The Truth About Toby
Page 8
“We called the rangers,” Shaine offered. “They probably have stretchers or something.”
“That could take a while,” the girl said, her face fallen.
Austin sized the college student up. “We’ll make a travois and drag him back.”
“Brilliant!” Shaine said with a smile that disappeared immediately. “How do we do that?”
He unzipped the bag he’d carried. “We cut down a couple of saplings and lash our jackets between.”
Twenty minutes later, she watched him maneuver Tommy onto the makeshift conveyance. “How’d you learn to do that, anyway?”
“ ‘MacGyver,’” he replied, and packed his survival gear back in the bag.
She giggled and took it from him, leaving him free to pull the travois.
The trip back up the trail took a lot longer than the one down, and even after pausing several times to rest, Austin had broken out in an honest-to-goodness sweat by the time they reached the log house.
Shaine and the girl they’d learned was named Tricia, helped Tommy into one of the wooden porch chairs.
Austin collapsed on the steps, and Shaine brought him a jug of water. “I think I’ll skip my run today,” he said, panting.
Shaine made sandwiches for Tommy and Tricia, and by the time the rangers came, the sun hung low in the sky.
Having caught his second wind, Austin watched the mud-encrusted Blazer leave, bent to pick up the split wood and carried it into the house. “Shaine?”
He didn’t get a reply. He got the fire going, popped some popcorn and finally, checked the bathroom and the downstairs, looking for her. “Shaine?”
Concerned, he climbed the stairs to the loft. She lay on his king-size bed, still wearing her jeans, jacket and hiking boots.
“Hey.” He touched her arm, but she didn’t rouse. Unlacing her boots, he tugged them off, still not disturbing her. Sure that nothing would disturb her now, he rolled her from one side to the other, removing her jacket, then took the side of the comforter and tucked it around her.
On its own, his hand reached out and smoothed her hair away from her face. It was like touching silk. He ran his fingers through the strands, wondering at his impulsive inclination to touch her.
He’d thought he was safe up here away from people. Away from the hurts of victims, away from the warped appetites of criminals, away from feelings. Away. Period.
But this woman had shown him he’d only been deluding himself. He couldn’t live the rest of his life without feeling something.
And right now he was feeling pretty confused. What had happened today was a one-in-a-million chance. He didn’t have much to measure it to, and he’d had some wild experiences. Rarely had he tuned in to anyone he could actually help. Oh, the victim’s families were often grateful to have a body to bury and to set their minds at ease. And the police and the FBI knew he had done them a service.
But reaching a victim in time to prevent a tragedy wasn’t the norm.
Shaine had done just that. She’d been lucky.
Hadn’t she?
Or could she do it again?
With every fiber of his being, he’d discouraged her belief that her nephew was alive. He knew the pain and disappointment and guilt that accompanied being too late, and he didn’t want that for her.
But what if...?
What if there was an iota of a possibility that the child really was alive? He thought back over all the information she’d given him and her reasons for her belief. If there was a chance, even the smallest chance in the world, didn’t he owe that to her?
Austin combed his fingers through her hair one last time, lingered over the soft skin of her cheek and tenderly drew a line across her parted lips.
He thought it over carefully, making very sure he wasn’t doing this because he had a case of the hots for her. He was doing this because she deserved her chance.
And so did her nephew. If he was still alive.
“Okay, sexy lady,” he said aloud. “We’re going to do it your way.”
He adjusted the coverlet one last time and left her to her sleep.
“What you have to learn,” he said, with a startling new intensity behind his eyes, “is how your own intuitive sense works.”
Still fighting the groggy effects of the day before, Shaine concentrated on absorbing his words. Her morning cup of coffee had chugged life through her veins, and she’d stepped out on the porch for some fresh air. That’s where Austin had found her. “Okay,” she said. “I learn how my intuitive sense works.”
He leaned a hip against the porch rail and nodded, raising his own cup to his lips.
“And you’re going to tell me how to do this?” she asked.
“Give the sense your own definition,” he explained. “Not a label someone else calls it. Not even a label I call it. Give it a name and a color and credibility and whatever else it takes to know it. You have to acknowledge that you have this capability.”
“I have the ability,” she said with some assurance in her voice. “And Tom taught me to give my dreams names. That’s how he taught me to differentiate between them.”
“Good. So you understand what I’m saying.”
“I think so.”
“Now, you use your strongest experiences as points of reference.”
“What do you mean?”
“Take the experiences that are vivid for you. Things you knew without a shadow of a doubt.”
“Like my aunt Jackie’s accident?”
“And the Deets boy. Every detail about those incidents will help you in the next.”
It hit her then that he was giving her practical, completely understandable information on how to use her own skill. Excitement built within her chest, and her heart pounded erratically. “Austin?”
The warmth of his flint-colored gaze touched her every bit as directly as the heat from the morning sun. She’d never felt quite so alive.
“What?” he replied.
She tried to form words around the pressure in her chest. “Wh-what are you doing?”
He leaned forward, his intriguing dark eyes suffused with a challenge...and something more.... “I’m going to give you what you’re asking for. So you’d better hope it’s what you really want.”
Joy sprang up inside her, but warily she forced herself to double-check his meaning. “You’re going to teach me how?”
As if she were seeing too much, he cast his gaze toward the fall-dressed mountainside for several seconds. When he looked back at her, she read his uncertainty. “Yesterday shook up my conviction about your nephew.”
“Oh, Austin.” She allowed the expectant thrill of his decision to wash over her. He believed her! He believed she could find Toby! Impulsively she stepped closer, wanting to touch him, needing to share her feelings and oh, so grateful to him for caring enough to change his mind.
“Whoa!” he said, as his coffee sloshed over the side of the cup and dotted the porch floor. One arm went around her, and quickly he set the cup down and used the other to steady her against him.
“Thank you,” she said, and placed her hands on his cheeks.
Against her breast his heart thundered. Around her, his arms were solid and reassuring. For the first time ever, she didn’t feel all alone. This man understood her. He cared enough to help her. He wasn’t afraid of her, nor did he want to examine her head to satisfy his curiosity.
His hand opened in the middle of her back, but it didn’t pull her toward him. Heat radiated through her sweater and raced along her spine.
She stared into his dark eyes and wanted to kiss him. She wanted to feel that pulse-drugging excitement once again. His cheeks were warm and smooth beneath her palms. She raised her face until her lips were only inches from his.
“Don’t do this just because I’m helping you,” he said, his voice a low warning.
She had to think a moment. Had to clear her head and recognize what he was saying to her. Don’t kiss him? Don’t throw herself into his ar
ms? Don’t what?
“I’m doing this because I want to,” she said, and moved her hands to his hard shoulders.
The way he sat on the rail had her pressed into the V of his jean-clad thighs where hard muscle encased her hips. His hand moved up her back, still not demanding, still not pressing her toward him. When he reached her hair, he twined his fingers through the tresses and found the sensitive skin of her neck.
The caress transmitted a betraying shiver through Shaine’s body.
His eyes darkened. His lips beckoned. Shaine leaned into the kiss, meeting his mouth, wrapping one arm around the back of his neck to retain the delicious connection.
His lips were warm and pliant and starved for the taste of hers. Not gentle. Not patient. Not at all like the last time. Passion swept through her with the onslaught of his hungry quest for more. He had an array of kisses, and she wanted to sample them all.
He slid his hand through her hair to cradle the back of her head, and the kiss became daring, fiery, ardent. Shaine cupped his jaw, ran her thumb over the warm supple skin of his cheek.
He framed her face with his hard-palmed hands and unsatisfactorily kissed both corners of her mouth, nipped her chin, touched his tongue to the tender skin below her jaw. Shaine’s shallow breath fluttered through her lips.
“You’d better decide,” he said against her throat.
Shaine opened her eyes, but saw nothing. “Decide what?”
“What kind of a relationship you want, here.” He nipped her ear, and a soft sound of pleasure escaped her.
The air cooled her damp fevered lips. She ran her tongue over them. “What do you mean?”
“I told you I’d take you to bed. I will. We both want it.” He held her head still and looked into her eyes. “But I won’t get involved. If you need a commitment, I’m not your man. If you want to share some good times and go your separate way afterward, that’s how it’ll be. But I won’t mislead you.”
She eased back, slightly embarrassed, more than slightly uncertain, and he allowed her the freedom, his hands sliding to her waist. “We kissed,” she said with a shaky laugh. “That’s not a lifetime commitment.”
“Okay. I want it straight between us. No misunderstandings.”
“No misunderstandings,” she agreed, the delicious glow he ignited within her a restless flame she would live with now. She couldn’t afford any complications interfering with her search for Toby. It was easy to see she could fall for Austin in a heartbeat, and he had no intention of reciprocating. She’d be wise to place her arousing feelings for him out of the way and concentrate on the matter at hand.
After this, however, that would be no easy task.
She’d never before known the desire or tender feelings she’d experienced in his arms. He made her feel alive and beautiful, he made her want to give, but need to take, all at once. And Shaine knew, just as she knew many things without positive proof, that this feverous, frightening passion Austin had made known wouldn’t be easy to forget or ignore.
Self-consciously, she pulled away from his easy embrace and faced the mountainside, folding her arms and holding her elbows. “Well, what next?” she asked finally. “How are you going to teach me?”
He tossed his cold coffee over the porch rail and stood. “For the next few days we’ll go over these things we’ve talked about. How to use your experience with the Deets boy and the others as a guideline to direct your perception. I’ll ask you too many questions and make you crazy, forcing you to remember all the little details.”
“Whatever it takes,” she said, turning back to him.
“In a few days I’ll be getting mail in Gunnison. We’ll have to go down for it.”
“Okay. A job?”
“Nor.”
“May I ask what?”
“A package from a friend of mine.”
He still hadn’t told her anything, but she waited. If he wanted to, he would.
“He’s with the FBI”
Shaine searched his rugged features, her interest piqued.
“I asked for files so you’d have something to practice on.”
Her heart leapt into her chest. “What kind of files?”
“Missing persons.”
“And he’s just sending you this stuff? Aren’t they confidential?”
“Families and detectives only seek my kind of help as a last resort, so by the time this stuff gets to my friend, it’s a desperate measure.” He ran a hand over his face. “This was what I did for years and years, Shaine. I’ve worked with the FBI on hundreds of cases. They’re eager to have a fresh lead or a new clue.”
She stared at him nervously. “What will we do with these files?”
He contemplated her once again. “Sit down a minute.”
“Why?”
“Just sit down. Am I the teacher? Sit down.”
She backed onto the chair and he crouched in front of her. Daisy joined them then, laying her snout on Shaine’s knee. Shaine petted her distractedly.
“I think you have the same ability I do,’ he said gently. “We’re going to test it.”
“What do you mean? What ability?”
“To touch things and get impressions.”
“That’s impossible, why would you think that?”
He shooed Daisy away and took her hand. “You told me you started having the dreams of Toby after you’d packed away his and Maggie’s things.”
She thought a minute, remembering the details she’d shared with him. “That’s not exactly what I told you.”
“No, you told me about signing out guests at the inn, and visiting the cemetery, but in there was the part about packing their things.”
She acquiesced. “Okay.”
“You held something of Toby’s, didn’t you?”
She recalled crying all the while she packed the clothing and toys, deciding what to give away, what to keep. Unconsciously her fingers tightened on his. “Yes,” she whispered.
“And after that you dreamed of him.”
She’d been staring unseeingly at the sky, but she focused on him, on his words.
“From childhood you’d trained yourself not to have the visions. As a defense, you learned to shut them out. But whatever you held of Toby’s triggered your perception, and your subconscious released it in the form of dreams.”
Stunned, Shaine clutched his hand until her knuckles turned white. A sudden grasping fear clawed her insides. “What does this mean?” she asked. “What will we do with those files?”
“You’ll touch their things,” he said. “We’ll see if you can get impressions from them.”
Her heart had a frantic workout against her breast. Alarm spread through her body until her hands shook. Lord help her, this was what she’d wanted. This was why she’d left Audrey alone with the inn, why she’d made an idiot of herself coming up here and why she’d hammered at Austin tenaciously for the last week.
This was what she’d wanted.
And heaven help her, he was giving it to her.
Chapter 7
The ride to Gunnison was a pleasant one. Shaine had always loved fall, and autumn in the Rockies was a breathtaking sight. Deer bounded across the road, and Austin drove his Jeep Cherokee slowly. Once, several porcupine lumbered across, and he waited patiently while they moved aside.
The past couple of days had been revealing, in more ways than one. Not only had he shown her insight into her own ability, but he’d unwittingly revealed his own caring, vulnerable nature, the side of him she’d suspected was there all along.
Austin had a sixties CD blasting from the rear speakers, and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to Dion singing “The Wanderer.” As she’d overheard from time to time since her arrival, he sang a few lines here and there in a surprisingly good voice.
She smiled and leaned back in the comfortable seat. The play of sun through the leaves of the gold and yellow trees dappled the windshield and dash and glinted highlights off Austin’s dark hair.
She shook her head and he slipped them back on.
“Why this music?” she asked.
“What?” He leaned forward and turned the volume down.
“Why do you listen to oldies and nothing else?”
“I have other stuff.”
“But you don’t listen to it.”
“It’s the only kind of music,” he said with a grin.
“Maybe you’re trying to recapture the years you didn’t get to be a kid.”
“Maybe you’re making a pretty lame attempt at psychoanalysis.”
“Hey, I’m free.”
The Kinks belted out “You Really Got Me” just then and Austin turned the volume back up. “Maybe you should just let yourself enjoy it, and not wonder why,” he said over the song.
She applied herself to just that.
Gunnison streets weren’t busy that morning as he drove to the post office. He came out with two boxes and loaded them into the back of the Cherokee. Shaine surveyed the packages and followed him with her gaze as he strode to his door.
Austin slid into the seat and recognized the apprehension on her face. She’d been trying her best to cover her uneasiness over what they were going to do, but he knew the fear she hid.
“How about some lunch before we get groceries?” he asked, hoping to give her a change of scenery and lighten her mood.
She agreed with a nod.
“You’ve been cooking and eating meals I like,” he said, thinking out loud. “What do you like?”
“I haven’t had a pizza for ages,” she suggested.
“Pizza it is.” He parked in front of place called Bob & Tony’s and led her inside. “Smells good.”
They slid into a booth, sat across from one another and agreed on toppings. Austin placed the order and they helped themselves to salad.
“Have you eaten here before?” she asked.
“A couple of times. Not in the last five or six years. It’s a college hangout on the weekends.”
“I had a dream last night,” she said.