Lying on the couch in the dark, with the silvery moonlight illuminating a path toward her door on the landing above, Eric renewed his vow to find the truth about what had happened to Mike, not for himself, but for her.
He just vowed that Mariah would have her dreams, all of them, even if they didn’t include him.
Chapter 11
Mariah squinted as a golden spike of light jutted out through her bedroom window and stabbed at her one open eye. Murmuring to herself, she pulled the pillow in her arms tighter against her body and smiled. A night without dreams—without nightmares, at least. A rarity for her.
Warm sensations that had seeped into her sleep faded comfortably into the recesses of her mind with wakefulness. Comfort. Peace. She let them go grudgingly.
Satiation. Limbs heavy with satisfaction. She held on. She’d been dreaming about Eric. About the feelings he’d awakened, as new to her as the rising sun is to each day. Under his tender touch, she’d felt the glow of morning. She could only dream about the heat of high noon.
How she longed to kindle his warm touch until it burned. Scorched away her past. Incinerated the emptiness inside her. She wanted to lie with him on the pyre of her fears until the inferno consumed her, left her ashen in the coals. Replete.
Quietly she slipped out of bed. Her bare feet skimmed the hardwood floors soundlessly; she knew each board, which creaked, and which did not. Wearing nothing but Eric’s T-shirt and a high-cut pair of cotton underpants, she crept down the stairs. Eric lay sprawled on the couch in the front room, his big body draped over the cushions like a fat cat on a narrow windowsill. Maggie was curled on the floor at his side.
“Some watchdogs you two are, sleeping on the job,” she whispered, smiling down at Eric as she reached to brush the unruly lock of hair she loved so much—if only because it refused to obey him—from his face.
Faster than her mind could register, his arms shot out, ensnaring her thighs. He pulled her down and rolled in one lithe movement, putting himself on top of her, driving her into the couch with his weight. “Mariah?” His voice was thick with sleep.
Her instincts screamed. Her voice nearly followed suit. Only through determined force of will did she bite back the cry.
Eric wouldn’t hurt you.
He blinked sleepily. What light morning cast into the room disappeared into the black depths of his eyes. Then, as quickly as he had captured her, he let her loose. Rolling to his side, he pulled her over so that she lay on top of him. His arms slipped to her sides, leaving her blessedly free.
“Oh, Mariah. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
She shushed him, not wanting to talk. Content for the moment just to look. To feel her length pressed to his. The rise and fall of his chest lifted her like a glider plane on a breeze, then settled her gently back against him.
“What are you doing down here?”
“It’s morning.”
He turned his head toward the window. “It’s early.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Bad dreams?”
Bravely, she traced a fingertip over the hollow of his throat. “No. Good dreams.”
His nostrils flared like Jet’s when the stallion scented one of his mares. His eyes might have dilated, but she couldn’t be sure. Not when his irises and pupils were equally dark, equally beckoning.
He pulled in a breath deeper than the last. “How are you feeling this morning? Any more...numbness?”
“No. It seems like I can feel every little thing this morning.” She lifted her hand into the shaft of sunshine tunneling across the room just over their heads and turned her palm forward and back. “I can even feel the light.”
He shifted beneath her, and she felt his arousal. “I seem to be unusually sensitive myself this morning.”
“Must be something in the air.”
“Must be.”
She rotated her head from side to side very deliberately.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Checking for blunt objects.” She peered over the back of the couch, leaned to the side to see behind his head. “Don’t worry. You’re in the clear.”
His lips quivered, then curled up as a smile broke out across his face. His chest shook. The vibration rumbled through her before the laughter spilled forth.
Slowly she lowered her head. Tentatively her tongue darted out, traced the corner of his mouth as he’d taught her. She trapped his lower lip between her teeth. Gentle suction, then release. She raised her head a margin so she could see his eyes. Breathlessly she waited for his reaction.
His silence nearly killed her.
“Am I doing it right?” Never had she wanted anything more. Never had one single action, one single awaited response held such power over her. Her future—the future she’d never dared let herself believe in—dangled on his next move.
At his stillness, a sense of failure strangled her hope. He thought her a fool. A clumsy, inexperienced boob. What had ever made her think he would be interested in her?
“Not right,” he finally said.
If she thought his silence had killed her, his words ripped her soul in two. Suddenly even lying on top was too close, too confining. She moved to slide off him.
His strong hands gripped her waist. “Perfect. Too damn perfect.”
He lifted his head to rejoin the connection she’d severed. She crushed herself to him; he rose to meet her. She grasped his head, her fingers twined in heavy strands of dark silk. His hands twined in the comforter tangled around him.
At some point his knee rose to ride high along her thigh. At some point her knee rose to ride along the hard column of his arousal. With every degree the sun gained in the sky, the heat rose between them.
Eric lifted his hand. His thumb skimmed the protrusion of her hipbone. His knuckles glided inward. Mariah felt the muscles of her abdomen flutter, quick as a hummingbird’s wings, beneath his touch. Her breath stalled again as his hand edged upward, tracing the line of each rib. And when he touched her breast, the soft mound giving to him, taking him in, she tipped her head back in rejoicing. Sensation splintered through her, centering on the point of his touch but bursting out in all directions like sparks from a fireworks display.
Eric’s head arched back, his eyes squeezed as if in pain. “Mariah—”
She kissed a trail down the column of his exposed throat, loving every delicious ring.
“Mariah, please.”
The sheer desperation in his voice made her pause. “What’s wrong?”
He pulled himself out of her grasp and dragged a hand through his hair. As he studied her, his harsh breathing gradually evened out. “I have to know something, Mariah.”
“What?”
His brows drew together as if this were a matter of great importance. “Why me? Why now?”
“What do you mean?”
“After all these years, what’s different with me? Why aren’t you afraid?”
She sat up, pulling the hair from her eyes and fighting the urge to retreat. “I am afraid.”
“Then why do this?”
“Because I’m tired of being afraid.” She captured his hand under hers on top of her thigh. “I’m tired of seeing other people lead the life I could have had. With you, I just know I finally have a chance to live the kind of life I’ve only imagined before.”
He seemed to be waging a war with himself as she spoke. Over what, she couldn’t know, but when it was over, she had a feeling both sides had lost.
“I can’t give you that life,” he said. “It wouldn’t work.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know I’m not what a woman like you needs.”
“A woman like me?” She’d known she wasn’t good enough for him. Attractive enough. Experienced enough. Why had she let herself believe it didn’t matter?
Awkwardly she scrambled to her feet, but he stopped her with a hand like a vise around her wrist before she could get away.
“A wo
man with dreams,” he explained. “A woman who believes in happily-ever-afters and fairy tales.”
“Fairy tares?” She might have laughed if she hadn’t been so close to crying. “Just what about my life do you consider storybook material? My parents’ deaths? Nearly being raped? The years in a group home with thirty other needy kids and caregivers who couldn’t even keep our names straight?”
“And you didn’t let any of that stop you, did you?”
She felt the tightening in his chest.
“No matter how many bad things happened to you, no matter how awful the memories were, you came right back here to where it all started, because this is the only thing you’ve ever wanted, isn’t it? You’re just sure that if you work hard enough, you can make this place everything you want it to be. And you can do it all by yourself, too, can’t you? God help anyone who tries to tell you that you can’t.” He flung her arm away, his eyes cruel. “You’re hell-bent on living out your dream, no matter what—or who—you have to leave behind to do it.”
At last, Mariah understood his anger. “Is that the real reason you’re so angry at your father and your brother, your ex-wife? Because their dreams took them away from you?”
“No.”
“Yes. You’re not angry because they had dreams. You’re angry because you think they loved their dreams more than they loved you.”
Bingo. He let her arm go as if he’d been holding a live wire. She whirled and ran to the front door.
“Mariah—”
She stopped, her fingers gripping the doorknob. “Don’t worry, Eric. You made your point. I won’t be throwing myself at you anymore.”
It hurts too much when you let me fall.
Unwilling to let him see the anguish roiling inside her, Mariah pushed the door open and ran out. And straight into the khaki-covered chest of Shane Hightower.
Eric slumped lower in the slat-backed chair in the Washington County sheriff’s office’s “Interrogation room”—a fancy name for a closet with one grimy window and a door that locked from the outside.
Hightower had insisted they all meet in town to have a little talk. He said he had news about the fire in the equipment barn and wanted to ask a few questions. He’d let Mariah drive her truck in, but he’d made Eric ride with him. Gauging from the look in his eye when Mariah had stormed out the door half-dressed with Eric—also half-dressed—close on her heels, Eric figured he was lucky the sheriff hadn’t insisted on handcuffs, too.
“On what grounds are you holding me?” he asked.
“I’m not holding you. I asked you to come in and answer a few questions and you, being the concerned citizen I know you are, agreed.” He glanced at Manah, waiting outside the door. “But you’re free to go if you’ve changed your mind.”
Eric slid lower in his chair, glaring at the sheriff. Hightower held all the aces in this game, and he knew it. Eric wouldn’t leave Mariah alone with him.
At least the deputies didn’t seem to be around anywhere. He couldn’t help but wonder if they’d be waiting for him later, the way they had been after his first visit to this office.
Through the glass pane on the door, he watched as Hightower escorted Mariah to his office and seated her in a comfortable leather chair.
Shortly after, the radio dispatcher, an overweight woman in her sixties who doubled as Hightower’s secretary, he remembered from his first visit, made a fresh pot of coffee and brought it in to them. A whole damned pot. She didn’t even offer Eric the dregs.
An hour passed, and then another. The secretary made more coffee, and Eric eyed the loose screws holding the bars over the window. Until that point he hadn’t considered escape, but if he didn’t get some caffeine soon, he’d have to do something desperate. Finally, the sheriff strolled into the room.
Outside, Mariah strode purposely down the sidewalk without looking back. Watching her, Eric felt his throat tighten and he cursed himself for it. Why shouldn’t she leave him? This morning he’d made it very clear that she had no reason to wait.
Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was letting something very important slip away. He ought to go after her. Of course, the sheriff might have a thing or two to say about that.
The law officer in question cleared his throat, pulling Eric’s attention back into the stuffy little room. Draining the last drops from a ceramic mug, Hightower set the empty cup on the table between them.
Eric understood Hightower’s strategy. “You want to play games or ask questions?”
The sheriff almost smiled, then motioned the dispatcher to bring in more coffee. He filled two cups and handed one to Eric.
“The fire chief says the fire at the Double M wasn’t an accident.”
“Surprise, surprise.” Eric took the offered coffee and downed half the mug in one swallow. Hightower refilled it.
“Where were you when the fire started?”
“What did Mariah tell you?”
“I’m asking you.”
Eric pushed his mug away, waving his hand over the top when the sheriff reached for the pot again. “I was out riding.”
“With Mariah?”
Eric nodded.
“It was after midnight.”
“We got caught out in the storm and holed up in a cave. By the time it passed and we got back to the ranch, it was late.”
“Do you know Will Granger?”
Eric caught his surprise before it showed on his face. He hoped. “Met him once.”
The secretary—Eric thought her name was Georgia—walked into the room and put a sheaf of paper in front of the sheriff.
“What did you think of him?” Hightower asked, signing the form and handing it back.
Eric’s eyes flicked up to Georgia. “Wouldn’t be polite to say in the present company.”
A flicker of surprise flashed through Hightower’s eyes. He nodded Georgia out of the room. “What was your problem with Granger?”
“He was giving Mariah a hard time.”
“In what way?”
“I’d say you already know, or you wouldn’t have asked if I knew him.”
The sheriff leaned back. “He wanted to buy the Double M. Nothing illegal about that.”
“No. But how about starting a grass fire in a hay field? Or sabotaging equipment, or threatening Mariah’s horses?” Eric explained his theories on who was responsible for Mariah’s mishaps and why. While Hightower listened intently, Eric couldn’t tell if he believed any of it or not.
“What are you doing at the Double M?” For the first time, something other than professionalism crept into the sheriff’s voice.
Eric hesitated, then smiled wolfishly. He’d been waiting for this. Now was his chance to find out exactly how the sheriff really felt about Mariah. Mariah had said he was like a big brother. Eric wanted to know if the man had feelings for her that were more than familial. “What do you think I’m doing all alone up there with a woman like her?”
The muscle at the back of Hightower’s jaw popped up and down, but other than that, he didn’t react. Eric’s respect for the man edged up a notch.
“You be real careful what you say about Mariah around me,” the sheriff said calmly. “There’s not much I wouldn’t do to protect her. If you hurt her, I’ll hang you out to dry.”
That wasn’t the response Eric had expected. It didn’t sound much like an outraged lover. In fact, it did sound rather big-brotherish. Still, he had a few more buttons to push. “Is that what you did to Mike? Hung him out to dry?”
“You think I’m responsible for whatever happened to your brother?” The sheriff tilted his chair back on two legs, propping the sole of a well-worn boot on the edge of the table. “You still believe he was up on the mountain that day?”
“I know he was.”
“You think Mariah had something to do with him disappearing?”
“No.”
“You think it’s just a coincidence that she was supposed to meet him up there, then?”
Eric�
��s stomach turned. He wished Mariah hadn’t told Hightower that. This was a dangerous game they were playing. The less information the opposition had, the better.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” he finally answered.
“Good.” Hightower’s chair fell back to all four legs with a crack. Eric didn’t like the look on his face. It should have been confident. Cocky. But his expression wasn’t cocky. It was...tired. Not physically, but mind-weary, like a soldier who’d seen one too many bodies.
“You know something I don’t?” Eric shifted in his chair, uncomfortable under Hightower’s jaded scrutiny.
“I’ve been looking over some old case files since I took over here. Mariah said she told you about her parents?”
Eric nodded suspiciously.
“Some of the facts around their deaths were...questionable.”
Eric nearly came out of his chair. “You think Mariah had something to do with her parents’ deaths?”
“Hell no. Sit down.”
Eric eased back slowly and the sheriff continued.
“I just said the conclusions drawn at the time were questionable. Her prints were on the gun. Her parents had planned a hike that day. A hike up to Fannin’s Run.”
Eric recalled this part of the story. “But she never remembered if they took it or not.”
“No. She didn’t.” Hightower rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “But it seems odd to me that three unexplained deaths—or disappearances, in your brother’s case—have some connection to Mariah, and to that mountain. Of course, it’s nothing that couldn’t be explained.” The sheriff linked his fingers behind his head. “As coincidence.”
Eric leaned forward slowly. “What do you want from me, Hightower?”
“I want you to stay off of that mountain. And I want you to stay the hell away from Mariah.”
Mariah took her foot off the gas pedal and let Bessie coast alongside Eric as he walked. He’d marched out of the sheriff’s office and turned up the highway like a man on a mission. But he was headed in the wrong direction. Away from the ranch; away from her.
Virgin without a Memory Page 16
