Loyal pivoted back to face her. “Maybe your…abilities, are really you applying what you learned to make educated guesses.”
She shook her head at his typical skeptic attempt to give a logical explanation to what he refused to believe in. “You’re walking a thin line.”
“I’m trying to understand so it makes sense.”
“I’ve done what I do since I was a little girl, Loyal, and I knew nothing about psychology and human behavior back then. Listen, I’m not going to stand here and try to convince you when you obviously don’t have an open mind about what I do.”
“I’m used to dealing in numbers. They’re concrete,” he said. “I can see them and touch them. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around something I can’t prove.”
She crossed her arms and tried a new angle. “Do you believe in God?”
He looked surprised by the question. “Yes.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“No.”
His smile told her he knew where she was going, but she continued anyway. “Touched him?”
“Of course not.”
“So, you have no concrete proof of his existence, yet you still believe he exists?”
“Do you?”
“I do, but we’re not talking about me.”
“Okay, yeah, I get what you’re saying.” He glanced toward the table and then back to her. “Show me.”
“Show you what?”
He pulled out one of her two chairs and sat down. “Give me a reading.”
She didn’t move. “I already told you I can’t read you.”
“Are you sure? Because you frickin’ nailed it the other night about Grayson.”
“That was more psychology than psychic,” she admitted. “Besides, even if I could, I don’t feel like I have to prove anything to you.”
“You don’t want to make me believe?”
“I can’t make you do anything, Loyal, nor would I want to. It’s your choice to make, not mine.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. Which puts us back at you telling me what you do and how you do it. Open my mind to the possibilities.”
She eyed him with annoyance, wondering why he was so hell bent on getting her to talk about it right now. “I kind of already explained it earlier.”
“You feel things and see things.” He sat back, palms and eyebrows lifted in exasperation. “That really clears it up.”
Fine. That was somewhat vague. As he rested his palms on his legs and watched her expectantly, she huffed out a breath and stalked over to where he sat. “That’s my chair.”
“Does it matter?”
She stared him down to let him know it did, but that ended up being a huge mistake when all her frustration was swept away by an intense wave of awareness. Her heart rate sped up as heat flooded her body before pooling low in her belly.
The bob of his Adam’s apple told her he felt the energy shift, too. So did the obvious bulge behind his zipper.
All her arguments from earlier were incinerated, carried up and away on a wisp of imaginary ash. She wanted to see and feel things with him again. Denying what was in her heart and soul, suppressing her true essence…she didn’t want to become that person again.