Lost Bird (13 page)

“Is everything okay?”

No, I’m an idiot.
“Um, yeah, just wanted to go over some stuff before we get started tomorrow night.” She hoped the Goddess would forgive her that since, technically, it wasn’t a lie.

Technically.

“Okay, sure.”

She felt like she needed to add something, anything, to not sound like a dumbass. “I mean, I wanted the three of us to be able to talk. Alone. I mean, together, but alone. I mean—”

“Without Aunt Tammy there.”

“Yes, that.” She wanted to jump through the phone and rip the last fifteen seconds of conversation out of his memory and start over.

Hopefully not sounding like an idiot in the process the second time around.

But since that’s not an option…
“I’d just like to get your impressions. Both of you. About her. Uh, I mean about the situation.”

“I’ll call Oscar, but how about seven at Golden Corral?”

Oh, thank the Goddess!
“Seven sounds perfect, thanks.”

After hanging up she sat there, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

“So?”

Sachi jumped, startled, and turned to see Mandaline had stuck her head through the doorway of the smaller reading room where Sachi had gone to make the call.

“Tonight, seven. Want to come with?”

Mandaline grinned. “You’re on your own, sweetie. Knock ’em dead.”

She laid the phone on the table before dropping her head onto her arms. “I’m afraid I’ll be the one dying. I can barely talk to a guy.”

Mandaline stepped in and closed the door behind her. She walked over and gently kneaded Sachi’s shoulders. “Just keep saying to yourself, ‘It’s only dinner and talking.’ That’s it. That’s all it is. It’s you facing your fear.”

She didn’t lift her head. “That’s not my only fear.”

Mandaline didn’t ask, knowing Sachi would eventually volunteer it.

“I was only with one other guy before,” she softly said. “Just Tom. I mean…You know what I mean. This whole thing is crazy, and relationships don’t come with training wheels. And I think the only reason Tom put up with me as long as he did was because he had a sister who was a rape crisis counselor, so he picked her brain about how to deal with me. He wanted to be with me, but I was so scared of something happening to him, of Jackson Clary or someone coming after me, that I pushed him away. And…and in some ways, it was easier to live in fear instead of fighting for happiness.”

Sachi finally lifted her head and tipped it back so she could look up at Mandaline. “How the fuck is someone like me ever going to have a chance at a normal relationship with
one
guy, much less two guys? I feel fifty shades of cart before the horse at this point.”

Mandaline’s expression turned somber. “You simply put one foot in front of the other and have faith.
Believe
. Maybe you need two guys in your life. I know looking back that I’m glad I have two. And not for the sex. As much as I was hurting when Julie died, I don’t think one of them alone could have coped with what I was going through. I think the Universe put them both there for them to help me heal as much as I helped them heal.”

Sachi rested her head back against Mandaline’s stomach. “Why do you have to go using that damn logic on me, girlie?”

Mandaline draped her arms around Sachi and kissed her cheek. “Because I lubs you, sister. I want to see you happy. You’ve not only earned it, you deserve it. Quite frankly, I got a really good feeling when we were over there. I can’t see auras the way you can, but there was something there between you and those two guys that I can’t deny. A spark. A definite interest on their part.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah.”

Sachi drew in a long, deep breath before blowing it out again. “I’m scared,” she whispered.

Mandaline squeezed her even more tightly. “I know, sweetie. It’s okay to be scared. This is the good kind of fear, now, not the bad kind.”

Sachi closed her eyes. “I hope you’re right. I
really
want you to be right.”

“You won’t know unless you try.”

* * * *

Sachi preemptively blockaded any forthcoming intestinal battles by downing an Imodium tablet after making the call. She also busied herself that day with readings for clients, a small chakras class that afternoon, and helping Mandaline with bookkeeping. Her dad had already called to tell her he’d be home late because he’d been invited out to dinner by his new employer, so no guilt there.

Before she knew it, it was six thirty and she needed to head out to dinner.

She stood before the store’s back door for a few moments, unable to make herself walk through it.

“It won’t open itself,” Mandaline playfully called from down the hallway.

“Don’t rush me, boss. I’m thinking.”

“You’re
over
thinking.” Mandaline walked down the hall with Pers, her little dog, following her. “Just tell yourself you’re going to discuss the investigation and let it lead where it leads.”

“Dammit.” She dodged around Mandaline and down the hall.

Mandaline turned. “Now what?”

“Forgot my notebook.”

When Sachi returned to the back door, Mandaline had scooped Pers up with one hand, and opened the back door for her.

She suspected her friend would bodily shove her through and out the door if she didn’t go of her own volition. “Tell me again this is going to be okay,” Sachi whispered. “Please?”

Mandaline’s expression softened and she hugged her. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered in Sachi’s ear. “It’s
just
dinner.”

“It’s just dinner,” Sachi repeated, stepping back and nodding.

Mandaline smiled. “Exactly. It’s just dinner. You eat dinner every day. That’s all it is.”

“Just dinner.” She faced the doorway again. “Just dinner.” She took a deep breath and forced her feet forward.

Mandaline followed her, standing in the doorway but not closing it. “Call me when you get home, okay?” she told her. “Or stop by, if you want. No matter how late.”

Sachi nodded as she got into her car. “Just dinner,” she kept muttering. “Just dinner.”

In fact, she kept repeating it to herself the entire drive to the restaurant. And even as she stood in the restaurant’s lobby and awaited the men’s arrival.

When she spotted them, she realized with a dawning horror of sorts that Oscar wore an Arizona Cardinals football T-shirt. John had driven them, apparently, because he held his keys in his hands.

Attached to an Arizona Cardinals key ring.

It took every ounce of will she had not to burst into manic giggles right there in the lobby of the Golden Corral. The men wouldn’t have understood why.

Combined with the fact that their blue auras looked even more brilliant and vivid, which she hadn’t thought possible, she was close to becoming a babbling wreck.

Forcing herself to shake hands with them, she opted for an obvious comment. Obvious to her, at least. “Nice shirt.” It seemed like the eyes of the cardinal on the front were staring right at her, boring into her soul.

Yeah, got the hint. Thanks.

Oscar looked down at his shirt. “Oh, thanks. My mom and dad sent it to me.”

“They live out there, now,” John added, holding up his keys and clearly displaying the key ring. “We love football. I think they’re subtly rubbing it in our faces that the Cards were better than the Bucs last year.”

“Nearly every year,” Oscar added with more than a hint of snark in his tone.

Holy Goddess
, her panties were already soaked, and she’d only spoken two words to them. She didn’t know whether to focus on Oscar’s killer blue eyes, or John’s sweet brown gaze, either one already deadly to her powers of speech and concentration, but even more devastating when combined.

She swallowed. “Um, let’s get a table.”

Fortunately, it worked out that they were seated at a booth and the men, without asking, both slid into the same side, leaving her free and alone in the other.

Great. Won’t need to keep making them move for my bathroom trips.

Which she took the first one almost immediately, cleaning herself up and splashing water on her face after she washed her hands.

When she returned to the booth, they were both thankfully up and getting their first round of food. She went and got hers, mindful of how much she piled on her plate. She’d barely eaten all day despite her hunger, her nervous stomach still firing threats across her lower intestines’ bow every time she even so much as nibbled on anything.

After she’d sat down again, she dug out her notebook. “Right. Let’s start with have you guys actually seen anything happen at the house?”

It was hard for her to focus and be all business when all she wanted to do was curl up between the men and their plush, blue-velvet auras.

How can I literally go years with only a handful of lascivious thoughts, and here I am practically drooling over these two?

“Us? No. Aunt Tammy has been keeping her log like you told her to,” John said. “She’s reported things moved twice, and seeing the lights three times.”

“Have either of you gone back into the woods to see if anything’s there?”

“No. We haven’t been there when it’s happened, either,” John said.

“My people hiked out of the wilderness,” Oscar quipped. “I’m not hiking back into it.”

“Your
people
?” John asked, staring at him. “You made yourself
bacon
for breakfast. And is that not ham on your plate now?”

She wanted to bust out laughing at the two of them and their banter.

“Yeah, well, you know I don’t like the woods,” Oscar said, now a little red in the face.

“He had an unfortunate encounter with a squirrel when he was a kid,” John explained to her. “Bounced off his head while we were in the woods. Freaked him right the hell out.”

“It fucking attacked me.”

“It didn’t attack you,” John said. “It didn’t even scratch you.”

“Quit picking on the woodland-challenged,” Oscar muttered.

Okay, that did it. If she wasn’t in love with the two guys before, she was close to it now. She could feel the brotherly energy between the men even through their good-natured exchange.

“I have to admit, other than being outside to shoot skeet, I’m not much of a sportsman, either,” she said.

* * * *

Oscar didn’t resent being the focus of John’s friendly teasing because he suspected he knew exactly what his friend was up to. John wanted to try to put Sachi at ease, try to make her laugh. Oscar knew if he could see how nervous Sachi appeared to be, it had to be painfully evident to John. John was, admittedly, the more emotionally in-tune of the two of them.

Sabrina his ex-wife notwithstanding.

And they’d made her smile. They’d coaxed at least a little of a sparkle into those beautiful blue eyes of hers.

“I’ve never shot skeet,” Oscar said. “Is it hard?”

She shrugged and pulled back her long, black hair. “It’s not hard to me, but I’ve been shooting for over thirteen years. Have you ever shot before?”

“Paintball.”

John laughed next to him.

But even more importantly, Sachi smiled again. “Not exactly the same thing.”

And that’s why, twenty minutes later, both men were sitting, enraptured, as she talked about the fine art and sport of shooting skeet.

Her notebook lay unused next to her except for her initial notes.

She seemed to realize she’d gone off-topic. “Sorry,” she said, an adorable pink blush filling her cheeks. “I’m kind of a skeet geek.”

“No, it’s fine,” Oscar assured her. “It’s interesting. Do you think you could teach us?”

In all honesty he had no clue if John wanted to shoot skeet or not. Frankly, at that moment, he didn’t care. He knew he wanted to shoot skeet. With Sachi, at least. Her love for the sport telegraphed through her every word, the way her face lit up while she talked about it, everything.

Maybe she enjoyed what she did for a living at Many Blessings, but they were witnesses to her true passion being laid out before them.

He desperately wanted to be a part of that.

Wanted her to look at
him
like that.

* * * *

John hadn’t told Oscar about what Brad revealed to him that day in Many Blessings. In fact, he hadn’t said a word about it to anyone, chalking it up to a poor guy who obviously had some…issues going on.

But now…now he wasn’t so sure.

Sachi was a beautiful field of gravity drawing them in, her own self-contained force of nature.

He was happy to fall to her pull.

Shoot skeet? Hell, why not. If she’d said her hobby was identifying mushrooms or counting paint chips, and described it with the same level of joy and enthusiasm, he’d gladly try those, too.