The Sweetest Thing

by Barbara Freethy

  He tugged on his tie, feeling tightness in his chest at the very bad ideas flooding his brain. Catherine was an old friend of his new sister-in-law, and as such she was off-limits, not to mention the fact that she was more than a little quirky, with her passion for painting gruesome pictures and her claim that she was psychic. But despite her eccentricities, Catherine had a big heart and a fierce loyalty to her friends, which he found far too appealing.

  "Hello," Catherine said pointedly. "You’re staring."

  "You’re stunning," he replied, unable to stop the words from crossing his lips.

  She gave him a quick smile. "That’s a good start to the conversation. The wedding was lovely, didn’t you think? Jake and Sarah make a good match. I think they have a chance."

  "A chance, huh? That’s an enthusiastic endorsement," he said dryly, hearing the same note of cynicism that echoed through his own head.

  Catherine shrugged. "I haven’t seen a lot of happy marriages in my time, but if anyone can make it, they can."

  "So, how have you been -- painting a lot?"

  "Every night. I even painted you. It’s been quite a challenge."

  He raised an eyebrow. "No kidding? Do I want to see it?"

  Her smile widened. "Maybe I’ll show you sometime."

  "I don’t get down the coast much." Catherine lived in San Luis Obispo, three hours away from his apartment in San Francisco, which provided a nice buffer zone. He had to admit she’d crossed his mind more than once in the past six weeks, but fortunately he had been busy with his work as an investigative reporter for KTSF Television News in San Francisco.

  Catherine accepted a glass of champagne from the bartender. "I brought the painting with me. I wanted to work on it some more. I’m staying here at the lodge for a few days. I figured with a Friday-night wedding, it was only fitting that I get a weekend retreat in the woods."

  "Who’s watching your menagerie of pets?" he asked. "I can’t imagine you leaving them alone." Catherine shared her home with two cats, two dogs, and a very annoying and talkative bird. In some ways he envied her little zoo. He’d never been allowed to have a pet growing up, and watching her with her golden retrievers on the beach behind her house had made him feel like he’d missed out. Of course, he’d missed out on a lot of things besides having a pet. That had been the least of his problems.

  "My neighbor, Lois, watches them when I’m gone. I will miss them, but the mountains are beautiful, and I haven’t been away on my own for a while. Besides, the lake has a peacefulness about it, a depth and a secrecy that appeal to me. I want to soak it all in for a few days."

  Dylan didn’t see the lake the way she did, but he had always enjoyed Tahoe. For years he and Jake had come to the lake with friends or family members to escape the overbearing presence of their father, who luckily never left the city. Dylan wasn’t surprised Jake had wanted to get married here. It was a good start to his new life, although Jake and Sarah wouldn’t be staying long. They were taking a late-night flight to Hawaii to begin their honeymoon.

  "What about you?" Catherine asked, interrupting his thoughts. "Are you staying through the weekend?"

  "I leave in the morning."

  "Are you sure?"

  His gaze narrowed. "What does that mean?"

  Her dark blue eyes grew mysterious. "Do you remember what I told you about the two women entering your life, one bringing danger, the other salvation? I think it starts here."

  "What starts here?" he began, and then quickly backtracked. "You know what? I don’t want to know. I don’t believe in your psychic visions. I’m sorry. That’s just the way it is."

  "I understand," she said, raising her glass to her lips.

  He didn’t like the look in her eyes. He told himself to forget what she’d said. She was just trying to yank his chain.

  Someone took the seat on the other side of him. A waft of familiar perfume made his head turn. The brunette gave him a big smile. Damn, he was in trouble.

  Catherine leaned over and whispered in his ear, "Be careful, Dylan. She’s one of them."

  "Who’s the other one?" he asked as she got up and walked away. Catherine didn’t reply. He had a feeling he already knew the answer. But it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t let her crazy words rattle him. His life was going great, and he didn’t intend to let anything or anyone change that.

  "We need to talk, Dylan."

  Dylan turned his head and stared into the bright brown eyes of a woman he’d never thought he’d see again, Erica Layton. Six weeks earlier they’d shared a night -- a rather drunken night, and one he preferred to forget. He didn’t usually sleep with his sources, and he shouldn’t have slept with Erica, but a late-night celebration had somehow landed him in bed with her. And now she was here with an expectant expression on her face. This couldn’t be good, and he didn’t need a psychic to tell him that.

  Erica handed him a glass of champagne.

  "What’s this?" he asked.

  "We’re celebrating your brother’s wedding. Cheers." Erica tipped her glass to his.

  He reluctantly took a sip. "What are you doing here? You weren’t on the guest list."

  "I’ve been calling you for the past two weeks, but you haven’t returned my calls," she complained.

  "I was busy."

  "You weren’t too busy for me when you needed my help."

  He sighed at the sharp tone in her voice. "I appreciate all the help you gave me, Erica, but if you were looking for something more, it’s not going to happen." He was surprised that he even had to tell her that. Their one encounter had been mutually satisfying, but certainly not the beginning of a relationship. And Erica had understood that. He would have sworn she’d understood. He never got involved with women who didn’t know the score.

  Erica frowned, and her face went from pretty and edgy to hard and brittle. There was a wild gleam in her eyes that made him uneasy. Was she on something?

  "We need to talk," she repeated.

  His gut twisted at the purpose in her words. A quick mental calculation reminded him that when a woman you’d slept with six weeks earlier suddenly wanted to talk, there was a good chance it had something to do with a baby. But they’d used protection. He’d been stupid to sleep with her, but he hadn’t been completely careless. Still, his niece, Caitlyn, was a prime example that condoms didn’t always work. He gulped down another swallow of his champagne.

  He did not want to have this conversation now. His career was flying. He’d just broken one of the biggest stories of his life. He was on the fast track to success. Everything was going as planned. The last thing he needed was a complication -- a baby. His glance drifted down Erica’s body. She looked as thin as ever in a short red cocktail dress that was now hitched up to mid thigh. Her legs were bare, her skin tan, her feet strapped into a pair of red stilettos. A sheer red scarf was draped around her shoulders. She didn’t look pregnant, but if she was, he might as well face it head-on.

  "All right, talk," he ordered, never one to shy away from a problem. Whatever it was, he’d deal with it.

  Erica hesitated, her gaze darting around the room. "Not here. It’s too crowded. Take a walk with me."

  He didn’t want to go anywhere with her, but he also didn’t want to have a private conversation in a public place. Nor did he want to worry his brother or upset the wedding reception by getting into what could be a volatile conversation with Erica. She wasn’t exactly the calmest, most reasonable woman he’d ever met. Even now her fingers tapped nervously on the top of the bar, and she kept glancing around as if she were afraid someone was watching her, watching them.

  Maybe he was off base. Maybe this wasn’t personal. Erica had a way of getting herself into trouble without really trying. He’d learned that about her when she’d helped him link a state senator to murder. He owed her for that. The least he could do was listen to her now.

  "Does this have to do with Senator Ravino?" he asked, lowering his voice.

  She licked her lips. "Of course
not. He’s in jail, awaiting trial."

  "I know, and you helped me and the police put him there. Has he tried to contact you? Are you feeling threatened in some way?"

  "The police say I’m in no danger, but I know the senator better than anyone. He has a lot of connections outside prison."

  "What do you need from me?"

  "I need to talk to you," she said, sounding desperate. She slid off her stool. "Are you coming?"

  "All right." He finished the rest of the champagne and stood up.

  "There’s a path we can take," Erica said as they walked out of the bar and through the lobby of the lodge. "It winds along the mountain, and there’s a spectacular view of the lake."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I got here earlier. I had a chance to explore." She gave him a look he couldn’t decipher and then led him out a side door.

  Nestled in the High Sierras and surrounded by tall ponderosa pines, the Woodlake Mountain Lodge was perched on a steep hillside overlooking the glistening waters of Lake Tahoe. Adjoining the main building of the lodge were a dozen small, rustic cabins.

  "That’s my cabin over there." Erica pointed to a nearby building. "I didn’t want to drive down the mountain after dark, so I got a room. Are you in the main lodge?"

  "Yes. Why did you come here, Erica? You could have contacted me in San Francisco. You know where I live." It didn’t make sense to him that she would have come all the way to Tahoe to talk to him.

  "Let’s go this way," she said, taking a path to the right. "I knew I would have to surprise you, or you’d find an excuse to avoid me."

  "You should have waited until after my brother’s wedding. This is a big day for him."

  "You don’t care about weddings, Dylan."

  "When they involve my brother, I do."

  She rolled her eyes. "Right," she said, a cynical note in her voice.

  Dylan stopped abruptly, losing patience. "Look, whatever you have to say, just say it. It’s getting dark, and I don’t feel like getting lost in the woods with you."

  "Let’s walk to the end of the path. There’s a bench. We can sit." She proceeded without waiting for him to answer.

  The cement walkway was lined with small lights every ten feet or so, but as the path turned into dirt the lights disappeared and dark shadows surrounded them. He tried to call out to Erica to stop, but she was moving at a good clip, and his tongue felt thick in his head. He must have had more to drink than he’d realized.

  Where the hell was the bench Erica wanted to reach? His legs felt strangely fatigued, and the scenery began to spin in front of his eyes. It took everything he had to put one foot in front of the other. What was wrong? A sick, queasy feeling swept through him. He stumbled and almost fell, but he caught himself at the last minute. He put his hand on the trunk of a nearby tree to steady himself.

  "Erica," he mumbled, forcing the word out.

  She turned to stare back at him, but she made no move to come to his side.

  "Help me." He tried to lift his arm, but it was too heavy.

  "This is your fault, Dylan," she said. "I had no choice. I had nowhere else to turn."

  No choice? What was she talking about?

  "It always comes down to every man for himself. You said so yourself, Dylan. Now it’s my turn to look out for me."

  She took a few steps backward. She was getting awfully close to the edge of a very steep cliff. He wanted to warn her to stay back, but he couldn’t get the words out. The landscape took another wild spin.

  She’d drugged him, he realized, suddenly remembering the overly sweet taste of the champagne. Why? What the hell did she want? Before he could ask her, his legs gave way and the world went black.

  * * *

  Catherine Hilliard awoke in the middle of the night, her heart racing and sweat dampening her cheeks. The digital clock read four-forty-four. Every night for the past two months she’d woken up with terror flooding through her body like a tidal wave threatening to take her under. The screams of the past ran through her head, a maddening refrain that she feared she would never forget and yet never fully remember.

  The events of one night had been lost in her subconscious for twenty-four years. And every few years the nightmares came back, torturing her for weeks at a time and then disappearing as quickly as they’d come. But this time was different. The dreams were getting worse, and the fear was relentlessly increasing with each passing night, as if something were coming for her, something horrific.

  Scrambling out of bed, she did the only thing she could do to take the fear away. She painted.

  On the easel a blank canvas waited. She picked up her brushes and opened her mixed paints, finding comfort in the familiar actions. Dipping her brush into the paint, she paused for a second and then put the brush to the canvas. The nightmare in her mind took shape with bold, dark swaths of color, red, green, black, blue. She barely breathed as the fear seeped out of her with each swipe of the brush. She never knew what would come out of her subconscious. Finally, shaken and drained, she set down her brush and backed away.

  The picture she’d painted would make no sense to anyone. It was a mess of lines and shapes, collisions of color, but in the abstract images she thought she could see a face haunted by fear, dark eyes filled with terror, a mouth pleading for help. And deep down she believed she was supposed to help, but she didn’t know how.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, she let out a sigh as she studied her picture from afar. Calmer now, she tried to analyze what she’d done, the way she did every night, but the turmoil in her brain was as confusing as always.

  She’d been six years old when her life had changed forever, when her reality had become a nightmare, when the bad dreams had begun. The police had wanted to know exactly what she’d seen that night, but she couldn’t tell them. A therapist had given her paper and crayons and told her to draw, so she’d drawn, but the images hadn’t made any sense then, nor did they now. And since that day she hadn’t been able to stop drawing. Art had become her refuge, her passion, and her way of making a living. If she couldn’t paint, she didn’t think she could live.

  During the daylight hours she could draw beautiful pictures, landscapes, flowers, happy people -- but at night, after the dreams came, her paintings became monstrosities as she was driven to put brush to canvas in a desperate effort to free herself from the endless nightmares.

  She’d tried changing her environment, but that hadn’t worked. As a child she’d lived in eight different foster homes, and the nightmares had always found her. As an adult she’d tried three different cities and rented more than a few apartments before settling into her current beach cottage, but the dreams always returned.

  Of course, there were months when she slept undisturbed. She wished for the relief of those dreamless nights. The longest she’d gone without a nightmare was six years. She’d thought they were over. Then they’d returned, and she’d realized she would never be free until she did something....

  She had the sense that she was meant to act in some way -- only then would she be able to escape. But what was she supposed to do? She didn’t know. Nor did she recognize the abstract faces of the people she painted. They called out to her, but she couldn’t answer, because she didn’t know who they were.

  Although tonight she couldn’t help wondering if the face in her picture belonged to the woman who’d approached Dylan in the bar. There was a faint resemblance, wasn’t there? Maybe she was just imagining it. Or perhaps she’d painted the woman’s face because she’d seen her in her head, when she’d had a brief glimpse into Dylan’s future -- a future that seemed to include her. Not that she wanted to be included. She had a feeling Dylan was heading for trouble, and the last thing she needed was more trouble in her life.

  Getting up, she walked over to the window and drew back the curtain. Her room was located on the top floor of the three-story lodge and had a direct view of the lake several hundred yards below. The water shimmered in the light of a f
ull moon. The tall pine trees that covered the hillside swayed in the breeze like giant monsters. A shiver ran down her spine. She believed in connections, in fate and destiny. Nothing happened by chance. There was always a purpose. A long-ago childhood psychiatrist had told her that sometimes bad things just happened, and she had to stop looking for reasons, but Catherine hadn’t believed the doctor then, nor did she buy into that philosophy now. Which was why she couldn’t ignore the fact that something was wrong.

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she felt a cold draft through her thin camisole top and silky shorts. She hoped her sense of impending doom didn’t have anything to do with Sarah. Her friend deserved to be happy after everything she had been through the past few years. And Jake and Sarah and their daughter were on their way to Hawaii, to the land of swaying palm trees, soft, warm breezes, and blue skies. They were fine. They had to be.

  She drew in a deep breath and then slowly let it out. She repeated the action several more times. Usually painting her nightmares tired her enough so that she could sleep until morning. Tonight she still felt edgy, as if she were waiting for something else to happen. She walked over to the valise set against the wall and pulled out another painting, a portrait this time....

  Dylan stared back at her with his golden brown eyes that were a mix of mystery, pain, amusement, and cynicism. She’d worked hard to capture the complexity of his eyes, the proud strength of his jaw, and the hint of wariness that was usually present in his expression, as well as the cocky smile that could also be kind, but she didn’t think she had it quite right yet. They’d spent only a few days together two months earlier, when Dylan had asked for her help in finding Sarah and Jake’s daughter, but those few days in his presence had touched her in a way she didn’t completely understand. She just knew that they were connected. There was a reason Dylan had come to her.

  He’d say pragmatically that it was because she and Sarah shared a past, and that was the end of it. But she suspected there was more to come. If only she knew how the woman in the bar figured into things, that would be helpful, but her visions were never as complete or as forthcoming as she wanted. She would have to wait for whatever came next.