Page 19 of It takes a Psychic

He glanced at her. Heat flashed in his eyes. He quickly returned his attention to his driving.

“Sorry about the dress,” he said.

“I would have burned it anyway. Not like I was ever going to wear it again. The bloodstains.”

“Right.” With an easy motion, he shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to her. “Here, take it. You’re not very tall. I think it will give you plenty of coverage.”

“Thanks.”

He paused, taking a closer look at her chest. Offended and disappointed—for some reason she had not expected him to be the leering type—she held his coat in front of her to shield her breasts.

Evidently aware of how she had interpreted the situation, he flushed and turned back to his driving. “Sorry. I just noticed that crystal you’re wearing. It looks like the same kind of stone as the yellow pyramid in the box.”

Oh. Right. The crystal.

Naturally he had noticed her pendant now that the bodice of the gown no longer concealed it. He hadn’t been interested in her breasts. That was a good thing, she told herself. So why was she feeling just a tad deflated?

She got a belated ping from her intuition alerting her that it was probably not good that he had leaped to the conclusion that her pendant was the same type of crystal as the pyramid. The situation would get even more complicated if he realized the two stones had resonated.

“Yellow is not a rare color when it comes to crystals,” she said, striving for a dismissive tone.

“That particular shade of deep golden yellow is uncommon. It makes me think of whiskey. What do you know about the stone you’re wearing?”

He sounded far too curious. The fine hair on the back of her neck stirred. She needed to tread cautiously.

“My sister, Molly, found a couple of them when she was a little girl. She grew up with a talent for tuning crystals, so eventually she tuned a stone for each of us. It’s a sisterhood thing.”

“Can you focus through them?”

“Well, yes, because Molly tuned them. But they’re no more accurate than standard nav amber.”

Okay, that was not the whole truth, but she was not about to spill the Griffin Family Secret to an antiquities thief. Yes, he had saved her from getting swept up in the raid, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a stranger—unknown and potentially dangerous. He had his own agenda.

She did not want to give him any reason to think that she might be standing in the way of his priorities, because she was pretty sure he was the kind who kept moving forward until he reached his objective. She knew the type. She had a similar streak of stubbornness.

Oliver was no longer looking at the yellow crystal, so she took the opportunity to slip into his jacket and pull it snugly around herself. The garment was warm from the heat of his body and it carried an intriguing hint of his very masculine scent. Her senses were already spiking because of the adrenaline overload and the Underworld buzz, but the coat added another layer of stimulation. She searched for a word to describe the unfamiliar sensation she was experiencing. She came up withthrilled.

Ridiculous.

They drove into the rotunda. Oliver whipped the sled down one of a dozen hallways and checked the dashboard locator.

“All good,” he said. “We didn’t even lose much time. It’s way past midnight, Amberella, but I’ll have you home before dawn.”

She blew out a sigh of relief and suddenly remembered the artifact.She glanced down and saw that Pandora’s box was right where she had put it, on the floor of the sled. The lid, evidently jarred from the motion of the vehicle, had fallen closed. Once the artifact disappeared back into a private collection, she was highly unlikely to come in contact with it again.

Oliver was her only link to the private museum that had hired him to recover the relic. She had to start talking. Fast.

“It occurs to me,” she said, “that your client has every reason to be grateful to me.”

Oliver’s mouth twitched at the corner. Definitely his tell, she decided. He knew she was about to bargain for something and he was willing to play the game—probably because it amused him.

She gave him a very bright smile. “Do you think you could convince the director of that private museum to allow me to examine the crystal at some point in the near future?”

“Maybe.” His mouth twitched again. “I’m the director.”

That stopped her cold for a beat. “I thought you said you were a recovery agent.”

“In my case, recovering artifacts for the museum is part of my job description.”

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