The appreciative glances leveled at him by the women who spilled out of the café weren’t lost on me.
I slid my fingers into his and let him counterbalance my weight as I kicked my leg over the seat in a brief flash of red fabric.
His gaze landed precisely where I had hoped it would, and he shook his head. “You’re lucky we’re in public, Doctor,” he whispered through my hair.
“I would hardly expect that to stop you,” I mumbled.
“Is that a challenge?” A possessive arm slid behind my back, ending in fingers resting at the curve of my waist.
“An observation,” I said.
“There’s our boy now.”
I followed Crixus’s gaze through the front window and was rocked by a wave of pathos at the sight of Rolly sitting alone at a highboy table. His was an expression I recognized, having seen it on the faces of cats and dogs at the shelter when any human wandered within paw’s reach of their cage. Each time I had gone with the intention of finally adopting a pet, I found myself completely unable to choose. It didn’t seem right to take one when I couldn’t take them all.
The demigod swung the door open and waited for me to pass through. Truthfully, I would have been more than happy to let Crixus go first. The brightness in Rolly’s eyes when he caught sight of my face far outstripped the loneliness of moments earlier in terms of devastation.
“Dr. Schmidt!” He shot up from his stool, nearly knocking the table over in his zeal. “I didn’t know you would be coming!”
Neither did I. “Hi, Rolly. Nice to see you.”
Rolly had swapped his T-shirt and khakis for an ill-fitting black button up shirt and jeans. If he had been trying to mimic Crixus’s attire, he had missed by an order of magnitude. “Wow,” he sighed with unfiltered admiration. “You sure look pretty.”
“Thanks Rolly, that’s nice of you to say.”
“Can I get you anything?” asked a silky blonde in a skirt several inches shorter than mine, nudging her cleavage into Crixus’s arm.
Low self esteem stemming from childhood abandonment issues. Mother and father divorced before she was eight years old. Sporadic contact with father since then. Tendency to enter into relationships with emotionally unavailable men.
My mental cataloging failed to diffuse the frank appreciation in Crixus’s face.
“A table,” he said.
“Of course,” she purred.
The insistent beat of a live band muted any further attempts at conversation as we pushed our way into the main dining room.
Watching the waitress’s pleated skirt hem bounce just below her perky little ass, I considered accidentally knocking her into a chair, but thought better of it.
“This one okay?” she asked Crixus as we approached a table in the corner of the room.
He glanced at the four-top, then at the rest of the room. “This will be fine. Thank you, Destiny.”
“Hey!” she said. “How did you know?”
“Magic.” He winked at her.
My urge to stab someone with a butter knife was approaching crisis point.
Rolly took the stool nearest mine, and Crixus settled himself on the opposite side. He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair, the leprechaun-bearing pocket closest to me.
Destiny rested her elbows on the table, revealing enough cleavage to paint Rolly’s ears bright red and send his eyes floating up to the ceiling in search of safer places to look.
“So what does a magic man like to drink?” she asked, tracing the lines of Crixus’s pectorals with her hungry gaze.
“Scotch,” I interrupted. “I’d like your best twelve-year-old single malt scotch. On the rocks. And make it a double.”
She flicked her smoky gaze from Crixus to Rolly. “And for you, handsome?”
Rolly flushed a deeper shade of pink. “I’m not much of a drinker. Maybe just a fuzzy navel?”
“He’ll have a scotch, neat,” Crixus countered. “And so will I.”
“I’ll have those right out.” Destiny winked at Crixus and flounced off toward the kitchen.
“Next lesson,” Crixus said, turning to Rolly. “You want to be treated like a man, then you need to drink like one. Beer is okay, hard liquor is better. On the rocks is acceptable. Club soda is questionable but not forbidden.”
Rolly’s plump hand dove into his breast pocket and withdrew a small notebook and pen. He started scratching notes down in abrupt, sloppy script. “Got it!”
“Good. Now, I hope you were watching my interaction with our waitress.”
“Sure,” Rolly said, nodding eagerly. “Course I was.”
“Tell me what I did.”
Rolly looked thoughtful for a moment. “Stared at her boobies?”
Crixus raised an eyebrow at him. “Add boobies to the list of words you’ll never say again.”
“Okey dokey.” Rolly agreed, scribbling again.
“That too,” Crixus replied. “What else did I do?”
“Stare at her tushy?” Rolly looked up from his pad.
“It’s an ass,” Crixus corrected. “And no. What I did is show interest by making her feel like a woman. And an attractive woman at that.”
“Well how do I know the difference between that and just staring at her tu…” Rolly looked from me to Crixus then leaned in and whispered “ass.”
“It’s subtle,” Crixus said. “You want to glance. Not glare. Does that make sense?”
“I guess?” Rolly shrugged.
“Why don’t you practice on Dr. Schmidt,” Crixus suggested.
The air turned to plastic sheeting, suffocating rather than satiating my attempts at breath. “I really don’t think that’s a good—”
“I’m a subject matter expert, remember?” Crixus said. “My methods have been proven.”
What the hell are you doing? He has feelings for me.
Who better to practice on than an uninvested third party? came the reply.
Rolly slid a sheepish gaze in my direction.
“Oh, all right,” I sighed.
“Just a second,” Crixus said. He popped up from his chair and came around the table. Strong hands grabbed my hips and pivoted me toward Rolly. His fingers slid down my thigh and guided my skirt up another inch. “Visual inspiration always helps,” he breathed into my hair.
The whites of Rolly’s eyes were visible both above and below his irises.
Crixus ran a finger up my spine, sending electric ripples through every cell of my body. Pretend.
I took a deep breath and tried to picture anyone other than Rolly slouched in the chair across from me.
“Go ahead,” Crixus urged. “Practice the glance.”
“It’s okay, Rolly,” I reassured him. “Go ah—” A gasp seized my lungs as cold liquid doused my legs and ice pooled into my lap. A tray slid clattering to the ground.
“Oh my God,” Destiny gasped. “I am so sorry!”
Cold rivulets wound down my legs as I shot up from my chair. I grabbed a bundle of silverware, scattering the contents across the table to free the napkin, which I pressed against the wet fabric of my dress. “It’s okay,” I said.
“I am so, so sorry,” Destiny repeated.
“In more ways than you know,” I muttered.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. Be right back. I’m just going to run to the bathroom and take care of this.” I looked at Crixus, and in that moment, I knew that he knew. She had done it on purpose. To get rid of me. But did that mean to Crixus what it meant to me?
Neither of us had an answer for that one.
I turned and pushed my way through the crowd toward the bathrooms.
“Take your coat, ma’am?” a deep voice offered from my left.
“I’m not wearing a—”
The dark figure surged toward me, the rough palm closing over my mouth and dragging me over the waist-height coat check desk with effortless ease. My shoes were the first things to go as I kicked out against the r
acks I was hauled behind.
Recovering my senses, I bit down on the flesh crushing my lips against my teeth.
And by his bark of pain, he was revealed.
“Liam?” I gasped.
“Yeah. Fuckin’ A. Since when did you bite?” The shadows revealed him better than the light ever could. They found the hollows of his face, lending definition to his strong jaw, the indentations below his cheekbones, playing hide-and-seek among the dark hair falling across his forehead.
This man alone on the whole of the earth had been inside my body. By these beautiful lips and the tongue behind them, my flesh had been coaxed into spasms of pleasure no book or seminar could ever teach.
“Since someone dragged me into the coat check closet against my will.” I smoothed my dress over my legs and pushed my bra back into place.
He took a step back and examined me as if seeing me for the first time. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“A dress?”
“Yeah, I got that,” he said, his gaze lodging in my cleavage. “Which hooker did you mug to get it?”
“This is my dress,” I insisted. “And I like it.”
“The hell you do. You look like a school teacher at a strip club.”
“You would know,” I retorted.
“Actually, I wouldn’t. Don’t spend a lot of time at strip clubs, as it happens.”
“Good for you. What are you doing here?”
He eyed the sweetheart neckline of my bodice where it dipped low over my breasts. “Saving your life.”
“From whom?” This question alone could find space in my cluttered brain.
“You mean you don’t know?’ His dark eyes held genuine concern.
“I have no idea.”
“So you didn’t take the gold?”
“No more than I ran up a million dollar debt to Stefano,” I answered. “And how do you know about that?”
“Word gets around,” he said. “Someone must really hate you.”
“I can’t thank you enough for letting me know.” I turned to push my way through the suit coats but was pulled back strong forearms banded around my waist.
“I’m not joking around, Matilda,” he added. “You don’t want the Westies on your ass.”
“I don’t even know what a Westie is. How am I supposed to keep them off my ass?”
“The Westies,” he repeated. “Irish street gang based in New York City. They were at their height in the sixties and seventies, but there’s been a resurgence rumored as of late. Seems someone has been gathering the new generation of the old crew with grudges to settle.”
At least Stefano the Fathead had been far enough away to deny association by distance. I hadn’t been to New York City in a couple years, but having a threat so close did little to help my fraying nerves. “So what is it exactly I supposedly did?”
Liam cast a suspicious look over each broad shoulder, as if there might be someone secreted in the coat closet for the express purpose of intercepting our conversation. “How much to you know about the Federal Reserve?”
“As in the U.S Federal Reserve? The one in New York?”
He nodded.
“That it’s in New York.”
“And?” he coaxed.
“And that’s about it. I follow more in the way of science than economics,” I pointed out.
“Okay, brief history lesson. The Federal Reserve was created in 1914 so the government could control fluctuations in the currency. In order to keep the value of the dollar high, they needed to keep the value of gold low. Make sense so far?”
“So far, yes. Will there be a quiz?” I asked.
“Only an oral examination,” he said, leaning toward me.
“The Federal Reserve?” I reminded him. Turning my head away felt like resisting a magnetic pull.
“Right. Well, in 1972, Tricky Dick took us off the gold standard altogether. That’s when shit really went sideways. The Fed started lending gold out any time the price started to rise.”
“And that’s bad?” I asked.
“Honestly, woman,” he sighed. “How can you be as brilliant as you are and not know this shit?”
“There were always more interesting things to study,” I said.
He hooked a finger in the neckline of my dress and pulled it toward him. “Like anatomy?”
I slapped his hand away. “Like Neural Network Dynamics for Selectional Attention. Summarize.”
“The Fed lent all their gold out and now they’re employing the services of certain consultants to acquire more.”
“Consultants like the Westies?”
“Correct,” he said. “Meanwhile, a couple snitches put the word out that Carl Callaghan, an associate of the Westies, was looking for the third party player who had supposedly snagged one of their larger shipments. Whoever it was took the gold and got lost. Any guesses who that person might be?”
My stomach shrank into a painful ball. “Does her name start with Matilda and end with Schmidt?”
“Bingo,” Liam said, tapping the tip of my nose.
“That answers a couple questions at least,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Someone sent me a love note. It was waiting for me when I came back from Vegas. Something to the effect of ‘you have five days to cough up the gold or you die,’ sort of thing.”
“At least they’re direct,” he said.
I let myself sag against the wall behind me. “You know, I used to like my life. See a few patients, enjoy a quiet evening at home, go to a yoga class or two.”
“Aww, come on,” he said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “It’s not so bad. So the head of an infamous gang operating under the direction of the federal government suspects you of absconding with millions of dollars’ worth of gold. We all make mistakes. And who doesn’t get a death threat now and then, am I right?”
“Me!” I wriggled my arm out of his grasp. “Up until a few days ago, no one so much as sneezed in my direction. And now I’ve racked up a million-dollar debt, stolen gold from an Irish gang, and collected two dysfunctional supernatural organisms in the process.”
“Cupid the first?” he asked. “Or the second?”
“First. There have been a few of those this week,” I muttered.
“There could be a few more.” His body pressed mine into the wall, his hard hipbones connecting with the bottom of my rib cage. The coats swayed around us like sound-absorbing leaves from some strange tree. His dark head lowered to mine. Molecules of air separated our lips, warmed by his, or mine, or both.
“There you are, Doctor.” Crixus’s voice sent Liam’s head snapping to attention and his hand reaching for the gun concealed in his black suit coat.
I covered his hand with mine and shook my head. As far as I knew, shooting Crixus wouldn’t do any good anyway, he being immortal.
“I was wondering what might be keeping you.” Of all the speech patterns I had read in my handful of years as a therapist, Crixus possessed the most impenetrable. It was impossible to tell humor from sarcasm. Facetiousness from arrogance. Sincerity from manipulation. I suspected he knew exactly what was keeping me, but had wanted to listen in on my thoughts.
Liam put a protective forearm across my chest, insisting on being the first one out of the shadows that concealed and revealed him so well. “I see you made it back to our good doctor’s couch pretty quickly, Crickets.”
“Crixus,” the demigod corrected.
“Whatever,” Liam shrugged. “Let me guess. You’ve come to ask her help with another of your charges?”
“Well, I haven’t come to sell her out to a casino mogul,” Crixus replied, looking over Liam’s shoulder at me.
“As you’ll remember,” Liam said, squaring his shoulders, “I actively participated in informing my employer that she was not the correct target for the aforementioned proceedings.”
“Nice gesture after abducting her at gunpoint and shooting her full of animal tranquilizers,” Crixus added.
“And where were you when I took her?” Liam asked with exaggerated curiosity. “Oh yes, that’s right. Fucking her assistant in the storage closet.”
“You would bring that up, you pathetic—”
“Boys!” I interrupted. “This isn’t necessary. Yes, Liam kidnapped me. And yes, Crixus saddled me with an asshole love god in a diaper before boffing his way across the country in a mostly useless rescue attempt. Let’s not get caught up in the details, okay?”
“He puts a gun to your head and my list is longer?” Crixus asked.
“Not longer,” I said. “Just more colorful.”
“Or maybe it’s because I balanced mine out with our shower,” Liam suggested.
“Shower? You showered with this chicken fucker?” Crixus snorted.
I caught Liam by the elbows as he surged toward the coat closet door. “Stop this!” I ordered. “Right now. We’re all in this together.”
“Fuck that,” Liam said, shrugging me off. “I’m not in anything with this mythological relic.”
The air around us seemed to scatter and bounce off every available surface. I thought of anything to say that might gather it back. “Crix, Liam knows who sent the note. That’s good, right?”
“I would have found the gold without him,” Crixus commented.
The thought shot through my brain before I could stop it. If Liam found out who was responsible for the note, did that mean I still owed Crixus a night?
His reply came without a moment’s hesitation. I said I would look into it, and I did. I will have my payment.
“I’m sure you would have,” I said, swallowing the rise of fear. “But the important thing is, we know, and now we can plan accordingly.”
“And what plan did you have in mind?” Crixus asked Liam and I both.
“We hadn’t quite gotten to that part yet,” I reported. “All we know is that Carl Callighan of the Westies thinks I lifted an unknown sum of gold from him. And that he intends to see me pay in flesh and blood if he doesn’t get it back.”
“Any ideas?” Liam challenged Crixus.
“I’ll need some time to deliberate,” Crixus reported.
“Not sure who you can screw to buy her way out?” Liam asked.
Unlucky: The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist Page 4