Do You Feel It Too? Read online

  ALSO BY NICOLA RENDELL

  Shimmy Bang Sparkle

  So Good

  Just Like That

  Hail Mary

  Confessed

  Professed

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2018 Lux Holdings LLC

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503903500

  ISBN-10: 1503903508

  Cover design by Letitia Hasser

  Cover photography by Wander Aguiar

  To P.

  CONTENTS

  1 GABE

  2 LILY

  3 GABE

  4 LILY

  5 GABE

  6 LILY

  7 GABE

  8 LILY

  9 GABE

  10 LILY

  11 GABE

  12 LILY

  13 GABE

  14 GABE

  15 LILY

  16 GABE

  17 LILY

  18 GABE

  19 LILY

  20 GABE

  21 LILY

  22 GABE

  23 LILY

  24 GABE

  25 GABE

  26 LILY

  27 GABE

  28 LILY

  29 GABE

  30 LILY

  31 GABE

  32 LILY

  33 GABE

  34 LILY

  35 GABE

  36 LILY

  37 GABE

  38 LILY

  39 GABE

  40 LILY

  41 GABE

  42 LILY

  43 GABE

  44 LILY

  45 GABE

  46 LILY

  47 GABE

  48 LILY

  49 GABE

  50 LILY

  51 GABE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  GABE

  The first time I saw her, there were fireworks—actual fireworks. It was the Fourth of July on River Street in Savannah. It had been a long time since I’d spent the Fourth in the States. A year ago I’d been in the Yukon Province chasing down the yeti; the year before I was outside Nogales hunting for the chupacabra. I’d missed the hell out of Fourth of July fireworks, but all the explosions in the sky that night had nothing on her.

  She was across the park from me, maybe fifty feet away. The hot and humid night air made halos around the dimmed park lights. She was like an angel out there, like a goddamned vision. Red shorts. White T-shirt. Sneakers. She had long dark hair arranged over one shoulder. Sexy tanned thighs and a delicate line of cleavage.

  Fuck, she was gorgeous.

  She knelt down, like she’d dropped a contact or an earring. I began to stand to go help her but stopped myself. She wasn’t searching; she was working—peeling a line of duct tape off an audio cable on the ground. Before the fireworks, the mayor had given a speech in Emmet Park and a brass quartet had played as the sun set. It looked to me like she’d been the one doing the audio for it. In one hand she gathered the tape into a ball, and with the other she made neat loops of the cord that it had been covering. She followed the tape and wire to the edge of the sidewalk and over the curb to the back of a white van. Her curves and softness disappeared behind its open back doors so that all I could see were her calves and her navy-blue Converse. By the light of a series of fireworks exploding overhead, I saw the van’s logo. It was a flower with microphones as petals and an extension cord as the stem. Under that were the words:

  SOUNDS GOOD

  Turning Savannah Up to Eleven Since 2011!

  When a whistle filled the air, I kept my eyes trained on the back of the van. But when the sky lit up again with a pop, she wasn’t there. I scanned the edge of the park again and spotted her next to the bandstand, loading a speaker onto a handcart. On the back of her shirt was the same flower-shaped logo. She crouched down to secure the speaker with a bungee cord. Her position accentuated her waist and showed off a narrow strip of skin at the small of her back. I ran my hand down my stubble and growled into my palm when I saw the lacy edge of her panties peeking out.

  She wheeled the dolly a few feet and paused to grab a mic stand. Rather than carrying it by its top, she knelt down in front of it and reached back to balance it on her shoulder. It reminded me of Huck Finn, carrying his rucksack on a branch. Off she went, zipping across the path that ran diagonally across the edge of the park.

  Watching a beautiful woman move heavy equipment by herself was the pinnacle of douchebaggery. I was a lot of things, but to the best of my knowledge, douchebag wasn’t one of them. Whether she needed a hand or not, I was sure as hell going to offer one. Just because I wasn’t Southern didn’t mean I couldn’t be a gentleman.

  I tossed my go cup into the trash and made my way toward her, trying to time myself so our paths would cross right before she got to the van. In show business, they call it the meet-cute. Best way to get sparks to fly. I might not have been in the rom-com business, but I was going to meet-cute the hell out of her. Her and her sexy thighs.

  A series of smaller fireworks exploded overhead, and the crowd oohed and ahhed like a soundtrack as I ran my eyes over her body. A spray of star-shaped explosions lit up the park, and she raised her face to the sky, smiling. Now that I was closer to her, I could make out white stars on her red shorts. Her hair was pushed back from her forehead with a rolled blue bandanna.

  Cute as a button and sexier still.

  But right as I was about to offer to help her, the fireworks flamed out, sending us into darkness. She was so close that I could hear her sneakers on the pavement. A breeze carried her perfume over to me. Vanilla, maybe. But even though she smelled good enough to eat, I stayed where I was. Creeping up behind beautiful women in the dark wasn’t the type of shit that would get me onto People magazine’s list of Most Eligible Bachelors, thanks.

  When another firework exploded, turning everything deep red, I took another step toward her. She had her back to me. She’d put the dolly down and was checking something on her phone. The light from the screen illuminated the lines of her hourglass curves and highlighted the elegant curve where her neck met her shoulder. It was go time. “Can I give you a hand?” I asked.

  She swung around to face me, pivoting on her toes. As she did, time kind of . . . slowed down, as if everything were moving at a quarter speed. I saw her welcoming smile. Her dimples. Her full and shiny lips. But on my left, in my periphery, I also noticed something else. Something big, dark, and something—

  Wham!

  The bones in my skull rattled, my molars jiggled, and I stumbled backward. I pressed my hands to my face and staggered blindly back into the dark. Everything was spinning, and the neon necklaces the city had handed out to the children whizzed by like I was in the middle of a glow-in-the-dark roller rink.

  Blinking hard against the sting of sudden tears and the general feeling that my brain was sloshing around like too-watery Jell-O salad in a bowl, I tried to figure out what in the ever-loving fuck had just . . .

  The mic stand. She’d coldcocked me in the face with the goddamned mic stand.

  “Oh my God!” she shrieked and lunged to help me. Unfortunately, this also made the mic stand clatter to the ground. The base spun around like a quarter on a t
able, making the pole end gather just enough speed to whack me across the shins like a karate chop into a cinder block.

  I dropped to my knees and growled out, “Jesus!”

  “Oh no!” she said, clapping her hands to the sides of her head.

  “I’m good!” I told her, my voice muffled by my palm. “Totally good!” She was coming to help me, but out of pure protective instinct, I waved her away. Next thing I knew, I’d be getting beaten with her handbag. “I’ve got this. Totally!”

  But she wasn’t dissuaded. She grabbed my shoulders and steered me toward a bench to sit down. Her grip was firm and confident, which was way more than I could say for my backward flailing. Once I was sitting, she crouched in front of me. Just then, the finale of the fireworks kicked into high gear—patriotic trombones, cannon fire, soaring strings. The works. Dozens of fireworks exploded behind her, showing off all of her beauty. Her big, warm eyes. Her enticing lips. Her concerned grimace. As far as I could tell, she didn’t recognize me. I was pretty relieved; for a guy who spent his professional life on camera, it was still damned uncomfortable for me whenever anybody said, Hang on! Aren’t you . . .

  Which meant it would’ve been a perfect moment if not for all the goddamned spinning.

  By the light of the finale, she checked my pupils, leaning in so close that I felt the heat of her body against mine. Even through the brainpan-rattling pain, I knew she was even more beautiful than I’d thought at first. Once she seemed reasonably sure that I wasn’t obviously concussed, she knelt down at my feet. She placed one hand on my leg and the other hand to her rosy cheek. “I am so sorry. I had no idea you were standing behind me. Are you OK?”

  OK was debatable. There was a nonzero chance I was missing some teeth. Keeping my nose shielded with my hand, I felt around my mouth with my tongue. It seemed like they were all there. Probably. The front ones were there, anyway. Bonus. And as an even bigger bonus, there was still no sign that she recognized me at all. To her, I was just some poor sucker she’d almost knocked unconscious, and I didn’t mind that one bit. “You could take that swing to the major leagues.”

  She cringed, and it made her nose crinkle adorably. She placed her hand on my cheek, tipping her body forward so her cleavage brushed against my knees. Her palm was soft and cool, and her expression was worried and pained. “Come on. Let me get a closer look at the damage.”

  I wasn’t too hot on the idea, but she was gently persistent. She held my forearm, slowly tightening her grip to say please. Very carefully I lifted my hand. When she peeked underneath, she sucked in a breath between gritted teeth. I cupped my nose again and watched her blink a few times in rapid succession. Then the grimace transformed into an agonized smile. “Nothing a bag of frozen peas won’t fix!” she said.

  I wasn’t buying it. She looked like she’d just seen a five-car pileup that featured a diaper truck in the middle. I touched my knuckle to my nostril and saw a smudge of blood. “Any chance you’ve got a Kleenex?”

  She smacked her thighs with her palms. “Yes, yes, yes! Of course! One sec!” She scurried back to her van and leaned inside. When she did, one leg lifted up behind her like a ballerina, revealing the soft inside of her thigh. The sight of her silk-soft skin was like a shot of morphine. All my pain disappeared. But then I made the mistake of sniffing.

  Motherfuck it.

  She hustled back to me with her purse in hand. This she upended at my feet, covering the grass with all manner of shit, including lipsticks, a bruised banana, a paperback book, knitting needles, and a whole shitload of tangled yarn. She jiggled her bag, searched through the stuff at my feet, and growled, “No wonder this thing was on clearance.” She rummaged around through the pockets and finally emerged with a small pack of flower-printed tissues. “Here!” She thrust them out to me. I began to reach for them, but she snatched them back. “What am I thinking! I’ll get it. You hold tight.” Instead of pulling one tissue from the pack, she ripped the whole damned thing apart and they fluttered to the ground. With a few tissues in hand, she came up from her crouch and sat next to me, her thigh pressing against my leg.

  “Here, put your head back a little.” She placed one of her hands on the back of my head, and I felt the featherlight touch of her fingertips above my collar. “Now, easy does it,” she said softly. She dabbed at my upper lip with the corner of the tissue. But when she touched the edge of my nostril, I hissed before I could stop myself.

  “Sorry!” she whispered and pulled the tissue away to let me recover. I blinked hard, forcing the wave of pain to subside, and then leaned back into her. While she tended to me, I got a chance to study her up close. Around her neck, she wore a delicate necklace with a charm in the shape of what might’ve been a slice of pie. Or an ice cream cone. Or wait. Nope. It was a microphone. Of course. “Be honest,” I said. “Got a lot of experience bludgeoning strangers?”

  She blinked thoughtfully. “They teach it at the Y,” she said without missing a beat. “Every Tuesday after Hairspray as Offensive Weapon.”

  How you doin’? It was one thing to be pretty, but it was another to be both quick and funny in the middle of a small disaster. “Serves me right for sneaking up behind a beautiful woman in the dark.”

  She paused with the tissue an inch from my face. She pressed her lips together and gave me an adorable smile. “Well,” she said, a little embarrassed, “I don’t know about the beautiful woman part, but I do know you certainly didn’t deserve to get hit in the face.” She scooted closer, and I got a hit of her perfume—definitely vanilla. But the real deal. Like the vanilla bean orchid that grew wild in New Guinea. Exotic, rare, and utterly intoxicating.

  “Maybe I should take you to the ER.” She grabbed a fresh tissue. “It’s the least I could do.”

  It wasn’t exactly how I’d envisioned my first night in town, and I’d definitely survived crazier shit without medical attention. Like the time a lumberjack chased me off his property and I fell into a ravine. Or the time I had dinner with a rancher in the middle of Nowhere, Mexico, and ate a little orange pepper that sent me into an unstoppable cycle of hiccups, dry heaves, and uncontrollable weeping. I could handle this . . . especially if she was going to play nurse. “I’m Gabe.” I began to reach out my right hand to shake hers, but since it was probably smudged with blood, I opted for my left hand.

  Her eyes twinkled. Rather than try to shake it, she gave my fingers a squeeze. “Hi, Gabe,” she said softly. “I’m Lily.” She patted her name on the front of her shirt, and it made her gorgeous breasts jiggle. “But now”—she moved her head side to side as she peered at my face—“I think we should make double sure I don’t need to drive you to the doctor. Give me a sec to do some light googling.” She took my hand and pressed it to the tissue and then grabbed her phone from her pile of purse stuff on the grass at my feet.

  While she did her light googling, I did some light Lily studying. No wedding ring and no engagement ring. On her home screen was a photograph of a chubby, laughing infant in a onesie that said I LOVE MY AUNTIE LILY! She tapped in her security code and flipped through her apps. The background image was a sepia-filtered photo of the same kid, but this time sitting in an old-fashioned stroller with thin and oversize wheels. He wore an old-fashioned getup, like a tiny sailor’s costume, complete with an old-timey white hat.

  The light from her phone screen illuminated her features. Soft cheekbones, full lips. As she typed away with her thumbs, she pushed her eyebrows together so hard that a ridge appeared between them, and all the while she nibbled on her lip. On her screen in big, bold letters appeared the header “Broken Nose Treatment.”

  “OK! Found a symptom checker. ‘When to go see a health-care provider for a broken nose.’”

  “I’m sure it’s not broken.” Actually, I wasn’t completely sure about that at all, but I didn’t want to make her feel too bad about it. “Sprained, maybe.”

  She glanced up from the screen and pursed her lips. “Shush, now. You’re the patient, I’m the pretend
internet doctor. In WebMD we trust. Bullet one: ‘You cannot stop the nose from bleeding.’”

  I pulled the flowery tissue back from my nose. She leaned in, still with her eyebrows rumpled. She was unselfconscious about her expressions—no pretense, no shyness. No sense that she’d been practicing her expressions in a mirror for years, like half the women in LA did. That authenticity made her ten times more alluring. “Mmm. We’re fine. Just a little droplet. That’s good at least.” She held up her phone and read, “‘The nostril or nasal septum is crooked or out of place.’”

  With one finger I touched the ridge of my nose, then my septum. I’d never actually felt for the shape of my own nose, but it didn’t seem obviously messed up. “I think we’re good.”

  Lily pursed her lips. “I’m not so sure. I have no point of reference. Unless you’ve got a selfie handy!” she teased, squinting at my nose and then meeting my eyes for a beat. “But I don’t suppose that’s your jam.”

  Actually, my jam was hosting my own show investigating urban legends, mysteries, and generally strange shit around the world. The Powers of Suggestion, hosted by yours truly, Gabe Powers. New episodes aired every Thursday from 9:30 to 10:30 p.m. on Destination America, reruns every Friday between Bear Grylls and A Haunting, and all-day marathons every third Saturday. All she had to do was turn her light googling skills on my name and she’d see my face all over place. But I wasn’t about to just say all that. Because again, not a douchebag. Not a douchebag. “I never think to take them.”

  She sighed. “Well, you do seem OK. Everything seems pretty much . . .” Her eyes moved over my face. At first she was focused on my nose. But after a few seconds, it was clear to me that I wasn’t the only one feeling some chemistry. She was totally checking me out. So I gave her a lift of my chin to say, I see you, sexy. The chin flick made my nose throb, but it was worth it. Because in return, I got a big smile paired with a shy little giggle. She zipped the charm on her necklace back and forth and then returned to her phone. “Next bullet. ‘There is a grapelike swelling inside the nose.’”

  “Grapelike,” I said. “Jesus Christ. What does that even mean, grapelike?”