by Cassie Miles
THE NEXT MORNING, Melinda awoke with the uneasy sense of a nightmare that had already faded into the back of her mind. She opened her eyes. Where was she? Not at home, that much was obvious. Though the layout of the bedroom matched hers, none of her things were here. No knickknacks on the dresser. No family photos hung on the wall.
This bedroom was Spartan and plain. Drew’s apartment. He stretched out beside her on the king-size bed, lying on his back. The comforter covered him from the waist down. His chest was bare.
Her gaze lingered. The sight of him was certainly enough to change a nightmare into a dream. His body was long and lean. Not overly muscle-bound, he was built for speed. A sprinkling of hair on his chest arrowed down his torso. His right arm curled above his head. In repose, he looked younger than his twenty-eight years. More innocent. Less troubled.
She reached toward him, trying to remember why she was mad at him. Oh, yeah, he wanted to dump me as soon as I mentioned the baby. But he had kind of apologized. And he’d stuck with her last night.
As soon as her hand touched his cheek, he exploded awake. Launching himself off the bed into a crouch, he snatched a gun off the bedside table and aimed at the bedroom door. His green eyes glittered. He was one hundred percent alert.
“Light sleeper?” she asked.
Without a word, he strode from the bedroom into the hallway. His snug black undershorts outlined his tight butt. She would have appreciated the view a whole lot more if he hadn’t been stalking.
In spite of his insistence that they flee the city and hide out in a cabin, she didn’t really believe they were in desperate peril. Last night’s robbery was nothing more than a random event. And she felt much better this morning.
Her headache was gone, thank goodness. As she propped herself up on the pillows, she didn’t feel achy or sore at all. Nothing to worry about. She was going to be all right.
Drew returned to the bedroom and sat on the bed beside her. “How are you feeling?”
“Surprisingly good.”
He reached for her arm. “Let’s take a look at that bruise.”
When he peeled off the bandage, the dark black-and-blue area inside her arm had faded back to an almost normal skin color. How could that be? Automatically, she reached for her glasses, then remembered that she hadn’t been wearing them, didn’t need them. Vaguely, she remembered hearing that a woman’s vision improved when she was pregnant. She’d always thought that was an old wives’ tale. But maybe not.
Drew leaned down and kissed the spot on her arm that had been injured. “Looks good.”
“I can’t believe I’m better already. Guess I wasn’t hurt that badly.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I’m a fast healer myself.”
Waking up together, even if they hadn’t made love last night, felt sweet, and she was tempted to carry their easy intimacy to the next level with a kiss. Would it be so bad to make love to him one more time? The answer, unfortunately, was yes.
If she let her guard down, she’d only be hurt. There was no way they could be together. He had his globe-trotting profession. She had her cozy lifestyle. And never the twain would meet. She cleared her throat. “I don’t suppose you have coffee.”
“I didn’t, but I took the liberty of raiding your apartment last night and taking your coffee. It’s brewing. I also grabbed some bread and butter for toast.” He paused. “And I packed a suitcase with things I thought you’d need.”
“Why?”
“We can’t stay here, Melinda. Last night, I found a bug outside the window.”
She was pretty sure that he wasn’t talking about an insect. “A listening device? Like in the spy novels?”
“My enemies overheard us talking last night. They know you’re important to me, and they want to use you to get to me.”
“Let’s do a reality check.” She pulled her arm from his grasp and hiked up the comforter to cover her sports bra. “We’re in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In a plain, old apartment building. I’m a librarian, for pity’s sake. Nothing exotic ever happens to a person like me.”
“Brace yourself.” He rose from the bed. “Get dressed and meet me in the kitchen. I owe you an explanation.”
In his bathroom, she found the toiletries she generally used in the morning. He’d packed her bags? He wanted to whisk her away to his secret cabin?
She splashed water on her face and brushed her teeth. When she first hooked up with Drew, she knew he was too good to be true. Handsome, smart and funny. Now she knew the downside. He was nuts, delusional. Or was he? Was his job as a globe-trotting journalist a cover for a more dangerous occupation?
She put on her zippered sweatshirt and went to the front room, where he sat on the sofa drinking coffee from a Sioux Falls souvenir mug. “If you’re a spy,” she said, “who do you work for?”
“I’m freelance.” He leaned back on the sofa, and his bathrobe gaped open, showing a sexy glimpse of chest hair. “You know that.”
“You’re not CIA? Not part of some mysterious undercover network?”
“I’m not a spy.” He rose and went toward the bathroom. “Help yourself to coffee. I’ll be back in a minute.”
When he left the room, she glanced around. Her baby blue suitcase on the end of the sofa was the only bright touch in an otherwise unadorned, masculine room. The window shades were still drawn. A rifle leaned against the wall by the front door. There was some kind of electronic equipment on the table, along with night goggles. On the television, she saw three inset pictures that seemed to be from cameras monitoring the hallway and the outside of the building. Where was she? The bat cave?
On the kitchen counter by the coffeemaker was his Beretta. She poured coffee and made two pieces of toast.
What if Drew’s paranoia had some basis in fact? Last night had been scary. That was for sure. She’d never been attacked before. If she could have remembered what happened, she undoubtedly would have been more freaked out. During her struggle, her apartment was trashed. It must have been violent. But was it purposeful? Had Drew’s “enemy” targeted her? Why? It just didn’t make sense.
When the toast popped up, she slathered on the butter. Thus far, Melinda hadn’t had a moment of morning sickness. Her mom said that she’d never been sick while pregnant, and she’d delivered four babies, all girls with Melinda being the eldest. Her baby would be the first grandchild.
As she finished off her toast and washed it down with coffee, she found herself hoping that Drew’s paranoia wasn’t an inherited trait that might be passed on.
He came into the kitchen and snagged the second piece of toast before she could claim it.
“Hey,” she protested. “I made that for me.”
“Fine. I wanted pie, anyway.”
She’d forgotten about the apple pie. Not exactly a healthy breakfast, but it did contain fruit. “I’ll have some of that.”
They dished up pie and settled on the sofa since he didn’t have a dining table. With her fork, she pointed to the three pictures on the television screen. “Is all this security really necessary?”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “And it’s also entertaining. See that? On the camera that shows the parking lot? It’s the anthropology professor who lives across the hall from you.”
“Her name is Katherine Bidwell.” Melinda watched the spry elderly woman whose gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun. Bustling to her car, she juggled a plastic water bottle and a satchel of books. “Some people say she’s a genius.”
“She was smart enough to call 911 last night.”
He’d gotten dressed while he was in the bedroom. In his white T-shirt, worn jeans and running shoes, he looked sane and normal. But he was still cuckoo. The evidence was all around. Her packed suitcase. The guns. The surveillance equipment.
She finished off her pie and considered licking the plate, but decided she was full. Leaning back on the sofa, she studied his classically handsome profile. “You said it was smart for Professor Bidwell to call the pol
ice. Why can’t you do the same thing? Tell the police about your enemies.”
“They’d never believe me.”
“So you know that your story sounds a little bit, um, crazy.”
“But true.”
If he really wanted her to run away with him to a cabin in the woods, he needed to give her a far more thorough explanation. “Convince me.”
“It all started when I was ten years old. A couple of months after I moved in with Belle and Harlan Anderson…”
Chapter Five
Never before had Drew told anyone about what happened to him while he was growing up. As a rule, he avoided close relationships, a lesson he’d learned as a foster kid. If you don’t have friends, you won’t be hurt.
But now there was Melinda. And a baby. He had to prove to her that he was trustworthy, and that meant telling the truth.
“At the Andersons’ house, I was the only kid.” Before that, he’d been in group situations. “I had my own bedroom. A place where I could close the door and be by myself.”
“Did you like being alone?” she asked.
Though he was capable of spinning a convincing lie to make himself sound like Johnny Normal, he stuck to the truth. “I was pretty much a loner.”
An encouraging smile lit her face, and he decided that she was especially pretty in the morning. “Tell me about this room of your own.”
“The privacy was exactly what I wanted. I had secrets.”
“Like what?”
“Even when I was ten, I liked writing.” He composed pages and pages of dorky poetry about trees and sky and the parents he barely remembered and how they’d come back one day. “I had to hide my poems and my beat-up copy of The Little Prince.”
“I love that book,” she said. “Why would you hide it?”
“It’s okay for a girl to like a book like that. But a guy? No way. With my own room, I didn’t have to be so careful.”
Still, he kept his book and the spiral notebook filled with his scribbles hidden behind a drawer in his kneehole desk. He didn’t trust the Andersons. The rumor was that they’d lost their own children, three boys. If so, they never told him about it, never talked about themselves and they never showed him family photos.
Sometimes, he caught Belle looking at him with a strange longing in her eyes. Mostly, she was cold. Sparing in her conversation, she regulated his day with terse commands. Get up. Supper. Bedtime.
Harlan was a better companion, but his job as a salesman meant he was on the road a lot. On weekends, they’d watch sports on TV. Drew started memorizing baseball stats, and Harlan would test him. That was when his interest in sports started.
“It was an okay setup. I had food, clean clothes and a roof over my head. The house was on the outskirts of town, next to a forest. I’d pack a sandwich for lunch and spend the whole day tromping through the trees.” He remembered long afternoons when he lay on his back and stared up at the peaceful clouds as they rolled across the sky.
“All in all, life was pretty good, until a Saturday near the end of May. I woke up and got dressed. The next thing I remember was the sun going down while I walked back to the house. The entire day was a blank.”
“You had amnesia?”
“I don’t want to put a label on what happened.” Not yet, anyway. “It was like the daylight hours got erased. I wasn’t hurt so I didn’t say anything about it. Pushed the whole incident out of my head and didn’t think about it until it happened again during summer vacation. That time, it was two days.”
“Did you tell your foster parents?”
“Yeah.” The look on Belle’s face was sheer disgust. For a minute, he thought she was going to throw him out, and he didn’t want to leave. He liked his private bedroom and watching baseball with Harlan. “They didn’t believe me. Told me I was there at home and ate dinner, just like I always did.”
Her forehead wrinkled with concern. “You should have seen a doctor.”
“Harlan took me to a specialist in Rapid City. The guy ran tests and told me that I had a form of epilepsy that caused blackouts. He gave me pills.”
“Did that help?”
“The blackouts stopped. Harlan warned me not to tell anyone about my illness. If the foster care people found out, they’d send me away to a hospital.”
In one of her few lengthy conversations, Belle had described the horrors of a place she referred to as the “asylum.” She made it sound like a dungeon where he’d be locked up in a cage. The authorities couldn’t let crazy people like Drew run around loose. He might hurt someone.
So he kept his mouth shut. “When I was fifteen, the blackouts came more frequently. Sometimes, they’d last for a day. Sometimes, just for a couple of hours. Since I never knew when they’d happen, I missed a couple of practice sessions for the football team. Rather than explaining, I dropped out.”
“What position did you play?”
“Running back, and I was pretty damn good. But team sports weren’t for me. I started skateboarding, running, riding my bike off-road.” He cast a sidelong glance in her direction. “Are you with me so far?”
She nodded. “Everything you’ve said makes sense, and I’m glad to know about the epilepsy. It’s something to watch for in the baby.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve had tests run. I’m not epileptic.”
She left the sofa and went to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. “What caused the blackouts?”
“I don’t know.” With his own cup in hand, he followed her. “One of the reasons I moved back to South Dakota was to do research. I hoped to find answers.”
“What have you found out?”
“Not much.” It was frustrating as hell. He was a journalist—not necessarily an investigative whiz but he knew how to fact-find. “There’s no rational way to explain what happened to me. Or the results.”
“Results?”
“My physical abilities. Or disabilities. I’m not sure which word applies.”
“Stop.” She held up her palm like a crossing guard.
He froze with the coffeepot in one hand and his mug in the other. “What?”
“Disabilities? I’m pretty well acquainted with your physical attributes, and I’ve never noticed anything wrong with you.”
“Maybe you haven’t explored thoroughly.”
“Oh, but I have.” She looked him up and down. “I’ve been all over your personal terrain, from the top of your head to, um, all the other parts.”
He placed his full coffee mug on the counter. “I like what you do to all my parts.”
She gave him a reluctant smile. “Ditto.”
“Your terrain is a lot more interesting than mine.” He slid his hands down her torso. “All these nice curves.” He reached behind to squeeze her butt. “And this round, firm, sexy bottom.”
She subtly shifted position, arching toward him. Her chin lifted, and he knew she wanted to respond to his caresses with the sensuality that was an integral part of her nature.
“You’re distracting me,” she said.
“That’s the idea.”
He didn’t know how to tell the rest of his story. His theory, developed over the years, was that he’d been experimented on during those blackouts. Whatever they’d done to him changed his blood and gave him the regenerative capabilities that allowed him to heal in a matter of minutes. If he announced to her that he was, in a way, invincible, she’d run like hell. And he wouldn’t blame her for thinking he was some kind of nut-job.
Lacking the words to explain, he did what came naturally. A light kiss. The taste of apple pie sweetened her lips.
He whispered, “Have I mentioned that I’m crazy about you?”
“Crazy being the operative word.” She used both hands to push him away, then stepped back and leaned against the counter. “Are you going to tell me about this physical thing you have?”
The most obvious way to prove his case would be to take a butcher knife from the drawer by the sink and cut a vein. He could s
how her his ability. But self-healing took a toll. Today, for their escape, he needed to have all his faculties intact.
“Come away with me, Melinda.”
“Don’t change the subject.” She shook her head, and her auburn curls flopped across her forehead. “You’re not going to leave me with a cliff-hanger. What caused your blackouts? Do you still have them?”
“They went away after I left the Andersons’ house when I was eighteen.” He had timed his escape for the moment when he aged out of the foster system. He was an adult. No one would be searching for him.
“So, you have a clean bill of health,” she said. “No serious illness or injury.”
“Nothing serious.”
She seemed relieved, and he knew her concern wasn’t about him or his health. She was worried about the tiny life growing inside her womb. One of her hands rested on her belly as if she could shelter the baby from harm.
He had the same instinct. Protective. Paternal. He had to keep them all safe. He came toward her, rested his palm on top of hers. “We need time alone, Melinda. To talk.”
“You could be right about that.”
As he looked down into her greenish-gray eyes, he saw her attitude change. She was no longer wary.
When he was doing interviews with athletes who generally weren’t anywhere as articulate as Melinda, he learned to recognize the pivotal moment when they were ready to open up. That’s what he saw in her. She was coming around to his way of thinking. She didn’t want facts; she needed an emotional reason to believe in him.
“Last night, when you told me about the baby, I didn’t know how to handle it. I ran. That’s what I’ve always done.” He closed the distance between them to a matter of inches. “But I want this time to be different. I want to talk, to plan our future.”
“Our future? Together?”
Was it possible? Could he settle down and build a normal life with her? Daring to hope, he kissed her.
As their lips joined, he felt her resistance fade. Her slim, supple body molded to his and her arms encircled him. Her lips parted, and he eagerly deepened the kiss with his tongue.
