Chapter 17 #2
“Not ‘bothering,’ exactly,” she said, then paused as she seemed to search for the right words. “It’s just…we’re different now, aren’t we? Both of us. The things we can do, the way we’re connected to all this supernatural energy. None of it is going away.”
“Maybe not going away,” he replied, then hesitated for a moment. Everything was raw and new, and he was still trying to process what had happened. At the same time, though, he wasn’t as worried as he’d been even a half hour ago. “But I think it’s calming down. Don’t you feel it?”
She was quiet for a long moment, her gaze tracking from the window to the small wooden floor where her cousin was dancing with Alec, dark head lying against his chest. “I think I do,” she said after a long pause.
“I mean, I still feel different. But not quite as different as I did when all that was happening.”
“Same here,” he said. “Maybe those powers will surge if we need them, but I don’t think you have to worry about them consuming every aspect of your life.”
She was quiet again. When she spoke, her tone was more musing than troubled, despite her next words.
“I keep thinking about what happens next, though. I mean, are we going to spend the rest of our lives fighting demons and investigating supernatural conspiracies? Because after all that, the real estate business is looking pretty tame by comparison.”
Despite everything they’d been through, Caleb found himself chuckling. “I don’t know about the rest of our lives, but I think we might have earned ourselves some breathing space. And that’s no small thing.”
She reached over and took his hand, twining her fingers with his. They were warm and strong and just what he needed to feel then.
“No,” she said, “I suppose it isn’t.”
Before Caleb could respond, Olivia appeared beside them, glowing with happiness and maybe a little too much champagne.
“There you are!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around both of them in an enthusiastic, if slightly tipsy, hug. “Delia, I can’t thank you enough for everything you did. The chapel was absolutely perfect, and the flowers were gorgeous. Everything went off without a hitch.”
Somehow, Caleb kept his mouth from twitching at the “without a hitch” comment. “Your cousin is kind of a miracle worker,” he said. “The reception is really beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Olivia beamed at him, then turned to Delia. “And thank you for insisting we change venues. I know Alec and I were being difficult about it, but you were absolutely right. Angel’s Dream would have been all wrong for us.”
“I’m just glad everything worked out,” Delia replied, and Caleb admired her ability to keep her expression perfectly neutral.
But then again, she had plenty of experience working with difficult clients and maintaining her cool no matter what the circumstances.
Smiling, she added, “Sometimes you have to trust your instincts.”
“Exactly!” Olivia agreed, then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Actually, I heard something interesting from one of Alec’s golf buddies, who also lives here in Henderson.
He’s a fire chief with the city of Las Vegas.
Apparently, there was some kind of electrical fire at Angel’s Dream earlier tonight. The building had to be evacuated.”
Caleb and Delia exchanged a significant glance. He guessed that the chapel’s return to normal reality must have involved some kind of physical manifestation that required an official explanation, even though it had seemed intact enough as they left the building.
“That’s terrible,” Delia said, just the right amount of concern coloring her tone. “I hope no one was hurt.”
“No, not from what I heard,” Olivia replied. “But I guess I really must have some kind of psychic powers after all, since I kept having those dreams about fire.”
“Or just good instincts,” Caleb murmured, and caught the flash of wry amusement in Delia’s eyes.
They spent another hour at the reception, making polite conversation with Delia’s relatives and Alec’s family, dancing to the music that Alec’s sister Abby, who appeared to have taken on the role of DJ, was playing from her iPad and beaming to a decent sound system…
pretending to be nothing more than an ordinary couple enjoying a lovely evening out.
But Caleb could feel the exhaustion building in both of them, the delayed reaction to the night’s supernatural battle finally catching up.
“Ready to get out of here?” Delia asked quietly as “The Way You Look Tonight” began to play and people moved toward the dance floor, glad of the chance to slow dance as the evening wore down.
“More than ready,” he replied.
They paused to say goodbye to family members and offer final congratulations to the happy couple. Olivia hugged them both again, offering more thanks for all of Delia’s help, while Alec shook Caleb’s hand.
“Just let me know if you find a good flip that you’re not sure you want to take on,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about branching out into that kind of investment.”
“Sure,” Caleb replied, trying not to grin. He wouldn’t have been able to pick Alec Donohue out of a lineup before this evening, but he could already tell that the guy seemed like the type who’d much rather ride someone else’s coattails than do any of the hard work himself.
Delia was also looking amused, but she managed to refrain from comment. Just as they were about to leave the room, they bumped into her mother.
“You need to take better care of yourself,” Linda Dunne told her daughter. “You look exhausted.”
“It’s been a long day,” Delia agreed, then gave her mother a tired but genuine smile. “A good one, though.”
The drive back to her house took them through the heart of Las Vegas, past neon-lit casinos and hotels, past clubs with music pounding loud enough Caleb could hear it even with all the Kona’s windows rolled up tight.
Everything looked utterly, perfectly normal — tourists walking the Strip, traffic moving in its usual sluggish fits and starts, the eternal carnival of lights and sound that never quite slept.
If not for the lingering sensitivity to supernatural energy that remained from their earlier battle, he might have been able to convince himself that the night’s events had been nothing more than an extremely vivid dream.
“It feels so weird,” Delia said as they turned into her neighborhood of large, Mediterranean-inspired homes.
“Looking at all of this, knowing what almost happened, and having it all seem exactly the same. All those people going out to have fun on a Saturday night, completely unaware that reality almost got rewritten around them.”
“It’s better that way,” Caleb told her, knowing this was the simple truth. “The last thing anyone needs is to start second-guessing every weird shadow or electrical malfunction.”
“True.” She pulled into her driveway and touched the remote for the garage door, then waited until it opened fully before she pulled inside and closed it behind them. She shut off the engine but made no move to get out of the car. “Caleb?”
“Yes?”
“What we did tonight — the way our abilities worked together, the connection we shared — that’s not going away, is it?”
Something vulnerable in her voice made him want to reach out and take her in his arms, but that would have been awkward, thanks to the console that separated the passenger and driver’s seats.
Instead, he settled for shifting so he could face her better.
“No,” he said, realizing he needed to be utterly honest about all this.
“I don’t think it is. Not completely, anyway. Does that scare you?”
“A little,” she admitted. “Not because I don’t trust you, but because I’ve never been connected to another person like that before. It’s intense.”
That was putting it mildly. During their battle with Vinea, their psychic bond had deepened to the point where Caleb could feel her emotions as clearly as his own, could sense her thoughts and intentions without any need for words. It was intimacy on a level that went far beyond anything physical.
The intensity had faded, but, as he’d just told her, he didn’t think it would ever disappear entirely.
“We don’t have to figure it all out tonight,” he said. “We can take this one day at a time.”
Delia nodded, then was silent for a moment, as if wrestling with how to phrase her next words. “You know there’s a reason why we came here instead of me just taking you home.”
Yes, he’d already guessed that, had understood why she wanted to take this next step at her house. His home was bigger and more impressive, but she needed to be someplace where she felt utterly safe.
“And you’re okay with that?”
Her eyes met his, clear and unhaunted.
“I wouldn’t have brought you here if I weren’t.”
His hand reached out to touch hers. “Then let’s go in.”