Lost Bird (3 page)

His aura looked a little cloudy. Normally, it was bright, clear. He worried he’d hurt her feelings.

She gave him a one-armed hug with her left arm to reassure him. “Yeah, Tarzan, I know.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

She waved it away. “It’s okay, sweetie. I’m still emotional is all.”

He studied her for a moment before nodding. Brad, the survivor of not one, but two traumatic brain injuries, had two distinct sides. The more there guy, and the one who seemed like he might be off in la-la land. This Brad was the more
there
one, and he had his entire intuitive focus beaming sharply at her.

“Say hi to Libbie and the gang for me,” Sachi said as she waved him toward the front door.

“Will do.”

Since Brad, a very talented artist, worked from upstairs, he frequently volunteered to do the morning run across the square to Libbie’s bakery to pick up their daily inventory.

As he walked out the front door and across the square, Mandaline stepped out of the office. They were alone in the store except for Pers, Mandaline’s dog, and Damiago, her cat, both sharing a spot in a sunbeam on one of the couches in the front area under the large display windows.

“You know, if you want to talk…” Mandaline let her words drift off. Her aura wasn’t as cloudy as Brad’s. Mandaline was used to Sachi’s crankiness, but she still felt concerned for her, which touched Sachi.

Sachi nodded, her gaze dipping to the floor. “Yeah, boss. I got it. I know.”

She heard Mandaline’s sigh before her friend returned to her desk in the office.

Sachi breathed in a sigh of relief as she started the usual morning preparations for the coffeeshop part of their operation. The people who knew her best knew she wasn’t a warm, cuddly kind of person when dealing with her own emotional stuff. She’d built a secure wall around herself in that way. She’d become an expert in disguising it over the years.

Her customers and students, both at Many Blessings and at the shooting club, saw what she deliberately portrayed to them—a funny, snarky, laughing woman who loved what she did.

That wasn’t a lie, really.

What she didn’t want was their sympathy, or their looks of pity. It was bad enough that reporters had dredged up her mom’s murder and the attack on her when everything happened a couple of weeks ago, just weeks on the heels of Julie’s murder by local famous author, Steven Corey.

Sachi could ignore that look on the faces of practical strangers, even though it was a look that bit right through her core.

She didn’t need or want it from her friends, however.

Not in the slightest.

* * * *

Sachi borrowed Ellis’ car and ran home for lunch. Her dad had, at Sachi’s insistence, gone on a couple of job interviews that day. He’d be there to pick her up after work, but she needed a little time alone, in the personal fortress of solitude that was her home.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how she looked at it—a puddle of water was slowly creeping across the kitchen’s tile floor when she walked in. Had she not come home for lunch, she wouldn’t have found it until that night.

And it likely would have been a lot worse.

“Dammit!” She tracked its source back to the hot water heater, which was situated in the utility room between the kitchen and garage. It appeared to be leaking out of the bottom of the appliance.

She knew enough to go flip the breaker for that circuit, and to shut off the water valve going to the water heater.

Beyond that, she was clueless.

After grabbing a handful of bath towels to mop up the water, she picked up the phone and called Ellis on his cell.

“Hey, chief. Didn’t you say you guys have a great plumber working on your house?”

“What’s wrong?”

She gave him the short and snark-free version.

“I can have Mandaline bring Brad over to work on it for you.”

“No, Tarzan’s busy. Besides, this might require getting a permit or something, and I don’t want him to have to go through all that trouble. My next door neighbors had to have a permit for theirs, I think. I appreciate the offer, but I’ll pay a pro for this one.” She already felt badly enough that they’d gotten pulled into her personal mess and Mandaline had almost gotten hurt because of her attacker.

“Okay. His name’s John Evans. If I don’t have his number, Brad will. Hold on, let me look for it.”

She walked over to the counter and grabbed the notepad her dad had started making a shopping list on. It warmed her heart to see his handwriting there.

Brisket, lox, cream cheese, dish soap, broccoli, potatoes—

“Here it is.” Ellis rattled off a number. “Evans Plumbing. Call him, tell him you’re our friend. He’ll take good care of you.”

“Thanks.” She ended the call and dialed the number. Five minutes later, after explaining what happened, a woman on the other end assured her they’d have someone at her house within an hour. Her next call was to Mandaline to update her

Fortunately, Sachi didn’t have any readings or classes at the store that afternoon, or any skeet students. By the time her doorbell rang forty minutes later, she had the worst of the mess cleaned up and had figured out how to drain the rest of the water from the tank by hooking a garden hose to the valve at the bottom and running it out the back door and into the yard.

Barefoot, she went to answer the door. She glanced out her front window and saw the Evans Plumbing van parked in her driveway, so she didn’t bother looking through the viewfinder before opening the door.

She nearly slammed the door shut again. In fact, she’d reflexively started to pull it shut with her left hand and whacked herself in the hip with the doorknob.

The man who stood there in her entryway wore the most gorgeous royal blue aura she’d ever seen. Thick, like sweet syrup she wanted to dive into and swim around in. He had curly brown hair and delicious brown eyes and, gauging from her bare feet, he had to be around six one.

She blinked.

In the years since she’d been able to see and read auras, she’d only had such a strong, visceral reaction to someone once before.

Even then, her panties had never instantly dampened quite like that.

He looked up from a clipboard in his hand and met her gaze. “Ms. Wolowitz? I’m John Evans. I’m here about the hot water heater.”

Of course you are.
She stared at him for a moment before finally finding her voice. “Um, yeah. Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“No problem. Can you show me where it is?”

She couldn’t peel herself off the door.
I’m fucking going to kill Tarzan and Mandaline. They done gone and manifested me a hunk.

“Um, sure.” She forced her fingers to uncurl from the edge of the door and ordered her feet to take a step back. “This way.” She turned and headed down the hall, resisting the urge to break into a run.

She knew if she did that, she’d hit the back door, cross the yard, and keep running.

He’s here for my water heater. He doesn’t know anything except that I’m a royal schmuck at this point.

Keep your calm, girl. Steady breaths.

She stepped as far away from him as she could in the utility room and pointed. “There’s the fuc—arting thing.” Around her friends she didn’t bother censoring her swearing. But around people she didn’t know, and clients and customers, she tried to tone it back to at least a PG-13 level.

He knelt next to it and nodded. “Breaker already turned off?”

“Yeah. And the water valves.”

He glanced at the hose. “Good thinking on draining it. Do you want the same size, or one bigger?”

She somehow managed to stifle the giggle and snarky comment of
I’m a size queen
that threatened to slip through her lips.

“Um, whatever you think.”

He stood and took a few measurements of the space. “Let me have a look at the breaker real fast to confirm the circuit amps, and I’ll get you a couple of prices.”

She showed him to the garage, where the breaker box was, and popped the large garage door for him so he didn’t have to keep going back and forth through the house. Once she walked into the kitchen, she leaned over the sink and splashed cold water on her face.

Holy. Fucking. Goddess.

She’d managed to compose herself by the time he returned from his van a few minutes later with several options written down. She could go with a larger size water heater for only a hundred dollars more in price.

“Does that include the permit?”

“Everything, including hauling the old one away.”

“So how many days will I be without hot water?”

“I can have the new one installed in a couple of hours. I had a job cancel on me today which is why I was able to come myself.”

She successfully smothered
that
nervous giggle, too. He wouldn’t understand the lascivious thoughts running through her brain.

He continued. “We’ll pull the permits and notify the inspector, but for something like this, they let us go ahead and do the repair immediately. Your house is new enough we don’t need to make any modifications to the electrical circuit or existing pipes or anything.”

“Okay. Let’s go with the larger one then.” A little snort escaped her, but she thought by turning and heading for her purse she might have been far enough away from him he didn’t hear her.

“Great. I’ll go get the unit and be back here in less than an hour.”

She looked up from where she was rooting through her purse for her wallet. “You don’t want me to pay you now?”

“Once it’s finished and working.”

When he left, she leaned against the counter again and took long, slow, deep breaths.

The ability to see auras had started within a day after the attack when she was a teenager. She hadn’t said anything to anyone about it then, afraid they might institutionalize her. She’d seen them faintly during her overnight stay in the hospital, but attributed it to having been choked and beaten, and the mental and physical trauma of her rape, and emotional trauma over her mom’s death.

It was at her mother’s funeral two days later, however, while sitting by her father’s side and wearing a floppy hat and large, dark sunglasses to hide her black eyes—and her tears—from the rest of the attendees, that the ability jumped out and really said
huzzah
.

Everyone there bore an aura. Later, as Sachi researched her new ability and learned more, she understood that the most likely reason she’d seen them so clearly the day of the funeral was due to the highly charged emotional situation. As her ability grew and strengthened, she learned how to tune out and focus on not seeing auras, except when she wanted or needed to for a client.

It had been years since one had jumped out unbidden at her like this.

The last one had been the one and only attempt she’d had at a serious relationship several years earlier, after settling in Florida.

She went to go take a cold shower. No, she wasn’t a freaking nun and was as liable to lust after a hunky man as much as the next hot-blooded hetero woman or homosexual guy.

The difference was she never acted on it.

Ever.

She didn’t date, she didn’t flirt. She kept her thoughts and feelings to herself and, sometimes, her handheld shower massager.

Even that was fairly rare, though.

Maybe a little cold water will jolt my senses into proper alignment.

* * * *

John tried to focus on the task at hand as he drove to the shop to pick up the new water heater. He’d never met Sachi Wolowitz before, although he was familiar with who she was.

Hell, someone would have to be living under a rock to
not
know who she was. It had made the news when she’d been shot by a guy, who was then shot and killed by Ellis Fargo, a local attorney and a customer of his. John had personally overseen the work in that very house after a previous contractor had screwed some of it up.

The haunted look in Sachi’s eyes when they’d shown her on TV had drawn him in an unusual way even then, having never met her before.

When the dispatcher had given him her info he’d suspected it would be the same woman, yet he still felt the unusual lurch his heart made when she opened the door.

Those gorgeous blue eyes of hers, almond-shaped and full of wariness, looked even more beautiful and powerful in person. She wore her long, straight black hair loose today, although in some of the news coverage he’d seen of her, pictures of her on a skeet field, she’d worn it pulled back in a ponytail or braid.

Part of him wanted to turn to her and ask her out, but he couldn’t make himself do it. For starters, he didn’t want to get involved with a client. In a small town like Brooksville, it didn’t take much for the rumor mill to run overtime. He suspected she’d already had more than her fill of
that
to last a lifetime. Also, if it went badly between them, word of that could get around, too. He had a good reputation in town. He didn’t want to do anything stupid to mess that up.