Finder's Keeper (4 page)

“Gina.”

“Just thinking outside the box. You need a warm male body, sis.”

Actually, the problem lay more in the fact that she
didn’t
need warm male bodies. Mia had never had a very active libido. If she’d needed men more, she would have gone to the effort to acquire one before her thirty-fourth birthday. Sex was pleasant enough, but hardly essential to her physical and emotional well-being.

“What about—”

Mia cut her little sister off before she found herself at the church with another zoning officer. “Gina. The twenty dates you set me up on tonight were more than enough. Thank you.”

“Well, did you see any other likely candidates at the restaurant tonight? Even if the Zoning Avenger wasn’t The One, the watch should have brought your guy into range. You wore it, didn’t you?”

Mia wondered if she could get away with a lie. Gina was annoyingly good at detecting deception, but she might be able to slip one past her over the phone. If she hadn’t waited so long… Gina read the pause correctly and screeched.

“Mia! You aren’t even wearing it? How is it supposed to work if you don’t wear it?”

“There was nothing in the rules about wearing it. Possessing it, protecting it, yes. Wearing, no.”

“It’s
implied
.”

“Well, maybe the crazy gypsy lady should be a little more specific next time she sells a magic thingamabob to our family.”

“Mia.” Gina’s voice dropped, suddenly taking on an uncharacteristic seriousness. “I know you’ve always thought the watch was a crock. And I’m not going to argue that it works—you already know what I think. But I want you to consider that maybe your willingness to wear the watch isn’t just about whether or not
you
believe, but also about whether or not you respect Mama’s belief. And Nonna’s. And Zia Anna’s. You don’t have to try to find the love of your life, but could you at least
pretend
to be open to it? For the family? Because we all want you to be happy. And giving you that watch is the only way they know to show you that. So could you maybe not throw that all back in their faces by refusing to even
wear
the thing?”

Mia swallowed past the lump in her throat, her face hot with shame. She knew she could be self-centered and oblivious, but it sucked to have her baby sister read her the riot act—especially when she deserved it as royally as she did. “Damn,” she muttered with a thick voice, “only two months in and already you have that Mom Guilt Trip down to a science.”

Gina chuckled, easily accepting the apology in her tone. “What can I say? I’m a natural.”

“I’ll wear it,” Mia promised. “I’ll go home and put it on right away and wear it straight through until the Christening on Sunday. If it can get me a date so Mama leaves me alone, I will never bitch about how ridiculous a superstition it is…for at least a month.”

Gina snorted. “I’ll hold you to that.” Mia heard the creak of the rocking chair their mother had passed down to Gina when her youngest daughter was the first to have a child. “I bet he’s smokin’ hot, your guy. And not even remotely scientific.”

“You honestly think I would be compatible with someone unscientific?”

“I think you need someone less serious than you to lighten things up. Someone who isn’t going to be even more of a workaholic than you are.”

“I couldn’t be with someone who didn’t appreciate how important my work is to me. Men without ambition can’t possibly understand a woman whose priorities are larger than him—or even herself. I will allow that many people do seem to thrive with mates who present a polarizing viewpoint from their own, but I am not one of those people. I need someone stable. Educated. Unflappable.”

“Someone like Peter.”

Mia felt a little jab of guilt—as if she should have thought of him herself and it was disloyal to have forgotten the one long-term relationship she’d ever had. “Yes, someone precisely like Peter.”

“If you sounded more passionate than prim when you said his name, I might actually believe you.”

“I said someone
like
Peter, not Peter himself. He lives in Edinburgh now and my work is here.” And the fact that she hadn’t thought of him in almost two years probably didn’t bode well for their eternal happiness.

“Well, I for one am glad he didn’t immediately get transferred back here as soon as you got a hold of the watch. I’d hate to think the Stodgy Professor was your One and Only.”

“He isn’t stodgy,” Mia defended automatically.

“He sucks all the life out of a room just by entering it. You need someone with energy. Someone who can ignite your inner spark.”

“I don’t have an inner spark.”

“Ha. You have an inner bonfire. I can see it in your eyes whenever you’re talking about your work. You need a guy who lights you up like that. Promise me you won’t settle for less than a bonfire.”

Her heart sank. “Sweetie, I think most of the bonfire-inducing men are looking for someone younger and richer than me, who actually has boobs.”

“Your boobs are fine. Proportional. The right guy will love your boobs. And he’s coming. Believe it, sis. The watch is a state of mind. Go put it on and open yourself up to falling in love.”

The watch was certainly a state of mind. Mia had often theorized that its effectiveness lay only in the zealous belief her family placed on the fact that it
would
work. They made it infallible by being unwilling to accept any other alternative.

But it couldn’t hurt to take a page out of their book. It had worked for them.

“I will,” she promised her sister. “I’m just pulling into the driveway. I’ll have it on in five minutes. Scout’s honor.”

“Good. You’ve gotta get your brain out of the equation. Less thinking, more feeling. So here’s what you do. Remember that bottle of tequila Jamie and I gave you when your paper thingy was published in that journal? Pop the top on that sucker and do shots until your libido has a chance to catch up with that overactive brain of yours.”

“I don’t see how drinking by myself at home is going to help me find Mr. Right. Unless I’m supposed to find him at an AA meeting.”

“It’s not about the tequila. It’s about being open. Taking a leap. Just try to be open about this, okay? With or without alcohol enhancement.”

“I’ll try. Promise.”

“Great. Oh, and Mia? Sorry about the speed-dating thing. The zoning dude really seemed kinda nice-ish when I talked to him at the permit office.”

“He was nice.”
Ish.
“Just wrong.”

“Hey, Mister Right is out there. Don’t worry.”

If only it was as easy to find him as it was to say that. “G’night, Gina.”

“’Night, sis.”

Mia pulled into her carport. She grabbed her laptop case and trudged across the parking lot and up the steps to her condo. Unless they worked in pharmaceuticals, research scientists weren’t the best paid people in the world, but the microscopic two-bedroom townhome was tidy—largely because she spent so little time there. It was only fifteen minutes from the lab, but late at night when her eyes were gritty and aching, she usually just shut them on the couch in her office for a few hours rather than bothering to come home.

The glowing red display on the microwave read nine seventeen as she kicked off her slides. Even after the Night That Would Not End, she was still home earlier than she would have been if she’d just come straight from work.

She padded up the narrow staircase, flipping on lights as she went. She didn’t miss having someone waiting at home, all the lamps lit welcomingly when she walked in the door. Guilt flickered again, a reminder that she should have missed Peter more than she did. Not that she didn’t miss him at all, but…well, it was more a case of missing what he represented than missing the man himself. She missed the role he had filled in her life.

Someone to go to Christenings and keep her family from shooting her that pitying look they’d all perfected for the Spinster Daughter. But also someone who understood without being told that her work was more important to her than he was, because he felt the same way about his own.

They’d met when they were both in grad school and dated for almost a decade without ever getting serious. She’d expected, in a half-hearted way, that they would someday get married, but neither wanted children at the time and there didn’t seem to be a point in rushing into it. When he received the job offer in Scotland, she’d been relieved they weren’t married because it meant she wasn’t expected to go with him. They parted amicably—though even that word seemed too strong for their emotionless goodbye.

That was when she realized she hadn’t loved him. She’d never given the topic much thought before that day.

Mia spun the tumblers on the wall safe in her bedroom closet. She’d dropped the watch in there eleven months ago, annoyed by its existence, but if it could get her a date to the Christening in the next thirty-six hours, she might have to revise her opinion of the damn thing.

She swung open the door and reached inside to flip open the velvet jeweler’s case.

The
empty
jeweler’s case.

“No.”
Her heart stopped beating even as blood rushed too loud and fast in her ears. “No-no-no-no-no.”

She jerked the case out, flipped it over, and felt around inside the safe with desperation clawing at her brain, but her panic didn’t change anything. The safe stayed empty.

She’d lost the watch.

Chapter Four

One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor

Mia dragged herself toward consciousness, taking stock of the foreign object where her body should be. There was strong evidence that last night had not ended well.

One—Something small, furry and possibly molding had crawled into her mouth and died.

Two—Every muscle in her body felt like it had been cryogenically frozen and then improperly thawed after a couple decades, leaving her muscles aching and aged twenty years overnight.

Three—Her head pounded as if some industrious soul was using a spike and hammer to chisel away pieces of her skull. Or trying to crack it open like an egg to make an omelet with her brain; she wasn’t entirely sure which.

Four—When she opened her eyes, she realized she was lying face down on her living room rug, the short, rough pile mashing into her cheek as light from the front windows assaulted her eyes like the flashlight of God. The light must have woken her.

Five—On the floor in front of her face lay a half-empty tequila bottle, an open telephone book she hadn’t even known she owned, and her cell phone.

Mia cringed. Crap. Who had she drunk dialed?

She vaguely remembered a dull date involving small quantities of food and several glasses of red wine entering her system, but not so much that she’d been really tipsy. She’d been clear-headed and steady enough to drive. She remembered talking to Gina, driving home—

The watch
.

Mia jolted to a sitting position. Her stomach didn’t make the trip with the rest of her body, then decided to catch up by slingshotting its contents toward her throat as the world swooped and dipped around her.

She scrambled toward the bathroom, hunched over like the Cro-Magnon man, and thankfully made it to the Porcelain God of Hangovers before emptying her stomach. She flushed and slumped down next to the toilet, the cool tile feeling disproportionately good against her skin as the room began a slow lateral spin.

Apparently she was in that lovely place where Hungover and Still Drunk overlapped. The Venn Diagram of Drunkard’s Remorse.

Mia scaled the sink, using cabinet handles like holds on a climbing wall, and leaned against the basin to stay upright as she rinsed and brushed her teeth—though even minty freshness couldn’t entirely banish the fuzzy, dead-animal feeling in her mouth.

The woman in the mirror looked vaguely humanoid. Her hair had come down and been mashed into a rat’s nest that stuck out the side of her head. One cheek was red from the carpet abrasion, her glasses slanted precariously, and her eyes refused to open farther than a squint. Something orange and granular was smeared across her forehead and Mia rubbed at it with a wet washcloth, feeling every slimy cool bump on her abnormally sensitive skin.

Staggering back to the living room, Mia caught sight of her cell phone on the floor again, hit like a spotlight with the splash of sunlight streaming through the front windows.

Oh God. Had she drunk dialed her mom and told her the watch was missing? Or any member of the family? Everyone would know. If there was even a hint that she had failed her duties as the watch protector, mass panic would ensue. And the Corregiannis didn’t do panic in a small way. They didn’t do anything in a small way.

They were probably gathering pitchforks and kindling on their way over. She’d lost the watch.
The
watch. The timepiece responsible for health, happy marriages, job promotions and good parking karma. Her
one job
had been to protect it…and fall in love, but really she couldn’t be expected to fall in love on command. Protecting it had actually been a reasonable request. It was a freaking family heirloom. So what if there was superstition surrounding it? It was still valuable as a piece of family history. And she’d lost it.

And they would all think she’d done it on purpose.

Mia’s stomach staged another rebellion and she barely made it to the bathroom in time.

She’d never made any secret of the fact that she hated the watch. They all knew how ridiculous she thought it was. No one would buy that she’d lost it by accident.
She
almost didn’t buy it.

How could it have vanished from inside her safe? A locked safe inside her bedroom closet. There hadn’t been any signs of a break in. Nothing else was missing.

She retched until her stomach was officially empty, then stumbled to the sink for another brushing.

Could she have moved it and then forgotten about it somehow? The case was still in the safe, so maybe she’d taken it out to wear it?

And then completely forgotten about the personality reversal voluntarily wearing the watch would have entailed. Right.