Lucca by Karen Michelle Nutt Read Free Book Online Page B

sight.
Too bad, he would have enjoyed seeing her lovely face one more time
before he headed off for bed.
    His fingers flew over the keyboard of his
laptop. He found the link to Shakespeare in the Park and
scanned the information about the theatrical group and the group’s
past productions.
    It must be his lucky day. Tryouts were
tonight. He could stop by and see if his neighbor spent time with
the theatrical group. For curiosity sake only , he lied to
himself. His running across the woman twice in one night had to
mean something. Right? “I don’t even know her name.” Why hadn’t he
thought to ask? “She didn’t ask for my name either,” he grumbled.
She wasn’t interested in him. A stab of disappointment settled in
his chest before he could push the emotion away.
    Hell, with the way he behaved around her,
the female was better off keeping her distance. He remembered how
her gaze wavered over him in suspicion. He couldn’t blame her for
being leery of him. Even he found their chance meetings peculiar.
If the Hashasheen demons didn’t send her, then he would have to
believe Fate decided to be pushy.
    “ It is not in the stars to hold our
destiny, but in ourselves ,” he quoted Shakespeare with a snort.
“You got that right, Will.” Lucca liked to control matters. Screw
Fate. If Fate wanted to play matchmaker then he would choose
the when and where . “I’m becoming a sap. Matchmaking,” he
ground out the word as if it were a disease. “Next, I’ll be
searching for my soul mate.”
    He reached for his coffee mug on his desk,
his gaze picking up the flashing light on his answering machine. He
reached over to push the button.
    “Lucca, I need you to come by my place. It’s
urgent. Whatever you do, come alone. There’s someone you must meet
before… Well, there is someone you must meet. I believe you’ll be
pleased.”
    He recognized the voice as Leroy Fennings, a
Watcher. He’d been living in the human realm for over fifty years.
He owned a coffee shop within the Orange Circle, the historical
section of the City of Orange. A few weeks ago, Leroy asked him to
case his shop, thought someone was shadowing him. Lucca had sat in
front of the place a few nights in a row with no activity. He
brushed the paranoia off as Leroy spending too much time with
humans and his overindulgence of watching CSI programs on
television.
    The time stamp on Leroy’s message read 6:45
this morning. Lucca usually opened his office early, but after last
night, he wasn’t up to sitting in an empty office, hoping for
someone to drag themselves in with a sappy story and a stack of
money. He posed as a private detective on this realm with all the
credentials of a former cop from the Bay area. The elders allowed
him to keep the established job, while living out his banishment
from the Otherworldly realm. Learn to live with the humans,
respect them…blah blah blah. He didn’t see the elders cozying
up to the human population, but then again Eli Grigori gave out the
sentence. Just because he almost killed the guy… almost being the important word here, Lucca had been condemned. The
Nephilim still breathed and was living the happily-ever-after with his human mate, according to Gideon
anyway. As far as Lucca was concerned, his sentence shouldn’t have
been so severe.
    Eli forged a new path for the condemned
Fallen Angels. They no longer were forced to observe and record
history. They no longer followed the rules set for them centuries
ago. They could fraternize with humans and even take one as a
mate.
    The Watchers were fools to believe the
besotted Eli’s word. To find a soul mate, one had to have a soul.
The Angels sent down to earth during the time of Enoch had no
souls, or so they were led to believe. Hell, he believed it. His
father was proof enough, not a compassionate bone in his angelic
body, but what if his assumption had been wrong? Maybe compassion
had nothing to do with possessing a soul. He shook his head. The
lack of it