Terms of Surrender (46 page)

Hmm, maybe even dear old Mom would think this all a little crazy.

"Nova, you're willing to risk so much, risk us, on something that probably isn't—"

"Real?" She pulled out of his arms. "I knew you wouldn't understand."

"You know what I mean, hon." Matt immediately turned conciliatory. "It's all a little…far-fetched."

"Far-fetched or not, it's real to me."

He pulled her close again, nuzzling her hair with his chin. "Can't you just take some time off, a vacation? I really think that's all you need."

Nova let the irony of his suggestion wash over her as she smiled. A vacation wouldn't cure what ailed her, and it was what had gotten her into her current straits in the first place.

Matt must have read her thoughts, for she saw the look of guilt flash in his slate eyes when he pulled back to stare at her.

"I never meant for anything to happen to you, Nova. Surely you know that."

"I know, Matt." She returned his hug, wrapped her arms around his waist. "I made an amateur's mistake. Don't blame yourself."

"How can I not? You were my responsibility."

"So you're no Stipe Bozic," Nova teased, trying to lighten his mood but immediately realizing her mistake when Matt frowned.

"Stipe may be the best, but I had more at stake than breaking a mounting climbing record." He kissed her forehead before sliding his face down, cheek-to-cheek, and whispering against her hair, "I feel like I've already lost you."

Nova swallowed, unable to speak. She didn't want to confirm or deny the truth of his words. She didn't want to tell him he was right, that he had lost her to that mountain. She had come out of the experience a changed woman; almost dying did that to a person.

"You know how this sounds? Me, letting you run off to another city to look for some stranger you've seen in a vision?"

"I hate to break it to you, pardner, but you're not
letting
me do anything." Nova grinned, tried to take the edge off her statement, inject a little levity. But she didn't want Matt making any mistake about her intentions; she was leaving come hell or high water.

"Nova—"

"He's in danger, Matt."

"
If
that's the case, I don't see how it's your concern."

"I don't expect you to understand."

"I want to."

That was what made this so difficult. She knew he did, and wanted to make him understand but didn't know how or where to start. How could she tell him she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she didn't make this trip and at least try to find him?

Matt diverted her thoughts when he caught her against him, palms sliding up, firm on her shoulder blades, as he leaned in for a kiss. He coaxed her lips open, his mouth tempting and insistent. She let his tongue in, more out of duty and curiosity than lust and desire. She felt nothing but basic affection, almost like kissing her brother.

Something else just didn't sit right about making out with Matt. She felt like she was being unfaithful—to a man she hadn't yet met, whose face she’d only seen in visions. And all she could recall of him were the somber set of his jaw and the soulful, tea-colored eyes gazing from his painfully handsome face.

Nova’s withdrawal was slight, almost unconscious, but Matt pulled back and scowled at her. "It's him isn't it? I'm losing you to a specter?"

"I'm sorry, Matt." She could have told him the choice was no longer his or hers to make, but the resolute gleam in his eyes said it wouldn't have made any difference, that he would not give up easily. His next words confirmed this.

"Don't be sorry, Nova, just be prepared."

She frowned and Matt smiled.

"I'll give you one year. Then I'm coming out there to bring you back."

New York City - One Year Later

Nova anticipated a hectic day of highs and lows as she scrutinized the quote boards, following the prices of several securities in which she had invested for numerous clients.

For the last half hour, she had been on the phone with one of her most important customers, the president of a large technology company, trying to calm his frayed nerves, and was now desperate to get the gentleman off the line.

Her stranger came to her rescue before she came to his. Heat suddenly flared through her limbs, kaleidoscopic images bursting in front of her sight before she closed her eyes tight against double vision. Great, an excuse. Not exactly the one she was looking for, but she’d take what she could get.

Nova interrupted Mr. Nelson's droning in her ear about his fluctuating stock. "I understand your concerns, sir, but I'm going to have to finish this later. An emergency's just come up."

"I don't think you do understand my concerns, Ms. Foxx…"

Nova blocked him out as the warmth seeped up her legs into her abdomen, crashing into her gut like a wave of fire. She sucked in a breath as a vision struck her between the eyes, and she was suddenly at a police station surrounded by uniformed officers, no longer in the confines of her executive office. Then she saw her stranger, her clearest, sharpest vision of him yet, standing across the station floor, engaged in conversation with a tall auburn-haired man dressed in plain clothes. Nova assumed the redhead was a detective.

Was her stranger the victim of a crime, or had he committed a crime?

She guessed she should be glad he seemed alive and well and wasn't in the hospital instead of a police station. Still, police station did not bode well, meant trouble in her book.

"Ms. Foxx, I’d appreciate your full attention, and I don't think you've heard a word I've had to say in the last five min—"

"I've heard you, Mr. Nelson, but I really must go. I'll call you back as soon as I'm free."

She didn't waste time explaining further, already resigned to kissing major butt when next she contacted Mr. Nervous Nelson.

How had the man managed to make millions in the technology industry when he was so afraid of taking risks?

Nova opened her eyes to stare at her computer screen and found it hard to concentrate on reading e-mail when her stranger's face still hovered on the edge of her memory. She had barely gotten through the note on her screen before the phone rang again. She took a deep breath, as if to test her lungs, and reached for the receiver with some trepidation. The "Private Number"

readout on her phone made her wish she had some of her mother's ESP.

"Bornstein and Connor, Nova Foxx speaking."

"Hey Yankee."

"Why, as I live and breathe—Ms. Dakota." Nova grinned against the mouthpiece as she punched in a series of numbers on her keyboard before hitting "Enter" and sending a response to one of the firm's financial analysts. She liked his latest report and wanted to get together with him later to discuss his research and recommendations.

"Why so formal? We're not
compadres
anymore?"

"We're always going to be
compadres
, K.D."

"Oh, good. For a minute there I thought y'all had gotten up north and turned hotsy-ditty on a body."

"Maybe a little hotsy, but never ditty."

"Shucks, it's good to know you ain't lost your sense of humor."

With Kaylee Dakota, personal trainer extraordinaire, that was hardly likely.

"I miss you, Nova."

"The feeling's mutual, K."

"You know, someone else misses you just as much."

Nova braced herself for the scuttlebutt. She couldn't imagine Matthew Dalton pining for anyone, not even her. But according to Kaylee, that was exactly what he’d been doing for the last few months, since she’d refused to come back to L.A. with him. He’d tried everything within his considerable powers of persuasion to get her on a plane to California, but short of carrying her to the airport caveman-style, as he’d threatened, there was really nothing he could do.

"K.D., you promised…"

"What? I said I wouldn't mention his name, and I haven't."

"Like we both don't know who you're talking about," Nova grumbled.

"Can I help it if you're so extra-perceptive?"

Nova giggled against her will. She could never stay angry with the woman for, as Kaylee was fond of saying, "longer than it took shit to go through a tinhorn."

She loved Kaylee, outspoken busybody or not. The woman had been a great friend to her since their first meeting at the Rock Groove climbing gyms. She’d been a real godsend after the accident, helping Nova get back on track, once she was ready to try out her rehabilitated legs.

"You should give him a call, Nove."

"And get his hopes up?"

"What hopes up? You're still friends, aren't you?"

"The connotation doesn't translate as well for him as it does for you. Besides, he doesn't want 'just friends'; he made that perfectly clear the last time we spoke."

"What he says and what he feels are two different things."

Nova sighed, but almost immediately brightened when she heard the coffee cart coming down the hall with young Josh at its helm. Her mouth watered, anticipating a soothing jolt of java and an excuse to get off the phone—besides the other thousand-and-one things she had to do today, not the least of which was tracking down that police station in her vision.

She needed to cut Kaylee short. She knew what was coming.

Nova had settled down in New York for the long haul, had purchased a house upstate, and was firmly entrenched and advancing in a new brokerage firm on Wall Street. But Kaylee had never failed to bring Matt up, not in all the time Nova had been out east. She’d also never failed to remind her of everything she’d left behind and that it was still waiting for her whenever she was ready to end her wild goose chase.

It was the only aspect of her life idling in neutral, that ”wild goose chase." Kaylee would never know how close Nova had come in the past year to ending it, as all her loved ones in L.A.

wanted her to. She’d had no luck with the personals, want ads or the police, having gone so far as doing a rough sketch from her visions and posting it where and when she could.

All she had was a place and a face, each general at that. With so many people going missing and murdered around the city—around the
country
—it was easy enough for her guy to get lost in the shuffle. As small as the world was getting, New York was still a big piece of real estate and pretty ambiguous territory for one person to canvass, especially when searching for the face of a stranger in the crowd.

Not just a face. So much more. It had to be, to make you come all this way with nothing
but a hunch.

Before her episode minutes ago, she’d begun to think her trip to the east coast a year too late, that her stranger had already met an untimely end, was perhaps even one of the thousands of World Trade Center bombing victims. But her visions had increased, not decreased, since she’d been in New York, and now Nova
knew
he was close, could almost taste him.

How could she explain all this to Kaylee Dakota, a Texas farm girl more practical and down-to-earth than Nova's own disciplined father?

Josh, bearer of liquid heaven, parked his cart outside her door and pantomimed a question—did she want him to come in? Nova frantically motioned him forward.

"K, I have to go. The coffee cart's here."

"Haven't I taught you anything about putting that poison in your body?"

"I'll control my coffee addiction when you stop your Godiva addiction, guru."

"Okay, touché"

"Besides, I'm down to one-and-a-half cups a day. I'm being good."

"All right then," Kaylee said. "But I'll remember exactly where we left off. Count on it."

"Don't you have to be down at the Groove opening up?"

"I'll think of you while I'm ascending the granite, smartass."

"Rub it in." What she wouldn't do to be right there beside Kaylee, scaling boulders, swinging from crack to crack, feeling the adrenaline rush of weightlessness. Next to her morning runs and hot sex, it was the only other time she ever really felt free and at peace.

Nova thought twice about asking Kaylee to tell Matt hello, but in the end, she simply signed off with an "I love you." She hung up to Kaylee's "Ditto" and chuckles.

Rolling her chair from behind the desk, Nova stood to meet her savior. She smiled as Josh made his way across the thick wine-toned carpeting of her office. His obvious nervousness and crush were endearing. She couldn't count the times since she’d been at Bornstein and Connor that she had gotten a lap full of half-and-half, milk, or cream cheese. She could tell the kid she didn't bite, tell him to calm down and think of her as one of the guys, but that would probably cause more trouble than it would cure.

"How ya doin', Ms. Foxx?"

"Hey, Josh." She watched with bated breath as he moved steadily towards her, careful of each step. Nova met him halfway, wanting to cheer when he made it to her without bumping into any furniture or turning over the entire cart. She handed him her money as he handed over her coffee—black, no sugar—without spilling a drop. She could almost hear his sigh of relief when he returned her change.

Nova didn't say a word until Josh had pocketed his money and was readying to leave.

He’d concentrated hard to avoid one of his usual catastrophes—she knew he wasn't half as clumsy with anyone else. Either the old boy's network had gotten to him, spreading some nasty, man-eater rumors about her, or he was just so entranced with her, it short-circuited his young nervous system and reflexes to be around her.

He was a cute kid. Maybe if she were a little younger…but then again maybe not. With the exception of Matt, she’d always gone for the dark, brooding types, and Josh was as far away from that as they came, golden-blond, blue-eyed, every emotion clearly written across his face.

He was going to have to get a handle on that if he wanted to play with the big boys.

"Going to take advantage of the nice weather today?" Josh asked.

"Oh, you betcha. If I had my bikini with me and could sneak off to the beach undetected for a few hours, I would." Nova smiled and received a shaky grin in return. She should have stopped while she was ahead. "Guess I'll just have to settle for a long walk and maybe treat myself to an ice cream cone."