Remembrance (The Mediator #7)(34)

“Max?”

Now fairly ancient, the Ackerman family dog lived with Jake and Jesse, padding around the house in search of bits of stray food to eat and sunny spots in which to fall asleep.

“Yes, Max,” Jesse said. “You know he’s always had a preternatural ability to sense when spirits are around. Look how he avoided your bedroom when you were in high school.”

“Because you were there.”

Funny how now that Jesse’s soul was back in his body, Max was quite affectionate toward him. The dog certainly didn’t seem to sense any kind of evil in him. Let Jesse’s cat, Spike, walk into the room, however, and all hell broke loose.

“You know the safest thing to do right now is what I ask,” Jesse went on, ignoring me. “If not for me, for the children.”

“Children?” I echoed, bemused. “What children? Our future children? Let me tell you something, Jesse, those are getting harder and harder to imagine since you won’t even—”

“The children whose parents might bring them to the emergency room tonight at St. Francis Medical Center,” he interrupted, looking down at me with those big dark eyes. “How will I be able to concentrate on them when I’ll be so busy worrying about you?”

I have to admit, for a minute I fell for it, lost in those gleaming eyes. I melted. Should I tell him? I thought. It wasn’t fair of me not to. He deserved to know what Paul was doing. Look at him, so clean cut in his tie, so professional, so angelic. There wasn’t an ounce of malevolence in him. He was so gentle, he cared so much about children. He’d never lay a finger on Paul . . .

Then I remembered the time he’d tried to drown Paul in the hot tub at 99 Pine Crest, and realized how easily he’d manipulated me.

I pushed him away.

“Oh, my God, you jerk. Fine. I’ll do it, but for the children. Not for you.”

“Good.” He leaned down with a grin to scoop up my clothes and toss them to me. “Hurry. She used up a lot of energy in her attack on you, but now she’ll have had time to regroup. I’ll text Gina to ask what she needs from the apartment while you pack up Romeo and the rest of your things.”

“Great.” I rolled my eyes as he unlatched the childproof gate leading to the stairs back to my apartment, then held the gate open for me with one hand while he texted Gina with the other. “My dream come true. I finally get to sleep in your bed, and you won’t even be there.”

This caused him to glance up from his phone, one dark eyebrow raised. It was the one with the scar through it, a perfect crescent moon of skin where dark hair should have been. “Perhaps that’s for the best,” he said. “If I were in that bed with you, and you were dressed like that, you’d get no sleep at all.”

“Promises.” I accidentally-on-purpose grazed him with my breasts as I went through the gate in front of him. “Promises, promises. That’s all I ever hear from you—”

He snaked an arm around my waist and pulled me hard against him, so quickly, and with such force, it momentarily knocked the breath from me. I dropped my clothes.

“What’s the matter?” I glanced around in alarm, thinking that Lucia had reappeared, and he was snatching me from eminent danger.

But I realized the danger I was sensing was of an entirely different kind when he pressed me even closer against him, so close that I could feel the sharp definition of the buttons of his shirt—and the hardness of him through the rivets of his fly.

“I always keep my promises,” he said in a voice that was deeper than usual.

Then he leaned down to kiss me, and I felt the danger—and his promise—through every nerve in my body. It coursed from my lips all the way down to my toes, and reawakened other parts that had only recently calmed down again after being overexcited by the chaise longue.

“Y-yes,” I said, clinging to him a little unsteadily when he finally let me up for air. “You do keep your promises. I’ll give you that.”

“Hey, you two,” I heard my neighbor Ryan shout from his balcony. “Get a room!”

Jesse pulled reluctantly away from me, shooting a hostile glance in Ryan’s direction. “I’m really starting to dislike him.”

“Yeah, me, too.” I kept an arm around Jesse’s waist, since I needed the support. I still felt a little shaky. “Let’s get out of here.”





once


I had classes Tuesday and Thursday mornings until eleven, which was rough for me even when I wasn’t up late the night before recovering from an attack from a Non-Compliant Deceased Person.

But it was particularly rough that Thursday morning. Jake had been super excited about his unexpected overnight guests—well, one of them, anyway. He kept me and Gina up talking for hours, covering any and every topic he could think of, including but not limited to: what Jake would do if he got his hands on the “creeper” who was stalking us (the excuse Jesse gave him—and Gina—for why we’d suddenly had to crash at their house for the night); the tastiness of thin-crust pizza; what constituted a perfect wave, and why Jake was so good at riding them; and the unfairness of his not being made best man at my forthcoming wedding.

To avoid ill feeling, Jesse had appointed all three of my stepbrothers groomsmen, just as I had three bridesmaids: CeeCee, Gina, and Brad’s wife, Debbie. None of us were thrilled with the last choice, but it had been a necessary evil, since my stepnieces were our flower girls, and we needed both their parents close by to help keep control of them in the basilica during the ceremony.