Finder's Keeper (30 page)

“I’m sorry.”

The bubble of hope popped, pricked by the needle of the right words from the wrong man. He was back. He was sorry. He was so unfairly beautiful and defensively charming.

And she had to send him away, because above all else, he was the wrong Mr. Right for her.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Morning-After Imposters

Chase was man enough to admit when he was being an idiot—even if it took his boss calling him one repeatedly and a sleepless night spent sitting in the abandoned living room of his brother’s house for the truth to penetrate.

He loved Mia. He couldn’t control that any more than he could control the universe that might take her away from him. Being with her was a risk and it might rip him to pieces in the long run—if anything happened to her, it
would
—but he couldn’t live his life dodging all the things that made it living. He had an existence, it was time he got a life.

For anyone else he didn’t think he could have done it, but for Mia he could risk it.
With
her he would, because she was just as freaked out as he was about their inability to control the universe. But together they could lose control.

If he could convince her to take another chance on him. He hadn’t shown himself to be a good risk by bailing on her last night.

“I’m sorry,” he said again when Mia didn’t speak. “I shouldn’t have bolted like that. I freaked out and I’m—”

“No.” Occam wriggled frantically in Mia’s arms, trying to get to Chase and she cuddled him higher, tucking his head under her chin to soothe him. “You were right to go.”

“Wait. What? I was right?” Chase frowned. He hadn’t seen that one coming. He’d expected to have to beg for forgiveness, anticipated diffusing indignation and hurt feelings, but he should have known Mia wouldn’t take the expected path.

“We both needed space to think. I was being impulsive—”

“Hey, impulsive is good. I fully support impulsive. Though I’m not sure presenting me with readouts documenting your affections counts as an impulse.”

He was having some impulses himself. Like the impulse to kiss her until she forgot logic. She looked gorgeous, wearing an oversized Cal Tech T-shirt that had obviously been slept in and a pair of boxer shorts. And the watch. It dangled from the chain around her neck and whenever Occam stopped squirming long enough to give her a free hand, her fingers would flutter to brush at it.

A straight, dark lock of her slippery hair escaped from the knot at her nape and he reached out to tuck it back. Mia flinched away, holding Occam up like a shield.

“Mia, love? Your eggs are getting cold.”

Chase froze with his hand still suspended in the air between them. That was a man’s voice. Coming from Mia’s kitchen. A strange man. Making Mia eggs. Calling Mia “love”.

Twelve hours. He’d left her only twelve hours ago.

Chase’s gaze couldn’t resist the long bare expanse of Mia’s legs. Another man had seen those legs this morning. Perhaps even woken up tangled in them.

No. She wouldn’t have.

“Mia?” He couldn’t breathe. She’d said she loved him
last night
. In every conceivable scenario of loss, betrayal was not how he had ever imagined losing her.

She’d gone pale. With guilt? She met his eyes without flinching, but that didn’t tell him much. Mia had never been the flinching type. She was unswervingly honest. Not that she wouldn’t sleep with another man, but that she wouldn’t lie about it afterward. He’d know. Any second now she’d open her mouth and he’d know.

“Peter is back.”

“Peter.” Her ex. Mr. Compatibility. The name was a sledgehammer in his gut. He shoved his hands into his pockets and the fingers of his right hand brushed against the metal band he’d put there this morning.

“I put on the watch last night and there he was.” Suddenly Mia couldn’t meet his gaze. Painfully honest Mia studied the railing, the doorframe, anything but him. “Fate, right? Magic. He’s The One.”

“Since when do you believe in magic?”

She finally looked at him. “Since I met you.”

Something in that look rocked him. She hadn’t slept with Peter. Chase was sure of it. Her heart was still his, he just had to make up all the ground he’d lost last night and reconvince her to think with her heart, rather than that enormous brain.

“Come here.” He caught her around the waist and tugged her out onto the front step with him.

“Chase—I can’t—”

He didn’t give her a chance to gather a coherent protest. Scooping Occam out of her arms, with the puppy squirming wildly in an attempt to lick every inch of Chase’s face, he deposited the dog inside and quickly pulled the door shut—cutting Mia off from the puppy she’d tried to use as a shield and the man she thought had come at the call of the watch.

“My eggs…” she complained when he faced her, putting himself between her and the door.

“I’ll make you more eggs. I make amazing eggs.” He couldn’t cook to save his life, but how hard could boiling an egg be?

A reluctant smile almost curved her lips. “You’re so full of shit.”

“And you don’t let me get away with any bullshit. Without you I’d just run rampant.”

“Charming innocent bystanders out of their wits.”

“Exactly. I need you, Mia.”

“I just need… I need time to think.”

“No. No thinking allowed. Feeling only.”

“I can’t make life decisions based only on emotion, Chase. That isn’t who I am.”

“Okay, fine, let’s be logical. Diversity.”

She blinked, visibly thrown by the word he’d thrown down like a gauntlet. “Excuse me?”

“Diversity. It’s better for the species to blend your genetic code with one that’s very different from your own, right?”

“On a strictly genetic level…”

“Hey, you wanted logic. Let’s be brutally logical. You and Peter are too similar. Marrying him would be like marrying your cousin.”

“Actually no, it wouldn’t—”

“Whereas marrying me would be good for the species.”

Mia gave a small breathy laugh then pursed her lips tight as if to hold in any other outbursts of good humor. “How long did it take you to come up with that argument?”

All night.
“It’s a work in progress. I’ve been practicing it ever since you started harping on compatibility.”

“I do not harp.”

He shifted closer, needing to touch her, but she sidled away.

She leaned against the railing with her hands behind her, gripping it. “My eggs are old.”

It took Chase a moment to realize they weren’t talking about breakfast any more.

“If I want to have a family, I need to do it now. Peter is ready for that. Are you? Can you honestly say that you want to ensure the diversity of the species with me when you couldn’t even handle me expressing a little emotion to you last night?”

“Last night I was an idiot. It won’t happen again.”

“You can’t guarantee that. And even if you manage to control your panic next time, I want to be with a man who doesn’t react to settling down with a fight or flight reflex. I need someone who wants a future with me, not someone who may never want it and has to be dragged to maturity every step of the way.”

“I knew the age difference thing would come up eventually.”

“It isn’t age. It’s maturity.”

“It’s neither,” he snapped. “It’s fear. My fear, your fear. God knows we’ve got baggage to spare, but that doesn’t have to stop us. I’m going to accept the offer on Toby’s house. We can fix up my parents’ place, move in there if you like it. There’s a yard for Occam. I’m not running anymore. I was an idiot, but I’m in this now. I know what I want and it’s you.”

“Chase…the watch…”

He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to get his hands on her. Chase crowded her against the railing, both hands cradling her face. She pressed her cheek into his touch, and a fragile hope rose with that gesture. Whatever she needed him to prove to her, he would do it.

“You love me, right?”

A rosy flush warmed her cheeks against his palms. “I thought I did, but what if—”

“No. You’re the least uncertain person I know. You
knew
you loved me. It was science, sweetheart. Science doesn’t lie.” He gazed into her eyes—no evasion, no dodging the truth or running from what he wanted. What he needed. He poured every ounce of urgency he felt into his words. “I love you, Mia. I know I was an idiot last night and I know Peter may seem like the right guy for you on paper, but magic isn’t just about trusting a watch. It’s about trusting yourself. Your heart. Peter came when you put on the watch? Well, so did I. One of us is a coincidence, but which one does your heart tell you it is? Which one of us do you want to be The One? It’s me, Mia. Let it be me.”

“I want it to be you,” she whispered. The steel in her spine melted a little.

Then he kissed her, and it melted a lot.

She released the railing behind her to grab on to him, pulling him into the kiss with startling force. She was hungry, eager, and without conscious intent on his part his gift woke up. He felt the barrier between himself and her desires fading to transparency, her intangibles bleeding into him like osmosis through every eager touch.

She wanted him. Only him. All of him. The images flashing into his brain were graphic, sweaty,
so damn hot
and had him hard in seconds. The lines between them blurred until he wasn’t sure whether it was Mia’s fantasies or his own that he was seeing.
Mia, flinging her glasses aside, standing in front of him wearing the watch. Wearing
only
the watch.
That metallic string snapped taut with a twang so harsh it was almost painful. He saw the Corregianni watch, saw it crystal clear, and it wasn’t around Mia’s neck.

He jerked his head up. His breath came hard and he couldn’t make himself let her go, but she had to know. “Mia. I know where the watch is.”

She frowned, tucking one hand between them to hold up the gold bauble at her breastbone. “It’s right here.”

“No, it isn’t.” He closed his hand over hers on the watch. “This one’s a fake.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

You Just Can’t Trust a Warlock

The Prometheus Unbound Bookshop and Spell Emporium was the physical manifestation of every imaginable occult cliché. It was musty, shadowy, cluttered and stocked with everything from crystal balls to jars of what looked suspiciously like pickled bat wings.

Mia wouldn’t have been surprised to find that instead of Muzak, they played one of those haunted house recordings of creaking doors, howling wind and organ dirges. Instead, the shop was eerily silent. She gripped Chase’s hand, wholly out of her depth.

“Prometheus!” Chase shouted, when the bell over the door failed to bring anyone rushing to assist them. Apparently efficient customer service didn’t fit the atmosphere.

The wait was anticlimactic after the way they’d rushed over here. She was due at the party in less than two hours, but not without the watch. The
real
watch.

Mia had fobbed Peter off with a rushed explanation that something had come up, thrown on some clothes and left him in her kitchen feeding Occam her cold eggs. She’d have to deal with his proposal soon, but with Chase standing right there, it would have been almost cruel to refuse him in that moment—though Peter was unlikely to be heartbroken. He was too much like her.

Mia plucked at the sleeve of her sweater, unsure whether it was nerves or the pre-bake temperatures in the shop that made her feel like she was suffocating. Chase had taken custody of the fake watch. She wasn’t sure which had her more freaked out—the possibility that the creep who’d traded her heirloom for a dud might not return it, or the question of who the real watch would choose for her if he did. She knew she wanted Chase, but what if this real watch reinforced what the fake one had seemed to say? What if Peter was really the better choice? Could her heart overpower her head a second time?

The faintest rustle of the fabric concealing the doorway at the back of the shop was their only warning as Prometheus appeared.

“You bellowed?”

The shop’s owner was a tall, lean, scarecrow of a man—tall enough he had to duck his head coming through the doorway and built with the awkward, angled elegance of Jimmy Stewart. He was tanned with white creases of smile lines beginning around his eyes and close-cropped prematurely white hair that made it impossible to guess his age.
Stand aside, Anderson Cooper
.

He was an unusually handsome man—eye-catching by virtue of his unique hard-boned beauty, but all of the physical trappings were just window dressing, a shell for the force of the personality within. It was his eyes—intense, magnetic, black-hole eyes that seemed to suck everything toward him like a vacuum. Mia took an involuntary step forward before Chase’s hand on hers pulled her back.

“You have something that belongs to us.” Chase raised his hand, letting the fake watch dangle from his fingers.

Prometheus’s black whirlpool eyes flicked to the gleam of gold then away, betraying no recognition, but a sliver of a smile curled his lips. “Do I? How interesting.”

“A girl came in here a few months back—”

“So many girls come in here,” Prometheus purred. “How to keep them straight?”

“She had a watch like this one,” Chase went on as if the shop owner had not interrupted. “A charmed watch, and she asked you to duplicate the love spell on it. You told her you couldn’t and gave her back a watch—but the one you returned to her was a fake.” He swung the watch like a pendulum. “This fake.”

“You seem quite certain of that. That you deduced so much would be impressive.
If
I had stolen something.” Prometheus’s smile had broadened to a full-fledged grin. “Who are you? I make it a practice to know the names of people who accuse me of dirty deeds.”

“Chase Hunter, Karmic Consultants.”

“Ah. Of course. How nice to meet you, Chase Hunter, Karmic Consultants.” The tall man rocked back on his heels, beaming now though the smile never touched the calculation in his eyes. “I should have guessed you were one of Karma’s little pets. Fascinating woman, your employer.”