The Taking (12 page)

Huh. Comfort wasn’t Camille’s style. She would have watched an infant tumble into the dirt and just stared at it in curiosity, a self-protective trait he had to assume came from losing her family. Felix had only met Camille once before the fever outbreak, and she had seemed thoughtful and proper then. It was only after her family had died, when she’d been stripped of her security and love, that she’d had no compassion.

If it wasn’t Camille in the house, it was probably just one more lost spirit wandering around. “I see. I believe that’s possible. So you think the spirit is benevolent?”

She hesitated, but then nodded. “Yes, I do. There was no bad feeling attached to it, you know what I mean?”

“So you don’t want it removed? Because if you ever feel it’s become malicious, I can exorcise it.”

Her eyes went wide. “You can do that?”

“Sure.” Evil be gone. It was an old tenet of voodoo, and with his power, it actually worked. For other people. Not for himself. Never for himself. There was no spell to undo his connection to evil.

“I don’t think so. Not yet. I just want to wait and see.” She laughed nervously. “If I have the guts. I ran out of there like someone yelled fire last night.”

Felix wasn’t sure what to think. Maybe it was just a regular old haunt. But maybe it was something more, maybe it was Camille. But he wouldn’t know unless he went to the house, and he wasn’t about to do that unless Regan was truly scared. “If you ever feel uncomfortable, let me know. There are some spirits that will drain your energy, your peace of mind, your ability to sleep, like a spiritual anvil around your neck. You don’t want that.”

“Geez, no, I don’t want that. Thanks.” Smoothing the hairs back along her temple, Regan picked up her coffee and sipped it. “But I’m sorry, I didn’t drag you here to whine about weird goings-on in my house. I wanted to ask you about the journal I found.”

“Very clever of you to find it. It’s been hidden for a long time obviously.” And very clever of Camille to keep the journal from him. He wouldn’t have approved of her writing down his spells, their liaisons. It must have amused her that last night to know that he was standing right next to the hidden journal. He could even hear her laughter, see her saucy smile.

“Here it is.” Regan pulled the journal out of her bag and handed it to him with a nervous smile. “It’s probably a good thing you’re not drinking coffee. I want to be very careful not to damage it.”

Felix took it reluctantly. He needed to know, needed to see whether he was mentioned at all or not, but the yellowed pages sucked him back into the past as he flipped through them, and the past was a place he never wanted to return. “What is it you want to know?”

“I want to understand voodoo, why she was doing it. And if these are legitimate spells.”

“All spells are legitimate if the person using them believes in them.”

 

Guilt crashed into him, the intensity catching him so off guard that he slammed the book shut in anger.

Regan reacted, jumping a little in her seat at his sharp movement.

It had been a mistake to meet her. There was nothing he could do to help her, and he was putting them both in jeopardy.

“Look. You can’t understand these spells without understanding voodoo. Is that what you really want? Because I can recommend some books for you to read.”

“Really? That would be great” Her cell phone rang in her purse, her ringtone a classical piano piece.

He frowned. “That’s your ringtone?”

“Yes. Sorry.” She was digging around in her purse and checked her Caller ID. “This is my lawyer. Do you mind if I take it?”

“No, go ahead.” Though the ringtone still bothered him. It didn’t sound like her. But then what made him think that he knew a damn thing about Regan?

He didn’t. She was just an average, pretty woman that he knew nothing about and never would.

Because she would never tell him and he would never ask.

Regan tried to ignore the frown on Felix’s face as she answered her phone. It was rude, she knew that, but she had been playing phone tag with her lawyer for two days and she really wanted an update. Besides, she was starting to think it had been pointless to ask Felix to meet her. What could he really tell her about the journal? It was voodoo spells, end of story, and she was feeling a little stupid for wasting his time.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Richard. You’re not going to believe this.”

“What?” Lord only knew what Beau had called her now or tried to claim she had done.

“Beau dropped his requests straight across the board. His lawyer says your offer of the condo and the cash settlement is more than generous.”

“Are you serious?” Regan sat straight up, a grin splitting across her face. “Did he sign the papers? Am I actually going to be divorced soon?”

Felix was staring at her, making no secret of listening to her conversation. But she had answered the phone in the middle of their meeting, and besides, she didn’t care if he overheard. The news made her ecstatic. God, she could be divorced in a matter of weeks.

“Yep, he signed the papers. I still don’t trust him, Regan. He’s up to something. But as it stands right now, yes, you’ll be divorced before hurricane season. Hell, you’ll be divorced by the end of the week if I can manage it.”

Make that days. She could be divorced in just a couple of days. Now that was the best news she’d heard in a long time. “That’s fantastic. Thank you, Richard. And really, what could he possibly be up to?” she asked, trying to scoff, hoping it was just Richard being paranoid.

“I don’t know. But I like to be cautious. It comes with the job.”

Felix was waving his hand in front of her to get her attention. She looked at him, startled, and mouthed,
What?

“Tell him to look for hidden assets.”

“Excuse me?” she said to Felix.

“What?” Richard asked.

“Tell him that your husband doesn’t want to fight the settlement anymore because he’s afraid you’ll discover his hidden assets in the Caribbean and Switzerland,” Felix said.

He was being rude to interrupt, and he couldn’t possibly know anything about Beau or their divorce, but something about the look in his eyes had Regan saying, “Richard, do you think he could have hidden assets? I seem to remember something about the Caribbean and Switzerland.”

“Ah.” Richard made a sound of satisfaction. “That would explain the sudden cooperation. He could be worried we would uncover his true financial status.”

Uh-oh. Regan realized immediately that she shouldn’t have said anything. “If he does have money hidden, I don’t care,” she assured her lawyer. “I just want the divorce, that’s all.”

Felix frowned at her.

Richard didn’t seem to like her statement either. “Hey, I know, Regan, but come on. If the guy’s trying to smoke a few mil past us, we shouldn’t let that fly. You just offered him a shitload of money. If he doesn’t need it, we should withdraw our offer.”

“No. Forget I said anything. I don’t care about the money.”

There was a big pause. “Alright. I’ll keep you posted. Ciao.”

Regan hung up the phone and glared at Felix. “What do you think you’re doing? You completely threw me off balance in the middle of a very important phone call.”

“He’s hiding money.”

“One, how do you know? Two, who cares? I don’t. I just want a divorce.”

“How do I know? I know,” he said, leaning over the table so that his face was closer to hers, “because I have the second sight. I’m intuitive, or whatever the hell you want to call it. And you should care because he was a shitty husband and you shouldn’t have to pay off an asshole to get out of your marriage.”

His vehemence shocked her. Regan was having trouble thinking with him in her space. She could see the dark stubble on his chin, feel the warmth of his breath, watch the pupils expand in his blue eyes.

He withdrew, falling back against his chair, and she felt irrationally irritated with him. “How do you know he was a shitty husband? Maybe I’m just a bad wife. Maybe I’m just flighty or fickle.”

Felix shook his head slowly. “No, there is nothing flighty or fickle about you at all. And he had to be a shitty husband to put that look in your eye at the Christmas party.”

“What look?” Regan turned her cell phone around and around on the table, nervous and not sure why.

“Fear. Desperation. Like a caged animal.”

Jesus. That was so accurate she was horrified. Who else had seen that in her? “Well, then you should understand why I don’t want to risk screwing up my divorce. If he’s going to let it go through uncontested, I am beyond happy.”

“You deserve more,” he said simply.

Regan felt the hairs rise on her arms. It was the first time someone had put it quite like that. Her family and friends argued with her that she shouldn’t have left. Chris wanted her to stick it to Beau. But no one had ever told her in such a straightforward way that she was entitled to better in her life.

“Thank you,” she said softly, feeling comfortable with him, truly comfortable, for the first time. Then she looked at him, curious about the man in front of her. She supposed she believed in fate, and somehow, it just seemed that she and Felix had been destined to cross each other’s path. But who was he, how did he live, who did he spend his time with? “So tell me about yourself, Felix.”

“Nothing to tell. I run a voodoo shop. Nothing more, nothing less.”

That couldn’t possibly scratch the surface of his life, but she wasn’t surprised that was his answer. He seemed reticent about himself. Perfectly willing to talk about her, but dismissive about himself. “Do you have a girlfriend? A special someone?”

Felix gave a short laugh, though there didn’t seem to be a lot of amusement in it. “No. Any woman who would date me would undoubtedly
deserve more.”

That was annoying. Men always dropped lines like that, and she found it to be false self-effacement. They didn’t really believe it, they just didn’t want to work at a commitment. It also chafed that it seemed directed at her, like she shouldn’t get any ideas about the two of them having any sort of relationship.

“So is that a warning?”

He shook his head slowly. “No. It doesn’t do any good to warn anyone anyway. We all do as we want, for the most part, regardless of the danger.”

Maybe that was her problem. She hadn’t known what she wanted, so she had done what she had thought she’d wanted, regardless of the danger of it being a mistake, and married Beau. Could that be the real danger? Never knowing the truth of what you wanted? “What if you don’t know what you want?”

“Everyone knows what they want, whether they acknowledge it or not. You have to be honest with yourself.”

What she wanted, right at the moment, was him. She could be honest with herself, but she wasn’t about to be honest with Felix about it, so she made a noncommittal sound.

He had shifted his weight in the chair so he was leaning forward again, and it unnerved her. Regan fought the urge to back up, to create distance. It felt like he was challenging her and she wanted to hold her ground. Her skin tingled, her nipples hardening. There was such a sexual energy surrounding him, and she couldn’t help but respond to it. Or maybe it was just that she found him attractive and she hadn’t had sex in four months. Either way, she was always very acutely aware of her body around him.

“There is no memory with less satisfaction than that of some temptation which we resisted.”

Indeed. Regan was very, very tempted by Felix, and while she knew she should resist, doing the smart thing gave absolutely no satisfaction to a woman in desperate need of a good lover.