At His Fingertips

She sighed. “You’re just not what I expected.” She caught herself, covered her mouth. “I mean, remembered. But here you are. And on our anniversary. So that’s that. We go from here.”

“Where are we going?” He felt as though he’d fallen down some Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole.

“Don’t you think it’s curious that we’re meeting again on exactly this day?” Maybe it wasn’t incense he smelled. Maybe she’d been smoking some fruit-flavored hallucinogen.

“Small world, I guess.” He moved his shoulders uneasily.

Her eyes found his with their strange piercing power, so he looked down, but there were her sloppy straps and her nipples.

Ouch.

“That was a magical night. Remember the meteor shower?”

“Sure. I guess.”

“And the fruit we ate? Strawberries and raspberries and, my favorite, star fruit.”

“It tasted like pears?” That was how she’d tasted. Like pears and something sweet that was all her. Her lips had been soft and strong, and he’d been so hot for her he thought he would explode—

“So, Mitch…?” She touched his hand.

Electricity zoomed through him. Seventeen years had gone by, but the chemistry between them had not changed one bit. Screw the grant, screw her craziness, he thought, blood pounding through him. He wanted this woman. Right here, right now.

2

“WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME about your brother’s idea?” Esmeralda managed to ask, trying not to sound stunned. How could she help it, though? Doctor X had returned seventeen years later, almost to the day of when they’d met. The minute she recognized him, heat and light had poured through her from the soles of her feet to every last follicle on her scalp.

Mitch seemed stunned, too. By her touch or something in her gaze. Maybe some latent psychic impulse? She could only hope.

There was attraction, of course. It shivered in the air between them, like heat from an oven on broil, and made her forget his insulting hints that she was in over her head with the foundation.

Could he be the one? He was from the past, all right, and they had unfinished business. He hadn’t called her when he’d returned from L.A. as he’d promised. But then her life had changed so terribly the next day that a hot musician from a star-mad night had faded to nothing in her mind.

“His idea…?” Mitch seemed to struggle to clear his head. “For the grant, right. It’s, uh, a high school program to get low-income kids instruments and lessons. He’ll use musicians he knows to donate time and get a break on instruments….”

He kept explaining, while Esmeralda pondered possibilities. But he wasn’t even Doctor X anymore. He was Mitch Margolin, attorney-at-law, and he’d sneered at her gift. When she’d asked to see his palm, he’d practically hidden it behind his back. He thought she was a crackpot.

How could he be the one? Her body seemed intrigued, that was certain. If she were fur-bearing, she’d be fluffed out like a puff ball, prickling with awareness.

That long ago night, her attraction had been so hot and bright it had almost hurt. Of course, she’d been a virgin and he was older and a musician and devastatingly hot. How could she not be smitten?

He was still exceptionally attractive, though his jaw seemed firmer, the planes of his face more chiseled. The eyes behind the fashionable glasses had gone from a soft brown to hard, dark marbles with pinpoints of white judgment in the center.

The ponytail that had made him seem laid back had been replaced by a crisp business cut, and his hair was a muted brown. His smile was still sexy, but it didn’t seem to come so easily any more. Where he’d been wiry, he was now muscular and he smelled of a pricey cologne instead of sandalwood, clean sweat and fresh grass. The effect was serious, commanding, driven.

She felt funny sitting near him. Nervous, scared and, well…

Hot. She shifted against the ache between her legs, the rolling heat, the helpless urge to touch him, to be touched by him.

This was not how she expected to feel when the man from her past appeared. Jonathan had made her feel relaxed and content. They’d been friends as well as lovers. With Mitch she felt jumpy, unsettled, irritable. And she ached all over.

“Esmeralda?”

“Huh?” She realized he’d asked her a question.

“So, does this sound like something you’d fund?”

She’d hardly heard a word he’d said. “I’d need to see a full proposal before I could say more.”

“Yeah. Makes sense. Any suggestions for the format?”

“Tell you what. Bring your brother to my Wish Upon A Star workshop tomorrow night. We help people pin down their dreams.”

“You hold a workshop on dreams?” He raised his eyebrows.

“You’ve heard of investment groups, haven’t you? Networking groups? Often, people don’t know what they want or are afraid to give voice to it. We brainstorm plans and offer mutual support to make dreams real.”

“And what about the grants?”

“We provide a grant template and tips, too. But the purpose of the foundation is fulfilling dreams, not just giving away money. Let me show you.”

She grabbed one of their new brochures from the end table and handed it to him. “Olivia Rasbergen’s mission is to give money ‘from the heart’ to ‘the little people.’ We fund small businesses and services that deserve a chance, even if making a profit proves elusive.”

“That fits Dale. He’s not big on generating income.”

“And that makes you angry?”

“No. Worried.” Concern instantly replaced sarcasm. “He’s stuck in limbo, kind of an eternal adolescence. Ever since I dragged him to L.A. If I’d thought he’d drop out, I’d never have done it.” Mitch shook his head. “So I feel responsible. If I can help him get his life straight, I want to do it.”

“But is he happy with his life?”

Mitch shrugged. “He’s got the rhetoric down, the old ‘screw materialism and Yuppie striving.’He’d never tell me what he really thinks.”

“Because you’re his big brother.”

“Exactly. We push each other’s buttons. You know how it is.” His hard eyes had softened as he talked about his brother, which made her like him a little more.

“I can imagine.” She was an only child of a single mother, but she understood sibling dynamics from clients and friends. “So tell him about the workshop. If he’s interested, confirm with my assistant tomorrow. You can pay the fee when you get there.”

“There’s a fee?”

“Nominal. Just a hundred dollars. That way participants make a real commitment to the process. That’s why we offer matching grants, so they invest financially as well as emotionally and spiritually.”

“You ask them for capital? Up front?”

“Investment signals action. We encourage them to find outside investors as well.”

“I see.” But the idea seemed to confirm some suspicion he had.

“We eventually want the foundation to be self-sustaining.” Part of the long-range plan she had no clue how to create.

“If Dale does the workshop, will he get a grant?”

“If he meets our criteria. And if it’s his dream. I had a client today who thought she wanted a business, but what she wanted was to become a teacher.”

“So you turned her down?”

“I shifted her focus. She’s coming to the workshop and she’ll probably change her application to a scholarship. Bring Dale and you’ll see how it works.” She touched his hand—a reassuring gesture she used all the time—but it was like a lightning rod for the sexual current between them. She jerked her hand away.

Mitch looked at his hand, then at her face, as if he’d felt the charge, too. When he spoke, he seemed groggy, like someone awakened from a stage hypnosis. “What are the, uh, criteria?”

She used words he would respect. “We have a rubric to evaluate the viability of the idea, the level of the applicant’s commitment and the value of the service or product.”

“That sounds good.” He seemed relieved, which irked her.

“And, of course, I read the palm of every applicant.”

“You what?”

“I’m teasing, but my gift helps me choose who to fund.”

“Ok-ka-a-ay.” He wanted to laugh, she could tell, and that irritated her. She usually avoided skeptics or ignored their insults, but Mitch got to her. Maybe because of her own recent doubts.

“If it makes you feel better, just call it my strong intuition and knowledge of human psychology.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “What’s your approval percentage?”

“I’ve only been here for a few weeks, so I can’t say. The first director funded a dozen projects and I—”

“What happened to the first director?”

“She had to leave because of a family illness.”

“I see.” Was he thinking she was a desperation hire? She’d feared that, too, though Olivia had said no. You are tuned to the beat of every heart, cara, like I don’t know what for, she’d said in her charming Italian-cum-New Jersey accent. I should have gone with my heart and hired you first. Forget my brothers and their obligations.

“Anyway, I’ve funded six grants so far, including an earth-friendly organic bakery, a program for poor kids to earn computers through good grades and another to help prostitutes turn their lives around.”

“Prostitutes?”

“Yes. It’s a career-skills program. You can see how wide-ranging our projects can be.”

“Is there a prospectus or annual report? I noticed you don’t have a Web site.”

“Just the brochure so far. Belinda, my assistant, is working on the Web site, which should be up soon. We’re doing good work, Mitch, even if we don’t have a paper trail.”

“Sorry. I’m a lawyer. If it’s not in triplicate with six signatures, it doesn’t exist.” He gave a self-mocking smile.

“Have a little faith.”

“Not in my nature.” He shrugged.

“That’s not quite true.” She’d caught flickers of a wistful optimism behind his judgmental eyes. His self-mocking humor spoke of the humility she’d remembered. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll decide to draft your own grant.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I sense some dissatisfaction in you.”

“You’re reading my mind?” He was teasing, but she answered him straight.

“Only dimly. When I know someone my gift fades.” She had picked up a muddy blue coated with gray when she first saw him, signifying emotional reluctance, guardedness and suspicion. Not at all the openhearted guy she’d met that star-streaked night. But then maybe she’d read him wrong, read his palm wrong, too, as with her mother. That made her throb with pain. The day after she’d met Doctor X, her confidence, her world, had been rocked to its foundations.

She didn’t need any gift to read Mitch’s skepticism. “Everyone has psychic abilities, Mitch, however rudimentary or undeveloped. Even you. We all respond to subtle information about the people around us.”

She watched him fight a sharp remark, then decide to keep the peace. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Come to the workshop with an open mind and you’ll see.”

“Okay,” he said softly. “Surprise me.”

He’d sure surprised her.

Why hadn’t it been the friendly and familiar Jonathan smiling down at her when she’d shoved the eye bag off her face? Instead, it was Doctor X, who’d turned out all wrong.

The universe didn’t give you what you wanted, she knew, it gave you what you needed.

She needed Mitch Margolin? A brusque and suspicious lawyer who thought she belonged in a rubber room? It seemed impossible. Despite that, even after he’d gone she was shaking with arousal.

If he came to the workshop tomorrow night, she would get a chance to separate the tug of lust from the nudge of fate.

It just couldn’t be him.

Could it?

A LITTLE PUNCHY from the encounter with Esmeralda, Mitch swung by his office to pick up some files and to see if Craig had returned his call. He had to verify that the foundation was sound now that he’d promised to bring Dale to her workshop.

On dreams. God Almighty, how had she talked him into that?

It was that husky voice, those eerie eyes. And that mouth…

“You again!” Maggie, his motherly secretary, looked at him with dismay. “When you left here at four, soldier, I thought you were finally acting like a civilian.”

Maggie was always on him to take it easier. Her husband was retired military and Maggie swore that all the moves had taught her how to determine what mattered in life.

When you’ve packed as much as I have, you know what to U-Haul and what to yard-sale.

“Julie around?” he asked. He preferred to avoid her, at least until he got over the pain of his stupid crush. It had been three weeks, though. Should be time enough.

“Working at home.” Maggie’s steel-gray eyes were sympathetic. She’d figured it out, he guessed, and that made him feel even more ridiculous.

Before his crush on Julie had dead-ended, Maggie had strong-armed him into dating one of her daughter’s single friends—a PR woman with her own firm, as driven as he was. He’d liked her a lot, but they eventually got tired of matching calendars. When he’d felt only relief, it dawned on him what had kept him so disengaged. Julie. The way he felt about her.

He liked to hit problems straight on, so he’d asked her out to dinner, aching to lay it on the line. The rub was that they worked together. Also, she was younger than him. But if she felt like he felt, they’d figure out a solution.

She’d wanted to talk to him, too, it turned out, which gave him hope. As soon as they took their first sip of the wine he’d selected in the restaurant he’d chosen for its romantic ambiance, reserving a private table, she’d told him how much his friendship meant and how grateful she was that he’d taken her on right out of law school, and she wanted him to be the first to know that she was engaged to be married.

To some bureaucrat in land management. Dull as the dirt he parceled.

Mitch should have spoken up sooner. Why had he waited? Too late then and his confession had died in his chest. He’d wished her well. Of course. He wanted her to be happy.

He’d just hoped it would be with him.

“Dinner’s in your office,” Maggie said now. “A basket of homemade tamales from the wife of the landscape guy to thank you for all the extras. I could buy a new house with the billables you give away, Mitchell. Keep it up and your pro bonos will make us pro-broke-os.”

“I see their tax statements, Maggie. It does not serve us well to break their piggy banks paying us.” His clients often needed piddly advice he could rattle off without any research. “It’s practice-building,” he said. “Gets me referrals.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. He was swamped and she knew it.

The way he saw it was you gave extra and extra came back to you. Esmeralda would call it karma. He called it good business.

Right out of school, he’d gotten tons of experience with a business-law firm. Pro-bono work with the Small Business Administration helping startups had fired his blood, so he’d opened his own firm with that specialty six years ago, hired Maggie, then grew enough to bring on Julie last year.

He was up to his eyeballs in work, but he’d begun to feel restless, as though he needed a new challenge. Craig was after him to work for the A.G.’s office. A big income dive, but it was important work. A good next step, he figured.

“Let me see if any of this is urgent.” Maggie flipped through the pink message slips. “It can all wait. Go home.”

“When I’m ready. What are you doing here so late?”

“Keeping your head above water. Ed can heat up leftovers and Rachel’s working. Soon enough I’ll have more time than I’ll know what to do with.” She sighed and he realized she was talking about the fact that her daughter started college soon.

“You need time off to drive her up there?” She’d be attending Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, just three hours away.

“Nope. Saturday’s move-in day, so we’ll drive up then.”

“So hang with her a couple of days maybe.”

“And be accused of clinging? She’d be mortified. No. We’ll be fine. I’m just…antsy, I guess.”

“You know what I’m going to say….”

“I don’t need more school.”

“A paralegal would really help. I’d pay your tuition.”

“You don’t need to do that,” she said.

“It’s a write-off. Good for my taxes.”

“You are such a softie.”

“Eh-eh-eh. I’m a ruthless shark and don’t you forget it.” He gave her a stern look. “If my clients hear otherwise, they’ll quit me cold.”

She smiled. “I’ll take off then. Just don’t stay too late.” She shut down her computer, then adjusted the small photo of her daughter as a young girl, running a thumb across the surface in a sad and tender gesture.

Damn. He hated to see her blue. She had to stay busy. That was the secret. He’d cook up an extra assignment for her. Hell.

“What’s that?” Maggie nodded at the brochure in his hand.

He looked down at it. “A foundation that offers grants. Something I’m looking into for Dale.”

She leveled her gaze. “You can’t live his life for him.”

“Just a jumpstart, that’s all. Craig call?”

“Nope. Sorry.”

“I’ll try him again.”

“Don’t stay—”

“Late, got it. Good night, Mom.”

“I don’t know why I bother. You never listen to me.” She was shaking her head as she walked out the door and he headed into his office. Maybe if he kept her busy nagging him, she wouldn’t have time to miss her daughter.

Craig picked up on the first ring. “Craig Baker.”

“I have you live?” They often traded voice mail for days just booking a racquetball game.

“Trying to catch up.” Craig sighed. His friend was hopelessly overworked, which would be Mitch’s fate if he came on board. Sounded good to him. He needed…something.

“I hate to bug you, but did you get a chance to look into that foundation?” Mitch dropped into his chair and rolled close to the desk, laying the purple brochure beside his keyboard.

“Not yet.” Craig sighed. “I’m up to my ears. On top of everything else, there’s media interest in the roofing company fraud case out in Sun City West. I’m prepping the press secretary.”

An assistant A.G., Craig was part of a cross-agency task force to stem the tide of scam artists preying on Arizona’s retirees. “I’ll squeeze it in when I can.”

“If it helps, I went there and met the director. I got a brochure if you want the names of board members and staff.”

“Good idea. Give ’em to me.” There was a rustle as he prepared to take notes.

Mitch read off the list. Craig stopped him halfway through. “Sylvestri? That name’s familiar.”

“Yep. There are two Sylvestris on the board. Enzo and Louis.”

“Interesting. I’ll get a secretary to run a Lexis Nexis search and get back to you.” That would provide any news mentions or lawsuits, at least. A place to start. “How did it seem when you were there?”

“Hard to tell. Quirky.” Talk about understatement. “They have the grantees match funds and get investors.”

“Ah…possible prepayment scam. That’s how that MedQuest real estate investment group operated.”

“Made me wonder, too.” The phony music deal had been that kind of rip-off. A common music industry con, he’d learned afterward and was grateful they’d only lost a grand in “advance costs.” He’d been young, of course, and con artists were clever. One of his clients, a savvy guy, recently lost his shirt to a group that funded invention prototypes. They left the country with his and a hundred other dreamers’ “patent-filing fee.”

“Also, the director is new. She replaced a woman who left supposedly because of a family illness.”

“Major changes in top staff—especially early on—is a sign of trouble,” Craig said, confirming his suspicion.

“Yeah.” What would Craig say if he knew that Esmeralda got the job because she read palms? Lord.

“Got the name of the previous director?”

“I’ll ask when I see the new one tomorrow night.”

“You’re seeing her again?” Craig perked up.

“She’s holding a workshop for people looking at grants. I’m bringing Dale.” He paused. “Funny thing is that I know her. I met her back when I had a band.”

“So she was, what, a groupie?”

“Hardly.” She’d liked when he’d played for her, though. Of course she’d had those incredible eyes and that great mouth….

“But you slept with her.”

“Nah. She was jailbait.” She’d seemed younger than she was—eighteen—and probably a virgin, and he’d been leaving for L.A. anyway….

“You were a gentleman? No wonder your band never made it.”

“Yeah. That was the problem.” You will succeed beyond your wildest dreams, she’d said, looking up from his palm. And he’d believed her. He couldn’t imagine he’d ever been that naive. If he’d used the brains God gave him he’d have checked out the “scout” before leaving town.

“See what you can find out at the workshop,” Craig said. “If it’s bogus, you’re doing a public service. You’ll look good around here, too, if you’re still interested in a job.”

“I am.” The idea got his blood pumping like when he’d first opened his practice. Something new. Something important.

They finished the call with a date for racquetball, which lately had been his main social outlet, along with tossing back some brews watching sports on TV with a few friends.

He liked long hours in the office, despite Maggie’s nagging at him. It got too quiet at his house when Dale was out. Besides, he loved what he did. No regrets. Esmeralda had acted as if quitting music had been some kind of crime against humanity.

She’d looked at him so strangely, as though he was the ghost of Christmas past or a relative she’d thought lost at sea.

To be honest, he’d felt an odd vibration, too. Probably just sexual chemistry. Or maybe inhaling all that incense.

What had she told him? Scientific studies on palmar derma-whatever? Please. Psychics and palm readers were such common scammers, they’d practically earned their own fraud division.

Mitch didn’t believe anyone’s future rested in the lines of a palm. Now, fingerprints, on the other hand, those definitely said something about your future. For Dale’s sake, he hoped Craig didn’t find Esmeralda’s anywhere.

3

AT HOME, MITCH FOUND HIS BROTHER on the couch, clutching a bowl of Cap’n Crunch with a big glop of peanut butter on top. Stoned again. Dale mainlined junk food whenever he fired up a bowl.

Dale looked up from the MTV reality show he was watching. “You’re early.” He shoved magazines and a Xbox controller to the floor and patted the cushion for Mitch. His gaze returned to the plasma screen.

Mitch grabbed the remote and thumbed down the sound. He would be casual. Start real easy, no pressure. “So, I stopped by that foundation office—the one you cut out from the paper?”

Slowly, Dale turned away from the screen. “What?”

“The place that gives grants? You wrote down that after-school music program idea? Wholesale instruments, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” He shrugged. No big deal. That was how he’d acted when the music store had failed. Dale treated job ideas like catch-and-release fishing. There would always be another one. Not so, Mitch knew. Some chances didn’t come twice.

“So I found out more information for you.”

“You didn’t need to, but thanks.” Dale was an easy going guy, popular, with lots of women around. Always out and about, distracted from any doubts he had about the way he lived.

Maybe Mitch should have done the tough-love thing and booted him out, but he couldn’t stand the idea of his brother dragging his cookbooks and guitar from friend’s sofa to friend’s sofa. Mitch had the room and the money to help, so he did.

“The grant sounds possible. We need a proposal, though, and here’s the deal—there’s a grant-writing workshop tomorrow we need to go to. They’ll give tips.” And maybe hold a séance? God.

“Tomorrow night? We’ve got a gig.”

“This is at seven. And it’s a foot in the door on the grant.”