by Rebecca York
“Right.”
They started with the house across the street. Wyatt thought they’d struck pay dirt when the woman who answered the door said she’d looked out the front window just before turning in and seen an SUV pull into the driveway sometime after midnight. But she hadn’t stuck around to see anything else. Two other neighbors weren’t home. And two more had been aware of nothing unusual.
When they were finished with the interviews, Kate looked like she was going to cry again. Wyatt watched her struggle to rein in her emotions before she said, “Come back in the house.”
Inside, she walked to one of the living room end tables and opened a drawer. “You came to St. Stephens because you dreamed about my being in danger.”
“Yes.”
“And this morning, you woke up out of a nightmare about an older man running through a fun house. Is this him?”
She turned a picture around, and he saw a younger Kate standing with a man who had similar features. In the dream his hair had been gray. The picture had been taken several years earlier, when the hair had been browner.
But there was no mistaking the man. Wyatt felt his throat clog so that he had to force out the word, “Yes.”
Once again, he saw Kate struggling not to cry, and he was pretty sure she hated that she’d allowed herself to break down earlier.
“You saw somebody making him run for his life through a fun house,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“But he could still be alive,” she said in a voice that willed it to be true. And who was Wyatt Granger to snatch away hope in the absence of any hard evidence.
“Yes. It . . . hadn’t happened yet when I dreamed it.”
“And we could stop it.”
“Yes.” He gave her the answer he knew she wanted to hear, although he secretly wondered if it could be true. While he hadn’t seen the end of the dream, he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to end well. The question was—could Decorah Security find Caldwell in time?
“Did you ever stop something bad after you dreamed it?”
“Yes, working with Decorah. We’ve found several kidnapped women and children before they were killed.”
“Thank God.”
He didn’t say there had been cases where they’d been too late to save the victim—but that his dreams had led to the capture of the perp.
He dialed the office number and gave Teddy a quick report on what had happened—with a request that he begin looking for Kate’s father, although he and Teddy both knew that at this point, it was hard to know where to start.
When Kate gave him a grateful look, he forced himself not to spell out the odds of success.
As they had climbed into his car and closed the doors, she suddenly asked, “Do you think my mother’s death was connected?”
“I don’t know.”
She turned to him, her expression angry. “You’re supposed to have psychic powers. Why don’t you know?”
He clenched and unclenched his fists on the steering wheel, knowing that her demand came from fear for her father’s life.
Speaking in an even voice, he said, “Because whatever I have doesn’t work that way. I didn’t dream about your mother’s death before it happened. It started for me when I dreamed of your being in danger.”
As she folded her arms and turned away from him, he started the engine and backed out of the driveway, heading toward St. Stephens. He had the feeling she had made the remark about his powers for another reason, too. She was afraid the two of them were getting too close, and she wanted to distance herself from him.
When he sighed, she jerked her head toward him. “What?”
“Unfortunately, my abilities are limited. I can’t go into a trance and call up the past. I can’t pretend—like the ladies at your dad’s carnival. I only have dreams about something in the immediate future. And I can’t make the dreams come to me. Either they’re going to happen or they’re not.”
“That’s pretty inconvenient.”
“That’s the way it is. I wish I could tell you about your mother—but I have nothing to work with except the facts you’ve told me.”
She gave a little nod and looked down at her hands. He didn’t want to leave her alone with her thoughts, and he also needed more information.
When he cleared his throat, she looked at him questioningly.
“What did Treeman do after the accident?”
She dragged in a breath and let it out before saying, “He sued my father, but we had good insurance. It paid a claim on Billy.”
“How much?”
“I was just a kid. I didn’t ask, but it was probably substantial.” She tipped her head toward him. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m trying to get as many facts as I can. What insurance company?”
She thought for a moment, then named a firm.
“I’ll contact them and get some information.”
“How is that going to help us?” she asked in a weary voice.
“I don’t know.”
“We should call the police,” she said suddenly.
He gave her a quick glance before looking back at the road. “I wouldn’t advise it.”
“Why not?”
“Because if Treeman thinks the cops are closing in on him, he’ll kill your father.”
“If he’s even still alive.”
“Let’s hope he is,” he answered, arguing against his own previous conclusions. “Our best bet is to use the resources of Decorah Security. But I need as much background as you can give me. Where was the carnival located when Billy pulled you into the fun house?”
“Howard County. It was in a field near Columbia.”
He nodded.
“And what year was it, exactly?”
When she told him, he pulled off the highway, hauled out his phone and sent a text message to Teddy with the additional facts.
Kate watched him, then made a low sound.
“What?”
“I told you my father thought it would be safer for both of us if we didn’t see each other often.”
“Uh huh.”
“It made me sad to have to stay away from him, and in the end, it didn’t do us much good.”
He reached over and put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry.”
“I guess I did a lot of things wrong.”
“Don’t beat yourself up.”
She reached and covered his hand with hers, and he felt the mix of emotions that seemed to mark their relationship. He was elated that she was finally letting him get closer to her, but at the same time he was still worried about her safety.
Just as he pulled into the parking space beside the Crow’s Nest B&B, his phone rang.
It was Teddy Granada.
“It’s Decorah,” Wyatt said to Kate as he looked at the caller ID.
“Put it on speaker.”
He pressed the button and said, “Teddy, you’re on speaker. I’m with Kate Kingston.”
“Well, Treeman is like Kate. He’s dropped off the face of the earth. The last mention I have of him is after he got the settlement from the insurance company. The case was mentioned in an article in The Baltimore Sun. After that—nada. He collected the money and disappeared. Either he was killed or he took another name.”
“I think he’s alive and well—and that he scooped up Jerry Caldwell this morning.”
Wyatt talked to Teddy for a few minutes longer, giving him suggestions for how to proceed, then hung up.
“What are we going to do now?” Kate asked.
“That depends on you.”
“Like how?”
“Do you trust me? I mean, are you going to kick me out or let me protect you?”
Chapter Nine
Kate didn’t answer at once, and Wyatt waited with his heart pounding. Finally she raised her head and said, “It’s hard for me to trust.”
“I know.”
“I think you broke through some kind of barrier that I di
dn’t even know I had wrapped around myself.”
Wyatt let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Good. Will you come to the B&B with me? You can wait downstairs while I take a quick shower and change my clothes.”
He watched her debate, wondering if he’d gone too far. Finally she murmured, “Okay.”
When they stepped into the front hall, the aroma of breakfast drifted toward them. Then Mrs. Babson bustled out of the dining room to see who was there.
She looked from Wyatt to Kate and back again.
“I wondered why you were gone all night,” the innkeeper said, addressing Wyatt.
Kate was the one who answered. “It’s not what you think. Wyatt saw someone set my trash on fire last night, and this morning, we went to check on my father in Easton. He’s disappeared.”
“Oh my,” Mrs. Babson murmured as she gave them another long inspection. “You look done in. Why don’t you have some breakfast?”
“You’re sure that’s okay?” Wyatt asked.
“Of course.” The woman laughed. “Breakfast is part of your package, and I always make plenty of extra food. Why don’t you sit over there?” she said, pointing to a table for two on the enclosed porch facing the harbor. “You can help yourselves to the buffet.”
They both filled their plates with a cheese and egg dish, muffins, fruit and yogurt, and then both got mugs of coffee.
Wyatt was hungry. After a long pull on the hot coffee, he began to eat. Kate turned her coffee mug around and picked at her food.
“Eat,” he said.
“It’s hard to do when you’re worried.”
“Yeah, but you’ll be in better shape if you get some food in your stomach.”
She nodded and forked up some of the eggs, then took a bite of the muffin. She managed to finish about half the food on her plate before Wyatt led her upstairs to his room.
Crossing to the window, she looked out. “Did you pick this place so you could spy on me?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“I told you to go away, but you didn’t go very far. Do you ever take no for an answer?”
“I’m like you—stubborn.”
She laughed. “Apparently.”
He swallowed hard, sobering. “And I knew you were in danger. I couldn’t just walk away.”
A long look passed between them.
Kate pressed her hands against her sides and said, “I wanted to think the worst of you.”
“Why?”
“I think because I did believe you.” She waited a beat before adding, “And I was attracted to you.”
“That was a bad thing?”
“It was the way I’d been operating for years—keeping my distance from people.”
He answered with a little nod, fighting to hold his emotions under control. But secretly he was elated that she was opening up like this.
“I should get dressed,” he murmured, turning to rummage in his bag. He knew he was the one who was avoiding speaking now, but he was almost afraid to trust what he was hearing.
Taking out clean clothing, he disappeared into the bathroom.
After a quick shower, he shaved and brushed his teeth. When he came back out, he stopped short. Kate was lying on his bed with her eyes closed. Her regular breathing told him that she was sleeping. Probably she’d tried to stay awake, but she’d lost the battle with fatigue.
He crossed to the window and pulled down the shades, darkening the room. Then he slipped the “Do not disturb” sign onto the outside of the door.
He could have stretched out in the large chair in the corner; instead he crossed to the bed, looked down at the sleeping woman and drank in the curve of her lips, the arch of her brows, the way her lashes lay against her cheek, and the tantalizing scent of her body.
His gaze drifted lower to her breasts—and the rise and fall of her chest.
Unable to stop himself he eased onto the bed beside her, holding his breath as he prayed he wasn’t going to wake her.
She had kicked off her shoes before lying down, but aside from that she was fully dressed, and so was he. Although he felt a pang of guilt at not keeping busy looking for her father’s kidnapper, he knew that Decorah was handling this phase of the search.
And he silently told himself that if he didn’t get some rest, he wasn’t going to be any good to Kate or anyone else.
He turned his head toward her. From the first, he had longed to get close to her. Now she trusted him enough to sleep in his bed.
Closing his eyes, he wondered if he would dream if he slept. Would a dream help find Kate’s father, or would it just give her more reason to be worried?
The transition from alertness to slumber cut off the debate. And he gratefully grabbed the rest he needed. No dreams came to him, which he considered a good sign.
What woke him was a warm body pressed to his. His eyes blinked open, and he saw that in her sleep, Kate had rolled toward him—and he had rolled toward her.
He moved his head a fraction so that his lips were almost but not quite touching hers. The intimacy of breathing the same air was like a current running through him. He shouldn’t ask for more than that, he thought, but he lacked the will to do what he should. He moved his head so that his lips brushed hers. Gently, back and forth. He felt her smile. Then her eyes blinked open, and she stared at him. He kept his hands at his sides, just his mouth nibbling at hers. At first, when she had kept him at arm’s length, he’d assumed it was because she thought he was trying to fool her with the psychic business. Now he understood that she’d had a bad experience with a man—a bad experience that had turned worse.
It made anything that had happened in his past seem like a trip to the park in comparison.
He wanted to pull her close. Instead, he pressed his hands against the outside of his thighs as his tongue played with the seam of her lips. When she opened for him, he felt a surge of gratitude. She could have told him to back off, instead she was letting him explore the line of her teeth, then stroke the sensitive tissue on the inside of her lips.
She made a small sound deep in her throat, a sound that proclaimed she liked what he was doing. But was he taking advantage of her fragile emotional state?
He should stop. But he couldn’t make himself draw away, not yet.
Moving slowly, he dipped his tongue into her mouth. Perhaps that was a mistake because it brought a rush of, hot, needy sensations.
Silently asking permission to take more, his hands stroked up and down her ribs, gliding upward to find the sides of her breasts, praying that she wasn’t going to push him away.
When she stayed where she was, he brought his hands inward, stroking over the crests of her breasts, feeling her hardened nipples abrading his fingertips through the fabric of her shirt and bra.
And when she did the same thing, raising her hands to stroke her fingers against his flat nipples, his heart started pounding.
He knew she felt it, because she flattened her palm against his chest.
He brought his lips back to hers, trying not to be aggressive when he wanted to devour her.
“How far do you want this to go?” he heard himself ask.
“I don’t want to stop. Not now.”
As she spoke, she reached under his tee shirt, stroking her hand over his naked back then downward until she encountered the waistband of his jeans.
He sat up and pulled off the shirt before coming back to her, stroking his hands through her hair as he gathered her close. And still he was prepared to let her go the moment she told him to stop.
Instead, she seemed to burrow into him, and he let himself enjoy every nuance of the encounter.
He watched the dreamy expression on her face as she slid her finger along his recently shaven cheek, then traced the curve of his lips.
When her hand trailed to the side of his neck, he could feel his pulse accelerate again. He raised his head, staring down at her, knowing there was a question he had to ask.
“Have you been with anyone . . . since . . .?”
“No,” she answered before he could figure out how to finish the question.
“Then maybe we should stop,” he forced himself to say, because he was pretty sure she hadn’t been with anyone before that, either.
“This feels right.”
It did to him, too, better than anything he could remember.
As she spoke, she pulled one of his hands up again, cupping his palm around her breast, pressing her taut nipple against him.
He closed his eyes, bringing his other hand up, so that he could lift and squeeze both of her breasts, loving the feel of her. And when she moved the lower part of her body against him, he almost forgot to breathe.
He was dizzy with desire for her, desperate to feel her naked breasts against his chest. Yet he had never been so conscious that he could make the wrong move—and make her decide she was doing the wrong thing.
Was this wrong? He didn’t think so, but the only way to find out was to go slowly and be sure she was comfortable with everything they were doing.
“Can I take off your shirt?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, but he heard a little quaver in her voice.
“Sit up.”
They both sat up on the bed, and he pulled the shirt over her head, then reached around to unhook her bra. She caught her breath as he pulled it away from her body and laid it on the side of the bed with the shirt.
“Lord, you are so beautiful,” he whispered as his gaze swept over the creamy mounds of her breasts with their pink crests. Unable to hold back, he gathered her into his arms, a sound of gratitude rising in his throat as he absorbed the feel of her against himself.
He eased her back down, stroking her silky skin, feeling the hard points of her nipples against his chest.
She brought his hand to the button at the top of her jeans. “Could you help me out of these?”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
His hand not quite steady, he undid the button and lowered the zipper, keeping his gaze on her face, making sure he wasn’t going too fast.
She caught her breath as he slowly reached inside, caressing her intimately, still judging her reaction.
When she seemed comfortable with that, he dragged the jeans down, along with her panties, so that she lay naked on the bed.
