Finder's Keeper (7 page)

“We specialize in the impossible, Dr. Corregianni. Isn’t that why you came to us?”

The words were meant to be comforting, but Mia’s lips pursed with icy disapprobation. “Ms. Cox, that which we believe to be impossible or inexplicable is just that which we do not yet have the scientific maturity to understand.”

Karma smiled, unruffled by the scold. “True enough. I, for one, would love to see more serious scientific studies into paranormal phenomenon.” She lifted the telephone from her desk and pressed the intercom to reach the outer office where her surfer finder waited.

Mia became even more still and Karma got the sense that was her version of squirming in her chair. She was not comfortable with Chase, but why? Was it just scientific skepticism or something more personal?

“Chase,” Karma spoke into the phone, a shadow of a smile curving her lips. “Why don’t you join us?”

Karma, the proprietress of the unconventional investigation firm Mia had turned to in her hour of drunken desperation, was everything she could have hoped for. Tidy, controlled and professional. Anal. Mia respected those qualities—all of which could be used to describe Mia herself quite accurately. She didn’t deal well with messy, emotional, impulsive people. Chase Hunter seemed inclined to be all of those.

Karma set the phone back into the cradle and folded her hands on the desk. Her deep red manicure was as perfect as her makeup. Her hair was smoothed back in a French twist with a blue-on-black silk sheen and the subtle Asian configuration to her features made her even more striking.

Karma couldn’t have been much older than Mia was, but Mia couldn’t imagine anyone gasping with shock when they learned her age. Her maturity was there in the regal way she held herself. Mia on the other hand…

Somehow no matter how maturely Mia dressed, no matter how many uncomfortable suits and toe-pinching heels she bought for the express purpose of demonstrating she was not a twenty-five-year-old grad student anymore, people still assumed she was a child playing dress up. And then she was supposed to be flattered that she looked so young. As if being treated like an inexperienced apprentice was ever flattering.

Mia kept her own bitten-down-to-the-nub nails hidden in her lap, feeling distinctly outclassed by the poised and elegant proprietress of Karmic Consultants in a way she rarely felt anymore. She’d built confidence in herself through her career accomplishments, thriving with the knowledge of her own competence, but five minutes in a room with Karma Cox and she was back to being the awkward, nerdy girl with impossible hair and inch-thick glasses. It just went to show you never completely escaped the psychological conditioning of your youth.

She was already uncomfortable enough just being at Karmic Consultants. A
paranormal
investigating and consulting firm. Specializing in the
supernatural
. Every synapse in Mia’s scientific brain rebelled against the very idea.

But the references were beyond impeccable. She flipped open the brochure. Federal Agents, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. It was an impressive list.

It had taken her exactly one Google search to remember where she’d tripped across the name Karmic Consultants before. Her ghost-fanatic brother Joe had left an article at her apartment about the newest Haines Hideaway Hotel, The Haunted Hideaway. Ghost hunters were eagerly reserving rooms for the grand opening at outrageous rates, but what caught Mia’s attention was not the gullibility of the masses, but the single-line mention of Karmic Consultants, the paranormal solutions firm which supplied ghost-wranglers for the Inn.

Gazillionaire hotel magnate Wyatt Haines didn’t seem the type to throw money at a bunch of charlatans. Of course, he hadn’t seemed like the type to open up a Ghost Inn either.

Then again, Mia wasn’t “the type”, but here she was. In the tasteful, upscale offices of a consulting firm unlike any other.

Desperate times and all that.

Just not quite
that
desperate. “If I were to move forward with this, I would be more comfortable with another consultant,” Mia said, matching Karma’s precision with her own.

Chase snorted out a laugh from behind her. “Don’t be shy, honey. Tell me how you really feel.”

Mia felt her face heat, but firmed her chin, holding her ground. “I don’t mean to offend, Mr. Hunter, but this is not a trivial matter to me, no matter how insignificant it may appear to you. I’m sure you’re quite capable, but I would feel more comfortable with someone a bit more…”
Mature. Professional. Unattractive. Boring. Old. “
Experienced.”

She was rather pleased with herself for pulling that excuse out of her ass. Chase couldn’t be more than twenty-six or twenty-seven. He couldn’t have been doing this for long.

“Oh, I’m experienced, sugar.”

Mia felt herself blushing again. What was wrong with her? Flirtation and innuendo usually rolled right off her back.

Karma shot her finder a quelling look as he strolled past Mia’s chair and propped himself against the edge of his boss’s desk. A white stick thrust out between his lips and Mia realized he was rolling a lollipop around in his mouth.
The man is a child.

“Dr. Corregianni,” Karma said in her low, soothing tones. “Appearance aside, Chase is excellent and quite experienced. If another finder is better suited to your case, I assure you I will assign one. Why don’t we start with a description of the lost item?”

Mia studied the surfer dude who was supposedly going to save her ass and keep her from being disowned by her entire family. He did not inspire confidence.

Chase sprawled against Karma’s massive desk—too boneless to actually be considered leaning on it—with a Tootsie Pop rolling around in his mouth and an I-know-exactly-how-hot-I-am twinkle in his eye.

She needed Hercule Poirot and here she was faced with Matthew McConaughey’s younger, buffer and even less-responsible brother. He had that I-can’t-even-hold-a-minimum-wage-job-when-the-waves-are-good look. Or maybe that was just the god-awful T-shirt talking.

Her future depended on this man-child?

Mia swallowed past the lump of desperation clogging her throat and forced herself to respond to Karma’s question. It was the first time she’d actually said aloud (and sober) that she’d lost it, but she ensured her voice betrayed none of her hesitation, keeping the words simple and precise. She valued precision. “It’s a pocket watch. Gold, about the size of a silver dollar and probably worth about as much.”

“Is there anything distinctive about it? Anything that will help our finders distinguish it from the millions of other small gold watches in the world? A mark of some kind?”

Other than the fact that my entire family thinks that stupid charm safeguards the romantic fate of five generations of Corregiannis?

Mia sealed her lips together. She may be sitting in Kooks and Charlatans Central, but that didn’t mean she had to join the insanity. She refused to tell them that the watch still ran and supposedly had never stopped ticking in the last hundred-odd years it had been in her family’s possession. She didn’t believe that myth herself anyway. “No. Nothing distinctive.”

Karma nodded once, a comfortingly exact gesture. “Since the uniqueness of the item lies primarily in its significance to you, Chase really is the most suited to this task. I encourage you to let him try.”

He grinned around the candy obstruction in his mouth. “I promise to be gentle the first time.”

Mia pushed up her glasses—the better to glare at the blond surfer camped out on Karma’s gorgeous Asian-influenced desk. Honestly, who over the age of ten sucked on lollipops? Food on a stick was for crass state fairs and elementary school lunches.

Evidently sensing her animosity, Chase leaned back and said conspiratorially to his boss, “She’s seen
Leverage
, you know.”

“Ah.” Karma’s lips twitched. “Perhaps you would like to check up on us before we proceed?”

“No. That won’t be necessary.” She refrained from mentioning that she’d already done a thorough Google search and an Angie’s List check before driving over here. Karmic Consultants was a legitimate, if unorthodox business. And they might be able to save her ass, if she let them.

Mia took a breath. When one exhausted logical options, the illogical was all that remained, and you couldn’t get much more illogical than hiring a company specializing in occult solutions. The magical lost-stuff-finder-guy in the sleazy T-shirt was about as far from rational as she could go.

God, what was she doing here?

The phone on the desk bleeped cheerfully. Karma glanced at it and gave Mia an apologetic smile, professional and reserved. “If you don’t have any other questions for me, I’ll leave you in Mr. Hunter’s capable hands.”

Mia smothered the urge to ask more questions, just to avoid putting herself in those hands. She wasn’t afraid of being alone with Chase.
Certainly not
. He didn’t make her nervous. Not one little bit.

Even if his face and form did have such perfect symmetry and proportions even researchers using mathematics to dissect attractiveness with the Marquardt Beauty Analysis would struggle to find fault with them.

Mia could acknowledge, empirically, that he was the single most attractive man she had ever laid eyes on, but that did not mean she herself was attracted to him. Michelangelo probably wished he had a model like Chase for the David, but a pretty face did not necessarily equal an agile mind. Intellectual stimulus was Mia’s only erogenous zone and so far Chase Hunter had shown himself to be a woeful underachiever in that category.

He can talk circles around you
, a sly little voice reminded her. Mia ruthlessly silenced it.

His baby blues could sparkle all they wanted. Sun-bleached hair could flop boyishly over his brow. The warm, beachy scent of him could wrap all around her in an intoxicating cloud. But she wouldn’t be even the slightest bit affected by him.

“Dr. Corregianni?”

Mia started, realizing with a jolt that Karma had been waiting for a response. “Ah, no. No, thank you. No other questions.”

She stood, smoothed the wrinkles from her tailored gray suit with a sharp tug, and moved quickly to the door before the flush rising to her cheeks could expose her embarrassment. She was
never
caught wool-gathering. Mia was on top of things at all times. Controlled. Cerebral. She did not fantasize about immature frat boys in sexist T-shirts.

Chase held the outer door to the office for her and Mia swanned through, pulling up short in the parking lot outside when she realized she had no idea what came next. She turned to face Chase, focusing intently on the oversized cartoon breasts on his shirt rather than the pheromone-enticing body beneath it. Lust was a chemical reaction, nothing more.

She didn’t actually
like
him.

“You ready to play nice?” He flashed pearly white teeth that would have long since decayed from sugar-shock and rotted right out of his mouth if there were any justice in the world. Mia resisted the urge to yank the lollipop out of his mouth and smack him with it until his oh-so-pretty face was bruised with sugary smudges.

She’d give him five minutes. Then she was going home to ransack her house again. There had to be a better way to find the watch.

Chapter Seven

Captain Jack’s Surfer Punk

“What happens now? Do you need the last known location to begin your search?”

Chase rolled the sucker from one cheek to the other, clacking it against his teeth along the way—just because he knew it would annoy her. “I’m not a bloodhound, sugar. I’m a finder.”

Her prissy mouth pursed into a tight knot. “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“It means you think real hard about what you want and why you want it, and I find it.” He snapped his fingers. “Poof.”

“Poof,” she repeated dismally, rubbing a hand across her flat stomach. “Do you have any Tums?”

Chase snorted back a laugh. “I’m sensing a certain lack of faith in my methods.”

“Can we just get this over with?”

“No problem. We’ll skip the foreplay and just get nasty.”

“Oh, good Lord,” she groaned.

Chase grinned. He knew he should be playing it straight, pretending he had even a passing relationship with professionalism, but she was just so much fun to wind up. He extended a hand, palm up. She looked at it as if he was offering her the plague. “You have to take my hand,” he prompted.

With a visible display of reluctance, she slid her small, soft palm across his. His hands were smooth, polished by salt water and sand, and her skin was just as smooth. Long, slim fingers rested tentatively against the pad of his thumb. He’d never really thought of himself as a hand man, but hers were gorgeous. And freezing.

“Christ, your hands are like ice.”

“Poor circulation. Now what?”

He was an idiot. Waxing poetic on her hands instead of doing his damn job. Chase sighed. “Just think about why you want the watch. There might be some thought transference, but I won’t pry any more than absolutely necessary.” He tightened his grip on her fingers so she wouldn’t pull back and opened up the part of him where his gift lived.

Instantly, a fog of intangibles swamped him, pouring from her into him, a cloying tangle of unsatisfied longings flavored with Mia’s unique taste, the fizzy acidic tang of a mimosa.
Conclusive neural scan results…a halfway decent date for the Christening…sweet, soft baby cuddled into her shoulder…acceptance from her mother…

Chase jerked back, snapping the link. He rubbed one hand in a circle over his sternum as if he could rub out the uncomfortable intimacy of feeling her deepest desires. The intangibles were the things people wanted that he couldn’t find—because they couldn’t be found. They were the background noise he tried to ignore as he searched for the connection to the missing object, but the intangibles weren’t usually so loud. Or so clear.
Fuck
.

He needed to apologize for invading her most private thoughts—that should
not
have happened—but she was glaring at him, arms folded tightly, skepticism radiating off her. “Well?”