Danni and Vincent share a psychic bond--and a Destiny.
Since an accident on her fifth birthday, Daniela Blessing has had the ability to see crimes of passion and violence through the eyes of victims, and often, to step beyond the victim and reach into the twisted minds of the perpetrators. For Danni, it has been a mixed blessing. She knows it’s in her best interest to keep her abilities secret; particularly considering how she has sometimes dealt with the unsavory information her unwilling mind receives. Danni thinks of herself as a simple handmaiden of Fate, but when Vincent Gabriele accosts her one sunny morning in a park he accuses her of eye for an eye justice. He’s willing to keep her secrets safe—if she helps him find his estranged sister. Despite his blackmail tactics, Danni would love to help him, except her psychic abilities evaporate whenever Vincent is around. As truths emerge unlocking the mysteries of Vincent’s past, some of Danni’s unexplained history is also revealed. Not only have they been intrinsically tied in the past, but their future is about to become a Destiny neither of them expected.
Excerpt
“Please don’t insult me with any more denials. I told you I’d done my research. Even a rank amateur could connect Danni Best to Daniela Blessing. I assure you, I’m no amateur.”
No, the determined slash of his jaw made it clear he’d be a man who took the most direct, professional approach to whatever he sought. “Who are you?”
“I’m a man with questions.”
Questions he obviously thought she could answer. Danni decided the most expedient way to rid herself of him would be to let him ask. “I doubt I can help you, but go ahead and ask.”
“As I understand things, it’s common in the uncommon world of psychics for a gifted person to experience the victims pain. To grab hold of a raggedy teddy bear and be able to find a lost kid. To feel an unexplained pain or connection, and seek out the repressed or abused woman.”
Danni tried to laugh, but it emerged a feeble warble. “Been reading your pulp paperbacks, have you? I’m sure I saw that somewhere, too. Believe me, I’m not in the habit of carting around stuffed toys, or rescuing little Timmy’s from wells.”
“Not on record, anyway.”
His certainty infuriated her. Obviously, no matter what she said he had no intention of backing off. “Look, Mr. Gabriel, if your kid is missing standard procedure is to call the cops. Their standard procedure will be to blame your ex.”
“No kid. No ex. And no damn luck with the cops.” He delivered the statement blandly, but then another of the rumbling chuckles spiked the hair on her arms. “Didn’t you know that?”
Thoroughly frustrated by the conversation and growing wearier by the minute, Danni snorted. “What, you think it works that way? Like freakin’ satellite TV or something. Three thousand channels of other people’s misery and secrets I can tune in to on a whim.” She made the mistake of looking at him again. Beneath his smirk, she sensed the vulnerability of a wound he couldn’t heal and couldn’t quit picking at. Again she resisted the impulse to touch him and discover what had ripped open the chasm she felt echoing inside him.
Brokenhearted guys weren’t her thing. There were much more dangerous situations to exhaust her so-called talents trying to mend. “I know a lot less about you than you appear to know about me, Mr. Gabriel. And that’s still more than I want to know. Are we done now?”
“If you’ll confirm something for me, we can be. For now.”
She didn’t like that “for now” part, but she gave a small nod. “I might.”
“Various things I’ve discovered have led me to believe you can reach past the victim and grasp hold of the victimizer. Am I right?”
Relief washed her like summer rain, loosening the tension in her aching muscles enough to make her sag. He was a reporter or something, just satisfying his curiosity. He didn’t actually want her to find someone. She’d feared he’d approached her to hunt down a cheating spouse. Then she’d had the idiotic notion she’d been about to get busted by the psychic police or something for relieving other young girls of the disturbing visions that had plagued her as a child. She didn’t steal their abilities, per se. She’d just discovered a way to compartmentalize them until the girls reached an age where they could choose to reopen the door—or leave it forever locked.
She nodded again. Her voice feeble and horse when she admitted, “Sometimes one. Sometimes the other. Often both.”
“That’s pretty rare. Right?”
A zealot’s excitement seemed to light him from within, unnerving her all over again. She shrugged. “Not like I’m a member of a secret club where we compare notes or anything. I can only tell you what I experience.”
“And you can feel—or see, or whatever—the perpetrators?”
“Sometimes,” she said in qualification, not bothering to add the odds were about ninety-nine-point-nine when she tried.
He actually whooped like an excited kid at a ball game. “Excellent. Then you’re going to help me find someone.”
Again, she had the urge to slap him, or maybe toss him out on the tarmac and throw a few crescent kicks at his thick scull for his arrogant assumption she’d do whatever he ordered. “Why would I do that?”
“Because, Miss Blessing, February twentieth of this year when you went out of town you weren’t actually at a symposium on high needs children.”
Danni said nothing. She couldn’t have even if she’d wanted to. Her stomach had planted itself firmly in her throat. He’d been tracking her for six months?
He delivered a single nod, as though he’d read her panicked thoughts. “I know where you were, and I know what you did there. While I personally view your actions as quite heroic, I’m not at all certain the authorities would see things the same way. What do you think?”
A young widow joins her aunt’s house-restoration project in the wilderness, determined to take a stand for independence, but two men have different plans for her—and so does God.
He needs a wife. She needs a reason to trust him. He fell for her at first sight. She, not so much.
If you’re into engaging romantic stories with heart and humor, together with complex family dynamics, you’ll love His Practically Perfect Pla
