A Marriage-Minded Man? Read online

  But even as the words hovered on her tongue, she knew the dangers of giving free rein to her temper. It left her vulnerable to others psychically, and that was the last thing she wanted to experience with the cynical Detective Kelly.

  Clamping her teeth on a sharp retort, she struggled for control, only to find to her dismay that it was already too late. With no warning his emotions hit her like a blast of hot air. Anger. Disappointment. Frustration.

  Caught up in the vortex before she could draw a steadying breath, she instinctively tried to slam the door shut on her own intuitiveness. She didn’t intrude on anyone’s privacy without an invitation—ever. But the barriers she usually threw up with ease evaded her grasp, and between one heartbeat and another, she found herself inundated with images from his most private thoughts and emotions.

  His aura was dark and cloudy, his mood foul. He’d had a bad night, a case that hadn’t turned out the way he’d expected, and he blamed himself. A less conscientious man would have shrugged off the foul-up as just one of those things that happens and let it go, but that clearly wasn’t Sam Kelly’s way. He didn’t like mistakes, especially his own, and he took his responsibilities seriously. It was his duty to keep the bad guys off the street, and tonight he’d failed to do that. And although others had been involved, he blamed himself completely.

  He had a John Wayne complex, she decided. Normally she found that admirable. There was just something about a tall, rawboned man fighting the injustices of the world that appealed to her. And like it or not, Sam Kelly fit that description to a T. He had a jaw like granite, piercing eyes that missed little and a toughness that no doubt could be incredibly reassuring when trouble loomed on the horizon.

  But she wasn’t trouble, and she didn’t appreciate him looking at her like she was.

  “Ms. Hart? I’m waiting. Are you having another vision or just coming up with another outrageous story?”

  His mocking drawl snapped her back to attention and irritated her no end. Flushing, she clenched her teeth and counted to ten. It didn’t help. “This isn’t a story, Detective. Outrageous or otherwise. The victim is wealthy and appears to live by herself in a fieldstone house on a large tree-covered lot. Her husband may have died recently—she’s very lonely. The attack isn’t a random one—the robber has been watching her and other senior citizens who are vulnerable. He’s already picked out his next victim.”

  Far from impressed, the detective lounged back in his chair, not even bothering to take notes as she gave him further details. “You can see all that,” he said dubiously, “but you can’t see the thug who half kills this old lady. Tell me something, Ms. Hart. Just what kind of psychic are you?”

  “Actually, a damn frustrated one,” she confessed. “After the night you’ve had, I would think you could sympathize with that, but I guess that’s too much to ask.” As regal as a queen, she rose to her feet and handed him her business card. “You will find the little old lady, Detective Kelly, hopefully in time to save her. When you do, I’m sure you’ll want to talk to me.”

  She turned and walked away with an unconscious grace that no man with any blood in his veins could fail to appreciate. Sam was no exception. With his eyes locked on the gentle sway of her hips, he was forced to grudgingly acknowledge that the lady was a looker. And a few bricks shy of a load. The loonies always came out when the moon was full—every law-enforcement officer and emergency-room nurse in the city could attest to that—and the moon had been at its zenith for most of the night. Last month, he’d had to deal with a jumper on the Tower of Americas who thought he could fly like an eagle. If Ms. Hart wanted to prove she could really tell the future, she could give him Saturday’s lottery numbers—then they’d talk! Until then, he had better things to do with his time.

  Turning his attention back to the report he had to finish before he could go home, he deliberately tried to push the too-young, too-off-the-wall Jennifer Hart out of his mind, but one thought kept needling him, refusing to be ignored.

  What the hell did she know about the kind of night he’d had?

  Still steaming when she arrived back at Heavenly Scents, the small bakery and café she owned a block from the River Walk, she couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride at the sight of the place. It was hers, bought and paid for, thanks to the generosity and farsightedness of her grandparents. They’d always wanted more for her than the whispers, finger-pointing and distrust of the closed-minded people she’d had to deal with in the small town of Sandy Bluff, where they’d raised her after her mother died of breast cancer when she was seven. In their will, they had instructed her to sell their bakery so she could start over somewhere else. For that, and their love, she would always be grateful.

  All she’d wanted was to live a normal life...be normal. So when she’d moved to San Antonio, she’d kept her psychic abilities to herself, and for the first time in her life, she’d lived just like everyone else.

  Until that morning.

  Shivering, she hugged herself and tried to push back the horrifying scenes from the vision, but the images were too strong, too brutal. The elderly woman, alone and scared. Strong fingers squeezing her throat, cutting off her air until she tumbled unconscious to the floor. As much as Jennifer treasured the normal life she’d been able to create for herself, she’d known she couldn’t keep what she’d seen to herself. Not after she’d felt the victim’s terror and her attacker’s total lack of conscience.

  But she couldn’t think about that now. Not when the café was overflowing with the usual morning rush. Later she knew she would worry and lose sleep over what awaited an old woman she didn’t even know, but for now, all she could do was send up a silent prayer and go to work.

  Pulling open the door, she stepped inside. Every table was full, and at the door customers stood three deep, waiting for a seat. At the grill, Molly, her cook, was frying bacon and eggs and sausage and cracking jokes for the crowd. For the first time that morning, Jennifer grinned.

  White-haired and well past seventy, Molly had worked everything from hamburger stands to high-dollar restaurants and could cook just about anything. When she’d showed up at the café looking for a job two days after Jennifer bought it, she hadn’t lied about her age or her arthritis. She readily admitted that she couldn’t move as fast as she once had, but she’d tried retirement and didn’t like it. Sitting around all day was for old geezers, and she had a good ten or fifteen years to go before she’d consider herself old. If Jennifer would just hire her, she promised she’d never regret it.

  Liking her immediately, Jennifer had had no qualms about her age, not when she’d seen her own grandparents work long after they could have retired. They’d taught her the baking business, but she’d never run a restaurant on her own, and Molly’s unexpected arrival was like a gift from heaven. She’d hired her on the spot and had thanked God for her every day since. Molly did the cooking, she did the baking and waited tables, and together they’d made Heavenly Scents a hit.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Jennifer told her as she hurriedly grabbed an apron and tied it on. “It looks like you’ve got your hands full. Who gets the pancakes?”

  “Table three. Hang on—you can take these cacklers to four since you’re headed that way.”

  Orders were backing up because of the size of the crowd, but the two women worked well together and soon had things straightened out. At the first lull Molly blurted, “You going to tell me what happened at the police station? Or do I have to hog-tie you to a chair and make you talk? I’ve been waiting all morning to find out what’s going on, and it’s killing me.”

  Her green eyes twinkling, Jennifer almost laughed. There was only one thing Molly liked to do more than cook, and that was gossip. She’d arrived at work that morning just as Jennifer was leaving and was startled to learn she was going to the police station. She’d thrown one question after another at her, but there’d been no time for explanations. The morning baking was already in the oven, the first customer’s arrival less tha
n an hour away. Forced to stay behind, Molly had still been grumbling when she’d left. She’d probably been watching the door ever since.

  Jennifer had every intention of telling her about her vision, but it was hardly something she could do in a couple of minutes, especially when Molly didn’t have a clue that she was psychic. “You can put the rubber hose away—I’ll talk,” she promised, chuckling. “But after the rush. This is going to take some time.”

  The food on the grill forgotten, the older woman whirled on her in alarm. “Why? Are you in some kind of trouble? Dam it, Jennifer—”

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” she assured her. “It’s just...complicated.” There was no time to say more—there were empty coffee cups to fill, dirty tables to clean, orders to take. Grabbing the coffeepot, she went to work.

  An hour and a half later, the crowd thinned and the café began to clear out. The lunch crowd wouldn’t be in for several more hours, but she and Molly already had the day’s soup on and had begun work on the blue-plate special. With only a handful of customers to wait on, they had plenty of time to talk.

  Finding the right words, however, wasn’t nearly as easy as Jennifer had hoped. People always reacted in different ways when they found out about her psychic abilities. Some immediately wanted to know about their futures while others accused her of being in league with the devil. Molly was the closest thing she had to family now—if she was judgmental, Jennifer didn’t know what she would do.

  Refilling her coffee cup, she didn’t realize Molly was watching her struggle for words until she said quietly, “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. Just spit it out and get it over with.”

  Jennifer laughed, but the sound didn’t hold much humor. “That’s easy for you to say—you don’t know what I have to tell you.”

  Unperturbed, the older woman only shrugged and shoved three meat loaves into the oven. “How bad can it be? Unless you murdered your grandparents, of course. I might have a problem with that. You didn’t, did you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then there’s nothing you can’t tell me,” she said simply. “If you’re in some kind of trouble, I want to help.”

  There’d been a time in Sandy Bluff when Jennifer would have given anything to hear those words from people, other than her grandparents, she’d known and trusted all her life, but they’d withheld them and turned their backs on her, rejecting her for something she could no more help than they could control the color of their eyes. Molly, on the other hand, offered her support without even knowing what the problem was.

  Hot tears stinging her eyes, she gave her a quick hug and a watery smile. “I’m not in any trouble. Really,” she insisted when the older woman still looked skeptical. “I’m just... psychic.”

  Whatever Molly was expecting, it obviously wasn’t that. Shocked, she exclaimed, “You mean you can read palms and all that stuff? Just like Jeanne Dixon? Can you read mine?”

  She couldn’t have been more excited if Jennifer had told her she was Frank Sinatra’s granddaughter, and with her acceptance, a burden of silence was lifted off Jennifer’s shoulders. Leaving her past behind hadn’t been as simple as moving to a new town and starting over. There’d been times over the past six months when she’d literally ached to tell someone, anyone, about her grandparents and, by doing so, bring them back to life. But she couldn’t do that without opening herself up to questions of why she’d left Sandy Bluff, and up until now, that hadn’t been something she’d been willing to chance.

  “Actually I can see more if I close my eyes and just concentrate on you. And sometimes I have visions.” Images from that morning once again stirred in her mind, haunting her. “That’s why I went to the police this morning. I saw an old lady being assaulted and robbed and had to do something to try to stop it.”

  “You’re kidding! What are the police going to do?”

  “Nothing,” she said flatly. “The detective I spoke to thought I was some kind of wacko.”

  “He said that to your face?”

  “Not in those words, but he didn’t have to. It was pretty obvious he didn’t take me seriously.”

  Bristling indignantly, Molly marched over to the phone and snatched it up. “What’s his name? I’m calling him right now and giving him a piece of my mind! The man obviously needs a stern talking-to.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” Grabbing the phone, Jennifer quickly returned it to its cradle. “It won’t do any good, Molly,” she said quietly when her friend opened her mouth to protest. “Believe me, I know. I’ve been dealing with people—men—like Detective Kelly all my life. He doesn’t believe in what he can’t see, and all the talking in the world won’t change that.”

  “But there’s an old lady out there who’s going to get hurt,” she protested, outraged. “Are you saying we can’t do anything?”

  Her eyes anguished, Jennifer nodded. “Nothing but wait.”

  Two evenings later an elderly widow who lived alone in an exclusive neighborhood on the northeast side of town was in bed when she was surprised by an intruder. He choked her, nearly strangling her to death, then robbed her of a small fortune in jewelry. Unconscious, she might have lain there all night if her son hadn’t called and become worried when she didn’t answer the phone.

  When Sam and Tanner arrived on the scene, the evidence team was inside and an ambulance was just leaving with Agatha Elliot, the eighty-three-year-old victim. Michael Hawkins, the uniformed officer who answered the 911 call, was sober-faced as he met them on the lawn and gave them the details. “The perp broke in through a kitchen window while the old lady was upstairs in bed,” he told them. “Apparently she didn’t hear anything until he stepped into her bedroom.”

  “Did she get a look at him?” Sam asked.

  The younger man shook his head. “Not really. The only light was a night-light and she didn’t have her glasses on. He had something on his face, so she couldn’t see his features at all. She blacked out when he choked her, so what she does remember is a little hazy. She thought he had a ponytail and he seemed pretty tall to her. But she’s a little bitty thing, barely five feet, so she’d have to look up to just about anybody over five-six.”

  “And that’s it?” Tanner asked incredulously, frowning. “None of the neighbors heard or saw anything? It’s barely eleven o’clock!”

  “The neighbors on the left aren’t home, and the ones on the right were in their den at the back of the house watching TV,” the officer replied. “They didn’t know anything was wrong until they heard the ambulance drive up.”

  His angular face etched in harsh lines, Sam studied the victim’s fieldstone house, with its servants’ quarters and four-car garage and heard a soft feminine voice describe the layout in his head. The neighborhood is old and refined, the homes large and stately and set well back from the road. Instead of fences, most of the homes are separated by thick trees and foliage, so it’s very private. The old lady’s attacker will walk right out the front door with a sackful of jewelry and no one will see a thing.

  With a will of their own, his eyes moved over the landscaped yard that was now illuminated by floodlights, noting the spaciousness of the lots, the lack of fences, the forestlike setting right in the middle of the city. Just as Jennifer Hart said she had seen in her so-called vision.

  “Do we know how the perp exited the house?” he asked Michael Hawkins curtly. “Or what he took?”

  He nodded. “The front door was standing wide open when Mrs. Elliot’s son arrived. He took a quick look around before he left with the ambulance. The only thing he noticed missing was the jewelry. Apparently his mother had an extensive collection she refused to keep locked up.”

  It was all there—the house, the old lady, the jewelry, the crime. He’d already told Tanner all about Jennifer Hart, and he only had to exchange a look with him to know they were on the same wavelength. The robbery and attack on Mrs. Elliot hadn’t been a random act of violence, but a well-thought-out crime. And only one pers
on had prior knowledge of it—Jennifer Hart. Sam didn’t think for a minute it was because she was psychic.

  Chapter 2

  “Looks like the place is locked up tight,” Tanner said as they pulled up in front of Heavenly Scents Café. Located in a small two-story building that had been built at the turn of the century, the café took up the entire lower floor. “You sure this is the right place? I thought you said the lady was a psychic.”

  Sam checked the address on Jennifer Hart’s business card again, then frowned at the darkened windows of the café. The card just said “Heavenly Scents,” and he’d assumed, like Tanner, that she had one of those hokey shops where they sold scented oils and tarot cards, and told fortunes in the back behind a beaded curtain. So much for stereotypes.

  “That’s what she said,” Sam corrected him. “Evidently she’s not too good at it or she wouldn’t have to sling hash for a living. C’mon. There’s a light on in the back—it looks like someone’s moving around. Let’s check it out.”

  Circling the block, Sam pulled into the back alley and braked to a stop behind the café’s delivery entrance. Before they’d even climbed from the car, the light over the back door flared on. “Who’s out there?” a female voice demanded suspiciously.

  The door remained stubbornly shut and no doubt locked, but Sam didn’t have to see the woman to know that she was not Jennifer Hart. Her voice had the gruffness of age, which the psychic’s had lacked. Flashing his badge, he held it up to the small barred security window in the steel door. “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but I’m Detective Sam Kelly and this is Detective Bennigan, SAPD. We’re looking for Jennifer Hart.”

  The door swung open with a creak to reveal a tall plump woman with white hair and sharp brown eyes that raked over him without mercy. “You’re the one who gave Jennifer such a hard time the other morning at the police station.”

  She had him nailed—he couldn’t deny it. One corner of his mouth turning up into a rueful smile, he said, “Guilty as charged, Mrs....”