Read Online Mind Reader by Vicki Hinze - Free Book Online Page A

Through the rain, it glowed hazy. The lights inside the houses did, too. But the street itself was eerily dark between the amber lamps, and quiet.
    Caron locked the car door with her elbow, then reached for the box of tissues. Her breath had the window fogging, blocking her view. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees since dark.
    A tap sounded on her window. Caron gasped.
    “Hey, it’s me.”
    “Parker.” She relaxed. He’d gone to get them some thing to eat. She reached over and unlatched the passenger door. “Go around.”
    He did. Caron watched him through the smeared wind shield. He was holding a paper bag.
    Parker cracked the door open, mashed the button to keep the dome light off, then slid in. “It’s really coming down.”
    Rain slicked his hair and ran in rivulets down his face to his throat and disappeared inside his jacket. Watching it, Caron felt her throat muscles tighten and heard her stom ach growl.
    “Good.” Parker slid her a grin. “You are hungry.” He dug inside a crackling sack, then held out something wrapped in white paper. “Hamburger.”
    Caron’s mouth watered. She could smell the still-sizzling meat, the mustard and dill pickles. She loved dill pickles. “Thanks.”
    “You’re welcome.” He pulled a cup from the bag and passed it, too. “Coffee. Black coffee.”
    “Observant.” Caron set the cup on the dash and lifted the top. Steam rose from it and fogged the windshield again. She unwrapped the crinkling white paper from the burger and took a bite. Mmm, it was good. Hot and juicy, just the way she liked. The Butterfinger she’d had for lunch had worn off a long time ago, and it was already after 9:00 p.m.
    Parker pulled a carton from the sack. “Egg fu young,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d like it. So I got you the burger.”
    He’d made the right decision; she wouldn’t have liked it. “I hate vegetables.”
    She took another bite. It didn’t want to go down. There was something too intimate about sharing a meal in a dark car on a rainy night with Parker Simms.
    Parker opened the carton and stabbed his fork into his egg fu young. He splashed brown gravy onto his finger and licked it off.
    Great hands. Long, competent fingers. She stopped eating long enough to sip the coffee. It warmed her throat, and she stopped shivering. But the overall temperature seemed to have spiked fifty degrees, and, she admitted, it had nothing to do with the coffee or with Mother Nature’s whims. Caron gave Parker a wary look. “You’re a health food nut, then? Only vegetables?” It fit. He was a big man, powerfully built.
    “Not really. I just don’t dump chocolate into my body twenty-four hours a day.” He shifted and pulled a candy wrapper from the seat beneath him. “Do you ever eat any thing besides Butterfingers?”
    “Not if I can help it.” Despite an explicit decision not to, she smiled. Inwardly groaning at her weakness, she swung her gaze to Decker’s front door, determined to keep it there and her mind off Parker Simms’s attack on her senses.
    “I guess I owe you an apology, don’t I?”
    Caron turned back to Parker. “An apology?”
    “I’m sorry I clammed up about Charley.”
    She waited, but he didn’t say any more. “And I’m sorry you lost your dad, Parker.” Maybe his pain was worse than her own. He had a lifetime of memories of his father to re call. She had only seven years.
    “He was a good man. I admired him.”
    She wanted to say something, but feared that if she did Parker would stop talking.
    “He was shot,” Parker said softly. “You asked how he died.”
    “That must have been hard. No time for goodbyes.”
    Parker frowned, his gaze on his food. “My mother had a really hard time accepting it. So did my sister, Megan.”
    So had he. Caron brushed a raindrop off his neck. “How old were you?”
    “Twenty. Megan was fifteen.”
    There was bitterness here, deep-rooted and blinding. “What happened?”
    Parker’s shrug