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somewhere.”
    Toenails clicked down the stairs,
and Brutus entered the living room, tail wagging. Ian scrubbed his head with
his knuckles, but Brutus sat in front of Cynthia, not moving, until she finally
petted him. Brutus couldn’t get enough of Cynthia, despite her lack of interest
toward him.
    Ian dropped onto the couch. “Thank
God. I thought he’d somehow gotten off the leash line.”
    “No, he—”
    A figure appeared in the living
room doorway. “You should have woken me up,” Jake said. A yawn split his
sentence in two.
    Ian and Cynthia stared. Jake was
probably the first rumored killer they’d ever met.
    “Hello to you, too,” Emma said.
    “Do people usually fall asleep on
you halfway through?”
    Like it was her fault that he was
exhausted. “It’s never happened to me before, but I’ve heard of it.”
    He stretched, arms over his head.
He hadn’t put his rumpled dress shirt back on, and his white T-shirt edged high
enough for her to see his hard stomach. Hmm, next time she’d offer to work on
his front side. Not that there’d be a next time.
    “It felt fantastic at the
beginning,” he said, lowering his arms. Emma blinked and returned her eyes to
his face, which was compelling in its own right. “I wish I’d stayed awake for
the rest of it.”
    “Me, too. I could have used some
help from you.” She would have asked him to focus his thoughts on last night,
so she could see if she could find the snarls in his energy lines. “But since
you were out, I had to do all the work myself.”
    Afraid to get caught staring at
Jake like he was an ice cream cone in July, she glanced away and noticed Ian’s
half-fascinated, half-horrified expression. She gave him a quelling look. While
Jake was a guest in her home, Ian needed to pretend he wasn’t the number one
suspect in a murder.
    Then the conversation replayed in
her mind. Falling asleep on you…felt
fantastic at the beginning…I had to do all the work… Oh, great. Her cheeks
felt hot enough to light her hair on fire. Should she dramatically declare, “We
weren’t having sex!” right now?
    Jake was looking at her curiously.
Nope, she wasn’t going to humiliate herself in front of him. She’d tell Ian
later.
    “Can we talk for a second?” Jake
asked her. “Privately?”
    Sure— now he was big on privacy. Silently she stood and walked into the
kitchen, Jake on her heels. Behind them, in the living room, a burst of
whispered conversation split the quiet.
    Jake pulled out a chair from the
little kitchen table and dropped into it. “I don’t remember anything more,” he
said straight out. As if to console her, he added, “It was a great massage,
though.”
    “I just placed my hands on you. I
didn’t actually give you a massage. Are you, um, a recreational drug user? Because
I was having a lot of trouble finding your energy lines. Or maybe you drank
alcohol earlier today?”
    He shook his head.
    She hadn’t been able to read his
mind, and she hadn’t been able to loosen his energy flow. Not a banner day for
her. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
    He looked back at her without
blinking.
    She sucked in a hard breath. God,
he didn’t believe her at all. Didn’t believe she helped animals. Didn’t believe
she’d done anything to him except give him a massage while he slept. You didn’t
need to be a psychic to read the contempt in his eyes.
    And she’d been attracted to him. Well, she’d always had terrible taste in men.
    She stabbed a finger at him.
“Listen, bucko, in case it escaped your notice, I’m trying to help you. How
many other people are helping you today? Huh?” She waved at the door. “Good
luck, see you later, bye.”
    He stood slowly. “Do I owe you
anything? For your…help?”
    She snorted. “Your respect would be
nice, but that’s unlikely. No, you don’t owe me anything. I did it because I’m
a friend of Mickey’s.”
    His mouth twisted. Because Mickey
had “weird” friends whom Jake disapproved