He smiled, a wide flash of white teeth against weather- beaten, freckled skin and sauntered over to me like he hadn’t a care in the world. He stopped right before me so I was nose to his boots, which were just as worn and dusty as his jeans.
“Miss Palomino,” he drawled in his light Louisiana accent. He held out his large hand for me. Without thinking, I put mine in his. It looked so small in comparison.
He lifted his hand up until I was at my feet. I had risen as if he had Jedi powers.
“What…uh, what?” was my very intel igent response.
He squeezed my hand and that action sent two competing feelings through my body. One was uneasiness, that this was a friend of Dex’s, or an ex-friend, but at least an associate to a past that kept trying to rear its head in my life. The other feeling was one of warm shivers because he was oh so handsome, maybe even more so now that we were out of the grime and desolation of Red Fox (where I had met him before), and he and Dex never real y got along to begin with.
Stil , the question remained and I couldn’t help but blurt out, “Maximus! What the hel are you doing here?”
“Why Perry, you haven’t changed at all ,” he said with a smirk. “Do you mind if I steal you away from your, uh, position, for a few moments?”
I looked over at Shay. Even though she was in the middle of talking to a customer, her eyes met mine and she gave me a slight nod and a deliciously bemused smile.
Unfortunately, Ash’s expression was one of utter distrust for the tal , handsome stranger. I couldn’t blame him. Maximus stuck out in Portland like an exotic flower in a bed of weeds (even though half the weeds probably got a similar shirt from Urban Outfitters).
He continued to hold my hand while I awkwardly held the milk-soaked rag in the other and he led me to the corner of the shop where a table sat unoccupied.
In true gentleman fashion, he pul ed out my chair and gestured for me to sit down.
I did, feeling out of it and stupid. He pul ed up the other chair, his long legs sprawling out underneath. He rested his elbows on the table and looked me over slowly.
I made sure to do the same to him. It gave me time to gather my thoughts.
I had only known Maximus for a short amount of time. A weekend, real y, back in October. It was the second Experiment in Terror episode that had Dex and me trotting out to New Mexico to uncover a so-cal ed poltergeist. Only it wasn’t a poltergeist at all , but the work of an evil shaman, or medicine man, and his bewitched lover, who conspired to bring her husband’s ranch to its knees.
Maximus was the one who had set it all up. He had been cal ed in because he is, in some ways, like a ghost whisperer. Obviously he doesn’t have Jennifer Love Hewitt’s boobs in this case, but what he does, or what he says he does, is pick up on the readings, or “imprints,” of the people who died. He can figure out what they were doing and thinking in their last moments of death. Some of Maximus’s “power” went further than that, I believe, so that it was almost a psychic ability. But neither Dex nor I saw any sign of this condition when we were with him in Red Fox.
The only thing Maximus deduced was that “nothing died there,” which could have been a lucky guess. Dex seemed to think that Max was just ful of it and trying to scam the living by saying he could talk with the dead.
I wasn’t sure what to think. In some ways I’m the same, so it’s not like the ability is far-fetched or impossible. On the other hand, I never saw any proof of this power directly. He had proved before that he cared for me and for the Lancasters, yet I was always a bit suspicious of his true motivations. Maximus and Dex had a fal ing out after col ege, after Dex’s ex, Abby… Stop, I shouted to myself. I didn’t want to think about that anymore. Even the sound of her name caused a shiver to run through my already weak body.
“I’m sorry,” Maximus said quickly. He reached out and placed his hand on my arm and gave it a quick squeeze. “I didn’t mean to intrude by dropping by like this. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I squeaked and tried to act more composed.
“I’ve just been sick lately. Nothing to worry about, though.
Anyway, Maximus…what the hel ?”
“Right,” he grinned again and leaned back in his chair. “I forget that this is all new to you.”
I must have shown my confusion on my brow because he continued, “I moved to Portland about six weeks ago. I thought Jimmy or Dex would have told you.”
At the mention of them, my face grew cold as stone.
Jimmy had mentioned something about Maximus and Portland back at the Christmas party in December, but at the time I had been so focused on not pummel ing the snot out of Dex’s girlfriend Jenn, that it hadn’t real y sunk in.
“It must have slipped my mind,” I said somewhat truthful y.
He scratched his cheek, his stubble making a scratchy sound. “No worries. But here I am. I was biding my time, wondering if I should look you up. Then Jimmy gave me the push.”
I raised my brow. “Jimmy gave you the push?”
What did Jimmy have to do with Maximus anyway? It had struck me as weird that he had been the one tel ing Dex and I about him.
“You real y have been out of the loop, haven’t you darlin’?”
I wasn’t a fan of the word darling, but it sounded oh-so charming coming out of his mouth.
“I’m sure if you’ve been talking to Jimmy, you know what happened.”
He nodded with sympathy. “Yes, I do. I heard. That’s partly why I’m here.”
“Here, in Portland?”
“No. I was always planning on moving here, or at least the Pacific Northwest, anyway. But I got in touch with Jimmy a few months ago, inquiring if there was any work for me.
Dex and I did go to the same school, remember. well , Jimmy wasn’t too sure about me and my ways, I could tel .
But then a position became…available.”
I looked at him sharply. “What position?”
“We want you back on the show.”
Whoa.
“Show…,” I stammered. “Experiment in Terror?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, and leaned forward across the table. He smel ed like cinnamon.
“I quit the show.” Boy, did I ever, in the world’s most dramatic quitting scene.
“We know. But the reason you quit wasn’t because of the show itself. It was because of who the cameraman was.”