Finder's Keeper (5 page)

Mia gathered up her cell phone and the phonebook-of-unknown-origin and shuffled toward the kitchen. Only to draw up short in the doorway.

“Whoa.”

Apparently she had not only gotten shitfaced last night, she’d also ransacked her own place.

Every cupboard and drawer was open. Pots, pans, utensils and dry goods were strewn around the counters and floors. An economy-size package of Cheetos had burst open and scattered neon cheese curls across the hardwood.

Which at least explained the orange debris on her forehead. Sort of.

Mia slumped to sit on a clear patch of floor, cradling her phone and the phonebook in her lap. She had no urge whatsoever to clean the mess.
One disaster at a time.

She brought up her call history on the phone.
3:14am: Unknown.
A sense of acute relief let her breathe again when she saw she’d only made one call the night before—after Gina—and it had not been to any of the family numbers. Her caller ID didn’t recognize it.

Mia made note of the number and brought up her phone’s browser, typing the mystery number into a reverse look-up engine. The result flickered on the screen.
Karmic Consultants
.

Mia frowned. What the hell was a karmic consultant? The name sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

Scrolling down, she found the company’s weblink and selected it, flipping over to their official site. The website was clean and professional looking, some kind of private investigators. Mia started to think they might actually be helpful. Until she saw the list of services.
Psychics, Mediums, Exorcisms, Occult Investigations, Aura Consultations.

Lovely. Apparently in times of drunkenness and extreme stress, Mia called Ghostbusters. How helpful.

At least she hadn’t called her mother to confess.

Mia reached above her to set the phone on the cluttered counter and shoved the phonebook aside. It was tempting to curl up on the floor, using the phonebook as a pillow, and sleep until her body stopped throbbing. Disturbingly tempting. The cool hardwood called to her, somehow seeming a thousand times more comfortable than the soft bed that waited upstairs.

She slumped lower.
Maybe just a little nap…

The doorbell ringing echoed through her skull like an air raid siren. Mia moaned and wondered if she could ignore it. Who dropped by without calling on a Saturday morning? It had to be missionaries. They would take one look at her and see the Save Me written all over her face.
In Cheetos.
And then she’d never get them to leave.

The bell rang again, accompanied by a knock—as if the air raid siren hadn’t managed to alert her to the fact that someone was standing on her doorstep.

Mia hauled herself to her feet and staggered toward the door through the flat spin standing caused, absently shoving her shirt tails back into her waistband.

There had to be a rosary around here somewhere. Her mother was always leaving them around the house in the hopes that her second-born daughter would discover the joys of the Church. Maybe if Mia opened the door holding one and muttering Hail Marys, the missionaries would leave her alone.

The bell rang a third time right as she reached the door and Mia flinched at her proximity to the siren. Stunning how something she’d always thought sounded like light sweet chimes sober could sound like the Devil’s gym whistle drunk.

She threw open the door, catching her uninvited guest halfway down her front steps.
Damn
. If she’d waited another minute he would have gone away.

At the sound of the door opening, he spun—and his face hit her like a sucker punch.
Sweet mother of God.
Obviously the result of some freakish genetic convergence of all the current standards of male beauty, his double helix should be a national treasure. The man was
gorgeous.

As an extension of her research into the neurochemistry of love, Mia had studied lust and attraction. She was perfectly aware that the dilation of her pupils and acceleration of her heart rate were just helpless biological reactions—but that awareness didn’t stop her insteps from melting.

He was tall and broad shouldered, with the kind of sculpted muscular physique most commonly seen on action stars and professional athletes—which her survival of the fittest animal instincts were telling her body meant he would be a good protector and they would have strong offspring.

While she saw a face of pure, masculine perfection, framed by longish blond hair with a slight curl, her subconscious saw the symmetry of his features that would have earned him an impressive score on the Marquardt Compu-Analytical Beauty Analysis.

It wasn’t love at first sight. It was science. And in spite of the potent pheromones he was throwing off and her girly flutters of reaction, he couldn’t have been less her type.

The blue jeans that clung to his hips and thighs were worn until the seams were white and frayed, with a narrow hole slashed just above one knee. A threadbare T-shirt completed his surfer-boy sex appeal—featuring a cartoon of a buxom brunette perched on a colorful surfboard and the slogan
Woody’s Longboards: Get Lei’d in Hawaii
.

Classy.

“Mia Corregianni?”

He started back toward her up the steps, eyebrows arched inquisitively. Mia’s eyes were drawn helplessly to his hips and the lazy, rolling way they moved.
Oh, mercy.
The swooping feeling in her stomach must be tequila-induced. It couldn’t have been her girly parts getting hopeful at the sight of Mr. Sexypants. She was attracted to
intellect
, not the physical trappings.

When he reached the top step, recognition flashed across his features and he grinned. “You.”

“Do I know you?” she asked, although she already knew the answer would be negative. She would have remembered that abnormally gorgeous face. And the mildly offensive fashion sense.

He shook his head with a smile. “Nope.”

Mia narrowed her eyes, which didn’t take much effort since she was already squinting against the morning sunlight. “So what are you doing here?” Pretty or not, she didn’t have the patience for bullshit this morning. And she’d never really given a damn about social niceties anyway.

His smile broadened, revealing a dimple, as if he found her irritability endearing. “My name’s Chase Hunter. Karmic Consultants. I’m a finder.”

Oh Good Lord. She’d drunk dialed
him.

The Ghostbusters were making house calls.

Chapter Five

Librarians Gone Wild

Chase couldn’t contain his grin as Miss Prim glowered at him from the doorway. Though now she looked more like Miss Prim after a night of hard partying. Librarians Gone Wild.

Even looking—and smelling—like she’d been run over by a tequila truck, she was pretty damn cute. Grouchy, but cute.

In the bright morning light, without the starched sternness of her suit as camouflage, she looked younger than he’d originally pegged her. Maybe early-to-mid-twenties. He was no closer to figuring out where he knew her from or why he’d been so fixated on her last night, but he couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot at the coincidence that had landed him on her doorstep. If he’d known Miss Prim was the client Karma had called him about this morning with an urgent need for his services, he would have hauled ass and gotten here earlier.

Though from the look of her, earlier might not have been appreciated.

As it was, she seemed to be giving serious thought to slamming the door in his face, which would certainly slow down him finishing the job and collecting his finder’s fee. Maybe he could arrange a discount for her if she was willing to pose as his girlfriend a few times. That wasn’t creepy, right? Seeing her felt like the universe sanctioning his
pretend to have a girlfriend
plan.

But first he had to do his job.

“You lost something, right?” he prompted when she just frowned at him suspiciously from the doorway. “I’m here to find it.”

Her suspicious frown coalesced into something harder, icier. “I was impaired last night. Clearly I made a mistake contacting your company. I’m sorry to waste your time.”

“Whoa.” He closed the distance between them and slapped a palm against the door before she could slam it. She didn’t try to wrestle it away from him, but she did prevent him from pushing it open any farther. Strong for such a bony little thing. “Look, sweetheart, you called me. Why don’t you let me do my job?”
And earn my paycheck…

“Your job. Of course.” Her smile wasn’t a smile at all, more a patronizing parody to humor him. “And how, exactly, do you propose to find my lost item, Mr. Hunter?”

“Chase.” He tapped a finger against his temple. “It’s a gift.”

She snorted. “I’m a scientist.”

Her profession was thrown down like a gauntlet. She apparently expected him to stagger back, fatally intimidated by the challenge, but Miss Prim didn’t know who she was dealing with. Chase had never met an argument he couldn’t talk his way out of—even when he was clearly in the wrong. And this time, he even had the advantage of being right.

He gave her a big easy grin, leaning against the doorjamb. “That’s about the prettiest way I’ve ever been accused of being a con artist.”

“I didn’t say—”

“Yes, you did.”

“I never meant to imply—”

“Don’t play dumb, sweetheart. It’s beneath you.”

Her jaw dropped. He’d bet his best board prissy Miss Scientist had never been called dumb a day in her life.

He pressed the advantage her shock gave him. “You think I’m a phony and a crook, but what if I could prove to you,
scientifically
, that I’m not? I’m not here to bilk you. We’ve got a satisfaction guarantee policy at Karmic. I don’t get paid unless I find your jeegaw. And I sure as hell don’t get paid for standing around arguing with you. So how’s about you let me look so I can get back to the beach while the waves are still good?”

His little speech had given her time to recoup. Her mouth snapped shut and drew into a tight bow. “I don’t let strange men into my house.”

“That must eliminate most of the male population. What do you do if you need a plumber?” He added an extra patronizing, let-the-menfolk-handle-this vibe just to watch her eyes darken.

She rolled her eyes. “Why do all men believe a person has to have a Y chromosome to perform basic home maintenance?”

“Have you heard the sounds a woman makes when she tries to snake a drain? It’s like mice on helium.”

“Of all the chauvinistic—”

“I can see you’ve never snaked a drain. Lemme guess, your daddy is very handy.”

“I—you—” she sputtered. “That is entirely beside the point.”

Chase burst out laughing. “That is exactly the point. The Y chromosome can be useful. So why don’t you let me help you?”

Her eyes narrowed. He saw the exact moment she realized he’d just run her in a conversational circle until she lost track of her arguments. A flash in her eyes, a pursing of her mouth, the flush of anger high on her cheeks—pissed off was a good look for Mia. “You’re worse than a used car salesman.”

“Sweetheart, trust me, I’m much better than a used car salesman. Car salesmen can’t find shit.”

A smile almost twitched her lips, but didn’t quite make it. “Charming. Still, I think I’ll pass. Have a nice day.”

The door started to close again and Chase added a foot to the hand holding it open. Mia glowered. Damn, she was a tough nut to crack. Usually the whole
let me help you
bit combined with a smile and a stack of references was a sure sell. Especially with women. Hell, most days he didn’t even have to speak with women. Just stand there and look pretty.

“I have references. Glowing recommendations from pillars of the community.”

“Is barging into people’s homes part of the service? References can be faked. I’ve seen
Leverage
. For all I know you stole my…you stole it yourself and now you’re trying to get me to pay you to tell me where you stashed it.”

“Hey, you called me, honey. I’m an honest psychic.” At her snort, he shifted tactics. Just walking away would have been easy, but walking away didn’t pay the mortgages—or get him a fake girlfriend to get Brody off his back. This was the new Chase. The determined Chase. Next up:
appeal to the panic
. “How bad is it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Karma said it was an emergency. That you sounded pretty ripped up about this thing you lost. So how bad is it?”

The irritation left her face, leaving in its wake a blank hopelessness that was much worse. “It’s bad,” she admitted. “But I don’t see how you can possibly—”

“You don’t have to see. You don’t have to believe. All you have to do is let me try.”

“Why are you so pushy?” she countered. “Why is it such a big deal to you that I let you find my missing…thing?”

“Why are you so resistant? What does it cost you to let me try?”

He saw the answer she wouldn’t admit written all over her face. For a scientist, letting him try was admitting there was a chance he would succeed. It was giving in to the idea of psychics and magic and the supernatural. It shouldn’t surprise him that Mia wouldn’t surrender her skepticism easily.

“What kind of science do you study?” He was willing to bet a bucket of board wax it wasn’t parapsychology.

Her mouth puckered and her chin tipped up, giving her an air of such arrogant self-assurance he was obviously meant to feel like an uneducated peasant regarding an intellectual queen. “I have Ph.Ds in molecular physics and neurobiology, but the primary focus of my research at present is the study of the physiological impacts of emotion on brain chemistry. Specifically the way love chemically alters our neural pathways.”

Chase should not have gotten solid wood listening to a conceited brainiac brag about her work—but there was something in her voice when she talked about it. Sure, she was the arrogant queen, but there was fire rather than ice behind her words, and he wanted to tap into that reservoir of heat. Especially in the face of her stand-still-so-I-can-scrape-you-off-the-bottom-of-my-shoe attitude. He could never resist a challenge in a short skirt.