Sex & Sensibility (2 page)

“S
O BESIDES FLAKING OUT
of working on your thesis, what are you up to?”

Cell phone to her ear, Tessa Nichols stuck out her tongue at her sister, even though she was half a peninsula away. She walked across her one-room apartment to the only window whose very distant view of the water consisted of a vertical strip of blue between two buildings. On a good day. On a bad day, the grad student housing on the campus on the southern fringes of San Francisco sat under a fuzzy, cold blanket of fog and you couldn’t see your hand in front of you, much less the ocean and its illusion of freedom.

“How come I have to
do
something? Can’t a day just be enjoyed? Besides, I threw the cards and they said not to take on any important projects today.”

That wasn’t why she had thrown them, or what they had said, but with Linn you had to work up to these things gradually.

“Tessa, they did not. And I hope you’re well past the starting stage. Term began a month ago. You should have that paper researched and outlined by now.”

“Okay, how about this for a topic? ‘Mind Games: Deviant Behavior in our Public Schools.’”

“That has possibilities,” Linn allowed. “I could help you with data.”

“Or how about ‘Paris and Nicole: Attention-Seeking on a Global Scale.’”

“Tessa. I thought you were serious.”

“You’re right. It would only be good for half a dozen pages, and then what would be left to talk about? Hey, how about this: ‘My Way: The Police Mindset in Today’s Inner Cities.’”

“Don’t even start with me,” Linn warned. “You’re not still burned about that street fair mistake, are you?”

“Who, me?” Why would she be burned about the most humiliating event of her life? “No, I’m thinking of changing my major from psychology to something else.” Tessa grinned at the faraway strip of water and held the phone away from her ear half an inch, waiting for the explosion.

“Tessa Nichols! You will not waste another two years of your life. You’re almost twenty-seven. I’ve been in two police departments and taken three promotions in the time you’ve wasted on social work, environmental science, psychology, and—and—”

“Literature,” Tessa supplied helpfully. “But that was only for one term.”

Linn—soon to be Mrs. Kellan Black (“But I’m keeping my name for professional purposes, thank you.”) and showing the stress of every bride-to-be, no matter how anally well-organized—made an inarticulate sound, something like “urrrghh!”

Tessa took pity on her. “Sweetie, don’t you think you should go shoot something? You sound stressed.”

“I already spent the morning at the range,” Linn snapped. “But it didn’t help that the florist who is supposed to do our bouquets went into receivership this week. When I went to take some color swatches down there, there was a big Closed Indefinitely sign on the window.”

“Color swatches?”

“Yes. From your dresses.”

“I thought this was supposed to be a small wedding. Family and close friends. A dozen people, tops. How do color swatches fit in?”

“Have you ever tried to define
small
to an Irish-Italian family?” Linn asked with a sigh. “Whose only little boy is getting married? There are twenty-one—count ’em, twenty-one—people in Kellan’s immediate family alone. The wedding party now includes you, his two sisters, and his niece Anna.”

“Uh-oh. A flower girl? This is getting serious.”

“Cooper, Danny, and Slim are standing up with him,” Linn went on, naming the members of the narcotics team her fiancé had led at the California Law Enforcement Unit before he had been promoted last summer, “and his nephew, Seth, is ring bearer.”

“Oh, surely not,” Tessa teased.

“Yes,” Linn said in tones of complete gloom. “I have entered the wedding twilight zone. Just call me Madonna and bring on the helicopters.”

“Cheer up,” Tessa coaxed. “Only eight more weeks and you can jet off to Mazatlan—”

“St. Vincent.”

“—and forget about everything except spending ten days in bed with Kellan.”

“That is the good part,” her sister allowed. “I wonder if I can move our flight up a day and you guys can enjoy the wedding without us?”

“Don’t even think about it. If I have to lace myself into that satin corset thingy, you have to show up to appreciate it. Why can’t I just wear one of the dresses I already have?”

“Because your idea of pretty is eighty years old with its hem hanging down and one sleeve missing.”

“Want to hear what I found today?”

“Not another ugly dress from grandma’s closet,” Linn moaned. “You should be putting that money toward paying bills.”

Tessa decided to overlook Linn’s opinion of her wardrobe. “I went to that great place on Post and found this fabulous cashmere sweatshirt for five bucks. Can you believe it? Obviously whoever priced it had no idea what it was made of.”

“How can a sweatshirt be made of cashmere? That’s a total contradiction in terms.”

“I don’t know. It’s cut like a sweatshirt and has the bound neckline and sleeves, and it’s nice and baggy, the way I like them, and it’s this be
yoo
tiful ice-blue that actually makes me look human instead of like I just saw a ghost.”

“You look human all the time. Your coloring is just subtle.”

“Right. I look like a photographer’s negative.”

“Oh, come on. Marilyn Monroe had hair that color and look what happened to her.”

“Um, she had a breakdown and took too many pills one night?”

“No! She was famous and sexy and drove men mad.”

“I don’t want to drive anyone mad. When it’s time for me to meet someone, the cards will tell me.”

“I am going to hang up on you now.”

Tessa knew Linn hated it when she let the cards direct her decisions. In Linn’s view, a sensible woman set her course and focused on her goal like a panther moving in for the kill. Tessa had never been called sensible. She was
like her parents—creative and free-spirited. Well, maybe she wasn’t quite up to living in a motor home and zooming around the country to art shows, but they all shared the same carpe diem attitude toward life. Except for Linn. She had always been the anomaly in the family—the white sheep, as it were. Linn needed schedules and to-do lists and procedure manuals. Tessa preferred to see what fate had in store for her a little at a time. And so far fate was holding out on her as far as men went.

It wasn’t that she never dated. Men were yummy and fun and a good time. But good times were like tortilla chips—great for the short term, but after a while you wanted some guacamole and a few fajitas. Something substantial. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe guys couldn’t handle a woman who wanted the guacamole on the tostada of life. Maybe it was the way she came across—Carson Takagawa, for instance, had told her that her sense of freedom was what had drawn him to her. Unfortunately, his sense of freedom was the kind that involved airplane flights and long-distance calls, which wasn’t very satisfying in the long run.

She’d sure learned a lot about Japanese erotic art, though, which had come in handy since. Yes, she had a healthy sense of freedom—or to put it bluntly, she liked sex. She liked men’s bodies—the firm heat of skin under her hands and the way they got so visibly aroused. She liked the build of anticipation when she knew a man’s attraction was mutual but he hadn’t said anything yet. And most of all, she liked the way a man and a woman could lose their grip on reality with orgasm. It hadn’t happened often, but boy, the guy who could make her do that had serious keeper possibilities.

“Don’t you dare hang up.” She hadn’t even got close to
what she wanted to tell her sister, but Linn’s mind was back on the wedding.

“Kellan says he’s going to make sure there are at least a dozen eligible men with a taste for blondes there.”

“Well, if he’s including those scary whack jobs he works with, count me out. They’re nice guys and all, but I draw the line at concealed weapons. There is no way I could ever fall for a cop.”

Cops were
not
yummy and fun, whether they were friends of your sister or not. After twenty-six years of having Linn laugh at her gift and discount the advice of the cards, the last thing Tessa could do was hook up with a cop who would spend the next twenty-six doing exactly the same thing.

It wasn’t as if she’d never been up close and personal with a cop, either. She had—as Linn liked to say—data to back up her opinions.

It had happened a little over a year ago. She’d been minding her own business at a street fair in Santa Rita. She’d decorated her booth with care and had already sent half a dozen chattering customers on their way with readings taken from clothes or a photo, or simply a throw of the cards.

Then all hell had broken loose. Cops had come out of the woodwork, rounding up the vendors as if they’d all been running drugs out of their booths. Psychics, crystal sellers, soap makers, herbalists—it didn’t matter. Everybody had been hauled down to the police station. And
hauled
was the operative word.

Tessa still remembered the granite strength in Officer Griffin Knox’s hands as he’d manhandled her, wriggling and protesting, into the police car. In his cool eyes she’d seen the possibility of sympathy for baby chicks and home
less children, but not for grown women innocently trying to pay their tuition. Twenty-four utterly humiliating hours later, she’d been let go without so much as an apology, because of course there had been nothing to charge her with. It had just been a matter of the local P.D. having to keep up their stats for the month, and peaceful folks of the tree-hugging, New Age variety were easy targets.

She shook her head at the memory. “I mean never. No cops. Not even to do the bridesmaids’ dance with.”

Her sister laughed. “Never say never, especially when the maid of honor has to dance with the best man. Look, I’ve got to go deal with this florist.”

“No, wait.” Tessa tried to push her unresolved resentment into the little mental box in which she kept it. She needed to spit out the reason for her call. “I saw something and I need to ask you about it.”

“What do you mean,
saw something?
” Linn’s voice lost its lightness. “Like a murder? A drug deal? Somebody getting mugged? I’ve told you a hundred times you need to move off campus and into a decent neighborh—”

“No, not like that. A vision.”

There was a pause in which Tessa imagined all the things Linn was trying not to say. “Tess, I really have to go and deal with this flower problem.”

“Please.” Tessa hugged herself, wishing that, just once, Linn didn’t have to be cajoled into listening to her. Just once, couldn’t she say, “Tell me what you saw, Tess, and I’ll try to help”?

“I think someone’s in trouble.”

A sigh breathed down the line. “And you think this because…?”

“After I went to the thrift store I stopped for a cup of coffee, and someone had left their paper on the table. So
I looked at the entertainment section like I always do, and there was a picture in the society column of that software guy and his wife and daughter.”

“Software guy. Okay, that narrows the field to about a million. We’re next door to Silicon Valley, Tess.”

“No, the big one. The guy in Santa Rita whose company puts on that Bay to Berries marathon you talked me into running two years ago. You know, the one where we started on the pier and wound up God knows where in the middle of a strawberry field.”

“Oh,” Linn said. “I came in twentieth in that race. It was fun. You mean Jay Singleton at Ocean Tech. What about him?”

“I think his daughter is in trouble.”

“Again I ask, you think this because…”

“Because I was standing here this morning making a cup of tea and I had a vision of the same girl, the one in the photo with the Ocean Tech guy. She was tied up on a bed and there was a shadow looming over her. A man. And I had this feeling of anticipation mixed with fear, like she wasn’t quite sure what he meant to do. That was how she felt, I mean. Personally, the scarf scenario is one of my favorites.”

“You saw Jay Singleton’s daughter. Tied to a bed. Tess, don’t you think it’s more likely she’s on an estate in Carmel behind an electric fence with the most advanced technology in the known world to protect her?”

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Even if it were this girl, how do you know she’s in trouble? It could just be your neurons firing random pictures to your optic nerve. It could be something you saw in a movie once, and your brain put this girl’s face on it.”

“Like my brain has that much control over what I see.
I’m telling you, Linn, these visions I have are real. Just ask Connie Aguilar’s mom.”

Her sister the cop paused. “Finding that kid was luck and good guesswork and you know it.”

“Finding her was the vision and
you
know it.” Another silence. “Anyway,” Tessa went on, “I think I should tell someone. You. The missing persons department. Someone.”

“That you saw a random vision of a person who may or may not be Christina Singleton who may or may not be in a situation that might incite fear. No where, no when, no why. The officer on watch is going to need a little more to go on, Tess.”

“Well, what would you suggest?” Tessa asked with her last reserve of patience.

“This is a hundred miles outside my jurisdiction. You can call the sheriff’s department or even Santa Rita P.D., but I know their missing persons guy doubles in stolen property and has a caseload as high as my desk. Outside of ringing up Jay Singleton and asking if he’s seen his daughter lately, I’d suggest—”

“What?”

“Getting to work on your thesis.”

Tessa glanced at her laptop, humming softly on the counter, and with her free hand, brought up a window running the Internet. All companies had a page describing their executives and boards of directors. All companies had a “contact us” screen. Ocean Technology would be no different.

“Thanks, Linn. I’ll do that.”

“That is the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say all morning. Good luck deciding on a topic.”

Tessa found what she was looking for before her sister had even hung up.