All Through the Night (2 page)

“Was that a yes?” he prompted.

“Oh, sorry, yes. It was a yes. My finger is… you know.”

“I do know. Relax now, Kerry, breathe… see yourself flying across a field in a sheer white nightgown… you’re being chased down by a highwayman on a horse, who drops to the ground when he reaches you, rips open his breeches and passionately takes you against a huge tree.”

Oh
..
. my
…
oh
…
a ravishment fantasy
.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Nope,” was all she could manage. If she’d said more, something would have leaped out of her mouth, probably her heart.

“Then how about this one; how about a man who’s tall, dark and sexier than sin, and he’s right behind you, whispering naughty things in your ear while you’re waiting in line at the bank.”

Kerry was about to protest when it became apparent that the beeping sounds were not her cordless telephone. They rang out like chimes, and they were keeping time with her heart. Her wild heart.

Did she want someone to whisper naughty things in her ear?

“Well, of course, that depends on the man,” she said, feigning aplomb. But naturally, it didn’t work. Nothing worked. The chimes had become a chorus and were in danger of being drowned out by buzzing and pinging noises. What in the world was going on?

“I think we’ve touched a nerve,” he said softly.

His irony seemed to generate more sound and fury. Whoops and flashes of light made it look like there was a pinball machine in the room.

“What does this noise mean?” she asked.

“It means you do have fantasies, Kerry. Hot ones. That finger glove you’re wearing is registering your vital signs and giving you feedback.”

The translucent sheath on her index finger was wired into her computer, much like her mouse and audio speakers were, but Kerry had forgotten all about it until he asked. Apparently it was measuring more than her heart rate. Good thing it couldn’t read her mind. The machine would go up in smoke.

“Fortunately, I can take care of that,” he said.

“What?” She sat straight up in the chair. “What are you going to take care of?”

“I’m going to take care of you, Kerry. I’m going to devise the perfect fantasy for you. The one you’ve been waiting for, the one you don’t want anyone to know about. Your deepest secret, your deepest need, your deepest desire. I’m going to give them all to you.”

The game began to wail like a police siren.

Kerry made an instant executive decision. “Go to sleep,” she said, pulling off the finger glove and tossing it onto her desk.

“Kerry, you understand what happens when you voice that command. The game will be over.”

“Yes, I have to… please, that’s it for tonight.”

“Are you sure?”

“
Go to sleep
.” Kerry repeated the command firmly, knowing he wouldn’t obey otherwise. As a backup she positioned the mouse and aimed the arrow at an icon in the upper corner of her computer screen. It had the image of a man snoozing, a vapor trail of Zzzzzzzzs above him and one word below him, SLEEP.

She clicked the mouse and fell back against the chair, watching the computer screen go dark. “Whew,” she whistled softly. “Now that was
some
video game! Maybe I shouldn’t have set the Sensuality Level so high.”

She’d been a game tester for Genesis Software for a few months now, but this was by far the best idea they’d ever sent her for their new adult line. It was an interactive voice recognition game, and it felt like the game guide, otherwise known as Mr. Quick-Where’s-My-Vibrator, was right there in the room with her.

She grabbed her legal pad and began jotting notes.

I love this game! It’s like foreplay only more convenient. You can stop whenever you want to and throw in a load of wash.

Her next tip was crucial.

There’s just one thing missing. Your game guide needs a face to go with that voice. Maybe a body, too. Oh, my, yes! Let’s give our customers the full experience.

When Kerry was done making notes, she fell back in the chair and actually giggled. She hadn’t done that in a long time. There had been nothing resembling whimsy in her life for some time now. But, crazy as it seemed, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a new man on the horizon, and that something was about to happen. It felt like the heavens had opened and dropped him into her lap. Of course, that was ridiculous, she told herself. What the heavens had dropped was a compact disk.

She picked up the silky finger glove and felt a sharp little quiver of anticipation at the mere thought of slipping it on. Or was it foreboding? Whatever it was, she dropped the sheath like a hot potato.

“For heaven’s sake, girl, get a grip. It’s a game. It’s
only
a game.”

Chapter One

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Kerry stared at the front door of her house as if it had the power to reach out and grab her. She was bundled up like a linebacker, both for the winter weather and for defensive purposes. She had a mission to accomplish out there in the cold, cold world, but she hadn’t gotten any further than this impasse with her door. No surprise there. She hadn’t been out of her house in days, maybe weeks.

“The only thing to fear is fear itself,” she intoned, wishing she knew who’d come up with
that
line. Obviously not someone who lived in her neighborhood.

She yanked her fur trapper hat down tight, snapped the earflaps under her chin and checked her parka pockets. The pepper spray and police whistle were there, but she wasn’t sure what good they would do her. You needed an armed tank for this neighborhood. Just the thought of venturing out made her so nervous she’d seen a psychologist recently, and the woman had told her it was no surprise she was a little paranoid. She had reason.

Kerry lived in an area that had once been the pride of south Philly, but lately the neighborhood had been under siege. A pack of young thugs had moved into the “hood” and claimed it as theirs. Kerry herself had been mugged twice, and the attacks had left her feeling terribly vulnerable.

She should have moved months ago, when the area started going downhill, but her quaint red-brick town house had been left to her by her grandparents, whom she’d adored. They’d taken her in and raised her when it became clear that her single mom—their only daughter, Paula— wasn’t financially or emotionally able to take care of a child. Freed of that burden, Paula had gone off in search of herself, and Kerry had rarely seen her mother after that. Her grandparents were the only real family she knew.

A loud rap on the door startled her out of her reflections.

“Kerry, it’s Malcolm! Are you in there?”

Kerry struggled to calm her drumming heart. Malcolm lived in the studio above the garage in the back. He was her new tenant, and a sweet guy for the most part, but his mind was a Nintendo game. He actually thought that cell phones and Palm Pilots were part of a government plot to spy on the citizenry. The way he scrutinized Kerry’s computer equipment, she assumed that was suspect, too. She had him pegged for a conspiracy theorist and maybe a technophobe. Of course, she hadn’t figured that out until
after
she’d rented him the room.

“Hold on, Malcolm,” she called out. “It may take me a minute.”

The floor seemed to roll beneath Kerry’s feet as she started for the door. Her face was flushed, and the way her pulse was skittering, she wasn’t at all certain she was going to get there. A little paranoid? She couldn’t seem to walk.
Or
talk. It felt like something was caught in her throat— probably her heart. And by the time she did get to the door, her palms were so slippery she couldn’t get traction on the knob.

She lived on a side street, but traffic noise roared in her ears as she opened the door a crack.

“Are you okay, Kerry?”

Malcolm’s brow was furrowed with concern. He was wearing his navy pea coat and knit cap, as always, and his luxurious beard reminded her of the fisherman’s in the Gorton’s ad. He had the guy’s great baritone voice, too, except that Malcolm appeared to be at least twenty years younger. His eyes were a surreal delft blue, and there wasn’t a line on his face, despite hair as snowy as the deep drifts outside.

“I’m fine,” she said, but her shaky voice didn’t seem to fool him. It probably wouldn’t have fooled anyone.

“Here, I brought this for you.”

Her tenant made a quick, awkward presentation of a can of soup. Chicken noodle, Kerry realized by the label. She could remember her grandmother fixing that for lunch on rainy days, along with grilled cheese sandwiches.

“Soup, Malcolm?” Kerry didn’t know quite what to say.

“Sometimes I wonder if you get enough to eat,” he confessed.

Touched, she opened the door enough for him to step inside. “Thank you,” she said as she took the can.

Malcolm had brought little offerings on other occasions, and Kerry hadn’t had the heart to tell him not to. She sensed that he wanted to help, and Lord knew, she could use some. Today, however, his other arm was tucked behind his back, making her wonder if he had another surprise in store.

She didn’t ask. He seemed preoccupied.

“Santa just mugged someone,” he said.

“Oh, Malcolm”—Kerry shook her head—“stop that now.”

“No, it’s true, one of the nuns from Our Lady of Perpetual Weeping. He knocked her down and took her fanny pack.”

Kerry might have laughed if Malcolm hadn’t seemed so perfectly serious. She didn’t know what Santa he was talking about, unless it was one of the Salvation Army volunteers on the corner down the block. None of them had ever gone haywire that she knew of, but anything was possible.

“Might as well live in Bosnia,” Malcolm muttered.

“No kidding,” Kerry agreed. If anyone knew how bad it was, she did. The second time she’d been mugged a crowd had collected to watch as if it were a sporting match, and no one had lifted a finger to help her. She’d implored them to call the police, but they’d done nothing except scurry away. That’s when the fear had set in. She’d recognized one of them as her own next-door neighbor!

“Kerry, why do you stay?” Malcolm asked.

Kerry didn’t have a ready answer, except that she loved the place. The town house had a storybook charm about it that had always made her feel safe and secure, at least while she was inside. The breakfast nook walls were hung with sayings done in her grandmother’s hand-stitched embroidery, as was the upholstery in the living room and the cushions on the window seat.

Nothing had been safe from Gramma Laura’s needle except Grandpa Dan’s buttery-soft, old leather rocker. No one was allowed to touch that chair, even to drape a doily over the headrest, which her grandmother had tried on a few occasions. It was where he’d rocked Kerry endlessly, telling her stories about how wishes always came true if you wished hard enough. And Kerry had probably believed him once, impressionable child that she was.

This was how she kept her grandparents’ memories alive, she realized, by staying. But she couldn’t tell Malcolm that.

“I’ll have noodle soup for lunch today,” she assured him. It was the kindest way she could think of to get him to leave. And she did need him to leave. He meant well, but he could get spookier than she was, if that was possible.

“Oh, sure, good,” he said, seeming to get her drift.

He turned toward the door, and Kerry saw the bouquet of tulips he’d been hiding behind his back. They were bright spring colors, pink and deep rose reds, sunny yellows and oranges. It wasn’t a bouquet, it was a rainbow.

“Tulips, Malcolm? Where did you find tulips in the middle of winter?”

Apparently her tenant had forgotten all about the flowers because his shoulders lifted in surprise. “The tulip store?”

Kerry did laugh at that, and when Malcolm turned around, his blue eyes were twinkling like stars. She accepted the flowers and thanked him warmly, but for the first time since Kerry had rented him the room, she wondered about her new tenant. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if it was possible that Malcolm was hiding something other than a bouquet of tulips.

She didn’t ask.

Kerry’s cordless phone had become the enemy. It sat on the enormous tower of mail-order catalogs that she’d been collecting since she started working out of her house, and it had begun to ring shortly after Malcolm left. She could have broken a Guinness record with the tower, she imagined. Kerry Houston, Catalog Queen. But that was beside the point.

Her ringing phone was the point. She knew exactly who was calling, which was why she hadn’t answered. She’d finally had the sense to turn down the volume, but that hadn’t turned off the emotion churning inside her.

One look at the Caller ID number had told her it was starting all over again. The Genesis Software people would not give up! Genesis was the company she’d left three months ago, under the most embarrassing of circumstances, but their human resources person kept calling and insisting that she come back. He’d offered her everything under the sun, including more money, big money. She’d actually bundled up today with the thought of going over there to negotiate a new employment contract, that’s how much damn money it was.