“But now you’re so much more interested. I can tell.”
She laughed, just as he knew she would. “You’re awful,” she repeated, “and we should get going. Are you taking those fries?”
“No, the birds can have them.” He indicated the gulls that walked on the sand and the wooden patio waiting for them to leave. “I want the lasagna, remember?”
Malichai stood when she did and held out his hand to her. She took it without hesitation, which pleased him. She started toward the stairs that led to the beach, the same direction the couple from the bed-and-breakfast had taken. As they walked back toward the B and B, he moved closer to her and drew her hand to his chest, pressing her palm against his heart for a moment.
He felt her look, but he kept walking, observing around him, not her. It felt right just walking with her. Being with her. That was a new experience for him as well. It was the simplest thing, just strolling together, neither feeling the need to break their silence. They got all the way to the bed-and-breakfast before she stopped and pulled her hand from his.
“What is it, honey?” He slid his fingers around the nape of her neck, but his thumb dared to slide over her exquisite cheekbone.
“I just want you to know, I like your sweet.”
She leaned into him and pressed a kiss to his jaw, just a brief touch of her lips against that inevitable shadow that darkened the lower half of his face. His heart felt as though it had stopped in his chest while his entire body absorbed the feel of those lips on his skin. That fast, she turned away from him and was gone down the hall, disappearing into the part of the house that was off-limits to guests. He stared after her for a longer time than necessary and was grateful none of his fellow GhostWalkers were around. They would never have allowed him to hear the end of it.
Malichai headed to his room. This time he met two men coming out of their room. They were new at the B and B, arrivals sometime that day. He took his phone out of his pocket on the pretense of reading text messages. It wasn’t like he didn’t have plenty to read. Mostly they were from his brothers telling him he was going to get a beating if he didn’t answer soon. They wanted to know if he was all right.
Instead of answering, he snapped several pictures discreetly, as he’d done for every visitor he’d run into. It was a necessary evil. He’d even turned in Amaryllis’s picture without saying a word about what he suspected at times—that she was physically and psychically enhanced, just as he was. If she really was, that meant Whitney had sent her on a mission, or she had escaped his compound and was on the run.
She didn’t appear to be on the run and she had been working over a year at the bed-and-breakfast. That long ago, he’d never even considered a vacation in sunny California. It didn’t make sense that there was some big conspiracy involving him.
He noted that the two newcomers watched him as he came down the hall to his room. They parted, forcing him to walk between them, and still stared at him as he closed the door. He supposed some men might find him intimidating. Although, more likely, they were sent to kill him. That was definitely more in his wheelhouse. Great, now he was getting paranoid about all the other guests.
At least none of them were flirting too much with Amaryllis. That would get under his skin, and he wasn’t a good enough man for others to give him that kind of itch that could only be scratched the bayou way. He wasn’t a jealous man, so feeling that way—a little murderous and ready to fight—was another new experience for him.
He lay down on the bed and eased his leg up. Stretching it out hurt, but taking his weight off it definitely felt better than walking around on it. His thigh protested, as did his hip and calf. Ghost-Walkers healed faster than normal, and although he seemed to be fairly healed on the outside, the leg just didn’t want to get back to normal. He was swimming the way he was supposed to, but that was the only time his leg felt halfway decent.
Rubin, a psychic surgeon, had healed it from the inside out. Joe, a psychic healer, had worked on him numerous times. An orthopedic surgeon had performed a miraculous surgery on him. He’d gone through physical therapy. He’d always healed very fast, and with his enhancements, his ability to do so had more than tripled.
The physical therapist had told him no strenuous workouts. He was expected to walk on the injured leg, but not push it—to stop when the pain level rose and to keep those walks short, no running—which was a joke for a man like him. They wanted him swimming in the ocean every day. He was an excellent swimmer—a bullet in the water—and they thought that would help to strengthen the leg without the weight of his body on it. Walking in the sand every day was supposed to help. With all the therapy, psychic healing and surgeries, his leg should have been in excellent condition, but it hurt like hell.