Flirting With Fate (21 page)

“I love it when you come,” he said. “I was made to
pleasure you.”

She felt him swell inside her and she wished the
blindfold were gone. “I want to look at you when you come.”

He pulled the blindfold off and stared into her
eyes. “I love you.”

Her heart was torn between joy and grief.

When Tara was gone, Alyson let herself shift back
into her own body. Collin Raines scared the bloody shit out of her, so being in
his skin was beyond creepy.

The girl had bought it though. She shook her head.
Experienced Shifters could tell when there were other Shifters around, but Tara
was so fresh, she was clueless.

Alyson needed that journal or the man she loved
might be in danger.

A flash of his badge had gotten Quinton and Mallory
into a private examination room to view Josie Bovard’s chart—something he
should have needed a warrant for, but most people didn’t question an official
badge and kind smile, even if they’d been trained to know better.

When he’d told Mallory everything he knew about
Josie, she’d suggested Josie hadn’t had a bad diagnosis but had seen a “Healer”
to repair her broken arm.

“See,” Mallory was saying as he flipped through
the chart to find the X-rays, “non-Specials will believe anything to keep their
view of the world from being disrupted. It’s actually pretty easy for us to
keep our existence secret. You all do the work for us.”

Quinton flipped on the wall light and placed the
X-ray against it. “Holy shit,” he muttered.

“Looks like one nasty break,” Mallory said. “Must
have been some Healer.”

He pulled it back down and shoved everything into
the folder. It didn’t make sense. There was no logical explanation.

“So, she looks like me, huh?”

“I thought she
was
you,” he said. Okay, so
maybe they’d mixed up Josie’s X-ray with someone else’s, thus the misdiagnosis
that also explained what he’d just seen in her chart.

“Hmm. When I was little, I thought I had a twin.”

Quinton looked at her. Who knew how long it would
take to deprogram all the lies her father had told her? “She remembers you.”

Mallory blinked. “She does?” She grabbed her purse
and threw it over her shoulder. “I want to meet this woman. Let’s go.”

Quinton looked at his watch. “Let’s go home and
get some sleep. We’ll figure out the mystery of the twins in the morning.” He
left the examination room and when she didn’t follow several seconds behind,
popped his head back in to get her.

“Mallory?”

She was gone.

“I didn’t mean those things I told you in Eden,”
Josie said in the darkness.

They lay next to each other, Tanner propped on an
elbow. Every so often he’d run his fingers down her jaw line or over her hip
bone. He’d positioned the pillows behind her head so her cuffed arms were given
a rest. He couldn’t stop touching her, looking at her.

“I hoped as much,” he finally said, talking past
the knot in his throat. “I don’t expect you to be ready for such intense stuff
yet, but I’d love if you were at least...open to the possibility.” He shrugged.
“But I don’t have a whole lot of experience with being wanted in family-type
scenarios, so it’s not like I won’t know how to deal with it if you—”

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Tanner, you
don’t understand. I was lying. Completely. I don’t want to scare you away here,
but having your babies and being your wife. I kind of like the—”

He cut her off with his mouth, needing her closer,
then dropped his head to her belly and rested his cheek there. If she felt his
hot tears pool on her bare skin, she didn’t say so. “I’ve wanted you since the
first time I met you,” he said. “Not just in my bed. In my life.”

“Me too,” she murmured. “That’s what was so
bizarre about my visions. No matter how much I avoided you, they never changed.
That never happens.”

“Maybe we’re just fated to be together,” he said.

“Tanner, look at me,” she whispered. “I don’t
believe in fate, and I don’t want to. I want to be with you because I choose
to, not because of some predestined plan for me.”

He closed his eyes, the sweetness of her words too
decadent to savor open-eyed. “Okay.”

But she had been created for something, whether or
not she wanted to believe it. She’d been created as a Key to unlock an evil
man’s powers. And he didn’t know how to tell her without risking her making
some terrible and rash decision.

“I’m going to break my own rule,” she said.
“Because I can’t be so selfish as to move forward with this without telling
you.”

He frowned. Did she already know the legend of the
Keys? Had she seen this?

“I’m having conflicting visions,” she said. “In
some, we’re just so happy. Married, in love, making babies, making love.” She
drew in a ragged breath, making Tanner straighten. “In the others, you’re
holding my body in your arms.”

“Doesn’t sound so terrible.”

“I’m dead, Tanner. You’re holding my dead body,
and I can’t be much older than I am now.”

Shit.
He ran his hand over his face.

“There’s more,” she said. “When I fell asleep
after...on the beach, I had a dream that my twin and I were being connected to
a machine. I don’t know why or what it was for, but I know it had to do with
the Ascendants’ plan.”

The Keys.
“Your twin?”

She nodded and told him about her memories of her
could-be twin.

Tanner rolled off the bed. He couldn’t stay still while
his blood raced like this. “Do you have a hair pin?”

“Do you understand what I’m saying, Tanner?”

He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head.
“How do we take Path A?”

He opened her jewelry box and found a safety pin.
He walked around to her side of the bed and began to work on the cuffs. They
needed to go help Chrissie and Fernandez in the library.

She studied him as the lock released. “What do you
mean, Path A?”

His throat felt thick and his eyes burned. “How do
we choose the future where you have my babies and I get to make love to you for
the rest of our lives?”

Chrissie threw another file on the stack and
tugged at her hair. “There’s nothing here.”

Nicholas Fernandez sat across from her, digging
through files at the same speed as Chrissie, but neither had found any
confirmation that Josie was or wasn’t a Key or any evidence that there was or
wasn’t a Keeper.

Tanner and Josie were on their way, though
Chrissie wasn’t sure what good it would do.

“Fuck,” Fernandez said.

Chrissie rested her head against her palms. “You
can say that again.”

“Fuck, fuck,” Fernandez said. “But you said she
does have a twin?”

“She let me look into her memories, but there
aren’t many of Josie with the little girl she remembers. In one they’re playing
in water—maybe a sprinkler? In another they’re holding hands with a young woman
in long skirts but I can’t see her face.”

“Any idea how we can track her down?”

Chrissie shook her head. “But you know who might
have information, don’t you?”

Fernandez narrowed his eyes. “Do they count when
we can’t trust half the things that come out of their mouths?”

“I’m going to call,” Chrissie said, and Fernandez
put his hand over hers as she reached for her purse. “We’re out of places to
look,” she explained.

“Are you still in love with him?” Fernandez asked,
his voice a low rumble.

Chrissie pulled her hand from under his and folded
her arms across her chest. She didn’t need to ask to know he was talking about
Rider. “Does it matter?”

His dark chocolate eyes burned into hers. “He
doesn’t deserve you.”

“I know that,” she whispered, but it was still the
nicest damn thing the man had ever said to her. “Don’t you think I know that?”

Fernandez set his jaw and pushed back from the
table. “Suit yourself. Call the asshole, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I
were you.”

“The asshole is already here,” someone said from the
door, and Chrissie’s heart tripped as she looked up to see her ex—the man she
once thought she’d marry—stride into the SIA library, his twin following
behind.

Tara squeezed the leather-bound stand-in journal
against her chest and took in a shaky breath.

She’d saved the world once. She could do it again.

Of course, the first time she’d had a plan. She’d
known who the bad guy was and what he wanted. The first time she’d been
prepared, and instead of keeping secrets from her, Collin had stood by her
side.

Street lights illuminated the sidewalk, making the
buildings throw malevolent shadows in her path.

She waited for the Collin look-alike to come and
touched her lips. How sad that the kiss had given the Shifter away. How sad
that she knew she hadn’t been talking to the man she loved because of a soft
brush of lips she’d wanted more than anything.

Collin wouldn’t have kissed her.

Collin thought very little of himself, but Tara
knew he was too noble to kiss a woman whom he saw as a child. Too moral to use
the kiss she craved to manipulate her.

So she waited as herself, a leather-bound book in
her arms, with too much fear and not enough plan. She waited for her chance to
save the world again.

But she wasn’t prepared when man’s arm went around
her neck and pulled her into the shadows.

“So, this Keeper guy, he’s immortal?” Chrissie
asked Collin, flipping through Josie’s mother’s journal in the hopes she could
see something, anything, even just a piece of a memory. Unfortunately, her
power didn’t work like that, and it was only the very rare inanimate object
that gave her a vision.

“This
Keeper guy
,” Collin said, not
bothering to keep the annoyance from his voice, “is hundreds of years old and
very dangerous.”

The library doors opened again and Tanner came
through, followed by Josie, Paige, and Darian.

“Who is he?” Tanner demanded without introduction.

“Oh, look,” Collin said, sarcasm dripping from his
words like so much poison, “the gang’s all here.”

Tanner stalked toward Collin, grabbed him at the
neck and threw him against the wall.

 Behind him, Darian said, “Answer the man’s
question.”

“That’s the multi-million-dollar question. Now,
let me go.”

Tanner shook him against the wall again. “If you
knew about this, why the hell did you warn us it was coming?”

“Tanner,” Josie said behind him, “put Collin down.
He doesn’t always use our methods but he’s
on our side
.”

Tanner narrowed his eyes and begrudgingly released
Collin. Chrissie released her breath.

Collin rubbed his neck lightly and sighed. “The
girl is wise.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not patient, so spit it out,”
Tanner said.

“We don’t know who the Keeper is because no one
sees the Keeper,” Collin explained. “Those who work for him speak with someone
else or to one of his few trusted employees. In fact, anyone who knows anything
about the Keeper knows that if he allows you to see his face, he’s as likely to
kill you as let you leave.”

“So, you’ve never met him,” Fernandez said. “He
could be a myth?”

“Then how do you explain my visions?” Josie asked
quietly.

Collin gave her a curt nod and continued. “This
isn’t the first time the Keeper has tried to unlock this latent power he was
prophesied to have. He wants to play God, but the last time he tried, he
failed.”

“What happened?” Josie said.

Darian cast a glance to Tanner who said, “I filled
her in as best I could in the car.”

Collin strode to the table where Chrissie and
Fernandez sat. He leaned against a leather arm chair as he spoke. “He had a
pair of twins, just like this time. One was a precog, the other was her twin—identical
save the gene for Special powers.”

“What about it?” Chrissie asked.

“The precog’s twin didn’t have it,” Rider
explained, as he and Collin seemed to be the only ones in the room who knew
what the hell was going on. “The prophesy states that the Keys must be a precog
and her non-Special match.”

“What happened with the previous attempt?”
Fernandez asked, leaning forward.

Collin answered, “The chemistry wasn’t right, and
the Keeper’s new power flickered but didn’t take. They thought they had to go
back to the drawing board.”

“But if it didn’t it work the first time, why are
they doing it again? What makes them think it’s going to work this time?”

“The prophesy just said ‘precog and her
non-Special match’ but perhaps it had to be a very specific precog.” Collin
frowned. “Unfortunately, we were unable to break the code in the journal. So
who knows?”

Darian cleared his throat and lifted a stack of
papers above his head. “I know.”

Collin narrowed his eyes. “What’s that?”

“A copy of Josie’s mother’s journal. I didn’t want
to mark the pages so I’d been working on a photocopy. When it went missing, I
decided it best to keep this copy to myself.”

Tanner shook his head. “You son of a bitch,” he
said, smiling.

“I should have known he’d have done that,” Paige
said, but her smile was forced.

Tanner’s smile dropped away. “What did you find
out?”

“Dr. Martin was the geneticist who created Josie
and her twin for the Keeper,” Darian said. “Before that, he found something
when working with pregnant women who came to his clinic. When Specials get
pregnant, their powers are heightened and the chemistry of their blood alters
just enough that—”

“So, they have to be pregnant?” Paige sagged in
relief. “So, it’s okay.” She looked at Josie. “There’s no way you’re pregnant,
is there?”

“Of course not,” she said. “We used protection
every time we—”