The smile faded. “We had an appointment.”
“I know. But, my…my mother is here. I didn’t expect her.”
“Who is it, Amanda?” her mother called from the living room.
Jacob raised a dark eyebrow. “Your mother? I would love to meet her.”
She almost smiled at how inappropriate that idea was. “Not a good idea.”
“I disagree.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
He leveled his gaze with hers. “You said we could talk. We need to talk. I don’t want to put this off any longer. Please, let me come in.”
Being this close to him was dangerous, but she finally stepped aside to let him into her house. As he brushed past her, the briefest contact brought with it a dangerous storm warning for her growing inner hurricane.
THE WOMAN looked so much like an older version of Amanda he would have known it was her mother without being told. After all, he’d memorized every nuance of her daughter’s face. He couldn’t erase it from his mind if he wanted to.
She shared Amanda’s beautiful smile, as well. “You must be David,” she said. “Amanda, he is very handsome.”
Amanda moved toward her mother’s side, carefully avoiding Jacob’s eyes. “No, this isn’t David, actually. This is…uh…Jacob Caine. He’s a coworker of mine. Jacob, this is my mother, Madeleine Harper.”
The smile faded from Madeleine’s face and was replaced with an expression of disapproval. “I see. A coworker, you say?”
Amanda nodded and studied the floor.
“Great to meet you,” Jacob said. “And thanks for calling me handsome.”
Amanda’s lips quirked at that as she repressed a smile.
So this was the woman who didn’t approve of her daughter and had made her feel abnormal because of her abilities, huh? He could barely believe what Amanda had told him last night, that her father had abandoned their family because he couldn’t deal with having a psychically gifted daughter.
The thought made his blood boil. Who would turn their back on their family for a stupid reason like that? No wonder Amanda had major hang-ups about what she could do. She’d never been properly nurtured. Nobody had told her while growing up that there was absolutely nothing wrong or abnormal about her.
Instead she’d grown up feeling like a freak of nature for being psychic, and that was so deeply embedded in her that she couldn’t see any differently now that she was an adult.
She couldn’t see how wonderful and amazing she was. Well, he could see it. He could see it only too clearly.
Amanda’s forehead was furrowed in a frown and she raised her gaze to his.
Shit, she heard me, he thought. Why do I have to think so much?
Madeleine was studying them a bit too intently. “Where is David right now, dear?”
Amanda’s shoulders stiffened. “On his way back to his office in New York.”
“He works on Sundays?”
“He’s very dedicated to his job. He owns the company. He’ll be back for my going-away party on Tuesday night and then he’ll stay to help me move out on Wednesday.”
Madeleine looked satisfied with that answer. “He sounds like a wonderful man.”
Yeah, Jacob thought. Wonderfully, boringly normal. You’d definitely approve of the wonderfully, boringly normal life he plans to give your daughter.
That earned him a sharp glare from Amanda, but he ignored it. It amused him a little that he could still push her buttons without even saying a word out loud.
“You said you came here for a meeting?” Madeleine directed the question at Jacob.
“I did.”
“I’m curious about what kind of a meeting my daughter had planned for a Sunday morning just as her boyfriend has left town.”
Jacob repressed a smile. “It is unusual timing, isn’t it?”
Madeleine wasn’t amused. “I know I’m not a large part of my daughter’s life anymore, but I am fully invested in her happiness. And I’m also a quick study. From what I gather, she’s found that happiness with David. Enough so that she’s leaving this horrid little town to be with him.”
“She hasn’t left yet,” Jacob said. “Not for three more days.”
“Jacob and I have a case to discuss, that’s all,” Amanda interjected.
“Haven’t you quit your job?”
“Yes, but—”
“Honestly,” Madeleine waved her hand. “If it were me, I’d want to get as far away from this insanity the moment I was given the opportunity.”
“Would you?” Jacob said dryly.
She fixed him with a steady gaze. “I would.”
He didn’t have to know Amanda’s mother very long to get a good sense of her. The woman had lived a hard life. She was a survivor. She had a very fixed idea of what was right and wrong and it would take a lot to make her deviate from that opinion. He didn’t think she was a bad woman, but there was a hardness to her, an edge, that he’d seen glimpses of in Amanda herself. This was Amanda in twenty-five years. This was Amanda if she repressed her abilities because she didn’t accept herself. No passion, no spark, just somebody who thought they knew best.
“I think you should leave,” Amanda said aloud. She’d listened in on his thoughts and hadn’t liked what she’d heard.
“Do you really want me to leave?” he asked, wanting to coax the truth out of her.
“Yes,” she responded.
Sometimes the truth hurt.
“It was a pleasure meeting you,” he lied and held a hand out to Madeleine, who shook it since it was the polite thing to do.
“Likewise,” she said.
He squeezed her hand and opened up his mind to hers—his psychic ability that helped him get a read on people. It was the reason he’d been recruited to work for PARA, after all. His empathic ability was similar to reading someone’s mind, but not exactly. After all, one could lie with their thoughts, but they couldn’t lie with their subconscious. And that’s what he tapped into.