Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics by Carolyn Jourdan Read Free Book Online

Phoebe said. “About the underwear, I mean.”
    He was struggling not to laugh. “What are you seeing now?” she asked.
    “ Nothing . I swear.”
    “ Let’s get it all over with right now,” Phoebe said, “What else don’t I know about you?”
    “That would be the part t hat’s the need to know stuff.”
    “Forget about need-to-know. I’m asking you to tell me right now the stuff that if you don’t tell me now I will want to kill you for later, because you didn’t tell me now.”
    “Wow,” he said. “I s that Appalachian sentence construction? If so, it’s amazing. Nevertheless, we’re not gonna go there ever .”
    Phoebe shivered at the implications. She wondered what would happen if she tried to back out now. He turned to face forward and she looked at his handsome profile. It would be embarrassing to flub this mission. Phoebe was desperate to do a good job.
    S he sat there, frozen with indecision. Then, in the absence of any viable superpowers, she decided to go with her gut, which told her this was a good guy. He was no Christophe, but he was extremely good looking. And he couldn’t see that she was just ordinary looking. It was a unique situation. When she was with him, she would never have to worry about her hair, or anything connected with how she looked.
    She decided that except for being secretive, he was darn near perfect. She started the car, and asked, “Where to?”
    H e pointed toward a dirt road that led toward the highest part of the island.
    * * *
    As they chatted Phoebe called him Professor and he said, “Call me J.J.”
    She’d already forgotten his first name so she asked, “What does that stand for?”
    “ Jean-Jacques,” he said with an accent, so it sounded sort of like Zsa Zsa.
    Jean-Jacques De Blackmere , she repeated to herself. It sounded like something out of a medieval romance novel. To be honest, he looked like something out of medieval romance novel—one of the time travelling ones if you needed to explain the shorts and the t-shirt.

Chapter 7.
    The mysterious professor was a great tour guide. He directed her to all the best lookouts and filled her in on the history of the place. Because of its location and elevation, Lanai was cooler and drier than the other islands. Phoebe’s favorite stop was at the pretty stable where they kept horses for guests at the Lodge at Koele. There was something appealing about the notion of a Hawaiian cowboy.
    At his suggestion t hey had dinner on the terrace of Manele Bay Hotel, overlooking the ocean. Eating perfectly ripe local tropical fruit was a new experience for Phoebe. The papaya was a revelation. There was fresh, expertly-cooked fish as well. It was all pretty fabulous, except for her partner being blind and having some gigantic secret.
    When she took J.J. back home to drop him off, he invited Phoebe to follow him into his immaculate cottage while he got them a couple of light jackets. His house was small, but very well designed with a sleeping alcove and a bathroom off a charming central space that served as the kitchen, dining room, living room, and study. He had very few possessions there and everything was neatly arranged so he could find it easily.
    They went back outside and sat on the porch steps in the dark, listening to the ocean. “After I lost my vision,” J.J. said. “I gradually realized I could still see, but in a different way. It’s not visual, it’s more of a sense of pressure. I learned to perceive shapes, and even landscapes, if I was still enough, and calm. And I could sense if things were solid or hollow.
    “ Then I realized there was another benefit to being blind. It meant that I had a lot of room for memory, far more than sighted people do. Without the massive bombardment to the senses from normal vision, I was left with a big warehouse that I could use for information storage. So, in retrospect, losing my sight turned out to be a blessing for me.
    “ I tell you this so you’ll know I can be of