Touch and Go

Carrie leaned back into the sofa. “Just like that?”

Amanda nodded. “It was a miracle. But being healed stripped away his previously great personality. He even took a demotion from agency manager to field agent, which is the main reason he’s able to partner with you. While they’re looking for a replacement manager he’s doing a bit of both jobs, although reluctantly. But now he’s guarded and private to a fault, and he doesn’t like being around other people. And he never touches anyone. The handshake with you is the first time I can remember seeing him touch anyone in recent memory.”

Carrie considered all of this. It didn’t make much sense to her. But maybe Patrick had some issues about being in a wheelchair that made intimacy difficult now. Or perhaps it was posttraumatic stress from the injury itself. “What about his wife?”

“Wife?”

“Last time I saw him he said he was engaged.”

Amanda pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her dark blue suit jacket and glanced at the screen when it buzzed, then she tucked it away again. “He was. But they broke up shortly after he was injured. He hasn’t been seeing anyone since then. I figured he didn’t want to date while he was dealing with his injury, but now that he’s healed, I really don’t understand what’s going on with him, and he refuses to talk to anyone about it.”

Patrick looked exactly the same as the first time Carrie met him, but she had sensed something was different about him. Guarded was a good way to put it.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” she asked after a moment.

Amanda hesitated. “Because Patrick’s decided he wants to help you. That means you’re going to get a chance to spend a lot of time with him when he would normally keep to himself. It’s an opportunity I didn’t want to let pass.”

“An opportunity for what?”

“You’re a journalist, and from what I’ve heard, a damn good one. You investigate stories and get to the bottom of them.”

“This is true,” she said, not without a smidgen of pride. She had the shiny awards to prove it still boxed up from her move to her new apartment three miles from the PARA office building.

“I want you to find out what happened to Patrick and why he changed.”

Carrie studied Amanda’s serious expression. “You really care about him, don’t you?”

“He’s a good friend to me and my husband—or at least he used to be. He has a problem and he won’t confide in anyone. Sometimes an intervention is necessary.” She exhaled a little shakily. “So, will you help me?”

Two years ago Carrie had felt such a strong physical attraction to Patrick that she hadn’t been able to forget him. Now she had a chance to get to know him better, to work with him personally as he helped her learn how to control her telekinesis. She didn’t know much about him, really, except what Amanda had just told her.

But he’d offered his assistance without hesitation the first time they’d met. If she could help him in return, she would.

“Okay,” she said with a smile. “I’ll let you know what I find. Promise.”

If there was one thing Carrie loved, it was a mystery.

3

CARRIE STANFIELD WAS just as sexy as he remembered. Her hair was a little longer now, but otherwise she looked just the same as she had the last time he’d seen her. And touching her, feeling the warmth of her smooth skin against his after fantasizing about it all this time—

It had been worth it.

Patrick couldn’t believe he was actually shaking, and it had very little to do with the freezing cold temperature at the end of January. He stood next to his car in the parking lot after brushing the snow off his windshield and stared down at his trembling hands.

“Oh, come on,” he groaned. “Get control over yourself, will you?”

He was fine. Seriously. Just fine.

There was a time when Patrick could get a read on someone simply by being in the same room with them. It had been a very handy, very powerful tool he’d taken for granted. Back then, touching someone skin to skin helped hone in on certain feelings. He could tell, if he concentrated, when someone was lying. And sometimes he could even glean specific thoughts.

A powerful psychic ability like that had taken him to the top of PARA pretty damn fast, and it was a gift he’d had complete control over. He could turn it off if he didn’t want to be bombarded with details about another person’s life and turn it back on when he needed it again.

Then he’d had the accident. Thankfully, it hadn’t led to permanent paralysis, but spine injuries were a bitch to heal.

His fiancée, Julia, hadn’t stuck around very long once he’d landed in a wheelchair and had to start painful physio sessions. He wasn’t sure if she’d left because of his own miserable attitude at suddenly being physically challenged or that she simply didn’t want to be with him any longer. In any case, she’d broken up with him, returned the engagement ring and walked away. He heard she’d gotten married recently to a CEO in Los Angeles. The news hadn’t hurt half as much as he thought it would. Maybe they’d grown apart well before the accident and just hadn’t realized it, but his injury provided the perfect catalyst for Julia to make her life somewhere else. With someone else.

He preferred being alone, anyway. It was easier.

Being stuck in that wheelchair had been torture. He was used to being physically fit and completely independent. Working in an agency that dealt with enchanted objects on a daily basis could only lead to certain temptations. And he’d successfully been tempted by a healing charm a couple of agents had brought back from Egypt. Patrick began wearing the silver disc on a thin leather rope around his neck.

And it had worked like, well…a charm.

In a single day, the pain was gone and he was able to walk again as if the accident had never happened in the first place.

It was too good to be true.

Only, like many things that were too good to be true, his restored health had come at a price. Now he couldn’t get a read on someone simply by being in the same room. He had to actually touch them. That alone would have been fine. He’d have been willing to give up a fraction of his former power in order to recover from his injury in record time.

But now when he touched someone, he experienced their emotions and thoughts like a bone-crushing, mind-numbing wave that threatened his sanity and frequently gave him nosebleeds. The pain was too much for him to handle, and he had a high tolerance to begin with.

Sure, he could walk. Hell, he could run marathons like he used to—and he did take great joy in running five miles every morning at sunrise. But if he touched anyone, he was brought to his knees by the agonizing pain.

As a result, he didn’t touch anyone. Pain avoidance. Sanity preservation. He’d prefer his head not to explode. He needed it right where it was.

His BlackBerry, once a useful tool, had become his lifeline. He was never without it anymore. What information he used to get from touching someone, he now tried to get through the smart phone. He had a connection to the PARA database through it—a wealth of info about everything he needed to know. It wasn’t the same as before, of course, but he was adapting. It wasn’t as if he had much choice in the matter.

With his reduced capabilities, he’d known he couldn’t be the agency manager anymore, but PARA was his life. He wasn’t willing to simply walk away from it and start fresh elsewhere. He’d been asked to reconsider his decision, to be the boss again, but he wasn’t ready for that. Not now. Maybe never.

Not touching anyone had become second nature to him by now, but he knew it marked him as an outcast. His friends and coworkers were confused by his behavior, but he couldn’t tell them the truth. No one knew his secret. If news got out that he never tapped into his abilities anymore, he’d lose his credibility—and job.

Then along came Carrie Stanfield. She’d called him out of the blue a couple weeks ago, worried her telekinesis was completedly out of control. Telekinetics were rare and valuable—he knew this from years of managing psychics. He’d wanted her on staff two years ago when he’d sensed her burgeoning power. He hadn’t changed his mind about that. He’d hired her while he still had the authority to do so.

But she was going to be trouble.

The woman even looked like trouble with that long, sexy raven-colored hair and those cinnamon-colored eyes and lush pink mouth. A mouth that was a little too wide for her face, a feature that kept her from being just another generic and forgettable beauty.

There’d been something about her that day in the restaurant. It wasn’t an unusual situation. He’d been interviewed before, but his reaction to her had been out of the ordinary, to say the least.

Instant attraction. He’d never felt anything like it before. The only thing that held him back from doing anything about it—and, possibly, making love to her right then and there—was the fact they were in a public place and he was engaged to be married.

No woman, not even his ex-fiancée, had ever affected him so strongly. His cock hardened even now at the memory of her skin against his and the cautious desire he’d seen in her eyes. It was a mutual attraction and one that he’d sensed when he touched her. Carrie had wanted him.

No one but Patrick knew he’d kept the article she’d written in his top desk drawer just so he could look at her picture every now and then. He’d been convinced he’d never see her again.

And yet here she was. The brief handshake a few minutes ago had confirmed to him empathically that nothing had changed. She was still attracted to him after all this time.

But nothing could happen between them. A few seconds of the intensely pleasurable feel of her warm skin against his—a torturous tease for someone who’d been celibate for longer than he cared to admit—before his power kicked in, making his head feel ready to explode with agonizing pain. He couldn’t imagine what a more intimate exploration of her beautiful body would do to him. Just the thought of her naked flesh pressed firmly against his gave him a hard-on.