Flirting With Fate (16 page)

Quinton hung
up the phone before the man could say more. A man that interested in his grown
daughter’s innocence was just creepy.

Plunking down on
the couch he ran his hands through his hair. He still had no answers. Only more
questions.

“Listen,” Josie said, “we need to talk about—”

Tanner groaned. “Seriously? This speech?”

She ignored him and continued. “I value our
friendship.”

Wincing, Tanner mimed hara-kiri.

“I just think that since we’re likely to work
together in the future, we need to keep our relationship—”

“Don’t say it.”

“—platonic,” she finished.

He shuddered. “You had to go there, didn’t you?
You had to pull out that horrible
p
-word.”

Josie rolled her eyes. They were back in her room
to get her bags. After the dream she’d had on the beach, she knew time for
sulking and play were over. She needed to talk to Greyly about Mallory, find
out why Dr. Martin had lied to her, and get her mother’s journal back. “You
just think it’s horrible because it means no sex.”

He ran his gaze over her slowly, lingering on her
breasts then her thighs. “Guilty as charged.”

There was a distinct humming sensation between her
legs. Damn! Why did she have to know just how good it would feel to have him
slide inside her? Why did she have to know how he would smell and taste, his
skin slick with an afternoon of hot, sweaty sex?

“Just let me change out of my suit and we can go,”
she said, crossing the room to her suitcase.

She grabbed a pair of denim shorts and a tank,
then stopped when she realized he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Don’t mind me,” he said.

“Tanner, you cannot look at me like that!”

He rolled off the bed and took two long strides to
stand before her. “I make no such promise,” he said, not touching her, but
standing so close and looking so intense that she wished he would.

And it was that wish, that all-consuming desire
that nearly controlled her, combined with her knowledge, that made her speak.

Hurt his pride now, or break his heart later.

“Wiley, listen.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do I have
a hunch I’m not going to like this?”

She shook her head and plowed forward. “I like
you. I like the way you look and that you have a good heart, and I’m not going
to lie—”
yet
, she amended silently “—I’m attracted to you. That thing on
the beach—” She closed her eyes, just thinking of it, her body demanded an
encore. “It was fun.”

“Fun?”

She nodded. “Fun.”

He set his jaw. “But?”

She swallowed. Lies worked best when sprinkled
into liberal amounts of truth. “But I’m cursed with this ability, and I see
where this is going.”

He held up a hand. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Josie.
You’re the one who always insists on free will. You’re the one who insists your
visions change.”

She licked her lips. “I see myself pregnant with your
baby, Tanner.”

She ignored his shaky intake of breath, closed her
eyes, and prepared herself for the hard part. “I see myself pregnant, and
though I might find you attractive, I have no interest in having your child.
Ever.”

His face went blank. Unreadable. “Fine,” he said.
“I’ll wait outside.” He turned on his heel and strode from her room.

When the door clicked closed behind him, she sunk to
the floor and put her face in her hands as she choked on silent tears. Because
there was no man whose baby she’d rather have.

Darian wrapped his arms around Paige’s waist and
pulled her back against his front. She flashed a smile over her shoulder and
wriggled her ass against his cock, making it grow instantly hard.

He groaned and nuzzled her neck. “Don’t distract
me. I need to get through decoding the rest of that journal tonight.”

She turned and raised a brow. “
Your
brain
and you haven’t broken it yet? Huh, must be a tough cookie to crack.”

“Yeah, it’s deeply encrypted.” He frowned. “But I
only had it for a couple of hours before you came and got it from me yesterday.
I’m good, babe, but even I need more than two hours to break something this
complex.”

She pulled out of his grasp. “What are you talking
about?”

He put out a hand. “Give me the journal and I’ll
show you what I mean. Josie’s mother must have been wicked brilliant to—”

She pushed away his extended hand. “What do you
mean give you the journal? You have it! Tanner said he left it with you.”

Darian cocked his head, looking at her as if she
were one step from the loony bin. “Then you came and told me you needed it and
would bring it back after Chrissie pulled some info from it.”

“Darian, this isn’t funny. You know I did no such
thing.” Her stomach dropped when his face stayed serious. “I didn’t. Where’s
the journal?”

“Fuck,” Darian said, and Paige thought that just
about summed it up.

Flying over the ocean back to D.C. with Josie in
the seat next to him, Tanner felt like someone had just stomped the hell out of
his heart, scraped it off the ground like a piece of chewed bubblegum, and
shoved it back in his chest.

He shouldn’t have ever expected he could have more
with Josie. He shouldn’t have expected she’d be interested in offering more
than her body. He was just some ex-foster kid with heavy baggage. She could do
better than him.

When he’d come into his power at seventeen, he’d
walked around his foster parents’ house, invisible for days before they’d
realized he was missing. Of course, when he reappeared, he’d gotten the shit
kicked out of him for “scaring them,” but that was typical.

It had seemed so appropriate to be invisible after
a life of being unimportant. He hadn’t even questioned the power when it had
come.

He wasn’t sure why he’d expected Josie to see him
when no one else did.

“I need to tell you something,” he said, pulling
her attention from the window. If she didn’t want him anyway, he might as well
give it to her straight.

“What’s that?”

“I called in a favor and had someone who can time
jump go back and retrieve your mother’s journal.”

“What?”

The light in her eyes dug at his aching heart.
Wasn’t that why he’d done it? To see that look in her eyes?

“Tanner, why didn’t you tell me?”

“When I came to give it back to you, you were
talking with the doctor. I didn’t know what the journal said, so I couldn’t
risk giving it to you. I couldn’t risk you changing your mind and trying to go
through with the DNA conversion until I was sure the journal wouldn’t sway you
in that direction.”

Her body tensed but she didn’t move. “You didn’t
have the right. That’s my decision to make. Where is it?”

He let out a long breath. “I can’t tell you that.”

Her silence was all the response he needed.

“Josie, please—”

“I want that journal back.”

Tanner shook his head. “I won’t let you kill
yourself, Josie. Don’t you see? That’s what this would be. Suicide.”

But she’d turned back to the window, slamming the
door on the conversation. On him.

“I need you to arrange a meeting with this doctor,”
Josie said, pushing a piece of paper across her desk.

Her assistant, picked it up and nodded. “When?”

“It needs to be completely private. No one can
know we’re meeting.” After the dream she’d had in Eden, she was sure Dr. Martin
wasn’t telling her everything. Or was outright lying. “The sooner, the better.”

Aaron nodded. “Anything else?”

Josie forced a smile. She couldn’t stop thinking
about the way Tanner’s face looked yesterday. “You know anything about mending
broken hearts?”

“His or yours?”

Josie dropped her gaze to her desk. She missed
Tanner so much she ached with it. She’d fallen in love with him. She had to
believe she’d broken it off before
he
had fallen too deep. “Neither. I’m
fine,” she said, waving her hand. “I have a meeting with Sergeant Greyly
tonight, so give me a call when you reach Martin.”

“Did you have a nice trip?” someone asked.

Josie looked to her office door to see Chrissie.
“Hey, you. Come on in.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Paige filed in behind her, and Aaron excused
himself.

 “We missed you at the weekly meeting,” Paige
said.

“Sorry, I needed some time.” Josie looked at her
hands.

“Tanner said you’ve been avoiding him,” Paige
said, a disapproving frown on her face.

Josie rolled her eyes. “I told him I wanted to
keep things between us platonic. It’s his dick that’s disappointed, nothing
else.”

“Why’d you do that?” Paige asked.

Josie shrugged. “I’m not interested, that’s all.”

Paige raised a brow, her face saying bullshit even
if her mouth was polite enough to refrain.

“He likes you,” Chrissie said, scuffing the heel
of her boot on the carpet.

“What, now Chrissie is going to suggest I get
involved in some long-term deal? Who are you and where did you put my friend?”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m just
suggesting that if you want to be with him, you should be. Life’s too short.”

“That it is,” Josie said, closing her eyes. The
vision of her dead body in Tanner’s arms awaited her. She couldn’t get a grip
on the timeline. She saw herself marrying Tanner, having babies with Tanner,
yet the woman in his arms hadn’t aged from what Josie had seen in the mirror
this morning. And how did all that fit in with the vision of Alyson fixing her
to that machine?

It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t hurt Tanner by
letting him fall in love with her when her death was imminent. If she decided
she needed to do the DNA conversion and it wasn’t successful, she wouldn’t have
him grieve her, not like the haggard heartbroken man in her visions.

“Aw, Josie,” Paige whispered, “why don’t you talk
to us? Tell us what’s on your mind.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “All this stuff just has me
thinking about my family.”

Paige and Chrissie frowned, then crossed the room,
each leaning over the desk and embracing her.

Chrissie held on a little longer than necessary.

Josie jerked away. “Stop that!”

Chrissie’s eyes were wide, her mouth agape. “You
had a sister? I don’t remember a sister.”

Josie closed her eyes. As much as she wanted to
know what Greyly knew about the mysterious Mallory, she wasn’t real keen on
sharing the identifying symptom of her post-traumatic psychoses. “I don’t. I
was an only child.”

Chrissie and Paige exchanged glances.

“Jo,” Chrissie said softly, “I just saw a memory
from your childhood. You were playing in the sprinkler. There was another
little girl with you. She looked just like you.” Chrissie reached out, but
Josie shook her head and withdrew from the touch.

“You can tell us, Jo,” Paige said.

Josie walked to the window where she studied the
shadows cast by the street lamps. “She’s not real.” She heard the girls shift
behind her, but she let the uncomfortable silence fill the office for a dozen
heartbeats before she spoke. “I am young in all my memories—or whatever you
want to call them—of her. And I never thought about it until after my parents
died. Then, suddenly, I remembered.” She didn’t talk about this. Not ever. She
was as opposed to discussing her childhood illusions as she was to sharing the
visions she had of the future. “And when I started asking about my sister, they
sent me to the hospital.”

“You
did
have a sister,” Paige whispered.

“Shh!” Chrissie scolded behind Josie. “She said
she’s not real.”

“Right,” Paige whispered. “I’ll try to keep up.”

Josie’s chest shook with laughter, even as the
tears filled her eyes. God bless good friends. “The therapist said my ‘sister’
was an illusion I’d created so I wouldn’t feel so alone. It was so long ago. I
don’t remember much. I screamed and fought. They were lying. They were keeping
my sister from me and I knew it. But I remember the therapist asking me to tell
her about my sister, about the things we did together, about my memories. So I
did. And she was right. The only ‘memories’ I had were from when I was young.
Ten? Twelve? And they were few.” She trailed off, focusing on swallowing the
ball of cotton lodged in her throat.

“After my parents died, suddenly I couldn’t stop
thinking about her. They showed me legal documents about my family, family
photos. Where was this sister? I spent months going through visualization
exercises, re-imagining each memory and forcing my mind to accept the fact that
I was alone. I had no family left.”

 Chrissie closed the space between them and rubbed
her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Josie.”

“Me, too,” Paige said. She came up behind her on
the other side and leaned her head against her arm.

Josie turned to Chrissie and held out her hand.
“Can you look and tell me what you see?”

Quinton Greyly frowned as Josie Bovard sat on the
edge of his desk, legs crossed, makeup heavy.

She looked him up and down. “I need to know what
you found in my apartment. Who broke in? My apartment manager said he turned
the security tapes over to you.”

He pushed his chair back, trying to put some space
between them. He’d already told her the tapes had nothing. What had gotten into
her? “I really don’t have anything new for you, Ms. Bovard.” He shook his head.
She was acting like she didn’t even remember the e-mails they’d exchanged this
morning. “I’m sorry, but I thought you were here about something else.”

Her eyes widened. “What’s that?”

He frowned. Maybe she’d been concussed and the doctor
hadn’t seen it? Hell, if he’d thought a healthy arm was broken, it was pretty
likely he could miss a concussion. “Mallory?”