“Good.” He sat across from her, studying her from dark eyes that seemed to see through her. The feeling was discomfiting, and she wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. “At least there’s one person I didn’t scare.”
Connie bit her lip, guilt edging into anger’s place. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been worried to death.”
“Of course,” he answered. “You can yell at me if you want.”
His words acted like a pin, puncturing the last of her tension. A sigh escaped her as she rested her forehead on her hand. “You didn’t find anything at all?”
“No.”
The word hung on the air, bald and uncompromising, but its very brevity seemed to say something. Connie lifted her head. “There was someone there.”
His face took on that carved look again, as if it had turned to stone.
“What did you find?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “I don’t usually hallucinate. My life depends on seeing what’s really there. I thought I saw something. I don’t like being wrong.”
That was a whole mouthful, Connie thought. A butterfly returned to her stomach.
Julia apparently missed the subtext, however, because she said kindly, “We all make mistakes, Ethan. God never made a perfect man or woman.”
“No,” he agreed. “Thank God.”
* * *
Later, much later after Julia and Sophie had gone to bed and to sleep, Connie found Ethan sitting up in the darkened living room. He hadn’t even spread out the blankets and sheets she’d given him earlier.
“Are you going to stay up all night?” she asked. “You need some sleep.”
“You’re one to talk.” He turned in the darkness, and she caught the glimmer of his eyes. In the faint misty light that came through the sheer curtains, he became a figure of myth, a tall man with long hair, lacking only a shield and a sword to complete the image. Deep down inside, sensations began to stir, sensations she had banished to hell years ago.
Instinctively, she pulled her robe tighter and held it closed over her breasts.
“I can sleep while Sophie’s in school tomorrow,” he said. Apparently he sensed the awkwardness in the silence, too.
“Coffee?” she asked. “I thought it was just going to be me, so I planned on making tea, but since you’re a night owl, too, we might as well make coffee.”
“That would be great.”
Much to her relief, he didn’t follow. She made the coffee in the dark, waiting patiently for it to perk, thinking it was high time she got a drip coffeemaker. In short, anything that didn’t involve thinking about Sophie and the threat.
Or the man in her living room.
Some kind of preternatural shiver passed through her, focusing her mind on how Ethan had looked standing in the dark. Some psychic part of her clamored that she had business with him, though she couldn’t imagine what.
Oh, hell, yes she could. It didn’t take that big a leap to realize he drew her in some elemental way. Worrying about Sophie had kept her from recognizing other feelings, but here in the dark, they surged to the surface.
She could have turned on the lights, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to rupture the spell. It provided a much needed distraction right now, this yearning and need. This aching hunger that had grown unseen until it sprang from the jungle of her subconscious.
He would be safe, she realized. He would go away and take all the complications with him.
At once shock filled her. She didn’t think that way. She had never thought that way.
The aroma of the coffee filled her nostrils, speaking of hot, delightful, yet bitter flavors. Turning, she switched off the flame beneath the burner and filled two mugs. Strong and black.
Ethan still stood in the living room, looking out through the sheers at the street. She went to stand beside him and passed him a mug when he glanced at her.
“Thanks,” he said.
She didn’t reply. The spell locked her voice in her throat. An aura surrounded him. Holding her mug in both hands, closing her eyes, she sensed an emanation of power, strength and something far greater. For a moment she knew with certainty that if she opened her eyes, she would see him surrounded by rainbows. Crazy.
He spoke, his voice like night, all black velvet. “My people,” he said slowly, “believe that everything is alive, even the rocks.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. My mother was Cheyenne. She taught me some of the old ways and had her brother give me some training in what I suppose could be called the occult.”
She faced him then, forgetting everything else. “Shamanic tradition?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.” She barely breathed the word.
“Of course, it didn’t fit with most of what I was learning elsewhere or with my friends, so I took it all with a large grain of salt.”
“But now?”
“But now...” He shook his head. “I’ve felt the rocks cry out in protest at the blood spilled on them. I have heard the thunder speak. The ways of my mother’s people are as valid as your ways.”
Connie nodded. He did have an aura, she thought. She couldn’t see it, but she sure as hell could feel it, humming around him.
Almost in answer to what he had just said, a crack of thunder rent the night.
Connie bit her lip, waiting. The air around them crackled.
“I’ll protect your daughter,” he said. “But know this.”
She waited, her heart freezing.
“The danger is still there. I sense it. And it’s closing in.”
She wanted to scream at him that he was just trying to scare her, but deep in her very soul his words resonated with truth.
“Are you psychic?” she asked finally.
“Not really. If I were, many of my friends would still be walking this earth. But I am a mystic. I will admit that.”
“And you sense things.”
He looked at her, his eyes glimmering. “I sense things.”
Turning, she put her coffee on an end table and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “I can’t stand this.”
He astonished her, opening his arms and drawing her close, holding her snugly and comfortingly. Her head rested on his hard chest, and she could hear his heartbeat, a steady thud.
Tension, a tight spring inside her, began to loosen, as if his touch held soothing magic. His embrace seemed like a safe haven, an experience she had never known.
Then his fingers found their way into her hair, stroking and massaging gently.
He didn’t offer any false promises, merely the sense that she wouldn’t be alone. A ridiculous feeling, when the whole county shared her concern. But this felt closer and more intimate, more real.
They stood together for a long time, coffee forgotten, everything forgotten. Another crack of thunder, this one even louder, drove them apart.
Connie jumped back. Then, embarrassed, she reached for her coffee and retreated to an armchair. He, too, picked up his mug, then turned to face the window again, watching the flickers of lightning brighten the night.
Eventually