Tami Hoag - Magic

Bryan’s brows bobbed up and his face lit with genuine interest. “Karate? Really?”

Now was not the time to be overly honest, Rachel reflected as she frantically cast her gaze about for a handy sharp-edged instrument with which she might defend herself.

She thought of her mother and a terrible pang reverberated through her. All the years they’d wasted! And for what? Now she was finally returning, hoping she and Addie could patch up their relationship. What if she were too late? Dr. Moore had told her it wasn’t safe for Addie to live alone any longer, that her mother’s impairment made her forget things like turning off the stove and who to allow inside her home. Had her mother let this man into the house thinking he was a friend? It was entirely possible.

On the drive to California from Nebraska, Rachel had thought about what time she would have left with her mother-the mother she knew and loved-not some vacuous stranger existing in her mother’s body. And she had vowed to make the most of it. Time for them may have been snatched away. The thought filled her with a sense of almost overwhelming loss.

“Rachel,” he said abruptly.

Her eyes widened at the sound of her name. The stranger’s voice was husky and warm, but the fact that he knew her name sent chills down her back.

Bryan nodded decisively. “You’re Rachel Lindquist. You’re Addie’s daughter. I should have recognized you right off. You look a lot like your mother.”

He stared at her hard, his straight brows drawing down low and tight over his eyes. A slight frown of disapproval turned the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t triggered by Rachel Lindquist’s appearance or her identity, but by his own reaction to both. This was the daughter who had not bothered to visit her mother in five years, the girl Addie herself had labeled ungrateful. This was the young woman who had run off with a folk singer, the young woman he had thought of as selfish and uncaring. And he was damned attracted to her.

It came as a very unpleasant surprise, that warm, curling sensation deep in his gut. It was something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time, but he was too strongly, basically masculine not to recognize it for what it was-desire. The primitive male in him was responding to a pretty female, and he heartily resented it, resented her for stirring that dormant need inside him.

“So, you decided to come back after all,” he said coldly, trying to distance himself from her emotionally as well as physically.

Rachel willed herself to stand still while Bryan Hennessy’s gaze bore through her. He moved back and a little to her left, and the light from the old chandelier fell more fully across his face. He looked as if he’d just awakened from a sound sleep. Behind his glasses his eyes were bleary and bloodshot, but there was nothing truly dangerous in their stare. He looked annoyed more than anything. More than anything except male. He looked very male-big and brooding and sexy with his tousled hair and beard-shadowed cheeks.

The silence between them swelled with unspoken messages, messages Rachel didn’t want to hear or understand. Just the same, she felt a strange fluttering deep inside her, and she pressed a hand to her stomach as if she could push the sensation away. It was probably just hunger. Most of a day had passed since she’d eaten.

Tearing her gaze away from Bryan Hennessy, she gave herself a mental shake. She was experiencing hunger, all right, but it wasn’t the kind that she could appease with a sandwich. If she had learned anything over the course of the past five years, it was to be honest with herself. The kind of hunger coursing through her had little to do with prime rib and everything to do with primal attraction.

The realization shocked her. She had lived to the ripe old age of twenty-five and had never experienced such a strong physical reaction to a man, not even to Terence, whom she had once loved. She hadn’t expected ever to feel it. It simply wasn’t in her nature. She certainly hadn’t expected to feel it for a complete stranger, especially one who was suddenly regarding her with subtle disdain. She didn’t like it, didn’t want it, and she most definitely didn’t need it. The reason she had come to Anastasia loomed over her like a dark cloud. There would be no time in her life now for anything but Addie.

“Where is my mother?” she asked firmly, effectively breaking the strange spell between them.

“Upstairs. Asleep, if she’s lucky,” Bryan said, shouldering his way past her, “though I’d be surprised if there’s a dog in this county you didn’t wake up with that shrieking.”

“Shrieking!” Rachel said indignantly. She pressed her lips into a thin line and planted her hands on her slim hips as she watched him fiddling with the array of equipment clustered in the foyer. Anger surged through her as other feelings subsided. “Of course I was shrieking. I step into my mother’s house and am virtually attacked by mechanical contraptions.

“What is all this junk?” she asked impatiently, gesturing sharply at the stuff. “What’s it doing here? What are you doing here? Who do you think you are anyway?”

“Most of the time I think I’m Bryan Hennessy,” Bryan said dryly. He righted a light meter that had tipped over and tapped it gently with a finger, relieved to see it was still functioning. “I got hit in the head with a shot put once, and for about three hours afterward I thought I was Prince Charles, but that was fifteen years ago. I’ve pretty much gotten over it, except for a strange yen to play polo every now and again. And I was once mistaken for Pat Reilly, the actor.” He shot her a Cheshire-cat smile that made Rachel’s heart flip. “Personally, I don’t think we look all that much alike, but the lady tearing my shirt off didn’t agree.”

Warmth bloomed under the surface of Rachel’s skin as her imagination conjured up an unusually vivid picture of this man with his shirt half off. Her image of his chest was smooth and solid with well-defined muscles, a sprinkling of tawny curls, and a tiny brown mole just above his left nipple. She could almost feel the heat of his skin against her palms, and her nostrils flared as she caught the faintest hint of his male scent. It was an altogether weird experience, one that had her fighting to get a good deep breath into her lungs.

Oblivious to Rachel’s predicament, Bryan had turned back to his machinery. He checked each item thoroughly. At the moment he couldn’t afford to have a piece needing repair. His finances weren’t in the healthiest of states. In fact, he was more or less broke.

“This ‘junk,’ ” he said, “is highly sensitive electronic surveillance equipment essential to my work. I’m a psychic investigator specializing in locating and defining paranormal phenomenon.”

It came as a complete surprise to Rachel that a man who looked as rumpled and ratty as Bryan did was capable of speaking in more than monosyllables. She tucked her chin back and frowned as she tried to translate his explanation into garden-variety English. “Is there a generic term for what you do?”

He flashed her a smile that revealed even white teeth worthy of a toothpaste commercial. This time his eyes twinkled with amusement, the corners crinkling attractively behind his spectacles. “I’m a ghostbuster.”

Rachel blinked at him, certain she had heard him wrong. “You’re a what?”

“You know, a ghostbuster. When people hear things that go bump in the night, I’m the guy they hire to find out what those things are. Is it Aunt Edna coming back to get them for all those jokes they made about her pot roast, or is it just bad plumbing?” His broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Is that disgusting ooze in the basement crud from hell, or do they just need a new septic tank?”