“Oh, my.”
Corvin looked at Reg. He looked concerned. “Reg? You’re white as a ghost.”
“No ghosts,” Reg joked weakly. “Please.”
“What is it? You’re not sick, are you? You have to be careful not to eat too many too fast…”
“It’s Vivian.” Reg stared at the TV. Vivian wasn’t on the screen. There was nothing in the crawler that addressed whether there had been any injuries in the accident. Or deaths. “I don’t understand…”
“You don’t understand what? And who is Vivian?”
Reg grasped her beer and brought it up to her mouth with numb fingers, probably holding the glass a little too tightly. She took a couple of large swallows of the beer, even though her stomach was too full already and the alcohol didn’t really have anywhere to go except to float on top, triggering heartburn. Reg rubbed her chest, as if that might make it go down.
“Vivian… a new client. She’s the one who nearly got hit by that runaway truck.”
Corvin raised his brows. “Well, she’s having a run of bad luck, isn’t she? Nearly run over by a truck and then a tree comes for a visit? I wouldn’t stand too close to her, if I were you. They say these things come in threes.”
“This was the third. Her house in Colorado was crushed by a boulder.”
“Oh.” He blinked. “The woman does have a serious case of bad luck.”
“Or she’s very lucky,” Reg countered. “Any of those things could have killed her and, as far as I know, she’s walked away without a scratch every time. They’re not saying she was killed or injured by the tree.”
Corvin’s eyes went back to the TV. “They’re not saying her name and they haven’t shown her picture, so how do you know it is this Vivian?”
“Because I read her tea leaves. Three images. Tree, house, kitchen.”
“Well, that does seem to fit,” he agreed. “But we shouldn’t jump to conclusions until we know for sure.”
Reg pulled her phone out of her handbag. She had been careful not to look at it until that moment. It was too easy to get distracted by a message or pop-up. She didn’t want to let the date pass by with her eyes pasted to the phone screen instead of enjoying the time with Corvin. Or to give him the chance to charm her while she was distracted by her screen.
“I hope you don’t mind…” She scrolled through her call log, looking for the unfamiliar number. She tried to pinpoint exactly when Vivian had called her for an appointment. “This one…”
She tapped the number and waited for an answer. The phone went right through to voicemail. Probably turned off. That was what Reg figured she would do if she were in the middle of a disaster being reported on TV and didn’t want to be bothered by a deluge of callers.
“She’s not answering.”
“I wouldn’t either.”
“No,” Reg agreed. She sighed and put her phone back away. “I guess I’ll try again in the morning.”
The date had been nice, and Corvin hadn’t attempted to charm her throughout the evening. Reg knew that he hadn’t reformed. He was just waiting for the right time. And now they were getting to it. She was tense as they drove over the lonely roads that led away from Uncle Mike’s. She watched him for any sign of a threat, already building a protective psychic barrier around herself. He could pull over anywhere, on any of the little gravel roads, into a thick stand of vegetation that would hide the car from view. No one would be able to see or stop him.
Corvin’s hand moved away from the steering wheel, and Reg flinched away. He turned the radio on. “Calm down, Reg. Just relax.”
“I am relaxed.” It was, of course, a bald-faced lie, and Corvin knew it.
He glanced at her a couple of times as he drove, mouth set in a grimly amused smirk. “We’ve had a very pleasant evening. Why ruin it now?”
“I’m not ruining it. I’m just being careful.”
“You don’t need to worry.”
But she knew she did. Of course he would tell her that. He would tell her whatever he thought he needed to, promise whatever she wanted him to, and then take his opportunity.
“I’m driving. What do you think I’m going to do while I’m driving?”
He was already doing it. Despite his denial, the interior of the car was uncomfortably warm and beginning to smell of roses. Reg breathed shallowly through her mouth and focused on blocking him.
When he had gotten into a fight with Damon in the coffee shop, Reg had even been able to freeze him in his tracks. She was that strong.
She could protect herself.