Free Reilly's Return by Tami Hoag Page A

“You won’t regret it. I promise.”
    He leaned down, intending to drop a quick kiss on her lips, but froze when Candi appeared in the doorway with a knowing smile on her face.
    “A—hem,” she said.
    Jayne bolted back away from Reilly, blushing guiltily. Pat just grinned and chuckled, utterly unrepentant.
    Candi snickered. “Pardon me, Jayne, but your palmist is here.”
    “Oh. Fine.” Jayne rubbed her hand against her belly as if trying to erase the incriminating evidence of Reilly’s touch. She didn’t even attempt to meet his eyes as she scooted toward the door. “I’ll let you get settled in then, Reilly.”
    “Right,” he said, eyes twinkling as he winked at the teenager.
    In the hall Jayne shot a stern look at Candi’s smug expression. “There wasn’t anything going on, you hear?”
    “Oh, I’m sure.” Candi laughed sarcastically. “Jayne, it’s okay if you’ve got the hots for the guy. I mean, you’re thirty-something, and he’s the sexiest man in the universe. Go for it.”
    “He’s just a friend.”
    The girl rolled her kohl-ringed eyes and nodded, her black-and-orange spikes bobbing. “Uh-huh.”
    Reilly lounged in the doorway to his room, his broad shoulder propped against the doorjamb, his arms crossed over his chest. He smiled to himself as he watched Jayne and her pregnant punk descend the stairs.
    “Just a friend?” he murmured. “We’ll see about that, Jaynie.”

FIVE
    “P AT R EILLY’S HERE. He came, just like he said he would,” Jayne said. She nibbled on her thumbnail and looked to the one friend she had confided in about her attraction to Reilly, the one friend she had always confided in.
    Bryan Hennessy sat on a stack of hay bales in the llama barn, his brow furrowed in concentration as he held a dollar bill out in front of him. His big hands moving with surprising grace, he made the bill disappear, then tried to bring it back. What appeared in his hand was a dilapidated silk daisy with a bent stem. He frowned.
    “That’s eleven dollars I’ve lost. I’m going to go broke on that trick,” he muttered to himself.
    “Bryan, did you hear me?” Jayne asked, losing her patience.
    “What? Who?” Bryan pushed his glasses up on his nose and regarded Jayne with solemn, serious eyes as he tucked the daisy into his shirt pocket. “Reilly’s here, did you say? Hmm…. Do you want him here?”
    The word
no
teetered on the tip of her tongue, but didn’t quite spill out. It wouldn’t have been the absolute truth, and Bryan would have known that. Even in his current state of emotional pain, he could read her with uncanny ease. Jayne had long ago accepted the fact that she and Bryan were kin on a spiritual plane that transcended ordinary relationships. She seldom questioned or fought against anything highly spiritual. There was no point to it. A person’s karma was a person’s karma, after all.
    “I don’t know what I want,” she admitted, almost wincing as conflicting emotions clashed inside her.
    She bit her lip and wound her bracelet around her wrist. Bryan leaned his back against a thick post. She often found him in the barn trying to regain his lost talent for magic tricks or just sitting and staring at the llamas. He seemed to have lost all interest in his work as a psychic investigator, even though he was in demand all over the world as a renowned expert on ghosts and other suchphenomena. It tore Jayne’s heart out to see him suffering, but she knew from experience he needed time to grieve over his wife’s death.
    Bryan had come to Anastasia from Scotland two months after his wife Serena’s death, needing the support of his friends. They had given it to him without question or reserve over the past few weeks. Jayne had given him use of her dairy parlor, which she had converted into a guest house, so he would have privacy but be near enough for her to keep an eye on. It seemed ironic that now she was coming to him for advice and support.
    She had slipped out