She slipped from the bed and let her eyelids rise slowly. Would the day come when she couldn’t feel him even with her eyes closed? She shoved the paralyzing thought aside.
Street light filtered through the tree branches, bathing the room in its soft glow. She tried not to look back, but she seemed to have no control over the movement of her head.
The bed was empty. She’d left behind only the imprint of one head on her pillow and one body in the middle of the slightly sagging mattress.
All evidence of Cameron was gone. She knew he’d never really been there. He never would be again. She was crazy, with a fertile imagination that extended even to tactile sensation. She’d never understood how she could imagine something so utterly physical right down to the quaking of the bed.
The air pulsed around her. “It might not be real, Max, but it’s all I have left to give you.”
In one moment he gave her ecstasy, the next, he brought home that their reality existed only for a fleeting instant. In darkness. Behind closed lids. She ached for one last real touch.
His voice was a honeyed, agonizing whisper in her ear. “Don’t you know I’d live a lifetime in hell for the chance to make love with you in the flesh one more time?”
It was enough to make even a strong woman cry. But Max Starr couldn’t. Not now.
Because if she did, she’d never stop.
Chapter Three
“You want me to what?” Max stared at the phonebook Remy Hackett had laid in front of her.
The night was over. What she and Cameron had done in the night was over. She’d shoved aside her messy emotions and hurried off to her appointment with Wendy’s boss. Ex-boss.
Max had never wanted a job more than this one. Even making manager at Kirby, O’Brien, and Dakajama hadn’t been this important. Granted, at KOD, there’d been no visions, no ghosts, no dead women in her dreams, no ghostly lover. But this man wanted her to—
Hackett stood over her shoulder, pointing. “Add those highlighted phone numbers on the calculator.”
His closeness gave her the heebie-jeebies. It wasn’t so much a gut reaction as a familiar sensation deep in her belly. Wendy hadn’t like her boss, not at all.
Max stared at the dash of yellow highlighter across the page. The black numbers were slightly smeared, but still recognizable. She rubbed her nose, her only sign of irritation.
“But that’s like—” Like asking a nurse to demonstrate a blood pressure cuff or a computer whiz if he knows how to send an e-mail. Some things are second nature.
She looked from Remy to the Sharp ten-key—a brand name she’d used exclusively—and back to the phonebook again.
As a boss, the man would suck. As a suspect, Remy Hackett gave her an adrenaline rush. Max positioned the fingers of her right hand on the keypad and dusted off the list of numbers in less than five seconds with one hundred percent accuracy. “Would you like me to do it again? Maybe with some different numbers?”
Remy Hackett beamed. “I know it sounds bizarre, especially after looking at your resume, but you wouldn’t believe the number of people who...” He seemed to search for the polite description. “Let’s be honest. They lie on their work history. Lying is one of my pet peeves.”
It was a logical explanation from a man she’d thought at first wouldn’t need to explain anything to anyone. “I suppose in a small business, they figure they can get away with it,” Max offered, giving him the benefit of the doubt only because she wanted the job.
Remy Hackett wasn’t a big man—though he’d certainly be the big fish in his little appliance-parts pond. He was under six feet, close to forty years old, and ten pounds overweight. When he stood, he sucked in his gut and puffed out his chest. He’d combed back his overlong hair to hide a bald spot. A mustache tried to preserve the masculinity of an otherwise soft face.
She wondered if his budget was as big as his head. Though his oak desk was huge, it was dwarfed by the size of the man’s office. He had a genuine leather sofa and a kidney-shaped coffee table in the right corner. Yet the single chair he’d placed opposite the desk, the one he’d perched Max on, was a cheap wooden straight-back as uncomfortable as hell. It reminded her of the Punishment Chair she’d had to sit on when she’d committed some childhood infraction. After forty-five minutes of Remy’s interviewing techniques, her butt had gone numb.
Moving once again behind his desk, Remy sat down. On the out-breath, his middle sagged over his no-iron, Expandomatic slacks. He crossed his hands over his belly, drawing her eye right to the weakness he’d probably meant to hide.
“So, tell me why a CPA wants to do temp work.”
“It keeps my options open. If I don’t like a situation, I just call up Sunny and say find me another job.” Sticking as close to honesty as possible was the best policy.
Remy raised eyebrows that were two shades lighter than his dyed hair. “And I can call her just as expeditiously.”