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“How can you explain a feeling? I just sensed my bowl was not inside that building.”
Reese rose, thinking Taki the most illogical person he had ever encountered. How could she change her mind so quickly? “My investigator is already on his way.”
“Sorry. I was wrong,” she said, blue eyes troubled. Then she brightened. “But at least I admit it.”
“Yeah, at least there’s that.” Reese fought an impulse to warn her about relying on irrational feelings. “Taki, in my experience, facts work a lot better when searching for the truth.”
“Oh, I’m sure you think so,” she said, moving toward the door. “But I’ve learned facts can be manipulated. Twisted into something ugly.”
Reese came around his desk and stood beside her, wondering why he felt the urge to touch her, however inappropriate such an action might be. Would that be considered harassment in one of those previous lifetimes where they’d known each other?
Previous lifetimes? Yeah, sure. No doubt they’d known each other during the Civil War. Or maybe ancient Rome.
“Thanks for lunch,” he said. Taki had insisted on paying, reminding him that he was her guest. “I’ll let you know if anything develops.”
“Thank you.”
“Please don’t go to any more pawnshops, Taki. And I’m not ordering. I’m asking.”
She cocked her head. “And you even said ‘please.’”
“I’m serious,” he said, doubting she would listen. Taki existed in some mystifying world of her own creation where dangerous men like Romero didn’t exist. Too bad that world was total fiction.
“I promise.” She smiled, dimples appearing in her smooth cheeks, her face so serious and open that he knew she considered her promise a sacred vow. Without warning, she rose to her toes and brushed a kiss on his left cheek, her lips as soft as her promise. Her fresh scent, maybe jasmine, filled his senses, reminding him of sunshine and a gentle spring breeze.
“Thanks for worrying about me,” she said, hesitating an instant too long before pulling away, her breath warm and sweet on his chin. Reese closed his eyes against the thought of crushing her to him.
What the hell is wrong with me?
With his fingers pressed to the spot where her lips had touched, he watched Taki exit his office in her strangely elegant manner.
Talk about a breath of fresh air. Taki had blown into his life and shaken it up like nothing ever had. Treating what he knew to be fact as fiction, she made the impossible seem somehow believable.
Negative energy? Third eyes? Mysterious feelings? Ridiculous.
As his buzzer sounded insistently behind him, Reese felt as if he was coming out of a trance. The woman was sincere in her quirky beliefs, but a total fruitcake. He shook his head to clear it.
Damn, but she was a huge distraction, one he didn’t have time for.
Reese sat at his desk and prioritized the phone calls he needed to return. Thanks to his little time-out with Miss New Age Wonder, he wouldn’t get home tonight until after ten o’clock.
Better stay far, far away from Wacky Taki or he’d never get any work done.
“Yes, Joanne?” he said into the intercom.
“Agent Rivas is on line two.”
Reese punched the speaker. “What have you got for me, Javi?”
“Dead end, Reese. Some crackhead pawned a silver cup from a horse race, nothing from Tibet. But the clerk practically got religious when talking about your friend Taki. When do I get to meet this knockout blonde?”
“She’s a little hard to reach,” Reese said, realizing with a groan that he still didn’t have her phone number or address.
Taki might be a nut job, but she was also damned elusive.
* * *
AT HOME THAT EVENING, still unsettled by the loss of her bowl—not to mention her lunch with Reese—Taki tried to calm her mind by sitting for meditation. But her restless thoughts looped over and over one thing: Reese made her think of her father—actually, reminded her of her father—and she hated her father.
Maybe Reese could help her find the bowl, but she had no business coming within a square mile of him if he dredged up thoughts of the soulless monster. She should never look into Reese’s eyes—no matter how dreamy those particular eyes. No matter how dark, how aware. She sighed.
Longing to regain serenity, Taki rose and opened her back door to gaze out on her small herb garden. The sight of vigorous plants bursting with life out of their neat rows immediately improved her mood. The natural world always soothed her. Other than practicing yoga, her happiest times were spent with Mother Nature, either hiking or watching beautiful things grow.
She moved down the steps, feeling as if she were transitioning into another world, a better place, a quiet and simple space where no problems interfered. With the property bordered by tall oaks, she always felt as if she were entering some secret garden as she entered the backyard of the estate where she lived.
Inhaling deeply, she was rewarded with the delicious scent of the rich earth she’d worked so hard to create—Miami Beach actually had pretty lousy dirt—and, yes, there it was: a hint of lavender.
Her gaze zeroed in on the row of lavender, shiny green leaves and tiny purple buds. So hard to grow in South Florida, but with the cooler temperatures of winter, her third attempt had finally met with success. Lavender encouraged relaxation, and soon she could create her special scented bath oil. She often gave samples to new students, recommending long, soothing soaks after class. Maybe she should give some to Reese.
The image of a bare-chested, dark-eyed Reese easing his muscled body into a steaming tub made her anything but relaxed—in fact, it instantly destroyed the tranquility she’d come outside seeking.
Closing her eyes, she released a slow exhale, forcing her traitorous mind away from a naked Reese Beauchamps. It would certainly help if she didn’t find him so darned attractive.
She slipped off her shoes and stepped into the soft damp dirt between rows. Glorying in that sensation, she wiggled her toes and hugged her elbows. The plot might be small, but it was all hers, and she was perhaps too proud of these happy, healthy herbs.
And how could she call herself an herbalist if she didn’t grow her own product? She’d been on the run so much lately, this was the first time she’d been able to grow her own crop in what seemed like forever. She frowned, thinking back. How long had it been since her last real garden? One where the plants sent their roots straight into the earth and not some plastic pot.
Bending her knees, but keeping her upper back flat to protect the fragile lumbar area, Taki yanked weeds from between her plants. Working steadily down a row of Saint-John’s-wort, she considered her next step to locate the missing bowl. Where was it? She didn’t have any luck with the pawnshops. Could Reese’s logical methods find it?
She sighed, realizing her thoughts had once again circled back to Reese Beauchamps. Certainly didn’t take long.
A mockingbird chirped, flitted into a pine tree, then onto the iron railing of Victoria’s second-floor balcony where he began to sing in earnest. No lights were on in the master bedroom, so likely her landlady wasn’t home. Taki hoped Victoria was out having a good time at one of her clubs, maybe playing bridge.
Victoria Van Buren, who’d just turned seventy, had once been her mother’s best friend and mentor. After returning from Asia, on what was meant to be a brief trip to see Navi six months ago, Victoria offered free lodging in a converted garage behind the main house for as long as Taki wanted, promising never to reveal her true identity to anyone. While waiting for the bowl to arrive, Taki had accepted Victoria’s hospitality.
But now with the bowl stolen, everything had somehow changed.
Taki loved her cottage, but definitely did not want to talk to Victoria tonight. Truthfully, she didn’t want to talk to anyone. That’s why she was pulling weeds in her herb patch, hoping to figure out what to do about her bowl and Reese.
Because the universe in all its wisdom had linked Reese with her bowl. Once that connection was made, there was nothing she could do about it—no matter how much she wanted to never think about him again.
Of course, it would be a lot easier to forget about Reese if she didn’t enjoy fantasizing about him in his bath. Maybe she needed to meditate more often. Or longer.
What would Navi tell her to do? Spotting another weed, she bent over to extract it. No doubt Navi would teach something about seeking the truth, tell her that she needed to “do the work.” And, yeah, that actually did make sense.
So she’d seek the truth. She’d continue to do what she could to find the bowl.
But she needed to avoid Reese while she did so. She didn’t want to be reminded of her scheming father’s miserable world of excess, a place she’d vowed to never live again.
* * *
TAKI SMILED AT Benny in his usual front row space as she spread her mat for her Thursday evening class at SoBe Spa.
“How is your shoulder tonight, Ben?” Before starting her classes, he’d had a frozen shoulder that he could barely move, the result of an old injury.
Benny slowly rotated his arm and grinned. “Look at that. You’re a miracle worker, Taki.”
“No, you did the work,” she told him, pleased by his improvement.
She taught her most serious students in private sessions, the way yoga was meant to be learned, but she always found good energy with the friendly spa members. She enjoyed teaching here, and hoped she wouldn’t have to move again too soon.
To think she’d actually been thinking maybe she could stay in Miami. She should have known better. Getting attached always led to suffering.
For everyone, but especially for her.
After three sun salutations to warm up, she settled into half lotus and surveyed the room on the lookout for curious aerobic or step class students who ventured into her class. They tended to overdo the poses, sometimes harming themselves. Once a personal trainer had almost blown out a knee. She’d warned him to be careful, but he wouldn’t listen, and had to wear an elastic brace for a month.
Nobody new tonight, though, except— Recognition sent a startled thrill into her belly. Balancing on his buttocks, his arms wrapped around his knees, Reese sat in the back row, staring at her.
She inhaled deeply to calm herself, surprised by her reaction. She’d been teaching yoga since she was eighteen years old, and never had such a disturbing response to a new student.
But the sight of his bare arms and legs created a long, slow pull on her center.
“Assume a comfortable seated position. Close your eyes and allow your attention to focus on your breath, inhaling and exhaling through your nostrils,” Taki instructed, relieved her voice didn’t waver. Yeah, that would inspire confidence in my students.
“You’ve been in your head all day at work,” she said. “Now it’s time to come into your body.”
A class opening she frequently used, but a bad choice of words for tonight, she decided, trying to block the image of Reese’s well-toned arms and shoulders. She regained her concentration by filling her lungs with oxygen and exhaling with a controlled, even release.
She remained aware of Reese’s total attention as she led the class through warm-ups, sun salutes and the various poses she’d selected for tonight’s practice. Long used to students watching her, she couldn’t fathom why his intense scrutiny made her aware of herself as never before. The energy in the class felt sharper tonight, cutting through her distraction with a laserlike quality.
Only Reese’s presence explained the difference.
Why hadn’t she realized he might come to class? She’d encouraged him to try yoga, believing the practice would be therapeutic for him.
“And when you’re ready, you can come out of deep relaxation,” Taki said softly, alerting her students that class time had expired. Sitting with her back against a mirrored wall, she watched Reese, who still lay in corpse position. She hoped he’d been able to relax. Buddha knew the man needed it the way he was always rushing around.
Taki sighed at her ridiculous oath. When had she picked up that saying? Buddha certainly knew no such thing. In her never-ending search for a quiet mind, she’d managed to confuse the different philosophies she’d studied. Now with everything muddled inside her head, she’d never find the path to enlightenment and happiness.
If only her bowl hadn’t been stolen.
But she was probably putting too much faith in that remedy. Hadn’t Navi told her there was never one sure answer?
With her hands steepled in prayer position, she nodded and smiled at her students as they streamed from the yoga studio, and waited for her last student to leave. Reese.
He sat up, appearing more than a little dazed. But new students frequently reacted to their first savasana and deep relaxation the same way. Most people, definitely including Reese, were so stressed by a fast-paced life that their nervous systems remained in a constant state of agitation, which inevitably led down a path to one of the deadly modern diseases.
He’d recover in a few minutes. Tonight was likely the first time he’d managed to truly relax in years.
“How did you like the class?” she asked when his gaze sharpened and focused on her.
He rotated his neck left and right. “Wow. I haven’t been able to do that in a long time. What’d you do to me?”
“Nothing. You did it for yourself.”
“Listen,” Reese said, rising and stepping beside her. “I need your cell number in case something comes up on the bowl.”
“I don’t own a cell phone.” Taki rose and slipped on her sandals.
“Seriously?”
“Refusing to be at the mercy of a machine isn’t against the law.” She eased a loose gray sweatshirt over her camisole, feeling a slight chill now that she’d stopped moving.
“Then give me your home number. You do have a landline, right?”
Without replying, Taki removed her digital player from the spa’s sound system and stuffed it and other personal possessions into her class bag. She didn’t want to give him any phone number. She had good reasons to keep it private. Plus, it would be hard to avoid Reese if he could just call whenever he wanted.
But what if, like he suggested, he needed to speak to her about the bowl? Well, if she gave him her number, he had to respect her privacy and promise not to share it. She needed to make that clear.
When she faced him, his thick eyebrows were drawn together in puzzlement. No doubt he was used to women throwing their numbers at him without being asked.
“Will you miss another meeting if we go upstairs for a cup of herb tea?” she asked. “Before I give you my number, I need to explain something to you.”
He hesitated. “I don’t have a meeting, but...”
“But you have work to do,” she finished for him. Of course. She should have known that he’d feel compelled to use every second of the day to work. Even at night. So Mr. Workaholic could just wait to learn her phone number until he had a spare second.
He took a quick glance at his watch and sighed. “I guess I can make time.”
* * *
“THE PAWNSHOP DIDN’T have your bowl,” Reese told Taki as he relaxed onto a comfortable cushion. Until tonight, he’d never enjoyed this cozy nook of the spa where casual futon-style couches faced a picture window on the Atlantic Ocean. Five miles offshore, the lights of huge freighters glowed on the horizon.
At the service bar, she examined various boxes of tea, selected one and poured steaming water over tea bags in two white foam cups. Always in a hurry to get somewhere else, on occasion he’d grabbed a cup of coffee at this free beverage station, but never knew they provided herb tea. No doubt Taki’s doing.
“Lourdes promised she’d order biodegradable cups,” Taki said, frowning at the tea. “I’ll have to remind her again.”
“All Jacques’s Hock had was a silver chalice from Hialeah Race Track,” Reese said. “Sorry.”
She nodded. “I no longer believe my bowl is at a pawnshop. Honey?”
“What?” he asked, startled.
“Do you want honey in your tea?” She turned to him, eyebrows raised. “Or would you rather add another sweetener yourself?”
They stared at each other across the tiny area, and Reese wondered at the uneasiness in her eyes. In the soft lighting, their startling blue color appeared subdued, but her fair skin glowed. What was she worried about?
“Please,” he said. “And thank you.”
