Gilda sprinkled a bit of cheese on the salads. “Switching gears, then. Did you see that crazy article Malcomb wrote about an El Chupa—El Chupa—?”
“El Chupacabra.”
“That’s it.”
“I didn’t waste my time reading it.”
As if on cue, a series of footsteps paced over their heads. Erin had heard these steps on the first visit to their old cottage, but hadn’t heard it the last couple of times she came over.
“Is Mark up and about?”
Gilda picked up two salads and headed for the dining room. “Oh, he’s doing well. He’s in the library reading a book. His elbow wasn’t actually cracked, just severely bruised.”
Erin trailed after her friend with two more salad bowls. “Then who is upstairs?”
“Rudy. He’s been active lately. I guess something is bothering him.”
Of course. Rudy the ghost.
Erin didn’t pursue the subject, tired of ghost-permeated conversation. Moments later, Gilda called the others into the dining room.
Once everyone settled down to eat, Mark talked about school and the Halloween party coming up at the old house next to the Gunn Inn.
Mark, sitting to the right of his mother, seemed eager to talk about anything and everything. Tom sat at one head of the rectangular table, while Gilda sat at the other. Lachlan sat across from Erin and next to Mark.
Good. At least he’s not sitting next to me. I don’t know if I could have taken that luscious scent of his. When she glanced up at the big, dark-haired man, his smile melted her into her shoes. She smiled back, feeling delirious and dangerous. She wanted to rush right out of the house and make love with him until the sun came up. Instead, she’d restrain her overactive hormones.
Mark laughed at something Lachlan said, and the young boy’s freckled face, red hair and green eyes made him look a little like Howdy Doodie. Cute as a button, the young extrovert preferred talking over eating everything on his plate.
“I’m on the ghost committee.” Mark smiled and a piece of spice from the marinara sauce stuck in his teeth. “Jackie Cohen and I are making this really gross skeleton with missing teeth and blood running out of its eye sockets.”
“Charming,” Erin said as she looked down at her plate of blood-red marinara.
“Like there needs to be make-believe ghosts set up for the party?” Tom asked.
With the nonchalance of youth, Mark shrugged. “Yeah, but it should be fun. I think I can make some really disgusting special effects.”
“Lovely,” Gilda said, throwing a glance at her husband. “My son is becoming a special effects artist for Wes Craven movies at the age of eight.”
“Hey, that sounds cool.” Mark brightened up. “I love that movie Halloween.”
Everyone chuckle, even if Gilda did look chagrinned with the idea.
Seconds later the conversation veered to the attacks on women.
“I told Gilda she isn’t going home alone from the library.” Tom poured more wine. “It’s way too dangerous out there right now with a nut running loose.”
Lachlan glanced at Erin. “A very wise idea. I’ll be picking Erin up from the library from now on.”
Erin felt anger boil up, but she kept her voice modulated. “That won’t be necessary, thank you.”
Gilda put down her fork. “I wish you and I could carpool, but since our schedules are a little different on certain days…” Gilda shrugged.
Erin wanted to wipe the worried look off her friend’s face and prevent Lachlan from trying to take over her life at the same time. “I can go directly from the library to my house without any worries, I think. Unlike the two women who’ve been attacked, I’m not out walking or jogging early in the morning.”
Lachlan took a swallow of wine and said, “Then at least give me your schedule. I’ll follow you from home to work and back.”
She looked him dead in the eye. You hardly know me.
I still care about you. The masculine voice, undeniably Lachlan’s, came into her head. I want to protect you.
Amazing. Mind-to-mind communication sounded like a neat concept, but how could it be?
“I think it’s a good idea,” Tom said. “You never can be too careful when it comes to things like this.”
Gilda patted Lachlan on the arm. “You’re such a sweetie to do that for her.”
Erin wouldn’t be pushed. “I’ll be fine. I don’t need a bodyguard.”
But I’d love to guard your body.
Her gaze snapped to his, and Lachlan’s smile said he knew the outcome his thought would have on her. She couldn’t retaliate, unfortunately, with the family sitting here.
Contrary emotions bounced inside of her like rubber balls. She’d never met a man that caused multiple odd feelings within her all at once. She liked him far too much; obviously her hormones had been deprived long enough that any great looking guy with lethal magnetism could throw her off kilter. Erin glanced away, determined to not spend any more time ogling him. Besides, what if Danny had already discovered something unsavory about Lachlan? What would she do then?
Gilda gave a visible shudder. “I can’t imagine who could be attacking people and biting their necks. I mean, how sick.”
“A nasty bugger with no soul and no remorse,” Lachlan said.
“A monster?” Mark asked.
Erin smiled and took a sip of her wine. “Of course not, Mark. There are no such things as monsters.”
Mark frowned. “What about the Loch Ness monster?”
“Son, no one has proved the Loch Ness monster exists,” Tom said as he reached for another helping of salad. “Maybe someday, but there’s no proof right now.”
Yikes. So Tom is like Gilda. They really do believe in all this hokum about things that go bump in the night. It was difficult to fight the odds when everyone but you believed in ghoulish creatures roaming Pine Forest.
“Bigfoot,” Mark said. “Now there’s a monster.”
Lachlan wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I’m not so sure I believe in Bigfoot.”
Erin lifted her eyebrows. “You?”
Lachlan grinned. “I think Nessie is a better possibility. After all, she has a fair amount of water to hide in. The loch is deeper than the Atlantic Ocean in some spots, and over twenty miles long. Plenty of room for a wee beastie to hide.”
Mark’s grin went as wide as the aforementioned loch. “Thanks.”
“Humph.” Erin decided to egg on the big, bad vampire wanna be. With a huge smile designed to blind, she said, “And with thousands of miles of forest, poor ole Bigfoot gets dissed?”
Lachlan reached for the pasta bowl. “At the present time…yes.”
“Do you have ESP, Erin?” Mark asked.
She smiled, amused by the boy’s lightning change in direction. “Not that I know of.”
“Do you believe in it?” Lachlan sprinkled parmesan on his pasta and didn’t look at her.
She touched the sterling silver heart necklace she’d slipped on before leaving the house. “I’m not sure that I do. Anything the slightest bit strange I can usually pass off as coincidences.”
Lachlan’s skeptical expression and searching gaze unnerved her. “I don’t believe there are any coincidences. Things happen for a reason.”
“Things happen,” Erin said, “because people make choices.”
Lachlan grinned. “That, too.”
His agreement threw her, and she paused with her fork halfway to her mouth as she stared at him.
Tom leaned on the table, his gaze singling out Erin and Lachlan. “Live in this town awhile longer, Erin, and I’ll bet you’ll change your mind. Gilda and I were pretty unconvinced about ghosts and weird stuff until we moved here. Of course, Rudy the ghost had something to do with that.”
Erin started to feel like a woman trapped with ladies in a luncheon designed to convert her to a card-carrying quilt maker.
Before she could respond Mark said, “I still say it’s that Mexican or Puerto Rican goa
t sucker thing.”
“Why?” Lachlan asked.
Mark took a swig of his milk and came up with a white mustache. As he wiped his mouth he said, “’Cause I’ve been reading about it on the Internet.”
“Oh, that’s great. A wonderful source of truth and information. The Internet,” Gilda said as she glanced at the ceiling in apparent disgust.
Amused by Gilda’s prejudice, Erin decided to tease her friend. “Now, Gilda, you know as well as I do the Internet has some valuable information.”
Gilda’s frown grew deeper. “It also has a lot of misinformation.”
“No more than anywhere else,” Lachlan said as he finished his pasta.
“I still think it’s that Mexican goat sucker creature,” Mark said with conviction.
Tired of the supposition, Erin said, “Not only is El Chupacabra unlikely to be stalking people in Colorado, the entire idea is stupid.”
Her strident response slipped out before she gave full consideration to how it might sound. Mark frowned, and Lachlan looked at her sideways. Right away she knew she shouldn’t have been so hard on the boy.
“I’m sorry, Mark.” Erin pushed her plate away. “Anything is possible in this town.” When he smiled she continued. “At least that’s what I keep hearing.”
“It’s okay.” Mark bit into more bread. “Mom and dad said the same thing earlier.”
Lachlan reached for his water glass.
“Next thing people will say is that it’s a vampire,” Erin said.
Lachlan’s glass slipped from his fingers.
Erin saw it all like a slow motion cartoon. Mark’s mouth opened, Gilda let out a small “oh-oh” and Erin gasped. Time slowed, sticking like honey to the air around it. A moment that should take a fraction crawled as if stuck in the goop.
Lachlan’s hand flashed out.
And caught the glass.
Time snapped back into place.
With a grin Lachlan placed the glass back on the table. “Whew. That was close.”
“Wow,” Mark said, holding his fork halfway to his mouth.
“Didn’t spill a drop,” Tom said as he put down his utensils and stared at the undamaged water glass. “How did you do that?”
The big Scot took a sip of his water. “Quick reflexes.”
Erin saw the exchange in her mind again, and realized time seemed to stop awhile as Lachlan caught the glass. She knew she must have been blinking like an idiot.
Time didn’t stand still, Erin.
His voice again, in her head, made Erin glance up at him. Sure enough, he watched her.
Then why did everything seem to slow down?
I really do have extraordinary reflexes.
Astounded and speechless for the second time that evening, she looked away and concentrated on the remainder of her dinner. He was—they were—communicating with their minds. She didn’t want to think about how demented that sounded.
After coffee and apple pie for desert, they started home. As they cruised along in his car, Erin decided now would be a good time to ask him about their mind connection. She gazed into the night, catching the diamond-point reflection of the stars against the black velvet sky. Crisp and bracing, the evening felt like a good one to go home and curl up in bed. Even one glass of wine made her drowsy, so she knew she’d fall asleep fast. Unless, of course, this crazy mind-reading business didn’t keep her awake. She shifted on her seat and sighed.
God, the lass has beautiful legs.
Her head snapped up. Sure enough, his gaze flickered over her nylon clad legs for a millimeter of time. Heat spread over her entire body. Unused to men appreciating her body, she admitted it felt good to know he liked what he saw.
“I heard you,” she said before she could stop herself.
His mouth twitched in amusement or embarrassment. “Sorry. I couldn’t keep that thought to myself.”
He’d said it and confirmed the one thing that couldn’t and shouldn’t happen in her ordered world.
Erin searched for words to describe how she felt. “This is…is incredible. Is this really happening? Are we reading each other’s minds?”
Seconds later he pulled into her driveway and shut off the ignition. “We’re reading each other’s minds.”
She shook her head and remained stunned. “You’re not even surprised by this?”
“When I first realized I could do this, it freaked me out as well. But because it has happened to me before, I’m not one hundred percent surprised.”
“Eight-five percent surprised?”
He laughed softly and turned towards her. “It’s cold out here. Let’s go inside and talk about this.”
Erin lifted one eyebrow. “You’re assuming that I’m inviting you in?”
“Inviting me in is the only way you’re going to hear about mind-to-mind communication.”
While he’d been in her home once before, in the back of her mind she wondered if inviting him into her home this time might be one of the biggest mistakes of her life.
Chapter 9
Once inside the house, Erin offered Lachlan something to drink, but he refused. She took her time making some chamomile tea, nervous about allowing him in and wary of learning about this so-called mind reading.
Why him? Why now?
She paused as she poured boiling water over the teabag, half waiting to see if Lachlan would answer in her mind. When not a whisper came to mind, she sighed in relief.
She came back into the living room. Lachlan sprawled over the center of the couch, his big body taking up most of the room. She headed for the chair.
“Wait,” he said. “Sit by me.”
She hesitated. “Why?”
His grin went seductive and his gaze searching. “I want to be near you.”
She placed her drink on the coffee table and eased onto the couch. When he made no effort to move over, but snuggled her into the corner of the couch and pressed nearer, she almost protested.
He turned towards her. “You’re still afraid of me. Why?”
She jammed her fingers through her hair. “Look at it from my point of view. You came into town like gangbusters, kissed the stuffing out of me, made me feel things…”
Again that dark, carnal gaze drifted over her. “Yes? How could I make you feel things? Aren’t you responsible for your feelings? You just said at dinner that people make choices.”
“Yes, of course.” Exasperation made her want to smack him. “What I mean is there’s something about you. I’ve never been like this with another man. On short-term acquaintance, that’s frightening.”
“Don’t be frightened. You’re safe with me. I’d never do anything to you or with you that you didn’t want.”
Yes, but what if my will is not my own? She allowed the thought to flow whether or not he could read her mind. What if you have some strange, otherworldly power over me? When Lachlan smiled, Erin wondered if he’d heard her last mental statement.
“Tell me about your family.” His request sounded velvet soft and raw with a need that didn’t match the words.
God, he could be talking about cumquats and still turn her on. “What about them?”
“You’re from Arizona?”
“Yes.”
“Where in Arizona?”
She reached for her tea, taking a sip to stall. “Near Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. My parents have a ranch there. They wanted me to stay in my comfortable little job, but I felt hemmed in. Living with them in the big ranch house didn’t help.”
“You didn’t feel as if you had a place to call your own.”
She saw deep sympathy in his eyes. “Exactly.”
“So you had to leave and find your own way.”
“I should have done it a long time ago.”
He shook his head. “Would have, should have. Humans are strange creatures. They spend far too much time trying to analyze what might have worked rather than doing what works today.”
When he slipped his hands through her hair
, drawing his fingers through the short strands, Erin put her cup down on the table again to escape that disturbing touch.
“It’s the only way we learn from our mistakes,” she said. “We have to learn what we did wrong and not to do it the next time.”
He looked doubtful. “Not if it means we punish ourselves with eternal guilt for events beyond our control. And there is much beyond our power.”
“But I thought you believe in taking responsibility for ourselves?”
He closed his eyes a moment. “Yes, lass. But dwelling on what might have been can do harm to you and those around you. Call it negative thought forms, or bad attitude. You can’t change anything about what happened yesterday. You can only live today.”
Erin knew he spoke the truth, but she felt an urge to challenge him at almost every turn, almost as if she could find a way to discredit him. If she could discredit him, then she could escape his sexual prowess.
She crossed her arms. “I know that I can’t afford to shirk my responsibilities to others, if that’s what you mean.”
Used to men who became irate when they didn’t get their way, she waited. Her father always sputtered and bellowed when people defied him. Intellectually, she knew Lachlan wasn’t like her father, but emotionally she reacted by rote.
“Now you’re putting words into my mouth, Erin. Of course that isn’t what I mean.”
“I’m sorry.”
Again those tantalizing fingers speared into her hair and caressed the back of her head. “Apology accepted. Now that we have that out of the way, why are you drawing away from me? When we first kissed I felt something powerful, and I think you did, too.”
“Yes, but—” His passion made her crazy, throwing her pulse into a wild, ragged thing she couldn’t control. “You’re unlike any man I’ve known before. I’m used to a bully of a father and a passive-aggressive mother. I’m better off away from them, but sometimes I react like Pavlov’s dog to certain situations. I’m not used to the kind of acceptance you’ve shown me.” Go ahead, blurt it out. “Hell, I feel like a passion virgin.”
His eyebrows tilted up a bit. “Are you a physical virgin, lass?”
His voice came soft, caring and not the least bit derogatory. With a tone like that, she couldn’t become livid with him.
Deep is the Night: Dark Fire Page 10
