weaknesses. It was human nature to not want to reveal weakness, not even to a relative or a lover.
Only the members of her family and her closest, most trusted friends knew about her talent. And even they did not know her deepest, darkest secret. She had understood intuitively, ever since her eighteenth year when she had unwittingly discovered exactly what she could do with her psychic ability, that she must never confide in anyone.
There was another major downside to her ability. She had been forced to develop mental shields in order to cope with the relentless tide of psi energy that lapped at her whenever she was around other people. Had she not been able to do so, she knew she would have gone mad.
But she had learned how to control her talent, and now it was informing her in no uncertain terms that the man waiting for her wasn’t just a powerful para-rez, himself; he was going to be the most intriguing, most exciting man she had ever met, the one who could rez all of her senses.
So what was Mr. Perfect doing in the company of a police detective?
Assuming a proper, professional smile, she pushed the door open the rest of the way and walked into the room.
The man and the woman inside both rose from their chairs. The woman was establishing her authority. Celinda sensed that the man felt no need to do the same. He was just demonstrating that he been brought up with good manners.
“Celinda Ingram?” The woman offered an ID encased in a leather wallet instead of her hand. “Detective Martinez. I’m with the Cadence City Police Department. This is Davis Oakes of Oakes Security.”
Security. That didn’t sound good.
Celinda set the tote carefully on the floor behind her desk and then took her time examining the woman’s identification. She looked up and nodded once, cautiously polite. “Detective.” She switched her attention to Oakes. “Mr. Oakes.”
“Miss Ingram.”
His low voice rolled over her senses like a tropical ocean wave at night, darkly powerful and infinitely mysterious.
She braced herself for his touch. She had a feeling it was going to thrill all her senses.
It did. The skin-to-skin contact produced a strong resonating effect. Little tingles of excitement flickered up and down her spine. Yes, indeed, hormones on parade, just as she had anticipated.
She freed her hand as quickly as possible. This was no time to get distracted. She made herself concentrate on Alice Martinez, who had sat down again.
The detective was an attractive thirtysomething, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Her business suit was as severe as a uniform. The jacket of the suit was a tad lumpy on the left side. The bulge was a strong hint that there was a gun in a holster there.
Alice Martinez wore no visible amber, but Celinda sensed a distinctive psi pattern that indicated that she possessed some sort of fairly strong talent.
Mentally Celinda ticked off the reasons why a police detective and a man who worked in the security business might want to speak to her. It was a very short list. She suddenly went cold. The specter of fear that had become her constant companion during the past four months suddenly leaped from the shadows and wrapped icy fingers around her heart.
“Has something happened to someone in my family?” she whispered, her pulse skittering wildly.
“No.” Alice Martinez gave her a quick, unexpectedly reassuring smile. “This doesn’t involve any of your relatives.”
“Thank heavens.” The relief was so overwhelming she sagged a little against the desk. “For a minute there I was afraid…” She let the sentence trail off.
Davis’s eyes narrowed ever so faintly at the corners. She knew he had taken note of that brief moment of panic.
“Detective Martinez and I are cooperating in an investigation,” he said quietly.
She gave him a polite smile while she took stock. For years she’d known exactly what qualities she wanted in her dream man. She was a professional matchmaker, after all; she knew what to look for in a mate. The list was long and detailed: kindness, intelligence, loyalty, a strong sense of responsibility, the ability to make a commitment and stick to it, a capacity for love, the right attitudes toward money, children, and family obligations, etc., etc.
But until now she had never had a visual image of Mr. Perfect.
Her ideal man, it turned out, had hair as dark as a midnight sky and eyes of an unusual shade of silvery gray. His face was all hard edges and dangerously interesting planes and angles. He was of average height, but beneath the jacket of the dark business suit there was a lot of sleek muscle, especially in his shoulders.
It dawned on her that he had not taken his seat again. Instead, he stood quietly in that centered, controlled manner that seemed to characterize everything about him.
“As Detective Martinez told you, I’m with Oakes Security.” He handed her a card.
She glanced down and read the fine print. “It says here that you’re not exactly with Oakes Security. You’re the president and CEO.”
His mouth curved faintly at one corner. “Yeah, that, too. Oakes is a private consulting firm. We specialize in corporate security.”
“I see.” She was more mystified than ever. Nevertheless, she made an effort to appear intelligent. “Corporate security. That would be the expensive version of a private investigator?”
“The very expensive version,” he agreed neutrally. “In the same way that a matrimonial consultant is a real pricey version of what most people call a matchmaker.”
Okay, no mistaking the icy sarcasm in that comment.
She smiled coolly. “Pricey is right. But we only do Covenant Marriages here at Promises, Inc. The way we look at it, the stakes are high, so our fees should be, too.”
The marriage laws had been relaxed slightly in the past two centuries, but they were still extremely stringent. There was a lot of talk about loosening them up, but everyone knew that, realistically speaking, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
The rigid rules governing marriage had made sense two centuries ago when the colonists had found themselves marooned on Harmony. Survival had been the first and most important objective. The philosophers, social scientists, and political leaders who had framed the new Constitution had known that the key to keeping the fragile flame of civilization alive was the family unit. They had, therefore, cemented the sanctity of marriage in both law and tradition, ensuring that families remained intact regardless of the price that had to be paid.
The laws applied to everyone. Society put just as much pressure on gay people to form Covenant bonds with their partners as it did on heterosexuals.
The institution of the Covenant Marriage was a contract that, with very few exceptions, could be severed only by death. Getting out of a CM was a legal and financial nightmare that very few could afford.
But the Founders had also understood the need to provide an alternative for those who were not ready to undertake the commitment of a lifelong marriage. The Marriage of Convenience was a legally recognized arrangement that had to be renewed at regular intervals. It could be terminated by either spouse at any point unless a child was born into the marriage, in which case the contract was immediately converted into a permanent Covenant Marriage.
Families frequently encouraged their offspring to experiment with Marriages of Convenience before entering the far more stringent Covenant Marriage. Most Marriages of Convenience were, in reality, short-term affairs. Tradition afforded such arrangements an aura of respectability, however. MCs were several notches above what was often referred to as shacking up.
There were matchmaking agencies that worked with people seeking Marriages of Convenience, but Promises, Inc., was not one of them.
“Do you give refunds if the match proves to be a bad one?” Davis asked, gravely polite.
This definitely sounded personal. He was challenging her for some reason.
She went behind her desk, sat down, and folded her hands on the surface. She rezzed a bright, professional smile for him.
“Do you get paid regardless of whether or not you solve the case?” she retorted.
