The boy shrieked and laughed, tried to wiggle out of her arms, but from the look of pure joy on his face, it was clear he didn’t want to be anywhere else.
A memory flashed in Rafe’s mind as he sat there, one of him and Lisa and that steamy hotel room in Milan. And he instantly understood what the boy was feeling. When he’d been in Lisa’s arms, he hadn’t wanted to be anywhere else, either.
With a smile, Lisa leaned back and glanced down at the scruffy-haired boy. Her eyes lit up as she teased and tickled and gazed into irises the same color as her own. In one swift moment her whole face transformed from stunning to downright gorgeous.
And Rafe’s chest did that weird tightening thing again.
Me. Me. Me. Look at me like that.
He stared at her, consumed by the sparkle in her eyes.
Just once. Just long enough so I can know what it feels like.
Lisa dropped the boy on his feet, tucked her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and, stepping toward the stove, laughed at something her brother-in-law said. The boy tore out of the kitchen after his cousins.
And just like that, the moment passed, as if it had never even happened in the first place.
Rafe blew out a shaky breath and took another long pull from the bottle in his hand. What the hell was happening to him? He needed to get away from these strange people before he got sucked into their craziness. Or, at the very least, he needed to stop looking at Lisa, because for some reason the woman was doing a number on him he just couldn’t explain.
Theirs was a business arrangement, plain and simple. He didn’t have any desire to figure out what made her tick. God knows, he didn’t need that complication on top of everything else.
At least that’s what he told himself. All the way through dinner.
This was much better.
Rafe followed Lisa up the narrow stairs from the third floor of her parents’ house toward the attic. His stress level was already dropping, just by being out of the infernal chaos downstairs.
“You look a little shell-shocked, Sullivan.” Lisa pushed the door open with her hip and flashed a smug smile over her shoulder as she stepped into the dark attic.
“My ears are ringing,” he muttered.
“I warned you about tagging along.” She pulled a dangling cord in the middle of the room. Light from an unshaded bulb above flooded the area, blinding Rafe for a swift moment.
As his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he slowly took in the surroundings. Boxes were stacked four high where they met the steadily sloping ceiling and the naked trusses. Several trunks sat against the far wall just under a round window that let in a smattering of street light from below. A rickety rocking chair, an old coat hanger, framed art and pictures lay scattered around the space. The scent of mothballs was strong in the room, the sounds of cars passing on the street below easily discernible, drowning out the voices from downstairs.
Lisa moved to a pile of boxes in the corner. “I think this is most of it. Some of this is my research, some of it’s Doug’s.” She hefted a box and pulled it toward the old rocking chair.
Rafe took a step toward the mountain of boxes as she sat and started going through papers. He tipped his head and read Lisa’s name written in black pen across the cardboard. “So what exactly are we looking for?”
Lisa fingered papers in her hand. “There should be several boxes with research on the Furies. Doug kept binders and binders of information. He was anal about recording everything, keeping careful notes, doing in-depth research.”
He looked over his shoulder. Light spilled across her hair, casting her face in shadows. She didn’t meet his gaze, but the way she’d said Stone’s name made Rafe automatically dislike the guy.
He’d already figured out there’d been more than just a professional relationship between the deceased professor and his prize student. Why else would she have all his crap in her attic? And why was she suddenly interested in the Furies now, fifteen years after his death?
Shaking off those questions because he was sure asking any would be like diving into shark-infested waters with a severed artery, he turned back to the box, lifted the lid and pawed through a pile of old clothes. Near the bottom he found a black and red cheerleading outfit. A smile slinked