Sanctuary

by Brenda Novak

  “Miguel?”

  “A sergeant on the Enchantment police force. He’s a friend of mine. We went to school together.”

  “He’s probably fast asleep right now.” She held the front door for him as she stepped across the threshold. “I’ll call in the morning, even though I doubt there’s anything the police can do.”

  “They can keep an eye on the place.”

  “I guess,” she said, but she was thinking that a lot could happen between occasional drive-bys.

  “What are you going to do until morning?” he asked.

  She started rummaging through a utility drawer in the kitchen, where she found a box of plastic trash bags, several screwdrivers, a hammer and some nails, some glue and a few other miscellaneous items, all left by the owners of the cabin. “I’ll just have to stay on my guard.”

  “And how are you going to do that?” he asked, his voice skeptical. “Are you planning to stay up all night?”

  Hope almost told him that she might as well. She hadn’t slept much, anyway, ever since the dreams began. “Maybe.”

  “Do you have any weapons?”

  She handed him the plastic bags and a roll of duct tape. “Just my brain.”

  “You’re definitely not diabolical enough to handle Arvin.” He walked down the hall. “If I have my guess, he’s more than a little off balance, which has me worried,” he said over his shoulder.

  Why would anything about me worry you? she felt like asking. He didn’t want her to meet his son. He didn’t want her working at the center. Heck, he couldn’t even remember her name when she first came back to Enchantment.

  “This isn’t your problem,” she called after him. “You have a little boy at home. Go take care of him.”

  There was no answer for several minutes. Hope leaned against the counter as she waited for him to cover the broken window. She knew she’d have to vacuum up the glass before Faith came home, but she wasn’t in any hurry to spend time in that room. Morning would be soon enough.

  He returned and gave her the tape.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate what you’ve done.”

  “No problem.”

  “You’d better get going, huh?”

  She read indecision and what looked like some kind of torment in his eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Pivoting on one foot, he crossed the room to sit on the couch. “That I’m staying until morning.”

  Hope had never imagined he’d do anything of the sort. “But what about Dalton?”

  “He was in bed last time I called. I’m sure Bea is, too, by now. She was planning on staying in the guest room, so it won’t make any difference to her or Dalton whether I sleep here.”

  It would make a difference to Hope. After the window incident, she didn’t want to be alone. But neither did she want the awkwardness of having Parker Reynolds in the house.

  “That’s not necessary,” she insisted. “I’ll be fine, really.”

  “And I’m not going anywhere, really.” He took the remote from the coffee table and switched on the television. Nick at Night came blaring into the room. Then he glanced at the stove, seemed to make a decision and began to build a fire.

  Hope was speechless as she watched. When he tossed in a match, the newspaper he’d wadded up blackened and shrank beneath the devouring flame, and she finally found her voice. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t invited you.”

  Straightening, he looked back at her. “What’s the matter, Hope? Do I make you nervous?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t do well with intimacy as a general rule. And being alone with Parker so late at night, the wind buffeting the trees outside, the fire crackling in the stove, felt very intimate. It wasn’t as if he was anything like the nice, predictable men—or the not-so-nice but equally predictable men—she’d known since Bonner. She’d had no trouble letting each of them in and out of her life without a second thought.

  For some reason, Parker was different. He was enigmatic and dark, at least with her. But he was also ruggedly handsome and extremely sexy.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because you can’t seem to treat me decently, or at least consistently,” she said, “and…” And was where she drew a blank. She couldn’t tell him he was the first man she’d been attracted to since Bonner. The fact that she was attracted scared her. She wanted to feel desire, longed to know romantic love again. But this man was obviously another poor choice.

  “And?” he prompted. His tone had softened and his expression had grown watchful, as though he’d somehow understood what she wasn’t saying.

  “It’s time for bed,” she said quickly. “I’ll get you some blankets.”

  She made him a bed on the couch, then hurried up the ladder to her loft, where she lay awake listening to the television below and calling herself a fool. She wasn’t idealistic or naive enough to think her life would have a fairy-tale ending. Especially with her beginning.

  And yet, she seemed to be buying into Faith’s dream—and wishing for a man of her own.

  * * *

  PARKER WATCHED television long after Hope went to bed, but he wasn’t paying much attention to the movie he’d finally settled on. He could scarcely hear above the litany of words going through his mind: You shouldn’t be here. This is crazy. You can’t afford to establish any kind of relationship with Hope Tanner.

  But he couldn’t leave. Hope believed Arvin to be a viable threat, which meant he probably was a viable threat. And that rock incident definitely had him worried. It wasn’t as though Hope lived in a large neighborhood with a lot of boisterous kids running around.

  Parker propped his feet on the coffee table and told himself to stop worrying. Helping Hope out for one night hardly constituted a relationship. Certainly it didn’t make his betrayal any worse.

  Probably because it couldn’t get any worse.

  Grabbing the remote, he snapped off the television. It was nearly two in the morning. He needed to get some sleep; he still didn’t have a sponsor for the SIDS fund-raiser and would probably have to drive to Taos again in the morning. Maybe by then, he’d finally be able to put this night in perspective.

  He tried to relax, tried to keep his mind carefully blank of Hope, and finally fell into a doze. But he hadn’t been out long when a muffled cry yanked him awake.

  “What is it?” he said, jumping to his feet, adrenaline pumping through his veins. “Hope?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Had Arvin broken into the house and harmed her in some way? Parker couldn’t tell. He couldn’t hear anything now, but something had awoken him.

  He stood very still and listened intently, waiting until the sound came again. This time he knew it originated from the loft. It wasn’t a cry of pain so much as…a voice, he decided. Hope was speaking stridently, as though calling out to someone.

  Who? Silently crossing the room, Parker climbed the ladder to find a small attic with sloping ceilings and a few simple Southwestern furnishings. He couldn’t see any strangers, certainly no fiftyish man bent on dragging Hope back to Superior.

  Hope was there, in bed. Alone. As he watched, she tossed and kicked and started talking again.

  “But it’s not safe! Come here!”

  She kept muttering, most of it senseless, frantic jabber. Then she fell silent, only to start up again a few seconds later. “I said no! I’m coming…please, no…”

  Her voice cracked and she seemed to be crying. Parker moved reluctantly to her bedside. Was she dreaming about Superior? Bonner? He knew she could be reliving a variety of unpleasant things.

  “Hope? It’s me.” Sitting beside her on the mattress, he gently shook her awake.

  At first she tried to bat his hands away. After a moment, she blinked and stared at him, wide-eyed, as though she wasn’t quite sure where she was.

  Parker gazed down at her and couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she was, despite her alarm. “You were having a bad dream,
” he said, letting go of her because touching Hope seemed to trigger a weak-kneed sensation in him. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded and scanned the room, apparently verifying the truth of what he told her.

  “What were you dreaming about? Arvin?” He told himself not to look into her shiny eyes or admire her sweet face, but he did both. For a moment he thought he might drown in her gaze. If only he wasn’t harboring such a terrible secret…

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hope?” he persisted. Something had been going on in her dream. Something terrible.

  “I can’t remember,” she said, but he felt fairly certain she could. Whatever she’d dreamed was simply too private or too painful to share.

  “It was only a dream,” he said, and wiped away the dampness on her cheeks. He’d told himself over and over how strong Hope had become, but she seemed pretty vulnerable now. And her pain touched him in some way, made him want to soothe her, shield her.

  Hope was wearing a tank top, and in the moonlight slanting through the skylight above, her skin seemed to glow silver. He knew he shouldn’t touch her again, but he let one finger slide lightly down the length of her arm. She shivered, perhaps feeling some of the same sexual awareness that was flooding through him, and the control he’d worked so hard to maintain began to unravel.

  “You’re beautiful, you know that?” he murmured.

  She stared up as him as though she didn’t know whether to trust his sincerity. But when his fingers reached her hand, she threaded her own fingers through his and actually hung on.

  “How much longer until morning?” she asked.

  “A few hours,” he said, amazed at the breathless quality of his own voice. Since when had he become so…affected by her?

  “That long?”

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  “I don’t want to go back to sleep.”

  His heart pounded a little harder as his mind presented him with suggestions of what they could do to make good use of that time. Dalton meant everything to him. But his son suddenly seemed so removed from the situation. Right now, it was just Hope and him and the promise of what she’d feel like in his arms….

  “I could lie down with you for a while if that would help,” he said. He was hoping she’d say no, that she’d put a decisive end to the madness inside him. But she didn’t. She slid over.

  “Do you want me to hold you?” he asked as he lay down. He knew he was drawing close to the one woman who could ruin him, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. She needed him. He needed her. Somehow, they needed each other.

  “I don’t want to dream anymore,” she whispered.

  “I won’t let you,” he said. “I’ll be right here.”

  She moved tentatively closer, and he pulled her into his arms.

  The moment she came into contact with his chest, she stiffened. But she didn’t push away or ask him to leave. “I…I don’t want to make love with you,” she said.

  Parker definitely couldn’t claim the same thing, but the sane part of him was at least partially grateful. “That’s okay. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”

  “I’m not a good risk,” she said.

  “You’ve told me that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I’m forewarned, Hope. You have nothing to worry about. Just relax, okay?” He kneaded the tense muscles along her spine, but instead of feeling gratified when she began to relax against him, he felt even more aroused.

  “Warm?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Good.”

  She pressed her cheek against his heart, and he closed his eyes and breathed in the clean scent of her hair, feeling pretty damn warm himself. “Everything will be fine in the morning,” he said, but he knew that at least for him, morning was a long way off.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  HOPE PROPPED HERSELF up on one elbow in the early-morning light and stared down into the face of the man who’d just spent the night in her bed. His hair was ruffled and dark whiskers covered his jaw and chin. She liked the faint lines bracketing his mouth—they said he laughed, at least sometimes—and the short scar on his forehead. These minor flaws added dimension to an already interesting face.

  Her eyes lowered to his body, and the impulse to slip her hand beneath his T-shirt and touch his skin jolted through her. Maybe it was because she felt so strong and healthy this morning. Having Parker’s arms around her had provided a barrier from her past, from her dreams, from her fear of the future, and she’d slept soundly for almost the first time since she’d gone back to Superior.

  She wondered if she could get him to move and make it easier for her to touch him without being obvious, but he opened his eyes as soon as she shifted. “Is it morning?” he asked.

  “Six o’clock.”

  “I gotta go,” he said, but he didn’t get up. He lifted one hand and caressed her arm as he had during the night, and Hope instinctively drew closer.

  “You sleep okay?” he asked.

  “I slept great.”

  “No more dreams?”

  “No more dreams.”

  “That’s good.” He pulled her head down on his shoulder and she again felt the desire to slip her hand under his shirt.

  “This is a nice room,” he said, and she knew he was gazing up at the skylight. She could already feel the sun pouring through the glass, chasing away the cold and the shadows.

  “It was nice of you to stay with me.”

  “We need to get that window fixed today.”

  “I’ll call someone after eight.”

  He turned to look at her. “You ready to tell me about your dream?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to think about it.” She rested a hand on his chest but refused to let herself explore. “You want to tell me about your wife?”

  “My wife?” he asked, obviously surprised by her choice of topic.

  “I never got to meet her. I’ve always wondered what she was like.”

  “Well—” he hesitated “—she was older than you, for one.”

  “No kidding,” she said dryly, and his chuckle resonated through his chest.

  “You were so young when we met,” he said. “I’ll never forget how skinny you were. I swear your eyes looked as big as saucers.”

  “I was almost eighteen. That’s not so young.”

  “To a married man of twenty-six, it’s very young.”

  She considered that for a moment curious whether his first impression of her affected what he thought of her now. “Do you still think of me as young?”

  “I wish I did,” he said.

  Hope felt a tingle of excitement low in her belly, and wondered where that had come from. She didn’t want Parker to see her as anything other than a friend, and age didn’t matter when it came to friends. “What made you want to marry your wife?”

  “She was fun, attractive, driven.”

  “She wasn’t sick when you first met, was she?”

  “She’d always had a bad heart, but her health didn’t really start to go downhill until a few weeks after we got engaged.”

  “That must have been difficult.”

  “It was. We’d originally planned to be married in the spring, but once she got sick, her father started pushing for a fall wedding. He kept saying there wasn’t any reason to wait, that they didn’t have the time to plan a big wedding. But I’ve often suspected that was his way of making sure Vanessa got what she wanted. And he got my help and support in taking care of her.”

  “That’s sad.” Hope settled herself more comfortably on his shoulder. “And terribly unfair to you.”

  “Getting sick wasn’t fair to Vanessa,” he said. As he looked down at her, Hope was struck by the deep brown of his eyes and the long lashes that surrounded them.

  “What did your parents feel about the situation?” she asked.

  He blinked. “
My mother died just after I graduated from high school, so she never knew Vanessa. It was only my dad. He thought I was crazy for going through with the whole thing, but he’d lost a lot of credibility with me by then. So I did what I felt I should.”

  “Do you think your relationship would have culminated in marriage if Vanessa hadn’t gotten sick?” she asked.

  “That’s hard to say. A lot could’ve happened in nine months.”

  “Did you ever regret your decision?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “It was probably tough taking care of someone so ill.”

  “It wasn’t the actual care so much as putting up with the person her sickness caused her to become,” he said. “When I met her, she was bigger than life, outgoing and fun. But after she got sick, she was miserable. She just didn’t feel well enough to be around anyone, and I couldn’t make things any easier for her. Then she became obsessed with certain things, like germs and—”

  “And having a baby?”

  His eyebrows lifted as though the question surprised him. “How did you know?”

  “I was here during that time, remember?”

  “But you were dealing with your own problems. I didn’t realize you knew anything about me.”

  “Are you kidding? The whole center celebrated the day you got word from the adoption agency that you’d been approved. I guess that’s where you got Dalton, huh?”

  “Yeah.” His voice sounded gruffer than it had a moment earlier, but Hope ignored it.

  “Do your in-laws help you out with Dalton?” she asked.

  “They send him obscene amounts of money for nearly every holiday, insist we spend Christmas with them at their home in Taos and take him for two weeks each summer. But considering they live only an hour away, we don’t see them often.”

  “And your father?”

  “My father had already married the stereotypical bimbo and is still trying to recapture his youth.”

  “Wonderful,” she said sarcastically. “I can tell you’re proud.”

  “Yeah, well, we can’t be held responsible for our parents.”

  “Thank God,” she said.

  She felt his hand slide up her shirt and rub her back. “Tell me about your family,” he said. “What’s your mother like?”