Cindy Dees - Her Secret Spy

Not that all intuition was bad, though. Last night, as he’d walked her to the store, there’d been a moment. The kind of moment she’d fantasized about. That instant of connection as eyes met and instinctive recognition of true love broke over both parties. As angelic hosts sang and heavenly trumpets blared to announce the miracle. Or something along those lines.

The moment had left her breathless and thinking the kind of racy thoughts she’d rarely had time for before she’d set aside her unfortunate gift.

Resolutely, she picked up a tube of eyeliner and prayed that it would cooperate with her this morning. The makeup gods were capricious demons from time to time.

As she carefully accented the roundness and width of her big dark eyes, she allowed herself to remember her other dream from last night. The one about Max. Who knew a girl could make herself blush just by dreaming about a man she’d just met? Except in her dream they’d known each other—or at least had a connection—for a long time.

She stared critically at herself in the mirror and then down at her pitiful selection of lipsticks. She wanted to come off breezy. Demure but sexy—whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. Why was she going to all this trouble for this guy?

She’d always subscribed to the notion that any man worth her love would adore her just the way she was, with no makeup and her curls sticking out all over her head and a smudge of paint on her nose. Apparently that notion had flown right out the window at the first sign of a hot guy. He was not out of her league, darn it! She deserved any man she was attracted to.

But an insidious thread of doubt whispered warnings of what he would think if he knew about the circumstances of her conception and birth. She was tainted. Had bad genes. Her stepfather said once that they would come through in the end. The comment, uttered in anger, had stuck with her ever since. Was he right?

The sun shone a little less brightly through her window.

Max was, of course, punctual to the minute. She waited by the shop’s main entrance, picking at the black widow’s weeds she’d opted to wear. The old-fashioned dress swathed her in gloom and made her look at least a decade older than her twenty-six years.

“Going to a funeral after you make your statement?” he asked drily as he strolled down the sidewalk toward her.

Rendered speechless by his easy elegance in those flannel trousers and crisply starched dress shirt, she could only stare at him. How had she missed these movie-star good looks last night? She’d noticed that he was hot, but not that he was drop-dead gorgeous. She must have been in worse shock than she’d realized.

One of his eyebrows twitched. “Everything okay?”

“Umm, no. Yes.”

“Which?”

“I’m a little flummoxed by how handsome you are today.”

“Oh.” He fingered his jaw. “I shaved this morning. It’s nothing.”

Right. Because a simple shave had peeled back the troll’s face to reveal this prince beneath. She said lightly, “I believe a sincere yowza is in order, sir.”

“Well, thank you. And may I say you make a fetching widow.”

She grinned up at him. “Nice try.”

He shrugged. “Surely you know how beautiful a woman you are. Great bones. Perfect skin. Striking coloring. I have an eye for these things, you know.”

“And how’s that?” she asked as they strolled down the street.

“I have a good eye for beauty. Ask anyone who knows me. They’ll tell you so.” He stopped beside a low-slung, sleek sports car and opened the door for her. Startled, she sunk into the plush quilted leather interior. He was wealthy? She hadn’t seen that coming. It disappointed her a little. She wouldn’t want him to think she found him interesting just because he had money.

“Does your car have a name?” she asked as the vehicle purred away from the curb.

He frowned. “No.”

“Every car has one, you know.”

“A name?”

“Yes. You’re doing this beauty a great disservice by not taking the time to learn hers.”

He grinned over at her before accelerating out into a busy thoroughfare. “What would you call my car?”

She leaned forward to lay both palms flat on the dashboard. She listened for a moment and then broke into a big smile. “Of course. Her name is Lola. She’s Italian.”

“Most Ferraris are.”

“You’re making fun of me,” she accused.

“Are you one of those people who names everything?” he asked, without sounding at all like he was making fun of her.

She shrugged. “Only the things that need names.”

“And I suppose you skip people’s and animal’s given names entirely and make up endearments for them?”

She scowled, sensing that he was subtly poking fun at her. “Yes. And I’d call you Curmy.”

“Like Kermit the Frog?”

“No. Short for Curmudgeon.”

He laughed aloud. “I could live with that.”

“Fine, Curmy. How long till we reach the police station?”

“About...ten...seconds,” he answered as he decelerated quickly and swerved into a parking spot in front of a rather nondescript building obviously built in the modern-utilitarian 1970s.

“Lord, that’s an ugly building.” Of course, it wasn’t just the dreadful architecture. An aura of suffering and human evils hung over the place like a shroud. Hastily, she closed her mind’s eye, snapping it shut like a cheap door.

“No kidding it’s ugly,” Max muttered fervently as he helped her out of the car. “You’d think in a town like this that the builder would have given at least a tiny crap about his building not looking like a three-story wart.”

His hand came up to touch the small of her back as he escorted her into the police station, and her breath caught a little at the way her entire being focused on that light contact between them.

The actual taking of a statement took about two minutes. But then she came to the tricky part. “Officer Leblanc, have there been other girls in the past few years who went missing?”

“Of course,” the handsome Cajun replied.

“I mean any who look like me. You know. Similar height, build and coloring. Close to my age. That sort of thing.”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“My attacker. He...” She searched for the right words that didn’t come right out and say she’d picked a vision out of his brain. “He...indicated that I was not his first victim.”

“What do you mean?” As she’d expected, the cop jumped on her comment aggressively.

“I’m not sure exactly,” she demurred. “I...” Crap. She had no words to get around the truth she was determined not to reveal.

Thankfully, Max dived in and rescued her. Again. “I have to agree with her. I saw the way he was manhandling her. He was no amateur. He knew exactly how to subdue her. Could you just look into other missing persons reports, Bastien, and see if any other petite redheads have gone missing?”

“Fine. I’ll take a look.”

They had to wait around for a while as a lineup was prepared for her, and then Detective LeBlanc put her in a nasty little room with no lights and a big window. She knew the drill from watching television. Five surly-looking men filed into the room on the other side of the one-way glass, and she immediately pointed out suspect number four.

She was led out, and Max was brought into the room. He came out in about ten seconds, as well. She didn’t even bother to ask him which guy he’d picked. They’d both gotten up-close-and-personal looks at her attacker last night. The lineup was purely a formality.

And then they were done. An odd sense of panic washed over her. There was nothing else to tie Max to her life. He could drop her off at the curiosity shop and drive away, never to see her again. She didn’t even have his real name, let alone his phone number. If only she had more experience with men. Maybe she would know a smooth way to ask him for his contact information. Something that would let her keep in touch with him. She had a serious crush on him and craved more of him desperately.