lifted her black mood this blustery day.
Then she accidentally swiped across a pair of knock-off Nikes—attached to one tall Chinese tenant—and her heart abruptly started beating pitter-pat. Then she remembered his Tantric class, and her mood darkened in annoyance—at him, at herself, at the whole situation that made the only interesting man she knew a financial risk she couldn’t afford.
“Ah, hell,” she muttered, unsure what she was cursing.
“No worries, Miss Williams,” he said, his smile bringing his Asian charm to the fore. “My clothing has suffered far worse.” His eyes sparkled with part shyness, part devilry, and once again she was reminded why he’d become the object of her fantasies. Everything about him begged her to look deeper. What mysteries lay just beneath his very intriguing exterior?
She yanked down her headphones. “I didn’t see you there.” She bit her lip then and tried not to get lost in his eyes. This was how it always went with him, even when she was prepared. He smiled and she lost all sense of who she was and what she wanted. Most days she simply smiled back. Occasionally she remembered rehearsed speeches. He was always polite, but she never got beyond the shock of wanting to be perfect for him, of feeling completely blindsided by his beauty even when she wasn’t.
Today was no different except that this time her business side kicked in. Instead of little girl Tracy getting lost in his smile, businesswoman Tracy remembered that she had to sell this building. In eleven months, she needed two sets of tuition. So until Mike told her 4C did not have a criminal record, she couldn’t risk being friendly with him. Or making any promises about letting him stay.
“I can’t let you stay here. Not if you’re teaching those classes.”
His face dropped and she abruptly noticed that he looked tired. His skin was less golden, more wan. Backlit as he was by the afternoon sun, she could see that his shoulders were stooped and his head tilted slightly forward.
“I have to teach those classes,” he said. “I cannot survive any other way.”
She shook her head. “You can’t. I’ll have to evict you.” She bit her lip. “Please don’t make me do that.”
Instead of answering, he started rooting through his scarred satchel. “I have something for you.” He pulled out a couple of pristine white pages. “It’s a list of tasks and their market value,” he explained. “The Asian Student Group lists you as a landlord who exchanges work for a lowered rent, but I couldn’t find a table of jobs. I thought if you had one, then you would get more tenants willing to upgrade their units. It also helps prevent arguments about the value of someone’s work.”
She began flipping through the pages and saw an impressive chart listing a whole slew of apartment upgrades starting with painting all the way through to furniture repair. “What,” she quipped, “no plumbing or electrical work?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t have enough time. But I could get you something by tomorrow if you like.”
She stared at him, unaccountable fury building inside her. It was wrong of her—completely and utterly unfair to him. He was being nice. She wasn’t really mad at him, it was more the whole situation: that she had to threaten a man she’d been fantasizing about for months. And yet, she couldn’t manage to say that. “You don’t get it, do you? I can’t have you doing anything illegal here. Nothing that even appears illegal! Nothing that suggests anything illegal!”
She tried to shove the beautifully done pages back at him, but he didn’t move. He simply stared at her with an open, startled expression. “You are angry,” he finally said. “You are never angry.”
She swallowed, not knowing what to say. “You aren’t listening,” she began, but he interrupted her.
“What is happening?” He took a step forward. “What is the real problem?” As he spoke, she felt as if his whole body opened to her, as if he really wanted to know. The sight was so unusual and so needed that she actually lost her breath. God, how she had dreamed of him asking such a question of her. And in her fantasies, she blurted it all out—her financial fears, her brother’s weird moods, her dreams for the future that had been put on hold since that awful day eight years ago. But that was a dream, and this was reality.
There was no way his sympathy was real. They hadn’t progressed beyond simple, awkward flirting before she’d tried to evict him. So she shut her mouth and closed her eyes, reminding herself over and over that everything he offered was fake.
“Thank you for the charts,” she ground out as she shoved them into her back pants pocket. It was too small, so they teetered ridiculously back there, but she refused to fix it. Instead, she dared look him in the eyes again. “Quit teaching those classes.” Then she grabbed the mop handle and prepared to wield it with a criminal vengeance.
“I can help you,” he returned in a soft tone.
Shock made her rear her head back up. What was he talking about, helping her? It couldn’t be with her worries. He didn’t know anything about them. Did he mean the mopping? Or with something else? She didn’t know how to respond except to gape at him. And damn if he didn’t arch a really sexy brow at her that made her think of hot, sweet sex on a cold October day.
“Your chi is chaotic,” he said, as if that explained anything. “Your energy is messed up. I can quiet it. It will make you think more clearly.” He sighed. “Just take my hands. You don’t have to believe.”
He extended his hands—palms up—and waited. She felt no demand in his posture, just a simple offer of help with her chi. Whatever that was. If this was a come-on, it was the strangest one she’d ever experienced, and that alone won him points. Her curiosity was piqued. And she really did feel bad about treating him so rudely. So in the end, she took hold of his hands.
Nothing happened. Well, nothing except an abrupt realization that his hands weren’t cold. Given that the hallway was pretty nippy that was startling enough. But his warmth was a delicious kind of warmth, like rich hot chocolate or a snuggling puppy wrapped in a heated towel. She tried to snort in disdain. Hot cocoa and a puppy? What was she? Twelve years old? And yet…
His heat was seductive. It enveloped her hands and tingled up her wrists. No, it wasn’t a tingle, she realized, but a pervasive invasion of yumminess. Her gaze leaped to his, and her breath caught. His eyes were fixed on her face, but not such that he seemed to see her. Instead, he was looking through her or inside her or she didn’t know where, but it was intense. Powerfully direct—like an arrow aimed straight at her heart—and yet silent and steady. If he was an arrow, he was flying clean and true straight at her.
She had the sudden urge to duck and cover, but it was too late. She couldn’t move without breaking his wondrous heat. She couldn’t even blink, so fascinating was his expression. A deer in headlights, that was what she was. A dumb animal too stupid to pull away. And yet, it felt so…
Angry. Infuriating. Boiling fear and frustration and hatred steamed off her skin. She felt her hands clench around his larger ones. Rage flashed through her body, exploding in the air between them…and was gone. Poof. As if it had been lifted right off her skin. The anger was gone, and she was left feeling…what?
Lost and inadequate. She didn’t know how to help her brother, wasn’t sure she could get into college much less make it once there, and most of all, didn’t know if she could keep things together long enough to start a life that had been on hold for eight years. Everything was about to change, and she wasn’t sure she could handle any of it.
“I’m not angry anymore,” she said, awe infusing her voice. In truth, she’d never really been angry, just overwhelmed. “My brother, Joey,” she blurted. “I don’t understand him. He seems to be reaching out, but I don’t know what to do. I hate feeling so useless.”
She refocused on his face, reality intruding with a sudden shock. What was she doing confessing that kind of personal detail to this man? Whipping her hands out of his, she took an unsteady step backward. “What did you do?”
His hands fell to his sides, but his expression remained calm, and his eyes begged her to touch him again, to feel that yumminess once again. “It is what I teach,” he said softly. “Chi—personal energy—and how to purify it.”
“What?”
He straightened, and his eyes grew softer and warmer. They were mesmerizing as he spoke, tempting her to believe anything he said.
“Every living thing has an energy field,” he said. “We call it chi. The clearer your energy is, the clearer your thoughts are. I quieted your chi so you could think more clearly.” He smiled. “That is what I teach. I show people how to clear their energy field.”
