She shook her head with enough force that one silky tendril of blond hair slipped free of the knot at the back of her head. “That isn’t possible.”
“Why not?” he challenged her. “Are you afraid I’d write about them? According to you, I already have.”
“Yes, it’s like those poor women have been brutally murdered twice,” she said. “Once in reality and then again in your novels.”
Trent squeezed his eyes shut on a wave of self-disgust. “I didn’t know.”
Because he hadn’t let himself believe …
“You had to know. You used too many details,” she said, releasing a shaky sigh. “You used every detail, some that had never been released, details of which very few people were aware.”
“That’s why you’re here,” he surmised.
“Of course. What other reason would I have?”
Because she’d been looking for him, as he’d been looking for her—for the woman with whom he knew he would share this special connection. Yet even as connected as he was with her, he couldn’t feel her emotions like he was able to experience the emotions of others. He had no idea if she was really feeling what he was. The fierce, breath-stealing attraction and heart-pounding desire.
“The police like to hassle me from time to time,” he admitted. “I’m used to it.”
“In your books the serial killer,” she said, her pretty mouth twisting in disgust, “is the hero.”
“I wouldn’t call him a hero.” Complex. Multidimensional. That was what the critics called the protagonist of Trent Baines’s Thief of Hearts horror series.
“But,” she said, “you’ve written him as being smarter than law enforcement.”
That was what tended to piss off the authorities.
Her smoky gray-blue eyes darkened with frustration, and she added, “He always gets away.”
“Didn’t your killer?”
“What?” The faint color drained from her porcelain skin. “How do you know?”
“This killer you’re after,” Trent said even as he wondered at her reaction, wishing again that he could feel her emotions. “You wouldn’t still be after him if he hadn’t gotten away.”
“How do you know I’m after him?”
“You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. We’ve already established that you’re not a fan.” And she wasn’t likely to become one now. Despite whatever they might have meant to each other in another time, he was the writer that law enforcement hated.
“I could just be following up on a case,” she pointed out. “Checking out why you know things that only the killer would.”
He swallowed hard, but the knot in his throat wouldn’t go down. “Only the killer?”
Color rushed back into her face. “Or his victims.”
“But none of his victims could have survived to share their stories,” Trent said. If those real murders were exactly like the ones in his books, in his mind, no one could have survived the brutal attacks, the ritualistic mutilation. But they could have come back, returning from the dead into a new life.
Was that what had happened to him? Had he lived before? Was that why he had these memories that were not his? Whose were they, then? The memories of the killer that Alaina Paulsen sought?
“No, none of his victims survived,” she con firmed.
“How long ago did the murders happen?”
“I didn’t come here to share information with you,” she reminded him.
“You came here to get information from me.” The irony had his lips twitching into a grin. How could a man who had no idea what was real and what was fiction aid in a federal investigation?
“So tell me, Mr. Baines,” she persisted, “how you know things no one else knows about these murders.”
He tapped a fingertip against his forehead. “Imagination, Alaina.” That was what he’d been telling himself the past ten years—that he was only imagining things.
But he wasn’t imagining the connection between him and this woman, this stranger. Needing to touch her, he reached out, but before his fingertips could skim her cheek, she caught his wrist.
“Don’t.” She dropped his arm and stepped back, increasing the distance between them.
But he could still feel her touch, his skin tingling where her fingers had held his wrist.
“You might be able to ignore it, but I can’t,” he said. “There’s something here….” Something in her that pulled at him, that drew him to her. “There’s something between us.”
“Your ego,” she quipped.
He laughed. Sick of adoring fans, he found her attitude refreshing and attractive. But then, he found everything about her attractive. “Alaina …”
“These books,” she said as she lifted the one she still held, “these murders, aren’t from just your imagination. They are exactly the same as the real ones.”
He shrugged again. “Haven’t you heard? There is no such thing as an original idea.”
“I’ve heard that, but the saying I believe is that there is no such thing as coincidence.” She narrowed her eyes. “There’s no way you have all those details exactly the same by coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence, either,” he admitted. “I believe in fate, Alaina. I think that’s what brought you here.” He stood and closed the distance between them. This time when he reached for her, she didn’t catch his wrist. She didn’t stop him. His fingertips slid along the curve of her cheekbone, then down her neck to where her pulse pounded fast and hard beneath her pale skin. “Fate is what brought you to me.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. Then her tongue slid out from between her lips, sliding over the fuller bottom one.
Trent leaned forward, drawn to her mouth, to her lips. But before he could taste more than her breath, the doors rattled under a pounding fist.
“Alaina, c’mon,” a male voice called out to her. Trent felt and heard the man’s impatience. “We have to go!”
As close as Trent was to her, just a breath apart, he caught the flash of regret in Alaina’s eyes before she pulled back.
“No, you have to stay,” Trent urged her.
She shook her head and, with a trembling hand, pulled a cell phone from her pocket. “I—I have to go.”
“You will come back,” he said.
“Yes,” she said to his relief, but then she dashed his hopes. “But just because you haven’t answered any of my questions.”
He shook his head. “No, because you won’t be able to stay away from me.”
She didn’t deny his claim. She just pulled open the doors and walked away, joining her impatient partner in the hall, so she didn’t hear his next words.
“And because I won’t be able to stay away from you …”
She turned back, their gazes meeting, holding like he’d longed to hold her. And he suspected that she knew, even if she hadn’t heard him.
“What the hell was going on in there?” Vonner asked.
Fortunately,