Page 64 of It takes a Psychic

“Thank you for the heads-up,” Oliver said.

“Don’t try to talk business with him. Just take a look at that old file he wants to sell. If you decide to buy it, call me. I’ll take the money. I handle all of Mr. Thacker’s finances.”

That did not sound good, Leona thought, but she kept quiet.

“There will be documents to sign,” Oliver said. He adjusted his glasses and gave Harp a sharp look. “Mr. Thacker’s signature will be required.”

“That’s fine, just tell him where to sign,” Harp said. “I’ll handle the rest.” She peered at Oliver. “You remembered the terms are cash only?”

“I remembered,” Oliver said. He patted the messenger bag.

Harp opened the door and raised her voice. “The museum guy who wants to examine the Bluestone file is here, Mr. Thacker. He’s got his secretary with him.”

“Consultant,” Leona said.

“Yeah, right,” Harp muttered. “And a bit more on the side, according to what I heard.”

“Excuse me?” Leona said, putting a lot of ice into her voice.

“Edith called to tell me you two were on the way here. She said you had booked two rooms but only used one last night.”

Leona flushed. “Our private life is none of your business.”

Oliver cleared his throat. “Uh, Leona, we’re here to examine a file. We don’t have time—”

She ignored him. A woman could take only so much.

“There seems to be a misunderstanding,” she said through her teeth.

Harp ignored her. “I don’t give a damn about your sleeping arrangements.” She waved Leona and Oliver into the room. “Like I said, call me if you decide to buy the file.”

Oliver gripped Leona’s arm and steered her into the library. “What happens if we give Mr. Thacker the money?” he said over his shoulder.

“He’ll stash it somewhere in the library,” Harp said. “I’ll never find it, so it won’t get deposited. Might as well burn it in the fireplace. It will disappear either way.”

She stepped back into the hall and closed the door with a thud that sounded uncomfortably like the crack of doom.

“What a dreadful woman,” Leona fumed.

“Let it go. We’ve got work to do.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t know how it feels to wake up one day and discover that everyone you know and some you don’t are gossiping about you. I’ve already lost one career to the rumor mill at Hollister. I can’t afford to have my new one sabotaged before it even gets properly launched. I need this new gig to work and I…Holy shit.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Oliver said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The piles of artifacts, papers,books, and assorted junk stacked in the hallway had been merely the foothills, Oliver decided, the prelude to the towering mountain peaks and narrow canyons in the library. Footpaths that were barely wide enough to allow for single-file walking formed a maze across the room. The atmosphere was freighted with heavy waves of energy, a lot of which felt unstable.

“And we thought it was hot out in the hallway,” Leona said. She sounded stunned.

The only good thing about the scene in the Thacker house library was that it had distracted her from the unfortunate exchange with Harp, Oliver thought.

“If the rest of the house is this bad, it’s amazing the whole place hasn’t exploded or caught fire.” He looked around. “I’ve been in collectors’ basements and vaults, and the storage rooms of a few museums that I thought were dangerously overcrowded, but this beats anything I’ve ever seen.”

“There are rules and guidelines for handling antiquities,” Leona said. “Every professional knows better than to pile so many objects of unknown power together in a confined space like this. Talk about a disaster waiting to happen.”

He watched her out of the corner of his eye, trying to read her mood. She had been a mystery since they had awakened. He was reasonably certain the sex had been good for her, but he realized now that he had been expecting a change in their relationship this morning. He hadn’t known what that change would look like—just something,anything, that indicated they’d had more than a casual one-night stand.

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