Sizzle and Burn

sensed her withdrawing a little, pulling back into her safe zone.
    “Jenna was very beautiful,” he said, determined to plow on to the end now that he had started. “But she was so much more than merely beautiful. She was smart. Well educated. She seemed to know what I wanted even before I knew it myself, in bed and out.”
    Raine tugged the sheet up to her chin. “I see.”
    “She charmed my family and my friends. She could be sexy or sultry or glamorous or playful, depending on my mood. She enjoyed the same things I enjoyed from music to food to vacations. We never argued. We laughed at the same things. She never complained when I was obsessed with a case for days or weeks on end. She was always—”
    “Perfect,” Raine supplied neutrally.
    “Yes. She and my mother planned the perfect wedding together. And the perfect honeymoon. I told myself that I should be the happiest man on the face of the earth. But I wasn’t.”
    “Perfection wasn’t enough for you?” There was a noticeable edge in Raine’s voice now.
    He met her eyes. “Things were just too damn perfect. I finally decided Jenna was a little too good to be true.”
    “You tried to find flaws in the perfect woman?”
    “Yes.”
    Raine sat up, still clutching the sheet. “For heaven’s sake, why?”
    “Because at some point I finally acknowledged that I wasn’t in love with the woman everyone said was perfect for me and I had to know what was wrong.”
    “With her?”
    “No,” he said. “With me.”
    “Well?”
    “I started looking into her perfect past. When I got beyond the data in the computers, which was pristine, I finally began to spot some holes in the pattern of perfection. My first thought was that she had simply covered up a few secrets.”
    “You took that as a good sign?”
    “Believe it or not, it came as a relief to know that maybe she was human.”
    “What happened?” Raine was looking reluctantly fascinated.
    “I was careful but Jenna was a high-level intuitive talent. She began to suspect that I was having doubts about her. She got very worried.”
    “Did she confront you?”
    “You could say that. She tried to poison me.”
    Raine stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you serious?”
    “The only thing that saved me was my talent. She put the poison in a bottle of my favorite scotch, the kind I drink when the visions are really bad.”
    “How did you discover the poison before you drank it?”
    “She took the bottle down from the cupboard for me that night. There was just something about the way she handled it. I watched her pour the scotch and I knew she intended to kill me.”
    “Good grief. I don’t know what to say.” Raine paused, frowning. “What happened when you refused to drink the scotch?”
    “She went a little mad. I don’t know how else to describe it. She threw herself at me, going for my eyes with her nails. She screamed she was perfect for me over and over again. I finally managed to restrain her. I called one of the Society’s doctors. He concluded that she’d had some sort of psychotic break. We took her to a private clinic run by the Society.”
    “What happened?”
    “Two days later she was certifiably insane. She was put on a suicide watch but she managed to kill herself anyway.”
    Raine’s eyes widened in horror. “You said that kind of sudden spin into insanity is typical of what happens when someone who is addicted to the formula is deprived of it.”
    “Yes.”
    “Zack, are you telling me that you were almost poisoned by a member of Nightshade?”
    “Nightshade didn’t want to poison me,” he said quietly. “The intent was for Jenna to marry me.”
    Understanding dawned on her intelligent face. “Of course. If they could have married off an agent to a member of the Jones family, they would have had the perfect spy.”
    “They had prepared a near-perfect cover for her and managed to hack into the arcanematch files to plant it. In addition, they got into the Society’s genealogical database to set up a solid history for her, too.”
    “How did Nightshade figure out how to construct the perfect woman for you?” Raine asked.
    “They hacked into arcanematch and got my profile out of the database. Then they built a profile for Jenna that appeared to be nearly one hundred percent compatible. Jenna was chosen because she was not only very beautiful, she was an excellent actress. She was also a high-level intuitive talent like my mother. They jacked up her natural