tighter at the sight of her—but only in the front.
His knuckles whitened even more on the steering wheel.
He hated that she affected him like this. Other than lusting after her body for two years now, he honestly couldn’t stand the woman.
Why should he? She obviously despised him.
With one contemptuous look at the party where they first met, Amanda had stared a hole right through him to the other side as if her beautiful baby blues had laser beams hooked up to them. He’d felt naked and exposed, and not in a fun handcuffs-and-bedpost sort of way.
What the hell happened? he wondered, and not for the first time since that night.
He still didn’t know. One moment they were introducing themselves to each other and he was falling very quickly into those gorgeous eyes of hers, and the next moment she was giving him the freezing-cold shoulder. He just wished he’d been able to get an empathic read on her. It would have helped to pinpoint exactly what had turned her off about him. She’d said she didn’t have psychic walls up to block him, but he was less convinced.
It would make things much easier if he’d been able to forget about her and not want her nearly every day since. What did they say about the unattainable? Made it that much more exciting?
It wasn’t exciting. Torturous and uncomfortable, yes. Exciting, no.
She was definitely his weakness. And he had to overcome his pointless attraction to her. Tonight would be a great chance—especially since he’d heard she was quitting PARA soon—to finally get the beautiful clairvoyant out of his system.
Hell, two years ago he hadn’t believed in any of this psychic stuff. He’d been a regular guy with a regular job and a fiancée he planned to marry—that is, until he caught her in bed with his best friend. Sounded like the ultimate cliché, but it still stung like hell.
At the time, PARA had been secretly checking out his background. They’d found out he had certain abilities, abilities that he’d always written off to intuition and luck, and they offered him a job at exactly the right time. He enthusiastically took the chance of leaving his old life to come to the small town of Mystic Ridge in upper New York state, where the PARA headquarters were located. But the scars had already formed over his heart. He’d trusted not one but two people, and they’d both screwed him over. Or, he supposed, they’d screwed each other and he’d simply been left out in the cold.
Then they’d gotten married four months later claiming that they were madly in love. Insult to injury. Definitely.
His plan for revenge? To drink a great deal of alcohol. Also to have sex with as many women as would let him. To his surprise, there were a whole lot of women who would, which was great for a while, fantastic even, at least until he realized that maybe he wanted a bit more than a series of empty one-night stands.
Then he’d met her—Amanda LaGrange—and for the briefest of moments when their eyes met across the room that night he felt his scarred heart start to pound a little faster. At least, until she dug her designer stiletto heel into it.
He took the hint.
Whatever. He was happy working for PARA and having an exciting and varied sex life. It worked for him and he hadn’t received any complaints yet.
He tensed as Amanda opened up the passenger-side door of the Mustang and got in. She had a fake, frozen smile plastered on her face. He recognized it. It was the same fake, frozen smile she always wore in his presence.
The smile that made him focus on her full red lips and wonder what they’d taste like.
No, he thought immediately. She has no effect on you anymore, remember? Be strong.
“Jacob,” she said simply.
“That’s my name,” he replied. “How’ve you been, Amanda?”
“Wonderful,” she said.
“Good to hear.” He shifted into first gear and pulled away from the curb. “I don’t think you’ve ever been in my car before.”
“No, I haven’t.”
And that was about the end of his reserve of small talk. With a two-hour drive ahead of them, that might pose a bit of a problem.
“Patrick briefed me on the assignment earlier and wanted me to fill you in.” She reached into the bag she’d brought with her to pull out a notebook filled with page after page of her neat, precise handwriting. “A woman named Sheila Davis recently inherited the property from a distant uncle. While doing a walk-through she heard strange noises and had a sense of being pushed out of the house. That’s when she contacted us for an immediate assessment.”
“She’s scared to live there?”
“No. Actually, she thinks a haunted house will reduce the property value. She wants to sell and turn a quick profit and is planning an open house next week. So we go in, determine if there needs to be an exorcism performed, and then we leave. I figure it won’t take more than twenty minutes.”
She was wearing that perfume he liked.
Dammit to hell, he thought angrily.
He shifted position in his seat trying to ignore her very warm, feminine presence so close to him. Was it the fact that he knew he couldn’t have her that made him feel this way?
But, no. He didn’t want her. He could have any woman he wanted, and Amanda the Strange was not even on the list anymore.
Vanilla, he thought then. Her perfume smelled like vanilla. Edible. Delicious.
His grip on the steering wheel was so tight by now he thought he might be able to yank it right out of the dashboard if he tried. He realized that taking on this assignment tonight had been a huge, regrettable mistake. But Patrick had practically begged him, and he didn’t want to let his boss down.
“Are you listening to me?” she asked after a moment.
“Yeah, sure. Haunted house. We’re checking it out. Routine stuff. In and out in twenty minutes. No problem.”
She eyed him skeptically. “Is everything all right? You seem a bit distracted.”
He pushed a reasonable facsimile of a smile onto his face. “I appreciate your concern.” He concentrated on the road ahead. “So is it true?”
“What?”
“You’re quitting PARA? Heading to the Big Apple?”
She closed her notebook and slid it back into her bag. “It’s true.”
“When are you through?”
“This is my last field assignment.” She gazed out of the passenger-side window. “Patrick says they’re throwing me a going-away party Tuesday, so I get to say goodbye to everyone. I’m going to miss them all so much. But other than that and packing, I should be out of here the day after.”
Less than a week. The thought that she was leaving soon should have given him a sense of relief, but it didn’t. Not even close. In fact, it made his
