Celestial Bodies (7 page)

“Keep your back straight...” She gently helped a heavyset woman readjust her position. “Left arm on the floor,” she said, catching someone before he fell over. “Good. Exactly.”

By the end of the class the groaning, moaning students were bubbling with enthusiasm, their faces glowing as they exchanged names and promised to practice over the weekend.

“Thank you, Diana. This was wonderful. You’ve really helped me tonight,” said one woman before leaving.

Diana noticed Nick standing in the doorway when her students started departing. Her heartbeat, slowed down by the deep breathing and long stretches, suddenly accelerated. She didn’t understand why, instead of growing more accustomed to him, she got more excited around him every day.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.

“About twenty minutes.” He put his hands into the pockets of his jeans. The motion drew the material tight across his well-shaped thighs. Diana forced her fascinated gaze back up to his face as he strolled into the room and said, “It was interesting.”

“Thinking of joining our class?” she asked.

“Are you kidding? I’d need a chiropractor to straighten me out by the end of the day,” he teased.

“Nonsense. If you practiced yoga on a daily basis, you’d improve your overall health and temperament.”

“The way you’ve improved
your
temper?” he asked.

She smiled sheepishly as she toweled herself off. “If you think I’m short-tempered now, you should have seen me before I began yoga.”

“When was that?”

“College. Do you want some herbal ice tea?”

“I’ll join you in a glass,” he said. What he
wanted
was a cold beer.

They descended the stairs, walked through the shop where Felix was absorbed in conversation with the only customer, and sat down in the dimly lit courtyard with two tall glasses of chilled rose-hip tea that Diana had poured.

“So what got you interested in yoga in the first place?” Nick asked.

“My boyfriend during my sophomore year at college. He suffered from some kind of muscle atrophy. Yoga had helped to arrest the problem, and he practiced for an hour every day. He thought it would help me, too.”

“With what?” Nick tried not to screw up his face as he sipped his tea.

“With everything. I was very competitive, quick-tempered, tense, uptight, emotional. I don’t know how my family put up with me during my teenage years, to be honest.” She smiled fondly. “Of course, my mom was very patient by nature, and Felix has always been pretty obtuse.”

“And yoga helped you?”

She nodded. “Yoga and maturity. The discipline alone was very good for me. An hour a day of total concentration on relaxation and self-awareness really calmed me down, taught me to focus. Later on, I think it probably kept me alive in my crazy profession.”

That surprised him. “You weren’t always a yoga teacher?”

“No. I was in theatrical production.”

“Really?” He had already tried to look into her background and had found nothing. Now he knew why. He’d been looking in the wrong places.

“Yes. I majored in theatre business and moved to New York right after I got out of college. I worked with producers for nearly five years.”

“Didn’t you enjoy it?”

“Oh, I loved it. At first, anyhow. It was exciting, creative, exhilarating, always different, always educational. I loved the theatre, and I loved being part of its birth.”

“So what made you quit?” he asked curiously.

“A lot of things. Mostly reevaluation of my priorities.”

“Such as?”

She sipped her tea and looked thoughtful. “It was killing my health, for one thing. It was a high-strung business of sudden unemployment, long hours, clashing temperaments, strained budgets. For three years it seemed thrilling, then it just started to seem exhausting.” She shrugged and admitted, “Some of the exhaustion level was my fault. People kept telling me to take a vacation, but I was very ambitious. As soon as I could see one job coming to a close, I would start pushing for another. I worked constantly.”

“Then I started eating wrong, sleeping too little, neglecting my yoga. I started blowing off steam unfairly at people, misdirecting my anger and tension. I didn’t like myself very much.” She sipped her tea again. “As busy as I’ve been here, running the House of Ishtar, it’s nothing compared to the way I used to live. But I learned the hard way that stress and overwork are no good for me.” She glanced at him. “That’s why we hired you.”

“No, you hired me because I’m your destiny. Just ask your father,” he said solemnly.

Diana grimaced. “And how do you like your destiny so far?”

He leaned forward and said honestly, “It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced in a long and varied life.”

“Just how varied?” She pounced on the opportunity. She had told him something about herself. Maybe he would return the compliment.

As usual, he deftly changed the subject. “Why did you name your business after your cat? Did Ishtar already live here?”

“No.” Diana was disappointed for a moment, then looked forward to surprising him. Her eyes glinted with amusement as she looked at him. “My father has had Ishtar as long as anyone can remember.”

“How old is she?”

“No one knows. At least twenty-eight, certainly. She was full grown when, one day just before I was born, she walked into my father’s study in Chicago and introduced herself. She’s been with Felix ever since.”

Nick’s eyes widened. “You mean to say that that cat is... is...”

“At least as old as me. Probably older. The interesting thing is that our vet here estimates her age to be between three and five years—the same estimation as we got when she moved in with us, twenty-eight years ago.”

“Is that possible?”

“Since she’s here, I would have to say it is.”

He regarded her suspiciously. “You’re putting me on.”

“No. She’s the original. Even if Felix were given to subterfuge, you can always tell that she’s the real Ishtar because of a tiny crook halfway down her tail. I guess she broke it once during her youth.” Diana looked at him innocently.

“So Felix even has a wizard’s familiar,” Nick murmured.

“It’s certainly good for his image, isn’t it? But it happens to be true.”

“Why not?” Nick asked and sighed. “A lot of strange things happen around here that seem to be true. Do you know Felix walked up to me the other day and started explaining my nature as a Scorpio?”

“So?”

 
“So I never told him I was a Scorpio! I haven’t given you or anyone else my birth date since arriving. How did he know?”

Diana chuckled. “Oh, you’ll get used to that. He does it all the time. I have no idea how, but he knows, all right.”

Nick was about to say more, when he remembered he was posing as Felix’s acolyte. His rational questions and reasoning on the subject might make Diana suspicious. Once again she had made him forget why he was here.

“So how’s your reading coming?” Diana asked after a pause.

“Slowly. The ascendant and descendant axis. The upper and lower meridians. The houses of the planets, regeneration and reorientation, aspects of the zodiac—it’s pretty confusing,” he said truthfully. “I don’t see how it relates to the tarot, either.”

“That’s more advanced, I believe,” Diana told him. “Felix says you have to have a complete understanding of astrology and all its delineations before you can apply the tarot to it with any effectiveness.”

Nick looked at her, wondering how much she believed in her father’s mumbo jumbo. “Well, maybe I’ll catch on in the next
 
life,” he said ruefully.

“There’s still plenty of time in this life.” She patted his hand.

He turned his hand over and closed his fingers over hers. Their eyes met. A new tension entered the soft evening air between them.

After her initial resistance, he could feel her hand relax in his.

“Diana...”

Her fingers tightened involuntarily around his. He realized they were both caught by this attraction they hadn’t invited. She was different from anyone he had ever known, a study in contrasts, logical and emotional, passionate and businesslike, temperamental and serene. She fascinated him in a way that was too personal, too dangerous. He couldn’t afford to care so much about exonerating her—and her father—when he still might be forced to expose them.

His throat filled with all the things he wanted to say to her, all the words that could tumble from his lips at the sight of this fiery woman in the moonlit twilight. All the things he had no right to say to her, because he was here on a case. He had come to her under false pretenses.

He licked his lips. She lowered her glowing green eyes to his mouth. His belly tightened.

Diana felt her chest rise and fall with shallow, rapid breaths. She felt the heat of Nick’s gaze on her breasts, felt the warmth of his palm, like smooth leather, pressed firmly against hers.

Who was he? Where had he come from? He had been here less than a week, yet he was already part of her life. He was so easy to talk to, so distracting to be near, so exciting to touch. His onyx hair gleamed in the light of the courtyard lamp. His dark lashes veiled his eyes, but not before she saw the flash of longing there—a longing for her that pulled her toward him with an irresistible force.

He hesitated, and she found that endearing in a man so handsome, so rugged, so sexy. She had no doubt there had been many women in his life. He had the aura of a man who understood women well; he moved with the sensual grace of a man who knew how to please a woman. And yet he looked a little shy and uncertain right now, even as his eyes burned through her comfortable exercise clothes.

Diana’s gaze drifted over his broad shoulders and down his slim waist to his hard, flat belly. His narrow hips were encased in tight jeans that molded his muscular thighs. She shivered with excitement.

He was a mystery. She knew nothing about him. She still sensed he had deeper reasons for being here, reasons he wouldn’t share with her. But he had promised he wouldn’t hurt her or Felix.

“You aren’t the one in the cards,” she murmured.

“What?” His voice was husky and low.

She trusted her instincts as she leaned forward invitingly and parted her lips. She heard his sudden intake of breath, then felt the warmth of his palm against her cheek as he guided her face toward his.

His lips were firm, his tongue satiny, his mouth sweet.

Gentle. She felt the tensing of his biceps under her hand and marveled that he could possess such power, yet be so gentle.

He tilted his head and moved closer, rubbing his moist lips against hers, drinking from her mouth in the stillness of the empty courtyard. She could hear traffic in the Quarter, laughter from the street, a saxophone in the distance, but she floated above the common noises of the city. The sound of Nick’s deep, uneven breathing filled her ears, just as his hot kisses and hard hands swayed her senses.

She heard a shaky moan rise from her chest as he tilted her head back and pressed his mouth against the hollow of her throat. His hands slid across her ribs, massaging, caressing, teasing. She had never realized that her ribs were an erogenous zone.

Diana sought his mouth again, and his tongue entered boldly as he kissed her deeply. Everything was dark and swirling around her, everything smelled and tasted of him, and she slid her trembling arms around his neck so she wouldn’t fall off the edge of a cliff and into the dark void beyond.

She could hardly breathe by the time she felt him tear his mouth away and press her head against his shoulder. She was gasping as if she had just run five miles. She didn’t know which way was up. He packed quite a punch.

It seemed a long time before she became aware of simple sensations again—the feel of his hand stroking her hair, the cotton fabric of his shirt against her forehead, the hard cast-iron seat under her bottom, the smooth cobblestones under her feet.

He gripped her shoulders and shifted her position, so that their foreheads rested against each other.

“Is the Moon in Venus tonight, or something?” he whispered.

“Must be,” she mumbled.

“Don’t you have a company policy about this?”

“Huh?”

“You know. Fraternization.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” She smiled with him.

“Not many places let a guy kiss the boss during business hours,” he explained as his hand wandered down her back.

“Actually, I think we’ve been closed for a few minutes. But I’ll write you a memo about it later.”

She pulled away gently, ending the moment, and met his eyes with her customary candor. His expression melted her for a moment, then she felt him withdraw. Whatever he intended to hide, he was hiding it again.

“Still mysterious,” she said.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He rose abruptly and moved away from their little table. She could see that he was troubled. Now she felt uneasy, too. Getting interested in a man who lived under her roof and worked in her employ was pretty foolish, particularly when that man obviously had problems he hadn’t worked out and wouldn’t tell her about. Maybe she had just made a mistake.