stared at him intently, willing him to understand. “Many people use mundane skills to pass themselves off as psychics. The technique is generally referred to as cold reading. I do think that some people who actually cold read believe themselves to be genuinely psychic. In point of fact, they’re picking up on subtle body language signals from their subjects.”
“Like your aunt?”
He sounded as if he was trying to make a joke, but she answered seriously. “Most people who saw her in action believed she had a genuine gift. It’s not possible to cold read the future, but she could predict it spot-on. She could give uncannily accurate readings to people she’d never met, over the phone, in a different part of the country from her. And she never did it as a parlor trick or for financial gain.”
To his credit, Max didn’t make any snarky comments. He actually seemed to take her at her word when she claimed her aunt had possessed out-of-the-ordinary skills. At least he didn’t disbelieve her outright. That was more than she could have asked from him.
“If you’re not psychic,” he remarked lightly, “then I guess you’re simply a spectacular kisser.”
She shot him a damning look. “You don’t believe that.”
“I dunno. That was a pretty hot kiss you laid on me. Perhaps we ought to try it again and see if the same thing happens.”
“We’re in a restaurant, sitting in front of the window on a crowded street!”
“All those folks out there have seen kissing before.”
“I’m still hungry,” she declared, her stomach doing flip-flops at the idea of kissing him again. And this time when she wasn’t scared out of her mind.
“Afraid to kiss me?” he teased her.
“You have a sister, don’t you?” she accused.
He glanced at her a shade too quickly. “Did your psychic powers tell you that?”
“No. That annoying big-brother tone you just took with me told me,” she retorted.
Grinning, he lifted his orange juice to her. “Touché.”
An urge filled her to know this man, to understand what made him tick, to know how he’d become the confident, self-contained man seated before her today. “Tell me the three most important things that have ever happened to you,” she asked impulsively.
“You first,” he returned.
“Fair enough.” She thought for a moment. “In no particular order, the circumstances of my conception—”
He interrupted her. “Elaborate on that.”
“My mother was drugged and raped at a party when she was nineteen. Her attacker was never caught. I was the result of that event. But it means I never knew my birth father.” She added reluctantly, “And it means my mother was plagued by conflicted feelings about me and my existence throughout my entire upbringing.”
Which was the understatement of the century. No matter how hard her mother had wanted to love her, some part of her had never been able to break through the trauma of the rape to truly, unconditionally love Lissa. Her mother’s head was willing to love, but her heart was not entirely.
Max looked as though his mental wheels were turning a hundred miles an hour, and she continued hastily before he could ask her any more probing questions about that exceedingly unpleasant detail about her past.
“Number two most important life event—inheriting the shop from my aunt. It gave me an excuse to move across the country and start a new life.”
“Why didn’t you just sell the shop and stay where you were? That building has great bones and is in a neighborhood that’s gentrifying fast. You could turn a nice profit if you sold it.”
“I needed the new start more than I needed the money.”
“Why?”
She was careful not to even think about her real reasons for the abrupt move, lest they show on her face and Captain Perceptive Pants pick up on them. “My life wasn’t heading the direction I wanted it to in Vermont.”
“And what direction would that be?”
She shrugged. “The normal one. A decent living, some friends, a nice guy. Maybe settling down someday.” Suddenly panicked that he would think she was making a pass at him, she added in desperation, “You know. The whole 2.1 kids, dog and a Volvo station wagon routine.”
He smiled gently at her attempt at humor. “And the third most important thing to happen to you?”
“I’m still waiting for it.” She wasn’t about to admit that meeting him was rapidly climbing its way onto the list. And she bloody well wasn’t confessing that talking with dead people was the real third thing on her list. “Okay, your turn,” she blurted.
His facial expression went stone cold, locked and barred, no entrance. When he spoke, it was with great reluctance. “My parent’s divorce changed the course of my life. My father tried to steal my loyalty away from my mother, and the result was that he and I spent a lot of time together when I was a kid. He tried to teach me to be like him.”
She sensed darkness in that statement. Were she still a practicing psychic and he a client seeking a reading, she would dive into that darkness and explore it, but she was not and he was not. “Did your father succeed in making you like him?” she asked quietly.
“That’s an excellent question.”
Good grief. Wave upon wave of darkness shrouded that answer. Clearly Max was deeply conflicted about his father and not at all enamored at the idea of being like him. She noted that he declined to answer her. He continued with his list.
“The car accident that almost killed my mom and little sister was the second big milestone. It left my mother paralyzed from the neck down. I had to move back home from college and care for her around the clock for four years until she died of complications.”
“Oh, Max. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged casually, but she didn’t have to be psychic to feel the pain in the gesture.
“And the third event?”
He opened his mouth. Started to say something but stopped. A voice in her head filled in his unspoken words. Meeting you. Was that for real, or was that just her own desires whispering what she wanted to hear?
“My work, I suppose.”
“And what exactly is it that you do?”
“I’m a finder. I locate things for people with a lot of money burning a hole in their pockets. Art, antiques, furniture, information, you name it. I make connections and fulfill wishes.”
Interesting. “Tell me more about yourself, Max.”
“Nope.”
She blinked, startled at the bluntness of his reply. He sounded like he meant it, too. “Gonna make me discover
