Parker And The Gypsy. Susan Carroll
sappy stories his one foster mom had insisted upon reading to him. If Sleeping Beauty had looked anything like Sara, no wonder that dopey prince had risked burning his a—fighting dragons to get to her bedroom.
“Are you experiencing anything yet, Mr. Parker?” she asked.
“Not a blessed thing,” Mike denied, but he was disturbed to notice his hand begin to tremble. A tingling sensation started in his fingertips, quickly spreading along his arm, through the rest of his body to become the most intoxicating rush of desire he’d ever known.
Sara’s eyes fluttered open to stare straight into his. She frowned. “You haven’t really been trying. Didn’t you feel any impulse at all?”
Mike shook his head. Oh, he was having plenty of impulses all right, but none, he feared, that Sara would approve of.
“Let’s try it again,” he murmured. “Close your eyes.”
She looked a little wary, but obeyed. She stood before him, her lips half-parted in unconscious invitation. This was too easy, Mike thought with a groan. He should be ashamed of himself. He should resist the temptation, but he didn’t seem able to help himself.
Bending forward, he covered her mouth with his own. He felt Sara stiffen with surprise, but then he was a little surprised himself. He’d never kissed any woman this gently before. At least, it started out that way.
But when Sara didn’t resist, he folded her in his arms, deepening the embrace. She tasted and felt just like she smelled—all softness, innocence and seduction. He kissed her with increasing hunger, passion and heat rushing through him, warming places inside him that he had not even realized had gone cold.
Two
Sara clung to Mike’s shoulders, his mouth wreaking havoc with her senses, even her sixth one. Since she’d set foot in the door, this interview had gone nothing like she’d anticipated. Not only had Mike Parker turned out to be more rough-edged than she’d expected, he was now kissing her in a way to make her curls stand on end.
Any protest she should have voiced was swept away beneath the hot mastery of Mike’s lips on hers. Her purse dropped from her nerveless fingers, hitting the carpet with a soft thud. She melted closer, her head reeling. Her mind felt like she was floating, her body like it was on fire.
It was only when his tongue breached her lips, exploring her mouth with even greater intimacy, that alarm set in. Struggling to be free, she insinuated her hands between them, breaking off the heated contact of their mouths.
His breathing ragged, Mike blinked at her. For a moment, he looked as dazed as she felt. She had never experienced a kiss like that in her whole life. It would have been rather wonderful... if only he had really meant it.
But Mike was already making a rapid recovery. The tender set of his mouth hardened into the familiar sarcastic smirk.
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess my psychic—um—gizmo got a little out of control.”
Sara felt her cheeks heat, but this time with humiliation. Mike’s arms were still wrapped loosely about her waist. Bracing both hands against his chest, she squirmed away from him.
“You don’t have to believe in the same things I do, Mr. Parker,” she said. “But you don’t have to make fun of me, either.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you.”
“Then what do you call this?” Sara raised a trembling finger to her bruised lips.
“I was kissing you.” A shade of irritation crept into Mike’s voice. “You can’t go feeling up a guy’s aura and not expect him to react.”
“That wasn’t the sort of reaction you were supposed to—Oh, never mind.” Sara bent down to retrieve her purse from the carpet, gathering up the tattered remains of her dignity, as well. By the time she straightened, she managed to face Mike with some degree of calm.
“I’m sorry you’re such an unhappy man, Mr. Parker. But that doesn’t give you the right to mock and hurt other people.”
“I’m not unhappy, just hung over. So if you don’t mind, close the door quietly on your way out.”
“I’ll go,” Sara said. “But that doesn’t change anything. You’re a miserable and lonely man with a very disturbed aura, full of bitterness and a pain that’s as old as—as your wound.”
“Wound?” Mike scowled at her. “What wound?”
Sara blinked as she realized the words she’d just blurted out. She stared at Mike and suddenly an image came to her of Mike’s bare chest in all its glorious detail—hard-sculpted muscle from the flat plane of his stomach to the broad reach of his shoulders, smooth skin as bronzed and warm as sunlight. Except for—
“You—you have a scar on your left shoulder,” Sara said haltingly.
Mike’s eyes widened. “What have you got, X-ray vision or something?”
“N-no.” Sara flushed, feeling as if she’d been caught sneaking peeks at Mike naked in his shower. “I told you I was psychic, didn’t I? Sometimes these perceptions just come to me. That scar on your shoulder goes as deep as your soul, Mike Parker. It was made by something cold...something sharp.” Sara shivered. “A knife perhaps? With a long—”
“Enough, already,” Mike snarled, breaking her concentration. “Who the hell put you up to this?”
“Put me up to—Why, no one. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Either some jerk with a warped sense of humor sent you here to yank my chain or else you really are one total spook. Either way, I want you out of my office. Now!”
Sara took a hasty step back at Mike’s menacing approach. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, but I assure you no one sent me. I came to you because I honestly needed your help, Mr. Parker. What am I supposed to do about finding John Patrick? If you won’t take the case, could you at least—”
“Out!”
Before Sara could say another word, she found herself being roughly shoved into the tiny outer office. Mike slammed the door closed between them with a bang that was both loud and final.
“Recommend another detective?” Sara finished weakly, realizing she was addressing dead silence. She sensed that Mike Parker had just closed more doors than the one to his office. Any extrasensory perceptions she’d been having about Mike had ceased as abruptly as a phone line being disconnected.
Which was probably just as well. She’d definitely struck some kind of nerve when she’d started to probe into the mysteries of the scar on his shoulder. She’d never meant for that to happen. She tried not to invade the privacy of anyone’s personal life or thoughts unless invited to do so. But she hadn’t been able to help herself in Mike’s case.
The vision had caught her completely unaware. It had been as exhilarating and frightening as standing on the brink of some dark chasm, unable to see what lay at the bottom, but watching a ray of light slowly starting to stretch downward. Even if Mike hadn’t stopped her, Sara would have snatched herself back. Beneath his teasing wise-guy manner, she sensed something dark and disturbing about the man. She didn’t want a closer look at the secrets of his mind...or his body.
“You didn’t come here today to do a psychic reading or to be mentally undressing Mike Parker,” she reminded herself. “You came here to hire a detective.”
And in that she had just failed miserably.
Sara stole another look at Mike’s closed door and issued a long sigh of frustration and disappointment.
“So what am I supposed to do now?” she murmured, sagging down dispiritedly into the office’s sole waiting chair. On the secretary’s desk, the phone console burred softly, the incoming call light blinking off and on. Between throwing paying customers out of his office and ignoring