Hotter After Midnight

His head cocked to the side. “Your name was in her day planner. Your address.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know the woman. Look, why don’t you just ask her and—”

“Can’t do that. Gillian Nemont is missing.”

“Missing?” Oh, that didn’t sound good.

“Neighbors said they saw her last Wednesday. She stuffed a suitcase in her car and left as fast as she could.” He was watching her with expressionless eyes, waiting, gauging her response. “She hasn’t been to work since then.”

She felt his suspicion, heavy in the air. “Look, Colin, I don’t know the woman and—”

“She’s not a patient?”

“I just said I didn’t know her!”

“But you’d protect your patients, wouldn’t you, Doc?”

There was too much insinuation in that question for her to ignore. Emily shot to her feet. “I’d protect their confidentiality, yes, but I wouldn’t protect someone who was involved in a murder, if that’s what you’re asking.” Asking, implying, same damn thing in her book.

Her heart was racing now, her fists clenched. Colin thought she’d been lying to him, thought that she might even be protecting a killer.

Talk about a lack of trust.

But you don’t trust him either, not completely. Or else you would have made love with him last night, a nagging inner voice reminded her.

It looked like they both had trust issues. Not a good sign. “If you don’t believe me, why don’t you just go ask Vanessa? She’ll tell you that I didn’t treat Gillian.”

“My partner is interviewing her right now.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “So if there is anything you need to come clean about, Doc, now’s the time.”

The bastard. “I’m working this investigation with you.” In case he’d forgotten. “I’m not one of your suspects, and I sure as hell don’t appreciate being treated like one.”

A faint beeping sounded from her kitchen. Dinner.

Emily pushed past him. She felt like an idiot now. An absolute idiot. There was no way the two of them were going to sit down for a romantic dinner. The jerk thought she was—aw, hell, she didn’t even know what he thought.

She opened the oven and took out the lasagna she’d so painstakingly prepared. A master chef she certainly was not. But over the years, she’d learned how to perfect a few dishes, and her lasagna was one of them.

She placed the dish on the stove top, turned—

And found Colin standing in the doorway, a bemused look in his eyes as he took in the tidily set table, the two plates, the two candles.

Heat rushed into her cheeks, and it wasn’t due to the warmth of her oven.

“You cooked.”

Well, wasn’t he just Commander Obvious.

And wasn’t she just the queen of stupid? He’d told her that he was coming over to talk about the Other, not for a date.

But she’d still wasted all that time on the meal. Wasted time showering and dressing. She’d even left her hair down, not that Colin had seemed to notice.

“Yeah, well, I have to eat,” she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest. How was she going to get him out of her house?

His nostrils twitched. “Smells good.”

“Umm.” Her right foot began to tap. She decided to try the direct approach. “I want you to leave.”

Colin blinked.

“Now, actually. I want you to leave now.” Before she got even angrier.

He shook his head. “We need to talk more about the case—”

“You mean you want to question me more.” From profiler to suspect in twenty-four hours. She bet that didn’t happen often.

In fact, she bet it happened only to her.

The Monster Doctor strikes again.

His lips thinned. “I’m doing my job. I have to ask—”

The distinctive chime of a cell phone ring cut through his words.

Emily arched a brow. “Bet that’s Brooks.” Calling to report about his talk with Vanessa.

Colin growled and jerked out his phone.

Emily stared straight at him, eager to hear at least his part of the conversation.

“Yeah, Brooks, I’m here now.” A pause. “So she confirmed an appointment?”

What? Not damn likely. There had been no appointment scheduled with a Gillian Nemont.

“Huh. Yeah, that is interesting.”

Interesting that she had a client she didn’t remember? Yes, she’d certainly say so.

Colin gave a short burst of surprised laughter.

Laughter? Oh, the man was starting to get on her nerves.

“I guess that’d be pretty interesting too.” A brief pause, then, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Eight o’clock, right.” He punched a button to disconnect the call. His head cocked to the side as he studied her. “Seems you did have an appointment scheduled for last Friday.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I. Did. Not. Have. An. Appointment. With. Gillian. Nemont.” She spaced the words slowly, deliberately.

“No, you didn’t.”

His sudden, easy agreement threw her off.

“You had an appointment with a Michelle Tome. Something Vanessa called a meeter.” He slipped the cell phone back into his pocket. “Mind telling me just what a ‘meeter’ would be?”

She answered by rote. “I always have a sit-down meeting with anyone who is interested in my services. Before I do any evaluations, before I agree to work as counselor, I get the person to come in. We sit down, talk, and—”

“And you use your psychic gift to figure out if the would-be client is an ordinary human or one of the Other. ”

Emily nodded. She also partially lowered her shields at the meeter to get an idea of the person’s power. If she felt the taint of darkness or power that was too uncontrolled, she gave a nice, polite speech about how she wasn’t taking any new clients right then.

“Vanessa told Brooks that Michelle Tome never arrived for her appointment.”

And he thought Michelle and Gillian were one and the same. “Why would she use an alias? I mean, I wouldn’t know her either way.”

“I don’t know. There are quite a few things I don’t know about Ms. Nemont.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to find her?” Alive.

“I’m gonna do my best.” Not exactly the definitive answer she’d been hoping for.

She thought back to last Friday afternoon. She’d been mildly annoyed when Vanessa announced the appointment was a no-show.

She felt a rush of shame now. She’d been annoyed, while Gillian had—what? Been in danger? Been running for her life?

Been killed?

Emily swallowed. And why had Gillian wanted to see her?

She might never know.

“Doc, Emily, I had to ask you about her.” Colin took a step toward her, his hands lifted.

Oh, now he wants to play nice. Now that he thinks I’m not in on a murder.

But the damn annoying thing was that she understood. He was a cop, working the most high-profile case in the city. He’d found her name in Gillian Nemont’s appointment book. If he hadn’t followed up on the link, well, she would have wondered about his detective skills.

And his ethics.

But he had followed up. He’d pissed her off, offended her, ruined her night, but he’d done his job.

“Next time, Gyth, don’t come in with guns blazing.” She ignored his raised hands and turned her back on him.

He exhaled heavily. “I screwed things up, didn’t I?”

Hmmm. Commander Obvious had struck again. But maybe there’d be hope for him yet. Emily spun back around, a knife gripped in her fingers. “I don’t like your methods, Gyth, but I understand why you had to question me.” And why Brooks had to question Vanessa. Although she bet her assistant hadn’t appreciated the interruption. Wednesday nights were her coven nights. And tonight, well, tonight the coven had a skyclad ritual on the agenda.

She had a pretty good idea what Brooks had said that elicited earlier appreciative male laughter.

“Ah, you do?” Colin barely glanced at the gleaming knife.

“Umm, next time”—she really, really hoped there wasn’t a next time—“try playing good cop with me. It’ll work much better.”

Using the knife, she began cutting the lasagna. Colin stood there, a faint tension emanating from him. He didn’t say anything, just watched her. She could feel his intense stare on her.

After a few minutes she broke, glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Well, we have to eat, don’t we?” She muttered. Waving toward the table, she ordered, “Sit down. There’s no sense in wasting good food. Besides, we haven’t gotten to finish our talk about the Other.” She could play the professional card too.

They did need to finish the lesson.

And she wanted him to stay.

It looked like they both had some trust issues, but, hey, no one was perfect.

Not the Monster Doctor and not a shifter.

But perfect…perfect could be boring, she realized. And after living too much of her life on a regimented, by-the-minute schedule, she was ready for a bit of imperfection.

The shifter had better not screw up again. One free pass was all he was going to get from her.

So he’d royally fucked up. At least the doc had let him stay for dinner.

Dinner. The woman had actually cooked for him. Put out candles. Nice plates.

He couldn’t remember anyone doing that for him before.

Sure, he’d had more than his share of women. But they’d usually gone out to restaurants. And the relationships hadn’t lasted past a few sexual encounters and a couple of fancy meals.

He’d never had this cozy, relaxed kind of date before. And, yeah, despite the fact that he’d spent the first half hour of his time there grilling her, he still considered it a date.

Number two for them.

He wondered if the doc would let him get to second base.

A guy could hope.

“So, that’s the main difference between wizards and warlocks. The warlocks have just as much power, but they use the darker magic, and if you ever make the mistake of calling a wizard by the term warlock, well”—Emily paused, downed a rather large swallow of her wine—“then you’re in trouble, because you’ve just seriously insulted the guy.”

“Right. I’ll try to keep that in mind.” Throughout their dinner, Emily had kept up a steady stream of conversation about the Other.

He now knew that charmers could talk with only one type of animal. Some charmers were born linked to snakes, some to birds, and so on.

There were two types of vampires, the born or the Blood as they were called, and the made or the Taken. To make a vampire, you didn’t need the three blood exchanges like the books said. No, according to Emily, one was all it took. The victim had to be drained nearly dry by the vampire, then the would-be vamp had to drink from the sire— that was what Emily had called the guy, a sire—and boom, you had yourself a brand, spanking new vampire.

He’d also grilled her about shifters. She’d been right when she mentioned earlier that he could smell others of his kind. He could.

There was a wild, rich scent that clung to others like him. He’d first caught that scent when he’d been a nineteen-year-old rookie.

He’d stumbled onto a bear shifter and been so surprised he’d nearly dropped his gun.

The bear had broken into a vacation home, ransacked the place. When he’d arrived, the shifter had changed in front of him, a quick, easy transformation from beast to man.

He’d apologized for the wreckage, saying, “Sorry, mate, the beast took over.” He’d winked. “You know how it can get.”

“So…” Emily said, her soft drawl pulling him from the past. “Anything else you want to know?”

“Yeah.” He took a sip of his own wine. Normally, he wasn’t much for wine. Give him a beer and he was a happy man. But the wine Emily had, it was pretty good. Sweet. A little tangy.

The taste reminded him of her.

And he realized it’d been more than eight hours since he’d felt her lips beneath his. Too damn long.

He shifted in his chair. He’d had a hard-on from the moment he walked through her door. Her hair was down, looking all soft and silky around her shoulders. She was wearing a thin dress with delicate little spaghetti straps. One pull, just one quick tug, and he was sure he could snap those straps.

And he’d bet a month’s pay that Emily wasn’t wearing a bra. He could see the faint outline of her nipples. Those sweet, perfect nipples.

He could still feel them on his tongue, still see the flushed, pink-tipped areolas.

“Uh, Colin?”

He blinked, and realized that she’d just caught him staring at her chest.

Oh, nice. Definitely the way to charm a woman like her.

Playing the gentleman…not something he could do.

He managed to drag his eyes away from the too-tempting swell of her cleavage. He found her watching him, green eyes wide and mysterious behind the lenses of her glasses.

“You said you had something else to ask me.”

“Right.” He sat down his wineglass with a soft chink. “It’s about the wolf shifters.”

She tensed. “What about them?” Her fingers toyed with the rim of her glass.

“Are they really as bad as folks say? The other shifters I’ve met, they all said to steer clear of ’em, said they’re dangerous.”

Dangerous. Yeah, that was one of the words he’d heard. A few others were psychotic, homicidal, and primitive.