“Yeah, sure.” He did not look convinced. “What about you?”
“Me?” Good grief, was that her voice? The word had come out sounding like a squeak.
“Are you involved with anyone at the moment?” he asked with an air of great patience.
This was getting awkward. She cleared her throat and tried to appear nonchalant. “No, not at the moment. Life has been very busy lately. New job, you know.”
“Care to go out to dinner and discuss something besides marriage and relics?”
She went blank. “Huh?”
He smiled a little. She could see the sexy heat in his eyes. Psi energy tingled in the atmosphere, hers as well as his. She was shocked to realize that her insides were starting to melt.
“Got a feeling a date with you might be interesting.” He paused a beat. “Or am I picking up the wrong signals here? If so, my apologies.”
He was daring her to take the leap with him, challenging her.
“I usually don’t date—” she began.
“Hunters. Yes, I got that impression. Let me make it clear that, while I come from a Guild family, I don’t make my living as a ghost hunter.”
“I was going to say that I usually don’t date people I meet at work.”
“I’m not a client.”
She took a deep breath. In spite of his incredibly seductive psi patterns, they had nothing in common. Even if they got past that monumental hurdle, he had made it very clear that there was no long-term future for them together. Dating a man under these circumstances violated all the matchmaking rules, but she had never felt this way about any man in her entire life. She might never again meet someone who had this effect on her senses. Why shouldn’t she take the opportunity to experience a romantic fling?
Once again she reached up to touch Araminta.
It would have to be a terribly discreet fling, of course. Professional marriage consultants had to be exceedingly careful about their reputations.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose that might be all right.”
“Are you free tonight?”
She stopped petting Araminta. She could do this.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am,” she said. Belatedly, a thought struck her. “I can’t stay out late because I’m going out of town tomorrow morning and I still have some last-minute packing to do. But tonight is definitely clear.”
Great. She sounded just like Amberella in the fairy tale. After midnight the beautiful amber carriage turned back into a large squash, and a shoe went missing.
“If you’ll give me your address, I’ll pick you up at seven. I promise to have you home before midnight.”
“My address,” she repeated. A tiny chill of uncertainty swept through her. What did she really know about Davis Oakes? She had only just met him, and she was probably not thinking clearly, because standing close to him like this stirred all her senses.
He owned a security firm, she reminded herself. Okay, he had the Guild for a client, but he appeared to have a working relationship with a police detective. That would seem to indicate that he was not a serial killer. Still, she wasn’t quite ready to break all the rules. Safety first.
She rezzed what she hoped was a polished, confident smile. “Why don’t we meet at the restaurant? I’ll take a cab.”
Amusement gleamed in his eyes. “The careful type, huh?”
“We in the marriage consulting business tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to this sort of thing. First dates are tricky. If both parties take responsibility for getting themselves to and from the appointed venue, there’s less pressure.”
“That sounds like it came out of some kind of dating manual.”
“It did. The title is Ten Steps to a Covenant Marriage: Secrets of a Professional Matchmaker.”
“Since we’re talking about a date, not a Covenant Marriage, we can forget the rule book,” Davis said. “All right, how about Verdigris in the Old Quarter? I’ll wait for you in the lounge.”
“That sounds lovely.”
He held out his hand. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take the relic now. The sooner I get it back to my client, the better.”
Belatedly she realized that she was still holding the artifact.
“Right.” She started to hand it to him.
Araminta suddenly went wild. She chortled shrilly in Celinda’s ear and went into full predatory mode. Her second set of eyes, the amber-colored ones she used for hunting, and a lot of teeth suddenly appeared. Her lint- ball form sleeked out, revealing a tough, sinuous little body and all six paws.
She sprang straight down Celinda’s outstretched arm, seized the relic, and bounded to the floor. With her prize clutched in her two front paws, she raced through the open door and disappeared.
“Araminta, come back here,” Celinda called.
She rushed out into the corridor and saw Araminta dashing around the corner. She raced after her. When she rounded the corner, she was just in time to see the dust bunny disappear through the open door of the stairwell.
Jana Pace, the consultant who had the office next door to Celinda’s, rushed out of the stairwell, shrieking.
“A rat. I just saw a rat. I’m going to call the janitor.”
Jana fled toward her office and a phone.
Celinda came to a halt at the top of the stairs and looked down. There was no sign of Araminta.
She heard Davis’s footsteps behind her. He stopped and looked over her shoulder, gazing down into the empty stairwell.
“Had a feeling this case was going a little too smoothly,” he said without expression.
“Hey, it’s not my fault Araminta ran off with the relic.”
His eyes narrowed. “She’s your dust bunny.”
“Araminta doesn’t belong to me. She’s a companion. She’s very independent, and she obviously considers that artifact her toy. I’ll bet she’s going to hide it somewhere.”
“In which case, she’ll eventually retrieve it.”
She’d known him less than forty minutes, but she already knew enough about Davis Oakes to realize that he wasn’t about to give up easily. This was a man who, once he set an objective, kept going until he reached it. Furthermore, he was currently working for Mercer Wyatt, which meant he had the full power of the Cadence Guild behind him. What chance did one small dust bunny have?
She needed to find a way to take the heat off Araminta.
She dashed the back of her hand across her eyes and put a tremor in her voice. “Araminta has probably run away for good. I’m going to miss her so much. She was my little pal.”
“In my experience, once dust bunnies form a bond with a human, they are fiercely loyal,” he said, showing no signs of sympathy. “Your little pal will be back. She’ll probably be waiting for you when you get home tonight.”
So much for that ploy. Nevertheless, she sniffed and blinked furiously, as though trying to suppress a flood of tears. “I have your card, Mr. Oakes.” She added a delicate sob to her voice. “I’ll give you a call if she ever shows up again and brings back the relic.”
“You do that.” He went back out into the hall. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some work to do. See you at seven tonight.”
That stopped her cold. She cleared her throat. “I, uh, sort of assumed that this new development meant our date was probably off.”
He paused and looked back at her. “Guess again, Miss Ingram. You and I are going to be spending a lot of time in each other’s company until that damn relic reappears.”
She knew a threat when she heard one.
“No offense, Mr. Oakes, but under the circumstances, I don’t think it would be a comfortable evening for either of us. What do you say we postpone the issue of a date until we see whether or not Araminta comes back
