Reading His Mind (17 page)

“Come with me,” I begged.

“Why?”

Oh, for goodness sake
. “Because I need you to park the car.”

Her arms crossed over her chest.

“Because I am tired of doing every single thing by myself.”

“Didn’t hurt much, did it?”

“A little,” I admitted.

Gran scooted out the door behind us. Mel turned to look at her as she climbed in the backseat.

“I’m not missing this.” She buckled her seatbelt.

We were forty minutes from the airport, and traffic was not traveling in our favor. Mel had her window down, horn blowing almost continuously, as she flipped off other drivers, weaving the car in and out of traffic as though she’d taken driving lessons from Mario Andretti and Jeff Gordon’s love child.

She whipped the car into the departure terminal and shooed me out at the curb. “Go. Get him.”

I smacked the door open, hit a parking pole, then raced through the airport. I found a security officer and begged for his help. “Can you page someone?”

“It’s against policy, unless there is an emergency.”

Damn
. “It is an emergency, I promise. I know. It sounds very cliché, but I love this guy, and he is about to get on a plane. I have to stop him.”

“That’s not an emergency.” Shaking his head, he moved three steps away.

I followed then swerved around to block his path. “It really is.”

He didn’t budge on the subject.

“Listen, I have suffered through my own foolishness for an entire year because I let this guy walk away from me. I’m not a crazy stalker. For God’s sake, I haven’t even seen him in a year, but I can’t let him go because he’s on his way to Savannah to find me, and I’m here, and when he gets there, I’m afraid he will give up on me.” My eyes welled up. “Please.”

He wavered, needing one more good push.

“Please?”

Sighing, he picked up his radio. “I need to page a passenger.” He looked down at me. “What’s his name?”

“Jace Laugherty.” I couldn’t hide my smile.

“Please page Jace Laugherty to the north departure terminal. It’s a matter of the heart.” His voice hushed as though he couldn’t believe he’d been coerced into making the request. But he was an old softy.

I waited for a few seconds then heard his name ring over the speakers—twice. As I waited, dehydration became a concern due to the amount of sweat leaking out of my palms. For more than ten minutes, I stood with the security guard. I turned, about to thank him and leave.

“Would it be Jace Laugherty, the pitcher for Atlanta?”

I nodded.

“Would that be him?”

I turned in the direction of his finger. Jace walked toward me.

“Thank you.” I lifted up onto my toes to press an excited kiss to his cheek then walked toward Jace, my steps slow, unsure. When I stood within inches of him, we both stopped, drinking in the sight of each other.

“Hi.” My eloquence amazed even me.

“What are you doing here?”

I stayed out of his head, not sure I wanted to know what he thought just yet.

“I must have asked myself that ten or twelve times. What am I doing here? What am I doing here? What am I doing here? You can stop me anytime.”

He grinned, causing my heart to all but melt. “Stop.”

“I know being with me would be different. You’d never be able to surprise me, but it’s okay because I don’t like surprises. I don’t need gifts. I just don’t, so you would never have to worry about buying me one and keeping it a secret.”

Stepping closer, he took my hands in his.

“If you don’t want me in your head, I’ll try to keep out. I’ll do everything I can to give you that privacy, but we both know, you’re a weakness I have—like my kryptonite—so, it’s probably a pretty empty promise. But doesn’t it say something that I’m willing to try?”

He leaned his forehead against mine. “I was coming to get you, to tell you it didn’t matter. I can’t be without you anymore. Lyric, you’re the one I want.”

People milled around us, but I stood, taking in his words. “You could have said something.” I shrugged.

“I sent you text messages every single day.”

“To tell me about your day or about the weather in whatever city you played in.”

“I didn’t know what else to say. Besides, you never answered.”

“A simple I love you would have probably said it all.” I naturally gravitated toward him. “I tried so hard to get over you. I could almost convince myself you were just in my imagination then I would get a text and, even though they were so generic, they just reminded me it wasn’t all some dream I had. You were real.”

His devil smile appeared. “That was my plan.”

I grinned back. Staring at each other just seemed to be our thing for a few minutes.

“Don’t punch me.” Then he lowered his head and kissed me as though we had been apart for months and together forever.

Dear Reader,

It has been such a pleasure to immerse myself in the lives of Jace and Lyric. Such a cute couple, what with his spicy personality and her ability to read minds, their chemistry just about wrote itself. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. This is the first book in the Laugherty Series, written before For the Love of…Geese. I hope you learn to love the Laugherty clan and come back to Battlecry, Texas to read how the rest of the family finds their soul mates.

Thanks for reading and come back soon.

Melissa Shirley

http://melissashirley2.wix.com/melissashirleyauthor

Also from Decadent Publishing

www.decadentpublishing.com

Chapter One

Once upon a time, I had a normal life. I lived in a big house with a cook and a maid and my deliciously absent parents. If I asked for new shoes, custom-made Jimmy Choos arrived the next day. If I wanted to go see a movie, enough money showed up in my account to allow me to turn the local theater into my own private viewing chamber. If I needed a ride, the Mercedes dealer rushed over with a sporty automobile, complete with a shiny red bow on top. I requested—okay, sometimes demanded—and they complied. Since my birth, my life had rolled along this way, and I loved every single minute.

Then
it
happened, and I lost every single thing.

It all started with a bottle of forty-year-old single malt scotch, the bartender from the country club, and my dad’s cute little sportster.

It seemed twenty-six-year-olds who live at home and work for their parents, who drive through the garage door while semi-tipsy, were frowned upon in my family—frowned upon enough my mother woke me by waging a war against me with my own pillow.

I sat up, rubbing my sandpaper-lidded eyes then flipped one open. My mother stood above me, my pillow in her fists, ready for a second strike. I wondered where the bartender I’d been with had gone. And why was I still wearing a cocktail dress? I should have been naked and wrapped around Pablo—or was it Paul? “What is your
problem
?”

“Rebecca Jean-Marie Heller.” She used my full name.
Oh, dear
. “You missed the staff meeting.”

Oh. Well, hell
. If that was her big gripe for the day, I was going back to sleep until my hangover arrived and I could nap it off. I laid my head on the remaining pillow and received another wallop with my memory foam. “Stop it!”

“You drove your father’s Porsche through the garage door.” Barely-contained rage laced her voice.

“Oh, the car.” My brain throbbed its own rap song against my skull. Even if I might have done it, it wasn’t worth the bother to try to formulate an alibi or excuse. “Accident?”

She breathed in, her chest puffing to almost bursting proportions, her frustration a threat to my safety. “Rebecca!” Her voice, a shriek of disbelief. “It was a hundred-thousand-dollar car. Not to mention the damage to the garage.”

I stifled a yawn, trying not to be too bored by her fuming. Seriously. Lecturing me about money, while dressed from top to bottom in couture Chanel and custom-made Louboutins that had cost more than a semester at an Ivy League school? She'd be entertaining if my skull hadn't been threatening to crack open. “Just take it out of my trust fund and let me go back to sleep.”

“Oh, young lady.” Did I mention being twenty-six? “You’re going to pay for it. You’re going to work it off at the magazine. And I have
just
the assignment.”
Uh-oh
. This was bad.

Since becoming a staff writer and sometimes columnist for the entertainment magazine my family’s company owned, I’d enjoyed a lavish lifestyle of hobnobbing with the fabulously rich and the sinfully famous and was privy to their parties and to more than my fair share of their dirty little secrets. My lifestyle was nothing more than the product of the job my parents had insisted I take after college. Well, the job and the fact my parents had more money than most small countries—and a few large ones.

“So, what’ll it be this time, Mother? Book reviews for the blog again?” The go-to punishment for behavior that
disgraced our good family name
.

“No. You’re going to help your grandmother.”

“Grandmother?” I had one?

“My mother. She raises geese on a small farm in Illinois.” She smiled with triumph as though she knew something I did not. Again, not good. Her eerie little curve of passion-pink lipstick, capped, blinding-white teeth, and a tight, smug-lipped smile that had never meant anything but trouble for me.

“Geese?” I choked on a laugh then swallowed hard, realizing my mother did not make jokes. Ever.
Geese?

Her impeccably coiffed, sprayed-until-only-concrete-was-harder curls didn’t move as she nodded. “In Illinois.”

“I heard you the first time. But geese?”

“Six months. You will submit a book review each month for the magazine, and you will help your grandmother with chores. You will learn to appreciate all your father and I have worked so hard to give you. And, if you want to see that shiny little Mercedes in the garage again, you will do it with a smile on your face.” My mother didn’t make threats, she made promises, and once I sobered up, I planned to take this one very seriously. I loved my Mercedes more than anything else in the world. Ever.

“Whatever.” I flopped onto to my belly and closed my eyes while waving her out of my room. She stomped away, and I could have sworn I heard an evil laugh I was pretty sure belonged to my mother.

***

Aiming for complacency, I glanced at the woman next to me. Her spine was rigid, her eyes straight ahead.

“Take a gander outside, Mother. Even the gods of traffic are against you. There’s no way I’m making my flight.” We inched along with the four million other cars on the 405 during the morning rush hour. Although there sure as hell wasn’t much rushing going on.

Something devious had crawled into my mother and made its home. She’d been wearing the same wicked leer for the last two days. Father, upon news of his sportster’s tragic demise, had jetted off to Hawaii…the stress of work, he’d said. According to Mother, it was what he always did when pissed at me, leaving her to handle my latest “situation.”

“Your flight doesn’t leave for another four hours.” Okay. The sneer was getting a little creepy, leaning toward the demonic side, but then I understood. She’d tricked me into leaving way ahead of time, so there was no possibility I would miss my flight.

I threw myself against the seat, content to pout my way to godforsaken Illinois. I had argued, fussed, whined, cajoled, and bargained for my freedom, a way to keep my trust fund without having to spend six months confined with an old woman six states away from my beach house and my car and my life. My mother was a boulder of immobility on the matter.
Either go willingly, or I will take your gold card, your platinum card, your car keys, and your cell phone. And you can kiss your trust fund good-bye, too, missy
.

I rolled my eyes, her words echoing in my head. I had to get out of this. “I’ve never met this woman before. And you think she’s just going to throw open her door and let a complete stranger invade her life for six months?” This was my last-ditch effort, complete with arm flailing and high-pitched screeching, to convince her of the error of her flawed thinking.

“She is your grandmother. Of course she will be happy to have you.” Good Lord, my mother was unflappable. I whispered a silent prayer, asking for the divine intervention of a blow-out on our chauffeur-driven Lincoln.

“What if I…?”

“Absolutely not.”

“But—”

“Rebecca, not another word. You’re going.”

I stamped my foot and balled my hands into tight fists, wishing I had something to hit.

Grrr
. This was so unfair. I had a seat at the Academy Awards in just three short weeks. All because of a few tiny dents to a car Daddy hardly ever drove and a hole in the garage door, some secretary or columnist would be parking her butt at my table and rubbing elbows with Brangelina. I muttered a curse I knew my mother hated and turned to the window.