you’ll succumb to it.”
Several people in line turned to look at him.
He held out his hands. “What? She wanted to go skydiving without a parachute.”
“Oh, I’d have a parachute.” Lacey scowled at him again. Maybe he shouldn’t have reminded her.
“Trust me, it wasn’t going to be a working parachute.” Maybe he shouldn’t have reminded himself. Seeing her hit the ground, even in his head…
“And, another thing, I wasn’t finished with that book you stole from my freezer.” Lacey poked him in the chest.
“I can tell you how it ended... and why did you put it in the freezer?” The plastic bag had protected it, but he still didn’t see why she was putting books in the freezer now. He wouldn’t have even found it if he hadn’t been helping himself to her ice cream while saving her from being killed by her stove again.
“So you wouldn’t find it and don’t tell me
how it ends. I’ve narrowed it down to the boyfriend or the lawyer and…”
“It’s the lawyer. I figured it out on page 189, and you were already on page 237 judging from your bookmark so it was too late to beat me anyway.”
She groaned. “Did you even read the bookmark?”
“No.” It had something on it? It’d looked like a scrap of paper. He’d thrown it away since she wouldn’t need it anymore.
“It said, ‘Tempus, if you find this, don’t touch it and don’t tell me who the murderer is or I’ll kill you in your sleep.’”
“Well, that’s an empty threat if I’ve ever heard one.” They’d reached the front of the line. She thought he never took chances. He could take chances. “Meatball sub.” He shot her a glance. “Foot-long.”
She gave him a flat stare. “You’re a maniac. No. Stop. Don’t.”
“What are you having?”
“The same,” she told the cashier.
The image of her choking on a meatball filled his head. He wasn’t sure if it was a message from his father or if he was just starting to anticipate danger at every turn when it came to Lacey. “No, she won’t. Choose something less dangerous.”
Both she and the cashier went still and their jaws dropped.
He pantomimed his hands at his throat with a significant look.
“Oh. Okay. Turkey avocado.” She turned to him for approval.
He shrugged.
They sat down with their subs after he’d paid. “All I’m saying is that you could pick nice, quiet, safe things to cross off your bucket list. Everyday, mundane things.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s like the entire purpose of a bucket list escapes you.”
“Just show me your list.”
“No.”
“Okay, just tell me where you keep it.”
“Uhh, even more no.”
“Do you keep it in the drawer where you keep all those romance books?”
She set down her sandwich. “Okay, we’ve got to discuss boundaries, Tempus. You can’t just come into my house and go through my things. If it’s inside a drawer, closet, or inside my fridge, it’s off-limits.”
“So you’re saying it’s in one of those three places? But I’ve looked in all those places.”
Dropping her head, she banged it lightly on the table.
He slid his hand between her head and the table. “Stop. You’ll give yourself a concussion.”
She lifted her head with a sigh. “Well at least I’d be getting it in nice, safe ways. Tempus, haven’t you ever wanted,” she gestured around frantically, “more? I feel like there’s something within my grasp that’ll make this next eight months enough. That’ll make New Year’s feel like reading the end of a book... not that I manage to do that anymore.”
“All mortals think that. It’s why establishments like that skydiving place exist. You need the rush of adrenaline to make you feel complete. You get the same rush from sex and hot peppers.”
“So I should stick to sex and hot peppers?”
“No, you should just eat hot peppers. I thought you’d decided not to fall in love.”
“You don’t need to fall in love to have sex.”
“No, you have poor taste in men so stick with hot peppers.” She should definitely not be having sex.
Lacey tilted her head while brushing her red hair from her face. “But it’s more than that. It’s not something fleeting like an adrenaline rush—I can recognize the difference, believe it or not. I get it to a smaller degree when I help out women with my work... that feeling that you’ve accomplished something lasting, that you’ve had an impact on the Earth.”
“You nearly had an impact on the earth today,” he muttered under his breath.
She reached across and shoved his shoulder. “I’m serious, Tempus. I’m gonna be gone in eight months and I want to leave something behind that makes people remember me—something more than my corpse.”
“You thought you’d accomplish that skydiving?”
“No, skydiving was just to, well, to cross something off my list.” She sighed. “Never mind. There’s probably not anything that makes dying at thirty sound good.”
“You’re only twenty-nine.”
“I turned thirty a week ago.”
“Oh, that explains the balloons and the leftover cake in your fridge.”
“Which you ate the rest of.” She picked up her sandwich with a frown. “I swear you’re like having a college roommate. I’d write my name on the milk carton but it’d do no good. The point being that thirty is young, especially when compared to others at the table.”
“Immortality is, by definition, ageless. Time ceases to be linear when you can stop it and move within it thus expanding the temporal plane.”
She blinked. “Are you saying you’re both younger and older than me?”
“I’m saying I’m without age.”
They ate in silence that felt... companionable. It was strange.
“I guessed the chef in that book you stole two weeks ago on page 85.” Lacey raised her eyebrows expectantly.
He scowled. “Page 127. You finished that one before I borrowed it.”
“Is it borrowing if you don’t plan on returning it? And what was going to happen that day when I was gardening?”
“Nothing. You just looked like you hadn’t put on sunblock and I’d run out of books to read.” Her skin was really flushed and she kept looking at his house.
“You can buy your own books, you know.”
“How will I know if you’ve read them?”
Her mouth opened and closed. “You’re only reading books I read?”
“Because I can guess who the killer is faster.”
It’s like she didn’t realize they were competing. “How do you know when I’ve guessed it?”
“You turn down the page when you do.”
She wrinkled up her nose. “My mom used to do it. I didn’t know you’d figured it out.”
“You guessed really late on Hound of the Baskervilles. The author had as good as given it away. That’s when I recognized what you were doing.” He’d miss this after she was dead. He’d miss it a lot. Missing something was... unfamiliar. He’d never really felt it to this degree and her death hadn’t even occurred. Maybe he should preemptively quit.
He didn’t want to.
“You know we could meet for lunch and actually talk about books sometimes. You don’t have to just save my life and run off.”
Then, there was silence. They could do that, but that completely contradicted what she’d told him in the car. Was this just about books or…?
“Or maybe you do. Maybe you like being alone and I’m just cramping your style. You’re probably used to having your hot peppers and sex too, and then walking away.” She swallowed and shook her head. “What are you doing, Lacey? What are you doing?”
“Talking to yourself,” he suggested.
She wrapped the remainder of her sandwich hastily and stood. “Thanks for lunch. And for saving my life. Again.” Then, with a nod, she was gone, but he heard her say, “Stupid immortal,” as she pushed through the door.
What did he do?
CHAPTER FIVE
She really should stay the hell away from him. He didn’t want to have any interaction with her. He’d been fairly blunt about that from the beginning.
If he could manage to stay detached emotionally, so could she. Also, she was going to date. A lot.
Online dating was the way to go. As long as she was careful. Very careful. And met them in a public venue. She could do online dating.
Until her profile was deleted. Twice.
Bastard.
She left him a note. “Stay off my computer, you perv.”
“The first guy who responded was going to leave you dead in a ditch,” was his reply on the paper a few days later. “Like the guy in that last book we read. I guessed 46 pages earlier than you.”
He knew that far in advance that one of
the guys on the dating site was a psychotic killer? That was crazy. Hopefully he’d notified the proper authorities.
There was still meeting someone through work. Okay, so not through work—she dealt with abused women. But she worked with women who knew men—men who weren’t immortal and might want to spend time with her.
“Set me up, Candace, please. I’m desperate.”
Candace eyed her. “How come you’re desperate? I thought you were dating that guy around Valentine’s Day.”
Lacey sighed. “He wasn’t quite divorced and he never called me back after a mishap with his dinner that night.”
“So you want a rebound?”
“Yes. Only he can’t be a serial killer.”
Candace squinted. “Who do you think I know? Jeffrey Dahmer? Son of Sam?”
“At this point, I’m not super picky. I just need to have a torrid fling to help me forget this guy I know.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you need to forget the not-quite-divorced guy?”
“No. It’s this other guy who I can’t seem to get out of my head, but he doesn’t have the same problem with me. I’m not even friend-zoned.”
“And you think it’d be good?”
“Well, there was this kiss…”
“Friends don’t kiss.”
“It was before we met.”
Candace stared for a second before grabbing her chair. She sat down and said, “Okay, spill.”
“New Year’s Eve. I attacked him at midnight before I even knew who he was. I didn’t realize he’d move in beside me and we’d be seeing a whole lot of each other, but he doesn’t want anything more.”
“Commitment-phobe?”
“The worst kind. You thought we had issues about dating from working here. This guy makes us look like perpetual bridesmaids with their wedding rings already on layaway.”
Candace raised her eyebrows.
“Oh, c’mon. You know how impossible we are at intimacy and anything long-term. It should have been in the job description.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, this guy is worse, but the longer I know him—the more I want him. I’ve started trying to arrange accidental meetings.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I need you to stop me. I’ve become that desperate girl that I always felt sorry for.”
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