Flirting With Fate (13 page)

He wandered into the Stilettos, Inc. office and
waved to Aaron, their assistant.

“Josie in today?” he asked, hoping like hell he
didn’t sound as pathetic as he felt.

Aaron shook his head. “She called and said she was
taking the day off.”

Well, that would make this visit easier at least,
but he’d rather have a chance to talk to her.

“Hi, Tanner,” a small voice said from the couch.

Tanner looked over to see Paige’s little sister
waving at him from one of the waiting area couches. “Hey, Tara.” He pointed to
the back. “I need to visit with Paige for a minute. Were you already waiting to
talk to her?”

Tara shook her head. “No, you first. By all means.
Maybe she’ll take her mood out on you before she tears into me again.”

“Thanks.” He flashed her a smile. The kid was okay
and not nearly as naïve as her big sister thought.

He passed Josie’s office and wondered again what
the hell had happened last night. One second, he’d had Josie exactly where he
wanted her—hot, naked, and satisfied in his arms—and the next she’d been
anxious as hell to get him out the door.

“That’s what you get for messing around with a
Stiletto Girl,” Fernandez said this morning when Tanner had made the mistake of
confiding in him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Fernandez just shook his head. “They want nothing
to do with us. Darian and Paige? They’re an anomaly. Actually, I’m not even
sure they’re that. I’ll be amazed if they don’t kill each other before the
wedding.”

“What’s your point?”

“Josie freaked out because she doesn’t want you in
her business. Simple as that.”

Tanner wasn’t sure Fernandez was right, but as far
as he was concerned, Josie
was
his business. She was his friend, even if
they never slept together again—which would be a travesty. They’d been so damn
good together.

He cared about her and they’d been good together.
He’d leave it at that. No need to analyze the feeling that seemed to consume
his gut more than his heart.

He couldn’t analyze the feeling because now he had
the one thing she wanted most, and he couldn’t bring himself to give it to her,
not if there was a chance it might make her go through some outrageous DNA
conversion. Not if she would risk her life. He didn’t trust the man who’d been
in her apartment last night, and he’d kept the journal to protect her. But now
he couldn’t even do that.

Josie wasn’t answering his calls, so he had to
find someone to look after her.

Paige’s door was half closed, and as Tanner raised
a hand to knock, he heard arguing and stopped.

“No,” Paige said. “Absolutely not.”

“Paige,” Chrissie said. “You know I’m not the type
to jump on being some kind of…
mentor
.”

“Really?” Paige said, her voice raising an octave.
“Because it sounds to me like that’s exactly what you signed on for.”

“Tara has no identity.” Chrissie’s voice dropped
as Paige’s rose. “She needs to feel important. To have a purpose.”

“So you expect me to be okay with her risking her
life?”

Tanner turned on his heel. He could come back
another time.

“Wiley, I know you’re out there,” Paige called.
“Come on in.”

Tanner winced and toed the door open, not
interested in getting in the middle of a cat fight. “I didn’t mean to
interrupt.”

Paige leaned back in her chair, but Chrissie
continued standing against the wall, arms crossed, staring Paige down.

“I can kill Chrissie another time,” Paige said,
her calm voice contrasting with her words. “What can I do for you?”

Tanner took a breath. He wanted to share as little
of what he knew as possible. Not only had he opened this up as an SIA case
after Josie had been attacked in her apartment, he didn’t want the girls in the
middle of trouble when they needed to focus on protecting Josie.

“Get out,” Paige said suddenly.

Tanner took a step back. “Excuse me?”

Paige looked at Chrissie. “Can you believe he came
here to lie to us?”

Chrissie rolled her eyes. “He’s SIA. Are you
surprised?”

Tanner held up his hands. “Hey, I’m innocent. I
haven’t said a word and have no intention of lying to you.”

Paige waved away his protest. “Lie, omit fact,
distort the truth. It all comes across the same in your energy.”

Tanner looked to Chrissie. “Since when can she do
that without touching the subject?”

Chrissie grinned. “She can’t unless the subject is
real emotionally primed about something. Little sloppy, don’t you think?
Walking into an empath’s office with your emotions dripping all over the
place?”

Tanner ignored Chrissie’s jibe and turned to
Paige.

“Fernandez is teaching me,” Paige explained. “And
you can stay, but only if you tell the truth.”

“That’s fair.”

Paige narrowed her eyes. “Damn, he reined in his
emotions.”

Chrissie grabbed his arm, and Tanner shifted his
thoughts to block her from his memories of last night. Instead he tried to
focus on the memory of his last conversation with Fernandez about how much
Chrissie irritated him.

Chrissie rolled her eyes and muttered, “You can
tell him the feeling’s mutual.” But she didn’t let go, and then her eyes widened.
“You slept with her.”

So much for that.

Paige leaned halfway across her desk, apparently
not needing an explanation as to whom Chrissie was referring. “You fucker,” she
said, her voice so soft he wouldn’t have known her rage if he hadn’t heard her
words. “Do you know how messed up she was last night?”
Not as messed up as she would have been if she’d known Tanner was keeping her
mother’s journal from her.

“Holy shit,” Chrissie said, and Tanner cursed
himself because he’d already forgotten to manipulate what memories Chrissie
would find nearest the surface—not that it did him a whole hell of a lot of
good.

“What kind of bastard are you?” Chrissie asked.

He looked to Paige. “Can I have a seat?”

Paige set her jaw and settled back in her seat
despite looking like she wanted to come across her desk and sucker-punch him.
“Sure, whatever.”

After taking his arm back from Chrissie’s grasp,
Tanner lowered himself on a chair and put his hands on his knees. He was making
a mess of this.

“I’m here because I’m worried about Josie.”

“But that didn’t stop you from sleeping with her
when she was at her most vulnerable,” Paige said, her voice sickly sweet.

Chrissie shot her a look and shook her head, and
Paige shut her mouth.

He took a breath. “There’s shit brewing. I don’t
know what or who or how yet, but I think Josie’s in danger.”

“You think she’s in danger?” Chrissie said. “Some
asshole broke into her apartment to steal her mother’s journal. He beat the
shit out of her and broke her arm, and you think she’s in danger.” She rolled
her eyes. “There’s the SIA for you. Best and brightest among Specials.”

Paige frowned. “Chrissie, let him speak.”

Chrissie gaped. “You know what he isn’t saying,
Paige? What he isn’t saying is that he got the journal back and didn’t tell
Josie.”

Tanner turned and narrowed his eyes. “And you’d
better not either.” His voice was deadly soft.

“Why?” Paige asked.

Tanner put up a hand. “You don’t want Josie to
have that journal. You have to trust me. If you care about her at all, you will
trust me on this.”

“And what if we don’t trust you?” Paige asked.

“Then Josie will just have to hate me.” When he’d
made the decision last night, he’d known the likely result. But he’d rather her
hate him than follow through with her plan, and he had to accept that was a
possible outcome of giving the journal back to her. “It’s in a safe place, but
I won’t give it to her.” How much could he tell them?

“Spit it all out,” Paige said.

Hell, Darian would probably tell her anyway. “The
journal holds encoded messages—messages so deeply encoded that even Josie
didn’t recognize they were there all these years.”

“Wow,” Chrissie said. “That’s what she was keeping
from me. Why didn’t she tell us?”

“I would guess she didn’t tell you for the same
reason she didn’t tell me,” he said, earning him a punch in the arm from
Chrissie.

“Don’t think you’re more important than we are,”
she said.

“Chrissie,” Paige warned. She turned her attention
to Tanner. “What did the messages say?”

“Josie had only gotten through some of them, but
what she’d found told of her parents’ plans to see this geneticist who could
change their DNA—make them new people so they could run away.”

Paige nodded. “They were planning to run before
they were killed. Josie never knew why.”

“She thinks the messages might be telling her that
she needs to follow through with their plan.”

“That’s outrageous!” Chrissie said.

Tanner closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “I
know, but I have Darian working on it, and from what he’s decoded so far, we
think she’s right. That was what her mother intended.”

Paige put her hand over her mouth. “That’s
terrible. Why would they want her to do that?”

Tanner shook his head. “I don’t know, and Josie
doesn’t know. Last night, a doctor claiming to have worked with her mother
showed up at Josie’s apartment and told her she was no longer a part of the
Ascendant plan, that her blood wouldn’t be any good to them since she’s not a
virgin.”

Paige sagged in her chair. “Thank God.”

“I don’t trust him,” Tanner said.

“Jesus, you didn’t tell her that, did you?”
Chrissie asked.

“Of course not.” Tanner looked to Chrissie. “Now,
you see why I can’t return it to her?”

“Yeah.” Chrissie nodded. “The fertility clinics?
Is that what she was looking for? Her geneticist?”

Tanner nodded. “I think so, but I never asked.”

“Because you were too busy sleeping with her?”

Tanner set his jaw. “Don’t. Start.”

“Tanner.” Paige gave him a sideways smile. “You’ve
fallen in love with our girl, haven’t you?”

Tanner ignored the question. “As of last night, I
opened this up as an SIA investigation.”

“Why’d you do that?” Chrissie groaned and looked
at Paige. “Now they’re going to want us to stay out of it.”

Paige only nodded. “I see why you had to do that.”

Rolling her eyes, Chrissie said, “Don’t be some
SIA groupie now just because you’re marrying one.”

Tanner rubbed his forehead where a dull, throbbing
ache was forming. “Considering the sensitive material in the journal, including
references to the Ascendants that suggest Josie’s parents were working for them
before they were murdered, I had to open the case. We have every reason to use
SIA resources to pursue this.”

“You can’t expect us to stay out of it, though,”
Chrissie said. “We’re not going to sit back and let you play guard dog if our
friend is in danger.”

“Actually,” he said, “I was hoping you would be
the guard dog.”

Paige narrowed her eyes. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”

Fuck. They’d probably chew his head off when he
admitted this. Not that he deserved it. “Josie kind of kicked me out
after...last night, and now she’d not returning my phone calls.”

“What’d you do to her?” Chrissie asked.

Paige shook her head. “He’s torn up about it,
Chris.” She narrowed her eyes. “Worried, confused, and…Wiley, sweetie, that’s
love.”

Tanner sighed. He used to be damn good at keeping
his emotions held close, but apparently where Josie was involved he was
transparent. “I need you two to keep her out of this. At least until I know if
there’s still a threat.”

“If there was no threat, why would someone attack
her for the journal?”

“Exactly,” Tanner said.

Paige studied him for a long beat. “You really
think she’s still in danger?”

“Yes,” Tanner said. “But there’s more.”

The women stared at him, waiting.

“If the SIA finds something in the journal or
elsewhere that brings them to the conclusion that Josie’s mother was right—that
she needs to go through DNA conversion to stop some Ascendant plot—”

“The hell they will,” Chrissie said.

“If that happens,” Tanner said, “then I want you
to hide her.”

“Surely they wouldn’t...” Paige muttered. “The
threat would have to be—”

“If they do,” Tanner said, “hide her until we find
another way.”

“Darian has the journal,” Tara told Collin. “He’s
decoding the messages now.” She’d sneaked out of the office—why wait around
like a puppy dog while her sister sulked anyway? She’d come straight to
Collin’s apartment with the news.

Rider, Collin’s twin—identical save for Collin’s
grisly facial scar—nodded. “Good job, kid. You might just be worth keeping
around.”

Tara slipped into a stool at the kitchen counter
and raised her brows. “Call me kid again, and you won’t have the choice.”

Rider and Collin exchanged a look, and Collin just
shook his head.

“What?” Tara said.

Collin didn’t look at her. “My brother is
wondering when you became so sassy. But knowing your big sister as I do, I’d
figured it was just a matter of time.”

“So, are you ready to tell me what’s going on or
not?” She set her jaw. “I’m sick of being in the dark.”

They’d been testing her for the last two days,
seeing how many shifts she could do and how long she could hold them. Only last
night—when her power had begun to peter out completely—did the guys remember
that, like all other Specials, Tara’s power drained with use, and she needed to
recharge.

Since Specials recharged with sex or human blood,
that created an interesting dilemma. Though Collin assured her it’d be easy
enough to find a non-Special human with a vampire fetish—someone who would get
off on letting her drink his or her blood—Tara was repulsed by the idea. Almost
as repulsed as she was by the thought of another visit to Easy Frat Boys R Us.