Oracle Seeing (The Phoenix Files Book 2) (24 page)

“Well, no. Pietro’s is making
US
dinner. I was planning to heat it up and make a salad.”

Okay, that was a lie.

She had planned to heat it up, gorge on carbs, and then fall into a food comma, but for him…she’d share.

Hell!

If he stayed and didn’t run, he could have hers.

After all, he showed up.

It was a start. Bishop had to hope that this meant something. She had to hope it was going to be an easier road once they got past this.

“I don’t understand.”

She handed him the disposable foil pan holding the precious Italian food. “You’re here, we’re going to have dinner, and then I figured you wanted to talk.”

He did.

Only he wasn’t ready for this.

She was making it hard to figure out her next move. In court, he was the king of chess. Ironically, he was being taken down by a Bishop.

That made him want to laugh.

No woman had ever been able to do that to him. Everything Lucian ever did was carefully plotted, planned, and executed. Bishop was some out of control force, threatening to scatter all the pieces in the game to Hell and back.

As they headed into the kitchen, she dropped the files on the counter.

“Work?” he asked. “If you’re busy, I can…”

“Nope. Work will wait. The dead will have their day. You and I having dinner isn’t going to keep me from finding the killer. I can multitask.”

He placed the food on the stove.

It looked like she was going to corner him in her kitchen. That’s when she switched it up again.

“Welcome to my humble abode.”

“I like it.”

“Yeah, me too. I like small. I have no time to cook or clean, so it works for me.”

He understood that. Lucian had someone clean for him, but during the weekly visit, he hid in his office. It was off limits.

“How are you at salad?”

“Pardon?” he asked, trying not to look directly at her. All that red hair was distracting. He wanted to touch it. When he’d been sitting in her chair, he could smell her perfume. He’d picked it up that morning when she hunted him down.

“Salad. You know…the green leafy shit in a bowl. Can you make one? I guess I’m asking, or at least hoping, you’re better in a kitchen than I am.”

He was caught off guard again by the switch up.

“You want me to make a salad?”

“Well, I need to get a shower. I was in the morgue and at a crime scene. I don’t know about you, but that’s just way too much death to handle before lasagna.”

He was confused.

“Lucian?”

“I can make a salad. Actually, I can cook.”

“Well, next time, I’ll break into your house and make the salad, and you can make me dinner.”

He stared at her, ready to object, but she walked away.

She was seriously leaving him there to chop up a salad. He didn’t know what she was up to, but he had to figure it out.

Bishop was keeping him off guard.

Somehow, it calmed him. Instead of being freaked out, she was behaving like his presence there was a completely normal occurrence.

Suddenly, he wished it was.

This part of life had been missing. He hadn’t shared a meal with anyone in ten years. In fact, he hadn’t enjoyed food in ten years. Now he was looking forward to a salad.

“Stuff is in the fridge, Lucian!” she called from somewhere upstairs.

He could hear the water turning on as it ran through the old pipes, and he was suddenly very aware of everything around him. There was a naked sheriff upstairs.

His body reacted.

He fought it, but he couldn’t hold back.

Jesus!

What had she done to him?

Instead of thinking about it, he pulled off his hoodie, folded it neatly, and then began moving around her kitchen. Everything was easily found, and he appreciated that. Bishop was a very organized person.

Then he began looking for a bowl for salad.

When he opened the first cabinet, he started laughing. There, labeling every shelf, was a little tag describing what went in that spot.

He was a neat freak.

She was completely OCD.

For some reason, that relaxed him. With his gift, he didn’t like chaos. He assumed that was why she was the same.

Pulling down a bowl, he tried to figure out how big of a salad to make.

Bishop looked like she ate salad. She was tall, thin, and healthy. So, he had no choice but to guestimate the quantity.

As he chopped, he stared down at the pan of lasagna. It was in foil, so it couldn’t be microwaved. It was getting cold, so he popped it into the oven.

It was clear that Bishop had never used it before. It was spotless. Yeah, she hadn’t lied.

The woman couldn’t cook.

He didn’t mind.

He’d do this every day for….

Lucian stopped himself.

He was putting things in his mind that he didn’t know would ever happen. He wasn’t that lucky. There was no way she’d be his. When she found out what he’d done, pushing her away, there would be hell to pay.

Yes, she told him her feelings, but he’d run her through the ringer. A lot had happened in the last eight years. For all he knew, she was dating someone.

It irritated him to the point where he ran his hands over his face. He’d forgotten about the scar. While there, he’d forgotten that he wasn’t whole.

Lucian stared at the back door.

He wanted to leave.

He wanted to grab his hoodie, sneak out into the darkness and head home. What was coming would only hurt.

He was sure of it.

The demons he had to face were more than he could take. He wasn’t a man anymore. He was a shell.

As he walked toward his hoodie, he heard her coming.

Shit!

It was too late.

“Hey, thanks,” she said, entering the room. Bishop was shocked he was still there.

At least it was progress.

When he turned, he stared at her.

“What?” she asked, looking down.

“I didn’t expect sweats and a t-shirt.” And he hadn’t. With Wendy, she was always uptight, dressed to impress, and didn’t like to be messed up.

Bishop looked comfortable—in so many ways.

“Well, I hope you weren’t expecting a prom gown. To get that, you best be here with a corsage, the promise of cheesy dance music, and making out in the back seat of your car.”

He stared at her.

She tripped him up. Lucian couldn’t figure out how to outmaneuver her. It was as if she was in his head. He could picture them making out, and it nearly fried his circuits.

Jesus!

What the hell was he doing there? There was no way he was ready for her.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He opted to go with the truth. From this moment forward, when it came to her, he wasn’t lying.

Not to her.

Not to him.

“I feel like leaving.”

“Okay. If you can’t stay, I won’t force you.”

Again, that wasn’t what he expected. With Wendy, she’d whine and beg. She’d use any mean necessary to win.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “Why are you acting like this is normal? I’m here in your home. I hurt you all those years ago. Why are you being nice to me?”

Bishop hopped up and onto the counter. There were a million ways to answer that, but there was only one way to do it so Lucian wouldn’t freak out.

“Why can’t this be normal?” she asked. “You’re here. We have food, so the logical decision is to eat it.”

He pulled his hoodie on.

Her heart sank.

She was losing him.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. While the food was heating up, she needed to pull a miracle out of this one. It was the only chance she’d have. If he left, Lucian wouldn’t risk it again.

“Before you leave, I just want to know one thing,” she said. “This is a no lie zone. I expect the truth.”

He didn’t face her.

“Okay.”

“Why did you come here?” she asked. “Why did you show up, Lucian? I need to know. I think I deserve to know why after ten years of hating me, you finally came to my home?”

She was right.

Bishop did deserve this. It was a long time coming.

“I felt like I had to say some things to you.”

Well, he was at least talking to her.

“Like?”

“Did you mean what you said to me earlier?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

“Even the part about…?”

God!

This was uncomfortable. When had he lost his ability to talk to people? That had been his gift.

Oh, yeah.

When he locked himself away.

She saw him genuinely struggling, so she helped him out. “I meant all of it.”

He turned really fast.

“I wanted to really hate you. I wanted to make someone pay for my pain. I wanted never to see you again. I needed never to see you again.”

She listened.

Yeah, what he was going to say was going to hurt, but if she wanted to reach him, he had to get it off his chest.

“Every day for the first two years, when you showed up at my gate, I couldn’t stand thinking about you. Having you near me was painful.”

She didn’t speak.

It hurt, but she got it.

She wasn’t the only one who had that emotional connection. Lucian felt it, too, or this conversation wouldn’t be happening.

It gave her hope.

“Then you stopped coming to my gate. Why?”

“Well, you told me you’d see me in Hell before you’d ever look at me again. That was pretty nerve crushing. I couldn’t force you to talk to me. I figured when you were ready, you would, or you’d hate me forever. I had to wait for you. This wasn’t about my schedule. It was about yours.”

“I’m sorry.”

She was surprised. “Why?”

“The very next day, when you didn’t show up, I realized something, and it’s haunted me the last eight years.”

“What’s that, Lucian?”

“I missed you. You were my only human contact. No one else cared to show up. For two years, you came, you got rejected, and you still came. I hurt you, but you never gave up on me. Then one day, you did.”

What he didn’t know was that was her penance. She let Wendy walk in and blow his heart to bits. He’d had a bad enough time with nearly dying, but she failed him.

“I waited for you that day, and the next day.”

“And?”

“When you didn’t show, I finally wondered if I’d finally made you leave. I was glad I’d finally got you to stay away from me.”

“You did chase me away. I really believed me showing up hurt you more than helped. I didn’t want to stop. I would have kept coming if I thought you wanted me to be there, Lucian.”

“Why did you really stop, Bishop?”

“You hate me. Even now, you can’t look at me. How do you think I feel knowing that I tried? I made a judgment call, and it blew up in my face. I screwed up.”

No, she really didn’t. He’d forced her away, and she didn’t deserve that at all. This woman was more than he’d ever deserved in his life.

He saw that now.

“I live every day knowing that I had to walk away, Lucian. You hated me. How was I supposed to overcome that?”

He heard her pain.

Lucian wanted to weep, and then tell her the truth. Only he was afraid she’d really walk away—this time, never coming back. He wasn’t sure he could handle that.

So, he chickened out. He’d tell her the truth, but it couldn’t be then. He wasn’t sure she’d still care about him if the ugly truth were set free.

A man only got so many chances.

He was running out of luck.

“I saw the news today.”

She wasn’t surprised. Her whole station saw it. Silas had called twice, and she’d creatively dodged his calls. Eventually, he’d chew her ass over it.

For Lucian, she’d suck it up.

“For the record, the door got away, counselor, and she stumbled all on her own. No one can prove I shoved her, or at least that’s what I hope the video shows.”

“I’ve been miserable the last eight years.”

Yeah, so had she.

Only he wasn’t ready to hear that. The guilt she carried was far less painful than the horrors he was putting himself through.

“Would you have come back?”

“Had you called, yes. I would have showed up at the drop of a hat.”

“I don’t understand that. Maybe that’s why I’m a mess over this. Help me understand why, Bishop. Why did you even care? I was the job. Your father put you at that bedside.”