soul wanted to swim in hers for hours. “That’s all it’s really been so far.”
“So far?” Apparently, Jesse deems the disclosure worthy of handing my phone back over. He slides the device back across the desk. “That’s a pair of loaded words, my friend.”
It doesn’t take me long to lift my head. “Yeah. I guess so.”
A deeper interrogation brews in his gaze, then across his whole demeanor—but before he can act on it, there’s a stir of movement in his office doorway. I join him in looking up, to where a dark-haired, kohl-eyed beauty awaits his acknowledgment with unnerving stillness.
On paper, Kell Valari is a year younger than Kara—but looking at her now, I’d guess the opposite as truth, by more than that gap. It’s not just the force of the woman’s outward appearance, which is as scrubbed and styled as the rest of the Valari royalty. It’s everything else that informs her arrival. The authority in her stance. The regality of her posture. The confidence in the sole step she ventures toward Jesse.
“Is this a bad time, Professor North?”
Her words sound so much like Kara but not. Where Kara’s voice still wavers in places, sounding uncertain—maybe hopeful?—Kell’s is more assured, as if she already knows the answer to her question. For that matter, every other question in the world too.
In short, she’s spun of everything my best friend craves in a woman. A truth that’s now stamped across his too-beautiful-for-a-man features.
Still, Jesse gamely replies, “It’s a fine time, Miss Valari. What can I do for you?”
The moment would normally be my cue to fake interest in my phone, but the notion is fleeting in light of my fascination with Kara’s sister. Her smoky eyes are now locked on my friend. She pulls in a defined breath through her flared nostrils and then lifts the corner of her mouth. But only by a fraction.
“Well, I’m not here for official reasons,” she confesses. “There’s just something I’m curious about, and you seemed like the best person to consult.” While she talks, she withdraws her cell from the side pouch of her trendy satchel.
“Uhhh…great.” Jesse spreads his hands, looking every inch a flummoxed dork. “I’m all yours. I mean, I’m all ears. Consult away.”
“I took this picture in the middle of that freak storm last night,” she says, moving over to stand next to him. “There was lightning, thunder, and gallons of rain coming out of the sky—but then this.”
Jesse’s stare is confused at first but bugs out as he focuses on her screen. “Is that a—”
“A full constellation, right?” Kell returns quickly. “But I can’t identify it and thought maybe you could.”
Jesse zooms in on the image by spreading his fingers across the screen. “I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like it.”
“I didn’t even notice it until I looked back through my photos this morning,” she says. “I don’t remember seeing it last night when I was taking the shots. It looks like it’s right on top of the clouds. Or maybe…in them?”
“Perhaps it’s just a trick of light. Your phone reflection on the glass, maybe?”
“I was on the balcony of my bedroom,” she explains. “I slid open the door to take the pictures.”
As the two of them huddle over her device’s screen, strange needles in my bloodstream multiply. It’s not just the sight of my best friend getting cozy with a woman so physically similar to the woman I’m crazy about. It’s what they’re talking about. The storm last night. Which pivots my thoughts to everything I was doing during it. Everything I was feeling during it. The sensations that coursed through me, even hours after I dropped Kara at her place. Stirrings that were hot and new but bizarrely familiar.
Like they are now.
“I’m going to leave you two to the spectral sleuthing,” I assert, rising once more. “My office hours start in fifteen minutes, so…”
“Yeah, yeah. Talk to you tonight, man.”
Jesse’s reply is more a distracted rote than a thought, and he doesn’t look up from the image casting an electronic glow across his captivated face. Kell is another story, though. As soon as I clear the threshold of Jesse’s office, she’s not more than three steps behind me.
“Professor Maximus. Do you have a second?”
The pricks in my blood, now feeling more like daggers, encourage me to pretend deafness and keep moving. But my respect for Kara, and the love she no doubt bears for her sister, have me scuffing to a stop.
“Miss Valari.” I conduct half a pivot.