Flirt

I scowled at him, but stopped pulling on my hand. “I was told all my childhood that I wasn’t pretty, and you guys love me because of vampire powers. You may not be able to help it.”

Nathaniel’s arms encircled me from behind, as Micah came in from the front for a kiss. “You are beautiful, Anita, I swear it’s true,” he whispered. I was tense in their arms, almost panicked; why? My father’s second wife had been blond and blue-eyed, tall and Nordic, as had her daughter from her first marriage, and the son they had together later. I loved my brother Josh, but I’d always looked like the dark secret in the family pictures, and Judith had been very quick to explain to friends that I wasn’t hers; that my mother had been Hispanic. I’d always blamed my lack of self-esteem on that, but now I realized that wasn’t all of it. It wasn’t like a buried memory, just one I hadn’t looked at before.

“My Grandmother Blake took care of me while my father worked for about a year. I’d just lost my mom, and she told me that I was ugly, that I better not count on finding a husband, but get an education and a job and take care of myself.”

“What?” Micah said. Nathaniel’s arms tightened around me.

“Don’t make me say it again; it’s such a shitty thing to do to a little kid.”

“You know it’s not true,” Micah said, studying my face.

I nodded, and then shook my head. “I guess, not really. I mean, I see how people react to me so I know I clean up well, but I can’t really see why you guys react to me. I just see what my grandmother and then my stepmother told me wasn’t tall enough, white enough, pretty enough.” The tightness in my chest eased the panic flowing away on the realization that even if I’d been an ugly little girl, a grandmother who loved you wouldn’t have said it. She might have encouraged you to study hard and get a career, but she wouldn’t have told you it was because you were ugly and no man would have you.

Nathaniel kissed the side of my face as Micah kissed my lips. I stayed motionless in their arms, letting the knowledge of that childhood memory wash over me. “Why did I remember that now?” I asked, softly.

“You were ready to remember,” Nathaniel whispered. “We bring up the pain in pieces so we can look at it in small bites.”

Jason spoke softly from just behind Nathaniel. “First, you are beautiful and desirable, and that was evil of her. Second, one thing I’ve learned in therapy is that when you feel your most safe, most happy, is when the really painful stuff rears its head.”

“I remember Nathaniel’s therapist saying that when you started having bad dreams. Why does it have to work that way?” I asked, still held between the other two men.

“You feel safe enough and you believe you have enough of a support network to look at the really bad stuff, so when your life is going its best, we all have a tendency to dredge up the worst of our pain.”

I turned in their arms so I could see Jason’s face. “That sucks,” I said.

He smiled, eyes gentle. “Big-time suck, yes.” He studied my face. “You aren’t going to cry, are you?”

I thought about it, figuring out how I felt. “No.”

“It’s okay to cry,” he said.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to cry.”

“You never want to cry,” Nathaniel said.

I couldn’t argue that, so instead I let myself soften in their arms, and kissed first Micah, and then turned so I could lay my cheek against Nathaniel’s face and whisper, “I’ll cry later, at home.”

“You’ll cry when it finally hits you,” he said.

“I don’t feel like crying now.”

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“You could read my feelings.”

“You’ve taught me better psychic ma

“I came with better ma

I nodded, and then started to sit back on the bench. They moved back to let me. “I feel sort of hollow, like there’s this empty space inside me that I didn’t know was there. Fragile-which I hate.”

Jason reached past Nathaniel to pat my thigh, just a friendly touch. “It’s okay, we’re here.”

I nodded. That was the problem with loving people: it made you weak. It made you need them. It made the thought of not having them the worst thing in the world. I heard Be

For a long time after that first love, I’d protected my heart from all takers; now here I sat in a restaurant with two men I loved, and a third who was one of my best friends. How had I been willing to let so many people get so damn close?

The waiter was back at the table. He smiled that brilliant smile at me, and I could see that he was looking at me, not Nathaniel. I started to do what I’d done for years when men reacted to me-scowl and give him The Look-and then I realized that I didn’t want to be angry. I smiled at him, let him see that I saw him; I understood he was wasting smiles on me, and I appreciated it. I let myself smile up at him and let the pure happiness fill my face all the way up. The smile wasn’t entirely for the waiter; it was for the men around me, yet it made the waiter smile even wider, his eyes shining with it. It wasn’t a bad thing to share; in fact, it was a pretty nice thing to share, even with someone you didn’t know at all.

Ms. Natalie Zell sat across from me with her red hair in an artful tangle of swept waves that managed to be short enough not to go past her shoulders but also gave the impression that she had long hair. It was a good illusion, and probably an expensive one, but from the crème of her designer dress to the nearly perfect skin under its even more perfect makeup-all so understated that, at a glance, you might have been fooled into thinking she wasn’t wearing makeup-everything about her breathed money. I’d had enough rich clients to know the taste of someone who had always had money. Two days later I was betting that Natalie Zell was someone who had never wanted for anything and didn’t see any reason for that to change. She crooked her pale lips and they caught the light, shining, very sparkly in a subdued sort of way. Old money is seldom gaudy; they leave that for the nouveau riche.

“I want you to raise my husband from the dead, Ms. Blake,” she said, smiling.

I searched her face for signs of grief, but her grayish-green eyes were wide and unmarred with anything but a faint humor and a force of personality quietly controlled. I must have looked into her eyes too long, or too directly, because she lowered her lashes so that I lost eye contact.

“Why do you want Mr. Zell raised from the dead?” I asked.

“Does it really matter at the rates your business manager charges for your services?”

I nodded. “It matters.”

She crossed her long, slender legs under the pale dress. I think she actually flashed me some thigh, but it might have just been habit, and nothing personal. “My therapist thinks that a last good-bye would help me find closure.”

That was one of the standard reasons that I raised the dead. “I’ll need the name of your therapist.”

Her eyes lost that mild amusement and I caught a flash of that personality that I could feel behind all the pale control. I didn’t believe her about the therapist.

“Why do you need his name?” she asked, as she leaned back in the client chair, all elegant nonchalance.

“It’s standard to check.” I smiled, and I could feel that it didn’t quite make it to my eyes. I could have made the effort, but I didn’t. I didn’t want her comfortable. I wanted the truth.