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“But I just thought of something I want to say.”
She glared at him. “Spare me.”
“Hang in there,” he said, smiling. “This won’t take long.” His smile faded and his expression became serious. “I just wanted to say that kissing you was sensational. You sent me up in flames, Nancy Shatner. I’m very attracted to you. You’re a beautiful, intelligent, passionate woman.”
“I am?” She blinked. “I am not! What I mean is, I...” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know what I mean. Okay, fine, you’ve had your say. The subject is closed.”
“For now.”
“Forever!”
“No way, but we won’t argue the point at the moment.” He paused. “Listen, like it or not we’re in a bit of a mess here.” He glanced at the blue shawl where it was still spread across the bins of beads, then looked at Nancy again. “The shawl didn’t disappear while we were kissing.” He stared up at the ceiling, then narrowed his eyes as he directed his attention to the shawl. “Let’s gather some data.”
Nancy flipped one hand breezily in the air. “Why not? Data is nice. Gather your little heart out.”
Tux shot her a dark look, then folded his arms over his chest.
“If I was going to rob this place,” he said, “what would I get, besides a life’s supply of buttons and beads?”
Nancy shrugged. “Nothing. The majority of my business is mail orders paid by check. The cash flow from walk-in customers is minimal. Tux, seriously, there’s nothing here worth stealing.”
“Is there a tenant living upstairs?”
“Yes. Me.”
He dropped his arms to plant his hands on his narrow hips.
“You’re joking. Right? You wouldn’t be dumb enough to live alone in this neighborhood. Right? If you do, I just may have to erase the adjective intelligent from my list describing you. Tell me you don’t live upstairs.”
“You’re pushing me, Mr. Bishop. This is my store.” She pointed to the ceiling. “Up there is my home. That’s not dumb, it’s sound economic reasoning. I’m a flight of stairs away from my store, which is handy, due to the fact that I can’t afford a car. Everything I need is within walking distance of here.”
“Including sleazes who would steal from their own grandmothers,” Tux said. “This is a high-crime district, lady.”
“This is where I live and work, mister. I’ve been here for nearly two years and I’ve never had one bit of trouble. We’re like a family on this block. We look after each other. No one else has been robbed, or whatever, since I’ve been here, either, because businesses in this area aren’t exactly Fortune 500 enterprises.”
“Okay, okay,” Tux conceded, raising both hands in a gesture of peace. “You’ve made your point. Do you own a gun?”
“No.”
“Dandy,” he muttered, shaking his head. “You don’t even have a way to protect yourself. Look, we’re not getting anywhere. I think what I should do is talk to someone who’s up on psychic powers, see if there’s a reasonable explanation for why my friend’s have suddenly gone berserk.”
“That makes sense. Maybe there’s nothing at all to worry about. Maybe Glenna bringing me the blue shawl was just a weird coincidence.” She shivered. “Oh, I hope so, I really do.”
Tux closed the distance between them and drew one thumb gently over her lips. Nancy shivered again, only this time it wasn’t from a sudden rush of fear. The feel of Tux’s callused thumb on the soft flesh of her lips had been a simple, quick gesture, yet it had instantaneously fanned the still glowing embers of desire within her into hot, leaping flames.
Tux’s friend had sensed she was in danger when he saw his visions? she thought. Tux, himself, was a source of danger to her ability to reason, think straight, behave in a manner she was accustomed to. Oh, yes, Tux Bishop was a very dangerous man.
“I’m sorry about all this, Nancy,” he said quietly. “I know I’ve frightened you, but we’ll get to the bottom of it. I’ll find out what I can, then report back to you.
“In the meantime, be very careful. Make certain you check the doors and windows at night, don’t go strolling outside after dark, things like that Do you have a telephone upstairs?”
“Yes, it rings up there and down here at the same time. I’ll give you one of my business cards with the number.” She hurried into the back room and returned to hand him the card, which he slipped into his shirt pocket.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” he said.
Nancy nodded.
Their eyes met. The sensual haze that had encased them during the kisses shared began to weave its invisible threads once again, over and around them.
The incredible awareness, the sensuous pull between them from the moment they’d seen each other was eerie, like nothing either of them had experienced before.
It was exciting, but unsettling.
It was confusing, yet intertwined with a calming rightness.
“No,” Nancy whispered, not realizing she’d spoken aloud.
“What are you doing to me, Nancy Shatner?” Tux said, his voice raspy.
“Nothing.” She took a step backward. “Nothing.”
“You look like a beautiful gypsy. Are you? A gypsy? Do you have powers, too, that you haven’t told me about?”
“No, of course not. Don’t be silly. I’m not a gypsy, I just happen to like to wear this style of clothes sometimes. I get them at Glenna’s store.”
“Then how do you explain whatever this is that keeps... crackling between us, keeps wrapping around us? I can’t find the right words to describe it, but I know you feel it as much as I do. How do you explain that?”
“It’s simply a result of the bizarre scenario we’re suddenly finding ourselves in,” she said. “What am I doing to you? If you’ll recall, Mr. Bishop, you came in here with your story of visions and danger, and a blue shawl. You started this whole... whatever it is.”
A slow smile began to form on Tux’s lips, a very male smile, that caused Nancy to take yet another step away from him.
“Well,” he replied, “I guess you’re right. I started it. The really interesting part will be to see where it all goes. Right, Nancy?”
She lifted her chin. “Goodbye, Tux. I have a great deal of work to do.”
He looked at her for another long moment, then nodded. “I’m off to find an expert on psychic powers. I’ll check with you later. Take care of yourself.”
Nancy watched as Tux strode from behind the bins to the door, then left the store. Only then did she realize she’d been holding her breath until he was gone, and drew in a gulp of much needed air.
“Oh, goodness,” she said, pressing her hands to her cheeks.
“What a morning. What a mess. I don’t believe this.” She turned, then frowned as her gaze fell on the blue shawl. “Yes, I do,” she added wearily.
She snatched up the lusciously soft shawl and stomped into the back room.
Late that afternoon, Tux sat in the living room of a seventy-two-year-old man, who looked remarkably like Santa Claus.
“I appreciate your listening to my story, Dr. Nixon,” Tux said. “As I explained, I spent most of the day on the telephone looking for help with this situation, and was told more than once that you were the best authority in the area on psychic powers.”
“Call me Jeremiah, son,” the man answered. “Well, you’ve brought me an interesting tale, that’s for sure. But in all my years of researching psychic phenomena, I’ve always had to admit the same conclusion...there are no hard-and-fast rules we can count on.”
Tux leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers loosely together.
“Can you at least give me your opinion on what has happened?” he asked. “Why did I suddenly have visions predicting the future when I have never before had the power to do that? Even more, how do I know that what I saw will actually take place?”
“The blue shawl has already appeared, son.”
Tux slouched back in the chair. “I know.” He sighed and shook his head. “I hate this.”
Dr. Nixon chuckled. “A person wouldn’t need psychic powers to figure that out. You obviously like to be in control of your life, and at the moment you feel dictated to by outside forces.”
“Exactly. Not only that, there’s Nancy Shatner to consider. She’s in danger, or will be. But to what degree? I mean, maybe the fear I sensed, then saw on her face in the visions, was because a mouse ran across her floor.”
“Good point,” Jeremiah agreed, nodding. “It’s reasonable to me that your psychic ability took a side trip to an arena where it has never been, but due to your lack of experience, the danger that surrounds Nancy is not easily deciphered.”
“I hate this,” Tux repeated.
“Well, to be prudent, I’d suggest you assume the worst. Use the cliché of ‘better to be safe than sorry.’ You’d best watch over Nancy Shatner.”
“But for how long? In the first place, it’s difficult to continually remember when I’m talking to Nancy that I’m supposedly representing a friend of mine who has the powers, but I sure don’t want to tell Nancy the truth. She’s already used the word creepy in regard to this. I can live without that and the other adjectives she’d come up with. Secondly, I don’t know what the danger is, how serious it might be, or how ridiculous.”
“True. If she does see a mouse and gets hysterical, then that’s the end of the story. But you did say she works and lives in a high-crime neighborhood, so...” Dr. Nixon’s voice trailed off.
“Yeah, I hear you,” Tux said, frowning.
“Having listened to the details of your background, Tux, you’re more than capable of protecting Nancy.” He paused. “The lifelong researcher in me is fascinated by all of this. I’m just sorry I can’t give you concrete data as to why this happened. All I can offer you is my opinion.”
“Which is?”
“I believe that you and Nancy Shatner are connected in some way. The men of science would say that you two had an unexplainable link that enabled you to receive a message from Nancy that was based on events yet to happen.”
“Great,” Tux said dryly.
“However, there might be another theory coming from the romantics, those who speak more from their hearts than their minds.”
“Oh?”
“They’d be inclined to feel that you and Nancy are soul mates, found each other with thoughts before you actually met. She called out to you, you came. Destiny, son, destiny.”
“And you? What do you believe?”
Dr. Nixon smiled. “I believe I’ll be very eager to hear which theory proves to be true. You will keep me posted, won’t you?”
Tux got to his feet. “Yes, of course I will, providing I survive it all. I swear, I really—”
“Hate this,” Jeremiah concluded for him, laughing. “Tux, the data is crystal clear.”
Destiny.
When Dr. Nixon had explained the two approaches to viewing the situation, Tux had filed the information and not paid active attention to it.
But as he drove away from the old gentleman’s house, he realized he was actually hearing for the first time that portion of what had been said.
Destiny.
Destiny?
Ah, come on, give it a rest, Tux thought, with an impatient shake of his head. That really was the nonsense of romantics.
Soul mates.
He was chucking that one out the window, too. He and Nancy Shatner were not soul mates, not each other’s destiny. That was a bunch of hogwash. He and Nancy had connected by thought waves because they hadn’t yet met as they were destined to do? Ridiculous.
But...
Nancy had called out to him.
And he’d come.
She was in some kind of potential danger.
He fully intended to watch over and protect her until the source of that danger could be discovered and dealt with,
He’d been determined to locate the beautiful, gypsylike woman, who had pleaded for help in his visions.
And when he did find her, he’d kissed her.
Tux tightened his hold on the steering wheel and shifted slightly on the seat as heat coiled low and tight in his body from the remembrance of the kisses shared with Nancy.
She’d turned him inside out, that was for sure. He’d never been so instantly consumed by lust when kissing a woman.
“Wrong,” he said, smacking the steering wheel with the heel of his hand.
It hadn’t been just lust. What had swept throughout him like a hot, flaming rocket when he’d held Nancy in his arms, kissed her, savored the feel of her feminine, delicate body nestled against him, had not been just lust.
There had been a maze of indiscernible emotions tumbling through his mind as well. He’d recognized protectiveness and possessiveness, but the remainder were a tangled puzzle.
Protectiveness? That was easily explained. Nancy was in some kind of danger from an event yet to take place. It was perfectly natural for a decent, basically nice guy, to be determined to protect her from that danger lurking in future shadows.
Possessiveness? Well, that was reasonable, too. After all, he was the one who had been mentally informed of that danger, then delivered the news flash of its existence to Nancy. She was his for the duration of this dilemma; his to protect. His. Hence, the emotion of possessiveness.
Tux nodded decisively.
Destiny? Soul mates? Forget it. He was a realist, a man who operated with his feet firmly on the ground.
Logical thinking dictated that romantic-based psychic messages could only be received by someone who had a mind receptive to those kinds of thoughts, a place to receive them.
That wasn’t him, not by a long shot. Therefore, he was back to Dr. Nixon’s theory one, the scientific analysis. By some cosmic...or whatever...fluke, his brain waves had mistakenly connected with Nancy’s. It was like dialing the telephone and getting the wrong number.
