Angel's Touch (13 page)

Megan’s hands found their way under her shirt and up her back, pulling her closer. Kira tucked her hands into Megan’s pockets and fit their hips together. Their legs bent and swayed to the music pulsing in her veins, and Megan’s hips matched her beat for beat. They moved like one body and kissed with a searching, possessive need.

Megan tasted just like her dreams, clean like the ice cold water she could never gulp enough of after a long, hot run. But Megan couldn’t be the one from her dreams—it didn’t make sense that she could have dreamed of her so long ago. Reality didn’t work that way. But it felt like her. So familiar. So
right.

What the hell. Maybe reality did work that way. She was willing to give the mysteries of the universe the benefit of the doubt.

Because as it turned out, reality was much, much better than her dreams.

Megan twined her leg around Kira’s, pulling them off balance, and Kira stumbled and caught her footing, managing not to fall. Megan didn’t seem to notice. She kept kissing her, kept rubbing her inner thigh against her. Kira tightened her grip and let the feel of Megan’s body sear a memory into the deepest fibers of her being at every single point of contact. Nothing existed but her heat and her taste and the way she kissed her like the kiss would never end.

Until a half-naked man bumped into them and Megan sprang back. Kira reached for her, but Megan put a hand up to stop her.

“I can’t do this,” Megan said abruptly.

No. Kira’s body ached for her across the space that separated them.

“You’re a client.”

What? “I’m not a client.”

“The 10K…”

Kira’s mind spun, trying to adjust to Megan’s sudden change of heart as club lights played across her body in weirdly inappropriate patterns. Her words didn’t even make sense. “That doesn’t make me a client. That tent—that was an assembly line in there. Half those people you wouldn’t even recognize again.”

“I know, but…I shouldn’t.” Megan looked deflated and apologetic. “I could lose my license if I’m not careful.”

The troubled look in her eyes—and the unspoken trust that Kira would understand—knocked the fight right out of her. She could never try to force Megan to do something that made her uncomfortable, not if she wanted to be able to live with herself. Although she had to say that as far as excuses went, the losing her license thing was bogus. No way did she qualify as a client. But none of that mattered if Megan didn’t want her. It was hard to process, but that was what Megan was telling her—she didn’t want her.

She’d been showing off for her ex. What a waste.

So, okay. She could respect that. She wasn’t a man. She’d worked with enough Neanderthals to know that men always wanted the woman who was out of reach, the woman they had to chase, and once they got her, the excitement was over. They missed out on a lot, thinking that way. Because she had a feeling that once Megan let her into her life, the excitement would only get better.

Unfortunately, it didn’t look like she was going to get to find out.

Megan opened her front door and looked past the courtyard toward the street for Esther Bonney, her ten o’clock appointment, who was about to be late.

She spotted a familiar gray Taurus. Wasn’t that Barbara Fenhurst’s car?

Before she could wonder if she’d written down the wrong name in her appointment book, Esther drove up, parked and hobbled out of her car, the arthritis in her knees slowing her down more than usual.

Megan left her door open and went over to help Esther with the walk from her car.

“Thanks for your reminder call yesterday.” Esther gripped the support of Megan’s extended arm. “Can’t count on my memory anymore, and I’d hate to miss an appointment with you. Now the dentist, that I don’t mind missing.”

“How’s the arm?”

“Hurts a bit.”

“You don’t have to be stoic around me, you know.”

Even though Esther wore long sleeves to hide the compression wrap, Megan could tell her right arm was twice the size of the other one. Several years ago a mastectomy had saved her life, but it had left her with severe lymphedema. At least nowadays they didn’t remove all the lymph nodes as a matter of course. But surgeons still had this attitude of
I saved your life, what more do you want from me?
They cut the cancer out and if you complained about pain or infection or loss of function, well, that was the price you had to pay for not dying. It was a price women were willing to pay. But that didn’t make it right.

When they got upstairs and Esther was settled on the massage table, Megan elevated her arm and massaged it with the lightest, gentlest touch possible. Pressure would only aggravate the swelling. She brushed the arm over and over again, encouraging the excess fluid to flow toward the chest and leave the arm. The scent of the arnica massage cream filled the room.

By the end of the session the edema had visibly improved, and that meant the pain should be better, too. Megan sat on her stool behind her client and rested her hands on either side of her head. Like a mother tenderly stroking her sick child’s hair, she soothed her with slow circles on her scalp and forehead. Megan’s eyes lost focus, making Esther’s skin smooth out and her face become rounder, more youthful. It wasn’t hard to imagine her as a little girl racing around the beach with her arms open wide, screeching with delight.

Megan held the healing image in her mind and radiated love into Esther’s energy field. She realigned what she could, noted where there was resistance, and, with the pressure of her hands, invited her to let go. She positioned her hands at the base of Esther’s skull and waited for her to drift into the stillpoint—a gap between breaths, between heartbeats, between thought. A moment of pure stillness, where time followed different rules and deep healing occurred. She loved holding the stillpoint, feeling loving but detached, because when she was in that space, it was impossible to get sucked into her client’s problems. Or maybe it was the other way around: When she got sucked into her client’s problems—or her own problems—it was impossible to be a channel for pure love.

Which was why she was having trouble staying in the stillpoint. She was pulling herself out of it each time she thought about what happened at Avalanche with Kira. And she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

That kiss was a mistake. Kira had been so nice to her the whole evening. She looked so hot, too, in her tight shorts. The music was great, and what with all that pretending they’d been doing to make Amelia jealous, she’d gotten carried away. Way too carried away.

It had felt so natural to meet Kira’s lips, to let her tongue in, to revel in the way her hands tightened on her ass to pull her closer, so desperate for her. Megan had felt pretty desperate herself. It had taken quite a while before she remembered where she was and why she didn’t want to do this.

Inviting Kira to go to Avalanche with her had sounded like fun at the time…and yeah, it
had
been fun. Too fun. Somewhere along the way she’d left her ethics at the door and forgotten Kira was a client.

Clients were off-limits. For good reason.

She couldn’t see a woman’s personality clearly when that woman was a client, because it was all infused with that heart space she worked from to create healing. She loved her clients, every single one of them. She loved them because it was her job to set aside her personal prejudices and see them as innocent and lovable. Once she had looked at someone through that lens, that image was hard to shake. She wasn’t sure she could ever see them any other way.

And her clients couldn’t be objective about her, either. They raved about her because they saw her at her best, and because she helped them. They didn’t see her when she was tired and cranky and had other things to do. It was an illusion, and that illusion caused problems outside of the massage room.

Which was why she should have pulled back the instant she realized Kira was about to kiss her. There’d been time.

Time which she’d spent mesmerized, dizzy with yearning as she caressed Kira’s taut jaw, watched her lower her gaze, and felt her hesitate, knowing she was coming closer, knowing she was going to kiss her, wondering what it would be like.

Instead of thinking.

Thank God her brain had kicked in eventually.

Maybe they could just forget the kiss ever happened. Kira might agree to that. She was desperate for her help with the spa, and wouldn’t want to complicate their working relationship. They’d treat it like an accident—an accidental bumping of the lips. That accidentally turned into an irresistible soul kiss.

Yup. That would work.

Kisses that brushed against her soul were easy to forget. Not that she’d ever come across one before…

Well, she was sure it was possible.

***

It didn’t take long for George—Kira’s foreman—to confirm her suspicions. She liked to check on the construction site and assess the hotel’s progress every day, even on weekends when no one was around, so when she’d stopped by after her early Saturday morning run and noticed a stack of several large coils of copper pipe had disappeared, she’d immediately called George to assess what else might have been stolen.

George checked all the areas under construction as Kira followed close behind. “Looks like that’s all they took,” he said.

“Were they watching the delivery?” Kira had been in this business long enough to know she had to budget for some worksite theft, but it galled her every time—especially since these pipes had been delivered less than twenty-four hours ago. She’d almost been late meeting up with Megan at Avalanche the night before because she’d been waiting for the delivery and the truck got stuck in Friday afternoon beach traffic. Like that was a big surprise. She’d
told
them not to do it on a Friday. Her crew had gone home for the day and she had waited for the truck. Eating pizza out of a cardboard box, wondering when the truck was ever going to get there, knowing she was going to inconvenience Megan if it didn’t arrive soon… It had been a frustrating way to start the evening. And all for nothing.

She stomped down the hall. The plumbing was never going to get finished at this rate. They were already behind schedule. Did she need to hire a guard to stay overnight? Copper pipes weren’t a sexy, big-ticket item—not like the $60,000 backhoe that disappeared from one of her dad’s worksites—but they were untraceable and easy to resell. At least nothing else had been taken. Long before she’d started construction, she’d run the numbers and calculated that a security guard would cost much more than whatever her potentially stolen building supplies were worth. She didn’t want to be proven wrong.

George followed as she headed for the lobby. “I can get what we need. I know a guy—”

“And buy back what they stole? No thanks. I’m not providing them with a market. Tell me what we need and I’ll order it. And when the new pipes come in, tell the guys I want that plumbing installed as soon as possible.”

“Might not make any difference. I heard the guys working on that house down on Oak Drive got their copper pipes ripped right out of the walls. Took the toilets, too.”

Kira rubbed the hinge of her jaw, trying to get it to relax. She should get some tips from Megan on how to do that. Although as far as she knew, Megan was shit at it. The last time her favorite massage therapist had touched her jaw they had ended up kissing, and that kiss had jolted her like a shot of pure caffeine, intense enough to give her the shakes. It had certainly not left her feeling relaxed.

Not that she was complaining.

She rubbed her hands over her face and hoped her foreman hadn’t noticed that her lips were parted, still tingling from the aftereffects of their contact with Megan the day before.

“Think positive, George.”

“Yeah, sure,” he grumbled. “It’s your money.”

“Positive,” she reminded him. She wasn’t in the habit of giving up, and she wasn’t going to start now. She’d sleep at the hotel herself if she had to.

When they were sure nothing else was missing and George took off, Kira went to her office and tried to get some work done. Her current string of bad financial luck had started over a year ago, with Lizzy. Maybe if she hadn’t found Lizzy so sexy, she would never have taken her up on her offer to open a restaurant together. If it hadn’t been for the way she let her look down her very nice cleavage, she might not have talked herself into sinking money into an industry that was notoriously unstable instead of sticking with what she was good at. If only she’d had Megan’s strength of character and made some personal rule about not dating potential business partners, that whole fiasco could have been averted.

To be fair, she
had
been ready for a change. Lizzy and her dreams of being a chef and having her own restaurant happened to come along right when Kira was getting bored of building doctor’s offices. There was no guarantee that anything she tried at that point would have succeeded. Still, it was hard to believe lust hadn’t had something to do with her mistake. Lust that died before the restaurant ever opened.

Megan wouldn’t have gotten involved with Lizzy. And if Megan’s standards of integrity weren’t so admirable, she could be enjoying her company right now. She could be sleeping in late with her dream woman in her arms, blissfully unaware of what had happened at the hotel, instead of stewing because she had to order plumbing supplies she had already ordered once before.

She supposed eventually they’d have to get out of bed so Megan could see her massage clients. And yeah, Kira had to work, too. But not if she really didn’t want to. She could afford to take a day, or a week, to do nothing but roll around naked with her very sexy girlfriend. It had been a long time since she’d had a reason to take advantage of being her own boss.

Unfortunately, it was going to continue to be a long time, because Megan was unlikely to invite her to crawl into her bed anytime soon. Optimistically speaking.

Megan thought kissing her was a mistake.

That was so not how Kira felt about it.