the thin fabric of her cashmere sweater. As if he again read her thoughts, his gaze moved to her chest and he began to stroke her thigh with his thumb. It was all she could do to stop herself from arching against his touch and begging him to kiss her.
Then, suddenly, he released her. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “I need to keep my eyes on the road. That’s never happened before. I must be tired.”
“It’s fine,” she managed.
He pulled the car back onto the road. “We’re almost there, anyhow. Like you said, twenty minutes to check it out, and then we can leave.”
“Good.”
She pressed back into the seat and studied the road ahead, her body still tingling where Jacob had touched her.
3
IT WAS obvious to him now, after nearly slamming head-on into a transport truck. His continuing attraction to Amanda was going to kill him.
Literally.
It was a good thing they’d never been partnered before. He’d probably already be dead. The raging hard-on he was currently dealing with alone might kill him.
Jacob shook his head, silently chastising himself. Amanda had her own life. She was moving three hundred miles away and good riddance to her. He much preferred to be fully in charge of his emotions, and, for that matter, his cock.
He did find it more than a little interesting that she seemed to have taken an interest in his sex life. Fifty one-night stands? That was one hell of an overestimation. When he needed to let some steam off he rarely had any problems finding somebody willing to help him out, but fifty?
Hell, most nights he stayed home with a six-pack of Bud and the Playboy channel. Sad but true, lately it gave him almost as much satisfaction as the real thing. He’d definitely hit a slump. Two years since his big break-up and move to Mystic Ridge and he hadn’t found a single woman that interested him enough to see more than once.
Obviously the fault was with him. He knew it. He just wasn’t quite ready to deal with that yet.
“We’re here,” he said after what seemed like an eternity of silence between them. It had really only been a half hour since the brush with death…and the distracting contact with Amanda’s jeans-clad thigh.
He pulled into the driveway of the house set on a large lot. The house itself looked to be at least a hundred years old and the drive was flanked by thick oak trees that would have made the area dark even at noon.
Another car—a silver Volkswagen Jetta—idled in front of them and as soon as they pulled up a small woman with curly red hair, lit by Jacob’s headlights, stepped out of it. She beckoned them to join her.
“Guess we’re on the clock already,” Jacob said.
“Then let’s get it over with,” Amanda replied curtly. She quickly gathered her paperwork together, opened the passenger-side door, and got out.
Let’s get it over with. For some reason the phrase amused him. Was that how she might view a hot night of sex with her true love, David K. Smith?
“Let’s get it over with, honey.”
Sounded about right.
Pushing any thoughts of Amanda and sex out of his head, Jacob got out of the car to join his partner-of-the-moment in front of the irate-looking woman.
“I’ve been waiting for an hour already,” she snapped.
Jacob tensed at the shrill, impatient tone. He was about to open his mouth to say something, probably along the lines of “Chill out, lady, we’re here now,” when Amanda beat him to the punch.
“We apologize for any inconvenience, Mrs. Davis—”
“It’s Ms. Davis.”
What a huge surprise, Jacob thought dryly.
“Ms. Davis,” Amanda repeated, and then smiled warmly at the unpleasant woman. “But we did get here as soon as we could. This location is a fair drive for us.”
“That’s no excuse.”
Jacob was surprised that Amanda’s smile held. Hell, if he’d given her this much of a problem she’d be giving him the death glare by now.
Her death glare was kind of cute.
Amanda’s smile, though, did weaken a bit at the edges as she juggled her papers. She loved paperwork. He knew that. However, he hadn’t been aware that some of the paperwork she’d handled had to do with him and his past. It had made him more than a little uncomfortable when she’d brought up the subject of his ex-fiancée.
Served him right. She’d only been giving him a very big sign to stay away from her personal issues. It was only fair.
Best to keep things just business between them. No personal issues need apply.
Still, it bothered him. He would have rather kept up the facade of an unrepentant ladies’ man than some fool still nursing a broken heart.
Besides, he wasn’t nursing that broken heart anymore. He’d thrown it away. That’s what you did with broken things. You got rid of them so they didn’t cause unnecessary clutter.
A few pages from Amanda’s stack came loose and fluttered to the ground. She grabbed at them as Ms. Davis raised an eyebrow.
“Let’s move this along, dear. I don’t have all night.”
Amanda’s face flushed. Jacob leaned over and picked up some of the fallen pages and handed them back to her. She looked frustrated.
It was okay. He’d handle this.
“Ms. Davis,” he said out loud, turning toward the short redhead and giving her one of his very best smiles. He extended his hand to her. “I’m Jacob Caine.”
She hesitated for a brief moment, and then shook his hand.
That was all he needed. The skin-to-skin contact helped him get an empathic read on her. She obviously had no psychic abilities. Since joining PARA, he’d found that some psychics, such as Amanda, were a blank page to him. This woman on the other hand was wide open. He got the immediate impression she was equal parts lonely and needy.
He could totally work with that.
He squeezed her hand before letting it go. “What I want to know is why a beautiful woman like yourself would want to live in such a dreary house like this. I see you in a high-rise condo in a big city. Very cosmopolitan.”
Her thin eyebrows raised. “You’re a very good psychic. I actually have an offer in on a new complex in Chicago as we speak.”
“The perfect city,” he said. “I’m actually from Chicago originally myself. I moved away from there two years ago.”
“Really?”
He nodded. Well, to be quite honest, he was from Seattle, but
