She turned on the television. She wanted the noise, the illusion of company, he realized.
“Great movie, From Here to Eternity,” she commented.
“Yep.”
He was still standing next to the bed.
“Would you like something to drink? I don’t have a lot here—beer or white wine. Soda, coffee, tea.”
He could tell that she didn’t want him to leave. She was afraid, but she didn’t want to admit it. “Sure. I’m not much for wine, so I’ll have a beer.”
“Have a seat. The sofa is comfortable,” she told him, heading for the refrigerator and looking relieved.
He sat, and she brought over two beers and sat on the opposite end of the couch, facing him. Then she took a swig of her beer, smiling shyly.
Was it possible to envy a beer bottle because those lips had been around it? he wondered.
“So…how did you end up working with Adam Harrison?” she asked.
“Adam found me,” Caleb said, then turned the subject to her. “How did you meet Adam? And by the way, I’m glad you did—you wouldn’t trust me as far as you could throw me if it weren’t for Adam.”
She flushed and looked down for a moment. “Southerners,” she said. “We’re very hospitable, but that doesn’t mean we actually trust outsiders. ”
“I’m a Southerner, too,” he reminded her. “Born and bred in Virginia.”
“That’s awfully far north,” she said. “That’s where I met Adam, though. In Virginia. There was some trouble at a dig outside Fredericksburg—I was there taking notes and sketching finds. I met Adam when he came to see the director. Harrison Investigations had been hired to stop the weird things that were happening—tools disappearing, then reappearing, strange lights in the middle of the night, stuff like that. Even the newspapers had picked up on it and were joking that maybe the dig was haunted or cursed or something. Adam and his staff caught some college kids who had been creating all the trouble—no curses going on, just pranks. But my boss told me then that Harrison Investigations even gets called in by the government—quietly—to…look into weird events.”
Caleb admitted, “It’s true. He has an amazing network of people located all over the country. He brings the right person in on the right case every time.”
“Does he ever find that…the rumors are true? That something…unreal is going on?”
“Some of the people who work for him seem to have an affinity for…I don’t know, communicating with the…other side, I guess you’d call it. And yes, some of them do have what you might call ESP, but that just stands for extrasensory perception. Seeing is perception, touching…but scientists know the brain has much more capacity than the average person utilizes, and I think that’s what ESP is, just utilizing those parts of the brain.”
“What about you?”
“Me? I have a way of mentally rebuilding a crime scene. I’m not sure it’s ESP, more just a different way to use logic by relying on my subconscious.”
“Logic. I like logic. And the fact that we don’t utilize all our mental capacities, that makes sense to me. The brain can take us by surprise, like my dream last night.”
She was looking at him, smiling. Her lips were damp, her eyes soft and bright. And she was standing so close.
In the end, it must have been the perfume.
A sound escaped his lips, a groan, and he plucked the beer bottle out of her hand, set it on the side table alongside his own and pulled her into his arms. He met her eyes again. “I didn’t exactly barge in,” he said huskily, “but this bedroom will do just fine.”
He waited, a heartbeat, a pulse, giving her the chance to pull away.
There were things he could say. Inane assurances that he wouldn’t leave if she was afraid to be alone, even if they just sat and talked or watched TV, or just passed the time in silence.