Tapestry of the Past

by Alvania Scarborough

  For a moment, he wished she had.

  Not looking at him once, she crossed the room and fumbled for the doorknob, her movements jerky. On the flagstone walkway, she hesitated as though she were about to turn around but then, squaring her shoulders, walked to her car instead.

  A hard tension held Gabriel taut as she climbed inside. He almost called her back, even lifted a hand to stop her but let it drop when she slammed the door and started the car. He watched her taillights as they winked in and out of the trees as she sped down the drive. Not until after they were long gone did he close the front door.

  Tucking himself back in his jeans, he zipped them but left the button undone.

  It was for the best. If she knew what that scar meant, she wouldn’t kiss it. She’d run screaming.

  A humorless smile twisted his mouth.

  Perhaps he should have told her the moment she walked in the door. He shook his head. No, he wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to hold her, to taste her warmth and light. Not for anything.

  Gabriel snapped off the lamp and sat in the dark.

  * * * * *

  Kalesia stormed into the house and slammed the front door behind her. “The bastard! The low-down son of a bitch. How dare he kiss me, touch me,” a hot blush scalded her cheeks as she recalled just how she had let him touch her, “then call me crazy?” She slammed her purse on the nearest chair. “Just who the hell does he think he is?” It’d serve Gabriel Steele right if she called Major Harley and let him know what a jerk he had for a friend.

  She sat on one end of the sofa, kicked her shoes off and curled her legs under her. Kalesia dropped her head back against the cushion, her righteous indignation fading as the ramification of Gabriel’s refusal to help sank home. She hugged her body to ward off a growing inner chill.

  Dear God, she truly had no one to turn to. Her parents believed her visions were dreams, the police thought, at best, she had an overactive imagination and Gabriel Steele wouldn’t even consider the possibility that she was telling the truth.

  That left only her to stop a killer.

  Problem was, she didn’t have the slightest idea where to start.

  A soft meow drew her attention. Leaning down, she scooped up the worried Siamese. Holding the slender cat close, she scratched its head and stared at the wall. “Tia, what am I going to do?” The Siamese washed her face in sympathy.

  Damn, when would she ever learn? You’d think after the fiasco, she would know better. Even now, three years later, she winced at how naïve and stupid she’d been. She’d pulled the tatters of her self-respect around her and promised herself never to tell anyone about her visions again.

  So, okay, there were extenuating circumstances this time. She’d never had a vision where she was the victim. But, still, the end results were bound to be the same. Disbelief and the subtle easing away, as if she might be contagious.

  For some insane reason, though, she’d had the instant innate belief that Gabriel Steele was different. Something about his eyes. Even his initial reaction hadn’t dampened that belief. When he’d told her to sit and had begun to question her, she really thought he’d help her even if he couldn’t fully accept her knowledge came from a vision.

  “Just goes to show you how wrong my instincts can be, huh?” She tickled the cat under the chin. “I reacted to him, Tia,” she confessed in a near whisper. “Like I’ve never reacted to another man. Not even Christopher. Even after he made it clear he thought I was lying.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Guess that makes me desperate as well as stupid, doesn’t it? You wanna hear something weird? I could swear he was as turned on as I was.” She wasn’t stupid, past history aside. She knew guys could screw like bunnies without knowing so much as the woman’s name. But would a man only interested in getting in her pants have said the one thing guaranteed to send her scurrying like a mouse? And it had been deliberate. Of that she hadn’t the slightest doubt.

  A big black head butted insistently under her hand. Kalesia scooted back to allow another cat to hop up beside her.

  “Why couldn’t he be more like you, Hannibal? Starved and injured, you had every reason not to trust humans. Yet you let me close. You gave me a chance.” She rubbed her cheek against the long, silky fur of the tom. “It’s too bad Gabriel Steele didn’t do the same because, without him, I have the feeling I don’t stand a chance at all.”

  * * * * *

  Stark horror held her rigid as the violence raged, unabated. Rage, fear and hatred swirled about, threatening to encase her in their fetid grip. She couldn’t escape. It was going to trap her forever. A scream locked in her throat, the tendrils ripped asunder without warning.

  Torn from sleep, Kalesia stared into the diffuse light of pre-dawn, a startlingly real sensation of terror gripping her.

  * * * * *

  “Kalesia, you didn’t?”

  The wail turned several heads. Kalesia sighed. So much for hoping the open-air restaurant would restrain her mother.

  “Mom, I had to. This is my life we’re talking about, not someone already dead.” Bad idea. She needed someone to talk to but a late dinner with her mother had definitely been a bad idea. Her mother preferred to deal with her ability by pretending it didn’t exist.

  Kalesia glanced at the citrine-studded watch on her wrist. Maybe it would be better all the way around to suddenly recall an appointment.

  “But the police?” Della Brannigan smoothed a strand of hair back. She’d allowed a swath of white hair to remain, a striking contrast to the dark auburn she’d given her daughter. But where Kalesia’s eyes were Brannigan green, her mother’s were tawny brown. Kalesia noticed a gentleman at a neighboring table discreetly eyeing her mother. Even on the backside of fifty, her mother could still turn heads.

  Now, however, she looked ready to cry.

  “Mom, I didn’t know where else to turn.” Kalesia reached across the table and gripped her mother’s hand. “I know you don’t like it when I talk about my visions but this time I had to try to make someone listen.”

  “Remember what happened last time? You almost ruined your business reputation, not to mention running that nice Christopher Hiser away. You’d be married by now, maybe with children, if you hadn’t insisted on telling him.”

  Yeah and if I hadn’t told him my business reputation would never have been in jeopardy, she almost told her mother. At the last minute, she bit back the words. No one knew the full story behind her breakup with Christopher.

  They’d met when the corporation where he was a top-level manager had hired her to improve their image in the South. He’d been funny, kind and gentle. And, unlike the others in the firm, he had seemed to want to listen to her ideas and suggestions. He had also made her feel that she could tell him anything. Within a week, they were going out on a regular basis.

  Kalesia drew circles on the tabletop with the tip of her nail. By the end of the second month, she was retreating to save her dignity and career while he became vice president.

  “I agree, Mom. It was a mistake to tell him but not for the reasons you think. I don’t want a man who looks at me as if I have suddenly grown two heads. I want one who will believe me.”

  Her mother’s gaze slid away and she looked uneasy. “You know your father and I love you.”

  Kalesia tried to stop the conversation before they got into the same old argument. “I know, Mom. You guys love me but you just can’t bring yourselves to believe me.”

  “For crying out loud, visions of murder? They’re not real. They can’t be. It’s impossible to know what happened to someone else miles away. Your father and I have told you over and over they are dreams. Even as a child you had a vivid imagination. It’s Grandmother Brannigan’s fault. She encouraged you.”

  “Leave Grandma out of this.” Kalesia pinned her mother with a determined gaze. “She was the only one who would listen to me when I was a child. She didn’t try to convince me I was having nightmares, or send me to a child psychologist, or pretend to the n
eighbors that I had an overactive fantasy life. She listened. Made me understand that what I saw wasn’t my fault.”

  “Of course it wasn’t your fault! No one can control their dreams.”

  “And I can’t control my visions.” Kalesia held up a hand, weary to the bone. “Mom, I truly didn’t come here to argue with you.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “I don’t know. Just forget it.” Shoving her chair back and rising, she leaned over and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek before she could respond. “Tell Dad I’ll try to come over next weekend and help him with his garden.” She straightened.

  “Kalesia?”

  “What?”

  “I do love you, you know.”

  Kalesia gave a sad smile. “I know. I love you too.” She walked out of the restaurant, her throat too tight to say anything else.

  Two hours later, juggling a large sack of groceries and her purse, she kicked shut the front door of her house with a relieved sigh. Turning the kitchen light on with her elbow, she placed the bag on the counter in the kitchen as she mulled over the conversation with her mother. Nothing ever seemed to change. Her parents could not accept she had visions of murder and she couldn’t seem to stop trying to make them.

  Her mother may have been right about one thing, however. If word ever got out why she had gone to the authorities, she could lose everything. For good, this time.

  She’d known she was taking a chance, of course. But she’d been so shaken by the vision of her own death she’d thought it her only recourse. If she had been thinking more clearly, she would have realized the authorities wouldn’t believe her. They never had.

  She was putting the last can of cat food on the shelf when she realized she hadn’t seen the cats. Usually they pestered her for attention and food the moment she stepped in the door. Frowning, she called out.

  “Tia? Hannibal?” She checked the downstairs then, thinking they might be asleep on her bed, checked upstairs. Nothing.

  “Come on, you guys. Where are you?”

  One foot on the bottom step of the stairs, from the corner of her eye she saw the tip of a black tail swish from under the desk in her office. About time. She pushed the door open fully and walked into her office, a smile forming. “All right, what are you doing hiding—” Abruptly, she clamped her mouth shut. Her office door was kept closed at all times. Hannibal had a habit of shredding papers when he was bored or irritated.

  The door had been open.

  A thin edge of terror began gnawing at her composure.

  Dear God! What if her killer was in the house right now? What if he was waiting for her? Without looking, she reached for the sturdy police-style flashlight she kept on the end table next to the French window, holding it at the ready.

  Think Brannigan. Think!

  When hunting for the cats she’d checked every room, even peeked inside the closets. The only exception had been her office. She sucked in a deep, cleansing breath and slowly lowered the flashlight. Okay, that meant no one was in the house.

  Hell, maybe she was getting paranoid. What with the vision and Gabriel Steele’s reaction, she’d been distracted as she left to meet with her mother. It was possible, just, that she had failed to shut the office door properly.

  A small but persistent pain hammered at her temple. She rubbed at it and sank down on her knees, ignoring the tug of uneasiness that refused to go away.

  “Come on, fella. Out from under the desk.” She bent lower, making small, encouraging sounds. The huge black cat leveled an unblinking peridot gaze on her. “That’s my boy. Out you com—”

  The files.

  Sitting back on her heels, she stared at the desktop as the vague sense of something wrong crystalized. The files were on the left side of the keyboard. Her heart began slamming anew in her chest. She stood and walked around the desk.

  Kalesia stared at the neat pile of manila folders for a long moment.

  She touched the folders with the tips of her fingers. Such a small thing. A tiny detail that under normal circumstances no one would notice.

  The killer could have been waiting for her to walk in the door.

  Her gaze still locked on the files, she reached for the business card tucked under her desk calendar. The phone on the other end rang before Kalesia realized what she had done.

  She had dialed Gabriel Steele.

  “Hello?”

  The voice was as dark and compelling as she remembered. “Mr. Steele?”

  There was a long pause. “Ms. Brannigan? Kalesia? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  She gripped the phone harder. “I-I’m so sorry for bothering you but I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” His voice was brisk. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Someone broke into my home.”

  “Are you hurt? Have you called the police?”

  “No. No, I’m not hurt. They were gone by the time I returned home.” She looked around vaguely. Police. She hadn’t thought to call the police. “I haven’t called them. I’ll do that now.”

  “Wait. Don’t hang up!” There was a pause. “Are you positive no one is in the house?”

  “Yes. I checked.” She clutched the card Harley had given her as if it were a talisman.

  “Listen to me. I need directions to your house.”

  His voice rang distantly in her ear. Feeling as if the world were very far away, she gave him directions.

  “Okay. Stay put. I’ll be right over.”

  Chapter Three

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you.”

  Gabriel stared at the woman blocking the doorway. He noted the white-knuckle grip on the door. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  When he didn’t say anything, she began chewing on her bottom lip.

  Arms crossed over his chest, he waited until the silence got to her and she looked up. Gabriel snagged her gaze. Uncrossing his arms, he planted one hand on the door and push. Slowly, inexorably, he crowded Kalesia back into the small entryway.

  “Look, I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing. This isn’t your concern. Honestly, you can go home. I-I reacted without thought.”

  Gabriel ignored the babble. He reached out and pulled her into his arms. “Hush.”

  “Oh God, Gabriel, I was so scared.” She buried her head against his chest. Fine shivers racked her small frame.

  He rested his chin on top of her head, knocking the intricate topknot of hair slightly askew. Complication. Kalesia Brannigan had complication written all over her small, curvy body. Damn, he so did not want complications in his life. He’d sent her away in a manner that he thought guaranteed Hell would freeze over before she would contact him again.

  He might have sent her fleeing but he hadn’t been able to get rid of her. Her smell, her taste, the feel of her snug sheath around his finger taunted his waking hours and, at night, invaded his dreams.

  He’d wake up, hot, horny and sweaty, his hand wrapped around his cock. He gave a tiny grimace. Shit, he’d even woken up once with spunk all over his belly. You’d think he was fifteen, not a man kissing forty.

  When he answered the phone and heard the fear in her voice, he hadn’t stopped to think. He’d come running.

  Adrenaline still pumping unpleasantly in his system, Gabriel held her tighter.

  “I need to look around.” What he needed was to pull it together. He put her from him, hands still on her shoulders. “You going to be okay?”

  She nodded. Fine lines of strain fanned out from the corner of her eyes but she gave him a tremulous smile. For the first time, Gabriel noticed that one eyetooth was just the slightest bit crooked. Son of a bitch. He was in deep when that small imperfection just made her that much more attractive to him.

  Gabriel made a short but thorough search. He didn’t find anything but then he hadn’t expected to. “Tell me what happened.”

  Moving restlessly to a brightly patterned, overstuffed sofa, she sat down. “I had a l
ate dinner with my mother and then went shopping. When I came home, I didn’t notice right away that my cats—I have two—didn’t meet me at the door.” She played with a loose thread on the cushion. “When they hadn’t turned up by the time the groceries were put away, I got a little worried. After searching the house, I finally found them hiding under the desk in my office,” she whispered, her expression stark. “That door is always kept shut.”

  “Anything else to indicate an intrusion?”

  “The files on my desk were moved.”

  “Could the cats have disturbed them?”

  “No. I always keep active files on the right side of my keyboard. They were on the left.”

  “Is it possible you put them there by accident?” Gabriel glanced at the untidy pile of magazines on the coffee table and the books left haphazardly around the room. A pair of bright red high heels peeked out from under the edge of the sofa. Somehow, Kalesia’s house with its comfortable clutter reminded him of the woman herself—bright, warm and inviting.

  She sat up straight. “Look. Maybe my housekeeping isn’t up to your standards but when it comes to my work I am very particular.” She crossed her arms under her breasts, the gesture defensive. “It’s a habit.”

  “I’ll accept that for now.”

  “Gee, thanks,” she muttered, starting to look pissed.

  For some reason, it made him want to smile. Ignoring her sarcasm, he continued, “We need to determine if tonight’s break-in is connected to your vision.”

  “But how?” She shivered, though it had to be eighty degrees out. “I don’t have a clue why someone would want to kill me in the first place!”

  “What about your files? Is there anything valuable, other than to yourself, in them? Valuable enough to kill for?” Gabriel decided he liked her sarcasm better than this sign of vulnerability.

  “Valuable? Maybe to a client’s competitor but I doubt the information I have is worth killing for. For God’s sake, I analyze markets and recommend strategies for improving the image of a business. Sure, business can be cutthroat and, yeah, some people will stab you in the back to get ahead.” A shadow flitted through her eyes, making Gabriel wonder what caused it. “Not literally, however. Besides, my clients are scattered over the state, not just in Central Florida. Some are even in Georgia.” Her hands closed into fists. “It’s taken me three years to build my business to the point I feel secure. Three years, Gabriel. Not once in that time has something like this ever occurred.”