Between Darkness and Daylight (2 page)

For the last half hour, she had been on the phone with one of her most important customers, the president of a large technology company, trying to calm his frayed nerves, and was now desperate to get the gentleman off the line.

Her stranger came to her rescue before she came to his. Heat suddenly flared through her limbs, kaleidoscopic images bursting in front of her sight before she closed her eyes tight against double vision. Great, an excuse. Not exactly the one she was looking for, but she’d take what she could get.

Nova interrupted Mr. Nelson's droning in her ear about his fluctuating stock. "I understand your concerns, sir, but I'm going to have to finish this later. An emergency's just come up."

"I don't think you do understand my concerns, Ms. Foxx…"

Nova blocked him out as the warmth seeped up her legs into her abdomen, crashing into her gut like a wave of fire. She sucked in a breath as a vision struck her between the eyes, and she was suddenly at a police station surrounded by uniformed officers, no longer in the confines of her executive office. Then she saw her stranger, her clearest, sharpest vision of him yet, standing across the station floor, engaged in conversation with a tall auburn-haired man dressed in plain clothes. Nova assumed the redhead was a detective.

Was her stranger the victim of a crime, or had he committed a crime?

Between Darkness and Daylight

11

She guessed she should be glad he seemed alive and well and wasn't in the hospital instead of a police station. Still, police station did not bode well, meant trouble in her book.

"Ms. Foxx, I’d appreciate your full attention, and I don't think you've heard a word I've had to say in the last five min—"

"I've heard you, Mr. Nelson, but I really must go. I'll call you back as soon as I'm free." She didn't waste time explaining further, already resigned to kissing major butt when next she contacted Mr. Nervous Nelson.

How had the man managed to make millions in the technology

industry when he was so afraid of taking risks?

Nova opened her eyes to stare at her computer screen and found it hard to concentrate on reading e-mail when her stranger's face still hovered on the edge of her memory.

She closed her eyes to bring herself closer to the vision, closer to him, her body thrumming with anticipation of his heated touch, the musky-clean smell of him, the heavy solidity of his erection sliding against her slit and taunting her already moistened folds.

God, she hadn’t had one of these dreams in so long!

She preferred these erotic fantasy interludes over the Danger-Will-Robinson nightmares which, of course, was why she had more of the latter than the former. The sexy dreams just got in the way and muddled her reasons for leaving Matt and coming to New York.

Despite this, Nova took a deep breath and gave into the vision this time, stepped into the room in her mind, the room marked forbidden and X-rated, the room where
he
stood, clad in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs and a sexy smile, patiently waiting.

Usually, he was clad in a little more, jeans and a T-shirt, something she could strip off of him, teasing herself lingering over each button before she undid it, slowly drawing the soft denim down his long lean legs until she was kneeling before him and eye-level with that hard part of him that had her vaginal muscles periodically spasming hours after an encounter.

But now, it was as if he was as impatient as Nova to be close, skin to skin, feverish pussy to hard cock, firm-muscled chest to aching full breasts.

12

Gracie C. McKeever

“I thought you’d never come, Nova.”

Come…not a good word when she was at the edge of orgasm just being in his presence again, just looking at his broad-shouldered, tall physique. “I…I don’t have much time. I’m at work and—”

“Whatever you can give me. I just want to be close to you.” He closed the space between them and Nova’s breath hitched in her chest as he wrapped his arms around her and she realized she was already naked. His bare warm chest pressed flush against her painfully erect nipples.

He nuzzled her throat, made her shudder in his arms. “Be with me, Nova. Just for a few minutes. I need you,” he murmured.

He sounded so desperate, more desperate than she felt when she had these dreams.

Did that mean something bad was about to happen to him at the precinct? Something she needed to be there for and stop?

She slid her hands up to his head, tunneling her fingers through his gloriously silken waves, and closed her eyes. “I need you, too…” His name…Christ, she wanted him so badly and she didn’t even know his name, realized she didn’t care. She just wanted him inside her. Now.

His cock nudged her abdomen, a constant obvious reflection of her need, and Nova got up on her tiptoes as he bent his knees to bring the tip of his cock even with her slit. He grasped her ass and pulled her closer at the same instant she reached for his generous lips, teasing the seam with the tip of her tongue. He opened for Nova, readily let her in, thrusting his tongue out to meet and tangle with hers.

Jesus, his mouth set her off like a bottle rocket, kaleidoscope stars bursting bright in front of her eyes as she squeezed them tight, bells ringing in her head so loud she thought she would go deaf with the sound of it.

Ringing…bells…so loud in her head…

Nova woke with a violent jerk, glance bewilderedly darting around her office before finally landing on the phone on her desk.

She took a shaky breath as if to test her lungs and reached for the receiver with some trepidation. The "Private Number" readout on her phone made her wish she had some of her mother's ESP.

"Bornstein and Connor, Nova Foxx speaking."

"Hey, Yankee."

Between Darkness and Daylight

13

"Why, as I live and breathe—Ms. Dakota." Nova grinned against the mouthpiece, re-read what was on her screen, tried to get out of fantasizing-about-hot-sex-with-a-total-stranger mode, and back into work mode. She punched in a series of numbers on her keyboard before hitting "Enter" and sending a response to one of the firm's financial analysts. She liked his latest report and wanted to get together with him later to discuss his research and recommendations.

"Why so formal? We're not
compadres
anymore?"

"We're always going to be
compadres
, K.D."

"Oh, good. For a minute there I thought y'all had gotten up north and turned hotsy-ditty on a body."

"Maybe a little hotsy, but never ditty."

"Shucks, it's good to know you ain't lost your sense of humor."

With Kaylee Dakota, personal trainer extraordinaire, that was hardly likely.

"I miss you, Nova."

"The feeling's mutual, K."

"You know, someone else misses you just as much."

Nova braced herself for the scuttlebutt. She couldn't imagine Matthew Dalton pining for anyone, not even her. But according to Kaylee, that was exactly what he’d been doing for the last few months, since she’d refused to come back to L.A. with him. He’d tried everything within his considerable powers of persuasion to get her on a plane to California, but he’d failed. And short of carrying her to the airport caveman-style, as he’d threatened, there was really nothing he could have done to take her away from New York and
him.

"K.D., you promised…"

"What? I said I wouldn't mention his name, and I haven't."

"Like we both don't know who you're talking about," Nova grumbled.

"Can I help it if you're so extra-perceptive?"

Nova giggled against her will. She could never stay angry with the woman for, as Kaylee was fond of saying, "longer than it took shit to go through a tinhorn."

She loved Kaylee, outspoken busybody or not. The woman had been a great friend to her since their first meeting at the Rock Groove climbing 14

Gracie C. McKeever

gyms. She’d been a real godsend after the accident, helping Nova get back on track, once she was ready to try out her rehabilitated legs.

"You should give him a call, Nove."

"And get his hopes up?"

"What hopes up? You're still friends, aren't you?"

"The connotation doesn't translate as well for him as it does for you.

Besides, he doesn't want 'just friends'; he made that perfectly clear the last time we spoke."

"What he says and what he feels are two different things."

Nova sighed, but almost immediately brightened when she heard the coffee cart coming down the hall with young Josh at its helm. Her mouth watered, anticipating a soothing jolt of java and an excuse to get off the phone—besides the other thousand-and-one things she had to do today, not the least of which was tracking down that police station in her vision.

She needed to cut Kaylee short. She knew what was coming.

Nova had settled down in New York for the long haul, had purchased a house upstate, and was firmly entrenched and advancing in a new brokerage firm on Wall Street. But Kaylee had never failed to bring Matt up, not in all the time Nova had been out east. She’d also never failed to remind her of everything she’d left behind and that it was still waiting for her whenever she was ready to end her wild goose chase.

It was the only aspect of her life idling in neutral, that ”wild goose chase." Kaylee would never know how close Nova had come in the past year to ending her “wild goose chase” as all her loved ones in L.A. wanted her to. She’d had no luck with the personals, want ads or the police, having gone so far as doing a rough sketch from her visions and posting it where and when she could.

All she had was a place and a face, each general at that. With so many people going missing and murdered around the city—around the
country
—it was easy enough for her guy to get lost in the shuffle. As small as the world was getting, New York was still a big piece of real estate and pretty ambiguous territory for one person to canvass, especially when searching for the face of a stranger in the crowd.

Not just a face. So much more. It had to be, to make you come all this
way with nothing but a hunch.

Between Darkness and Daylight

15

Before her episode minutes ago, she’d begun to think her trip to the east coast a year too late, that her stranger had already met an untimely end, was perhaps even one of the thousands of World Trade Center bombing victims. But her visions had increased, not decreased, since she’d been in New York, and now Nova
knew
he was close, could almost taste him.

How could she explain all this to Kaylee Dakota, a Texas farm girl more practical and down-to-earth than Nova's own disciplined father?

Josh, bearer of liquid heaven, parked his cart outside her door and pantomimed a question—did she want him to come in? Nova frantically motioned him forward.

"K, I have to go. The coffee cart's here."

"Haven't I taught you anything about putting that poison in your body?"

"I'll control my coffee addiction when you stop your Godiva addiction, guru."

"Okay, touché"

"Besides, I'm down to one-and-a-half cups a day. I'm being good."

"All right then," Kaylee said. "But I'll remember exactly where we left off. Count on it."

"Don't you have to be down at the Groove opening up?"

"I'll think of you while I'm ascending the granite, smartass."

"Rub it in." What she wouldn't do to be right there beside Kaylee, scaling boulders, swinging from crack to crack, feeling the adrenaline rush of weightlessness. Next to her morning runs and hot sex, it was the only other time she ever really felt free and at peace.

Nova thought twice about asking Kaylee to tell Matt hello, but in the end, she simply signed off with an "I love you." She hung up to Kaylee's

"Ditto" and chuckles.

Rolling her chair from behind the desk, Nova stood to meet her savior.

She smiled as Josh made his way across the thick wine-toned carpeting of her office. His obvious nervousness and crush were endearing. She couldn't count the times since she’d been at Bornstein and Connor that she had gotten a lap full of half-and-half, milk, or cream cheese. She could tell the kid she didn't bite, tell him to calm down and think of her as one of the guys, but that would probably cause more trouble than it would cure.

16

Gracie C. McKeever

"How ya doin', Ms. Foxx?"

"Hey, Josh." She watched with bated breath as he moved steadily towards her, careful of each step. Nova met him halfway hoping to avoid one of his famous calamities, but it wasn’t to be.

He gave her her coffee—black no sugar—and she gave him his

money. But then he mentioned the great weather and Nova responded with a crack about going to the beach or taking a long walk and having an ice cream cone.

The combination of imagining her in a bikini or licking the sweet cold confection must have short-circuited his muscles because Josh expectedly overturned several cups of coffee as he reached for his cart. When Nova automatically bent to help him retrieve and sop up the mess, they bumped heads.

At least it was a good excuse to hurry him out of her office so that she could plan her escape for an early and long lunch. She needed a break now more than ever, if not to clear her aching head, then to start making sense of her earlier vision and re-energize her search.

* * * *

"It'll be a cinch. Just snatch and run."

Ransom could barely hear the dare over his pounding heart, the prospect of doing something inherently antisocial, not to mention illegal, pumping him full of adrenaline.

He was really going to do it this time. Had to, no way not to and still save face. He thought the snatch part should be easy, the running part even easier. He was one of the fastest kids in his ninth grade fitness class; the track coach wanted him to try out for the team.

"You up for it, Ran? Do this and you're officially in," Eddie said.

He liked the sounds of that. He wanted to be in.

Eddie was one of the cool kids, part of the "in" crew at school. Ran still couldn’t believe they’d been willing to take him, the new and really young kid from the suburbs, under their wing. They weren't a gang—