Since his very future now lay on the line, Jackson figured the faster he settled in front of a movie and decided on a game plan, the better.
Blowing out a breath, he steered the Porsche around a corner, then headed toward the Cinema Prosperino.
Cheyenne James had better things to do that evening than take in a movie. Gripping the ticket she’d bought—and had yet to use—she glanced around the red-carpeted lobby of the Cinema Prosperino, vaguely aware of the murmur of conversation and warm, buttery scent of popcorn that filled the air.
She knew that the case files on the three adolescents she’d counseled in private that morning sat on her small desk at home, waiting her attention. Her late-afternoon meeting with her boss, Blake Fallon, had resulted in her obtaining permission to submit a grant for funding of a vocational work-training program for several of the teenagers who, like her, lived at Hopechest Ranch.
She had planned on starting a draft of a proposal for the grant later tonight when she finished updating her case files. What she hadn’t anticipated was turning her back on her work and driving to the remodeled movie theater nestled between an espresso bar and art gallery on Prosperino’s main street.
After the vision came, nothing could have kept her away.
Her visions were her legacy, a gift from her mother of the blood through the blood. A gift she had embraced years ago and learned never to discount. The pictures she saw in her mind’s eye were not always pleasant, but had always proved accurate. When they came, she accepted them, and responded. Just as she had nearly an hour ago when the vision of the man’s eyes slid, cool and clean, into her head.
Closing her eyes, Cheyenne pulled back the memory. Her breath shallowed as she pictured again gray eyes with the same hardness as rocks hacked out of a cliff. Her vision had revealed only the man’s eyes, not his face. She didn’t know his name. She had sensed only that he was in trouble and needed her help. And that she would encounter him at the movie theater.
Flipping her heavy braid behind one shoulder, she watched as the doors to the still-darkened theater swung open. Several couples emerged, tossing empty popcorn sacks and soda cups into the container outside the door. A pair of teenage girls strolled out, whispering to each other as if trying to keep a secret from the two tall, gangly boys who trailed just behind them.
Seconds later, a lone man emerged from the theater’s dim depths, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his khaki slacks. Cheyenne’s heart took a hard leap into her throat and snapped it shut.
Jackson Colton looked tall, rangy and intimidatingly fit, like a long-distance runner at his peak. His sharpfeatured face, full of planes and angles, looked as darkly handsome now as it had at his uncle’s birthday party. Yet, she noted the changes in him. Eleven months ago he’d stood relaxed, gazing down at her with smoky silver eyes while he oozed charm and sex appeal with an easy smile. Now his shoulders looked wire-tense beneath his deep-blue linen shirt, his mouth was set in a grim line and his eyes were no longer the color of cool smoke, but the gray, rock-hard agates from her vision.
The instant his gaze met hers, recognition flashed across his face. His chin rose. Turning with catlike fluidity, he veered from the exit and strode toward her.
Cheyenne’s pulse raced with the knowledge that fate had brought her to the man who had filled her thoughts so often since that long-ago night.
“Cheyenne.” He said her name soft and low, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was there.
“Hello, Jackson. How are you?” Just his nearness had her pulse thudding at the base of her throat.
“Surprised to see you. Especially now.”
“Now?”
He raked his fingers through his jet-black hair. “After so long,” he amended. “It’s been nearly a year since my uncle’s party.”
“Yes.” Once or twice, she had even caught herself wondering if he would come back to Prosperino again this year to help celebrate his uncle’s birthday. And if she would see him if he did.
His gaze dropped to her hand. “I see you have a ticket for the next show.”
“That’s right.”
His gaze swept the lobby. “Are you here with someone?”
“No.”
“Meeting someone, then?”
“I didn’t make plans with anyone.”
“You haven’t used your ticket yet. We could get you a refund.”
She tilted her head. “Was the movie that bad?”
“No.” His smile came and went. “To tell you the truth, I was working something out in my mind. I didn’t pay attention to what was on the screen.”
“That alone doesn’t say a lot for the movie.”
“I guess not.”
Her vision had brought with it the sense that he was in trouble, yet his eyes had cleared and told her nothing. He knew how to keep his thoughts to himself, she realized.
As did she. Her gift might have brought them together again, but she was under no obligation to tell him that. There was a richness to her power, as well as bitterness. Her heart had learned well just how devastating relationships could be when people were unable to accept others for what they were.
“At my uncle’s party,” Jackson continued, “I promised you I’d be back so we could have a drink together. That didn’t happen.”
She arched a brow. “What happened was someone fired a shot at your uncle. I didn’t hold your not keeping your promise against you.”
“How about if I keep it now? I hear the espresso bar next door brews a mean latte.”
The same warm, musky scent that had infused a pang of desire into her blood so long ago slid into her lungs. Jackson Colton was attractive, magnetically sexual and she had lost count of how many times she had thought about him since they’d met. Now, as she always did, she reminded herself she was giving far too much importance to a man in whose presence she’d spent so little time.
Yet, tonight fate had brought her to him. She didn’t know why. The answer would come. It always did. Until then, she would not—could not—turn away from him.
“I’d love some coffee.”
“Great.” When he reached and slid the ticket from her grasp, his fingers grazed hers. “I’ll see about getting you a refund.”
“Fine,” she said, struggling to ignore the quick jumpiness in her stomach. “I’ll wait here.”
When he walked away, she closed her eyes and waited for her system to level.
Two
What were the chances, Jackson wondered, that just hours after his being questioned by the police, the one woman would walk back into his life whose testimony could put him behind bars? He had left her and dropped out of sight moments before someone took a shot at his uncle. Cheyenne James had seen him in almost the exact spot where the shooter stood. If she told Law that, the cop would have one more piece of circumstantial evidence against him.
An important piece.
Jackson gazed across the small table they’d settled at in the cozy espresso café that was cluttered with people and thick with noise. He had forgotten nothing about her, he confirmed as he watched Cheyenne sip a latte from an oversize cup. Not the high curve of her cheeks, her softly defined mouth, the dark eyebrows above those arresting brown eyes, or the jet-black hair that tonight was pulled back into a loose braid.
As he sipped his cappuccino, it occurred to him how striking the resemblance was