“Wormy, wormy fudge,” she muttered.
He chuckled beneath his breath. One thing he’d loved about her was the uniqueness of her colorful language, but even that sounded gross to him.
“What’s wrong?”
“My keys are in my purse, and it must be back in my office at the lodge.”
“Not to worry,” Stone said, and slipped a small lock pick from his jacket pocket. Moments later, the lock clicked and the door swung open. He stepped aside.
“Don’t mention it.”
She glanced up at him in silent appreciation. “Thank goodness you’re on our side.”
Stone followed her in, shutting the door behind him. “Got a flashlight or candles?”
“Both in the kitchen. Top drawer on the right.”
He traded the lock pick for his own small flashlight. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
When he started toward the back of the house, Jessica frowned.
“How do you know where the kitchen is?”
“I’m following my nose.”
She sniffed. He was right. The scent of burned bacon was still evident.
Smart aleck.
But she didn’t voice her thoughts. She didn’t have it in her to complain anymore. An old Elvis Presley song came to mind as she leaned against the wall to keep from falling. Yes, her legs were shaky, and her knees were more than weak. She was definitely all shook up, but from the accident, of course. Not from the fact that she’d just spent the better part of an hour with a man who’d haunted more than one of her dreams.
Jessica closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. When she looked up, he was coming toward her, carrying a lit candle. His face was cast in shadow, but the cut of his cheekbones, a broad slash of jaw and his lower lip were highlighted by the soft yellow glow.
Exhaling slowly, she watched as he set the candle on a nearby table and then led her toward the chair beside it. She sat.
“Here,” Stone said, and dropped her flashlight into her lap.
Suddenly the intimacy of being alone in the darkness with this man was too much. She’d spent two years trying to forget how it felt to go to sleep and wake up in his arms.
“Goodbye, and thank you for bringing me home.”
His easy laugh did things to her nerves she didn’t need to feel.
As Stone chuckled, it crossed his mind that his ex-wife would have cried and clung with every ounce of her being. She’d hated his job as a cop, but she’d hated her lonely life as a cop’s wife more.
“Damn, honey. I’ve had the brush-off before, but never so sweetly.”
Muttering beneath her breath, she looked away. “That wasn’t a brush-off, and stop calling me ‘honey.’”
He cupped her chin, tilting her face until she was forced to look at him.
“Hey, you.”
Now her nerves were really on edge. There was a low, breathless quality to his voice that she’d never thought she’d hear. At least, not when speaking to her.
“What?”
“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
Jessica’s heart started to thump erratically. “Long time since what?”
His voice deepened. “Since we’ve been together.”
“I’ve spent two years trying to forget,” she muttered.
“So that’s why you left without so much as a goodbye.”
She swallowed, trying to get past the pain. “You’d made yourself painfully clear,” she said, and then looked deeply into his eyes. “There wasn’t anything left to say…was there?”
He looked away, and then back. “Will you be afraid?”
She gripped the arms of the chair as her heart skipped a beat. Afraid? The only thing that ever scared me was losing you and I survived that. This is a piece of cake. But she didn’t answer.
“If you are, I can have a patrol car swing by here every so often to make sure you’re okay.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’m not afraid of the dark, and I want you to go.”
He sighed, then stood up, hesitating. Sitting there in the dark with nothing but candlelight by which to see, she seemed awfully small and so alone. He couldn’t bear to leave her…at least not like this. He thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out his card.
“If you need me, the number is on the card.”
Jessica fought an urge to cry. Her fingers curled around the card as he shut the door behind him. Even after the sound of his car engine had faded away, she sat unmoving, clutching the card as if it was her lifeline to normalcy in a world lost in darkness.
She fell asleep in the chair, and when she awoke, the candle was out, yet the room was not dark. Disoriented, it took her a moment to focus on the fact that the light she was seeing was coming through the windows, and that it was growing brighter and brighter with each passing second.
Tension pulled the muscles at the back of her neck, and her breath began to shorten. Her fingers dug into the arms of the chair as the familiarity of her home began to change before her eyes. Unable to look away from the light, she stared into a nightmare that wouldn’t let her go.
* * *
Olivia Stuart smiled as she walked around the kitchen, adding the finishing touches to the ensemble she’d chosen for Hal’s wedding. Teal was her favorite color. Somewhere between true blue and green, it accentuated her coloring to perfection. She paused in front of the sink and picked up a picture that stood on the windowsill, smiling to herself as she remembered the day it had been taken. Eve had been fussing with her hair, and Hal had been laughing at her futile attempts to make it glamorous. Even as adults, they were good children.
Just as she started to move toward the table, to pick up her purse and the umbrella lying there, the scent of flowers drifted into the room. A slight frown drew between her brows as she tried to identify the scent. Gardenias! She was smelling gardenias!
A hand came around her mouth without warning, and Olivia dropped the picture and shrieked, swallowing her own cry as the fingers upon her face clamped too tightly for the sound to escape. Fear shattered her control as she reached behind her, trying to tear free. The struggle was brief. Shock turned to pain as a sharp, burning sensation pierced the back of her leg.
She remembered thinking that this didn’t make sense. Her leg had been stabbed, but there was pain in her chest. She reached out, gasping desperately for air. She wasn’t going to make Hal’s wedding, after all.
My son…my son.
Pain blossomed and burst, splintering throughout her body in a white-hot heat.
* * *
Jessica jerked. The bright orb of light was still present, but there was a constant, repetitive thump that hadn’t been there before. She blinked, then blinked again as she realized this wasn’t part of the dream. Someone was knocking on her door.
It took her a moment to switch gears, and when she did, her first thought was that Stone had come back. And then she heard her sister’s voice.
“Jessica! Are you in there? Jessie, it’s me, Brenda! Let me in!”
Jessica blinked again, her perception of what she’d just seen suddenly clear. The light was nothing more than the headlights of Brenda’s car shining through the sheer curtains at her front window.
I