Cunningham, Pat - Legacy [Sequel to Belonging] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (3 page)

With Jeremy gone, she finally looked around and was shocked to see how empty the yard had become in only a couple of minutes. Fearful of imminent rain, parents hustled their children into cars and hurried homeward. She checked the line of cars for an unfamiliar auto with Jeremy behind the wheel. No sign of him. If he’d brought a car, he’d have offered to drive her home. He was that kind of a person. She thought of her own car, sitting in its assigned space in the apartment complex lot, and prayed she wouldn’t regret her choice to walk to work this morning.

The last parent ducked into his car and pulled out. Norelle had already gone back inside. Colleen headed for the door.

Stop.

The command hit her like a club, so powerfully she actually rocked on her heels. The spied-on feeling rushed over her anew, only now upped in intensity. It felt almost like physical claws in her flesh. Oddly, the deeper the claws sank in, the less it seemed to hurt.

Slowly, as if caught in a nightmare, she turned to face that spot across the street. Still, she saw nothing. No, wait. Was that someone by the mailbox? Colleen blinked, and the blurry figure came into focus. It appeared to be a man, but she couldn’t be certain. A coat hid his body from his neck to his ankles, and a thick scarf shielded his throat. A broad-brimmed hat obscured his face. Was he smiling? Colleen thought he might be. She’d have to get closer to check.

That’s it, pretty. Come to me. You’ve nothing to fear. We won’t hurt you. You belong with us.

He hadn’t spoken aloud, she was certain of that. She must be hearing his voice in her head. The sensation stirred foggy memories she’d thought successfully buried. A voice like dry leaves, eyes like polished silver, the touch of fingers chilly as a corpse. The revulsion tied to the memories roiled up inside her like bile. She froze where she stood and refused to obey or even listen to that insistent call.

Yet here was her foot, sliding forward as if pulled by a puppeteer’s string. Her other foot jerked after it. Then her stubborn streak kicked in. She planted her feet firmly on the blacktop.

Go away! Leave me alone!

The mental voice took on a sour sting.
Come, pretty. Don’t be difficult.
Scarlet eyes seemed to rush forward until they hung right before her face. They demanded obedience. She tried and failed to avert her own eyes. All by itself, her right foot moved again.

A hand came down on her shoulder, and she nearly screamed.

Colleen jerked her head around. Eyes the color of a storm-cloud snapped the scarlet spell. “Would you like to come have dinner with us?” Jeremy asked. “The Stantons, I mean. I can’t just walk out on you without saying a proper good-bye.”

Reeling physically and psychically, she managed a weak, “Uhhh, dinner?”

“I just called Annie, and it’s fine with her. She’s coming by to pick us up. Please say yes.”

The cold voice attempted to reassert itself. Automatically, she reached for Jeremy. His solidity swept the last oily traces of its awful tones from her head. She straightened her back and made herself smile. “I’d love to.”

“Great. Let’s go. I don’t like the looks of that sky.”

It wasn’t the sky he was looking at, she noticed. He was watching the opposite side of the street while trying not to let on about it. He slid his arm around her shoulders and hustled her over to the elm, where Shayla played with an umbrella as tall as she was. Colleen snuck a glance back over her shoulder. The mailbox stood alone and innocuous. Now that she had Jeremy beside her, the whole episode seemed like some weird hallucination. Had she even seen or heard anyone at all?

Jeremy, his hand firmly clasped around Shayla’s, stayed at her back while Colleen went in to gather up her sweater and purse. They lingered until Norelle got into her car and drove safely away. Outside once again, both of them carefully surveyed the street. Jeremy handed Colleen the umbrella and picked up Shayla.

“Looks like Annie’s not here yet,” he said. “Wait, or start walking?”

Colleen stole a look at the mailbox. The horrible sense of surveillance had edged in again. “Let’s start walking,” she said, and was relieved when he nodded. He also shot a look toward the mailbox, but didn’t say anything.

He set a brutal pace, almost a trot. Adrenaline helped her keep up. If she’d thought leaving the school, and the mailbox, behind would ease her distress, she quickly learned otherwise. The sense of being watched progressed to one of being followed. Stalked, like prey. She held the umbrella like a weapon. Jeremy smiled at her and made pithy small talk, but Colleen didn’t miss how warily his eyes scanned the streets or how firmly he held on to Shayla.

They’d gone barely a block and a half when a navy SUV abruptly swung up to the curb beside them. The window lowered. Colleen hefted the umbrella, tensed for scarlet eyes. Mental coercion or not, nobody was getting anywhere near Shayla without the fight of their lives.

“Hey, good-looking,” a woman’s voice said from within. “Want a lift?”

Jeremy’s whole lanky body relaxed. “Hey, Annie,” he said, and Shayla squealed, “Hi, Mommy.”

Colleen lowered the umbrella. Her past encounters with Dr. Annie Stanton had been brief but pleasant. The woman always left a friendly glow in her wake. She smiled at them now while she opened the passenger door. “Hop in, kiddos. That pot roast won’t stay warm forever.”

“’Tatoes?” Shayla asked hopefully as Jeremy set her in the back seat. Colleen clambered into the front, beside Annie. With everyone safely strapped in, Annie peeled out and took off at a speed Colleen considered excessive. Was Dr. Stanton also scanning the street? Colleen decided she must be paranoid.

The sense of being followed had trickled down to a whisper by the time Annie pulled into her driveway. Once inside their house, it shut off completely. Colleen blew out a sigh of relief and let the homey cheeriness of the house wash her clean of that awful, stifling anxiety. She touched her fingertips to her forehead. They came away dampened with sweat.

Shayla tagged after Annie into the kitchen, but Jeremy stayed by her side. “Are you all right?”

“I am now.” She smiled up into his eyes. She’d take their stormy darkness over red any day of the year. “I feel like I had a panic attack or something. Looks like it’s over. Is there some place I could freshen up?”

“Of course. Dinner won’t be for at least ten minutes. There’s a bathroom up the hall there, to your right.”

A brisk splash of cold water on her face, Colleen decided, would do her a world of good. So would a slug of whiskey, but that would have to wait. She scurried up the short hallway to the bathroom before post-panic shakes could hit. At the doorway, she glanced back. Jeremy had pulled out a cell phone and spoke into it in low tones that didn’t carry as far as her ears. He glanced up and caught her eyes on him. Colleen ducked into the bathroom.

With the door between her and all prying eyes, Colleen took a firm grip on the edge of the sink and a series of deep, cleansing breaths. Voices didn’t just sprout in people’s heads unless they were nuts, and Colleen knew she wasn’t nuts. The therapist had said so.

“I didn’t hear anything,” she said firmly. “There was nobody at the school.” She looked her reflection squarely in the eye. Common sense wins again.

Just for just a second her eyes flashed red.

Colleen’s heart leaped into her throat. It passed in a blink. Her eyes snapped back to their normal light violet. Eyes just like her mother’s, right down to the crazy.

“Nobody was there,” Colleen repeated fiercely. Her eyes stayed the color they were supposed to. She hauled in another long breath.

After a quick, bracing wash and face repair with the skimpy cosmetics in her purse, Colleen judged herself fit for company. She opened the bathroom door. Jeremy stood outside it like a sentry.

“Gus just got home,” he said and offered her his arm. “Don’t let him scare you. He’s loud, but he’s harmless.”

As if anything could scare her with Jeremy near. She smiled and took his arm and allowed him to escort her to the dining room.

Everything she’d heard about Annie’s husband, Gus, turned out to be no exaggeration. He was a booming, likeable, bear of a man for whom she suspected the word “overwhelming” had been coined. Also the word “Yeti,” even though there was nothing cold about either him or the wife he towered over. She was pleased to see little Shayla held her own against both their forceful personalities, and both her adoptive parents clearly doted on her. With a home environment like this, Colleen had no doubt Shayla would grow up to conquer the world.

Annie and Shayla had already set the table. Jeremy brought the last couple of dishes over. “Let’s eat,” Gus said. “Bet you must be famished, Colleen, chasing after little kids all day. How do you do it?”

“Quickly,” she said and won a chuckle from both Gus and Annie. Annie seated Shayla, and Gus seated Annie. Jeremy held out a chair for Colleen and took the one beside her.

There followed one of the weirdest dinner conversations Colleen had ever listened in on. Actually, it was more like two, with an undercurrent of a third. The primary talk, the one that happened out loud, stemmed mainly from Shayla, who chattered nonstop about her day to the delight of her beaming parents. Underneath this, Colleen’s psychic prickle picked up a second dialogue, spoken in exchanged glances, body language, and carefully-masked expressions. No one looked directly at her, except to say something polite. No one mentioned lurkers at the preschool. She wondered what Jeremy had told them while she was in the bathroom and who it was he’d called.

At least they weren’t looking at her like she was a nutcase, which was a major plus. More importantly, that menacing spied-on sensation hadn’t returned. She felt safe here, protected. Jeremy seated beside her had a lot to do with that. Lulled by all this camaraderie, she finally let herself relax.

Shayla wound down eventually and fixated on her potatoes, which allowed Gus to get a word in. He directed the word at Jeremy. “Is Wally coming over?”

“He’s not up yet. I left him a message.” That explained the phone call. Maybe.

“I’ll make him a care package,” Annie said. Her bright gaze pierced Colleen. “Has Jeremy told you about Wally?”

And there it was, that other unspoken conversation, finally out in the open. The man at her side had a man at home. Of course his friends would be concerned about his interest in her.

Colleen smiled up at Jeremy. Her expression held just the hint of an edge. “Oh yes. The first day we met, in fact. Did you tell him about me?”

He raised a brow. “Of course I did. I tell him everything.”

Are you going to tell him how you’ve been inching your chair closer to me all through dinner? Or that you’ve got your thigh practically glued to my leg?

To be fair, she hadn’t tried to move her leg, and maybe she’d done a bit of inching herself. The Stantons had to have noticed. They didn’t miss a trick. Colleen resolved to move her leg at the first opportune moment. “I’d love to meet him.”

The significant looks exchange flared up again, first between Annie and Gus, then fired off at Jeremy. Gus dove in. “Better make sure you prep her, sonny. Wally’s best if taken in small doses.”

Colleen went on smiling. “I’m tougher than I look. I’m sure I can handle him.”

“I’ll bet you could,” Annie said with her own smile and significant subtext-laden look for Jeremy. “Wally likes folks who can go toe-to-toe with him. If you can handle a herd of rambunctious preschoolers day after day, I’m sure you can take on anything.”

“Combat training,” Colleen agreed. “You got that right. Besides, I was raised in a commune. Real counterculture stuff. Alternative lifestyles don’t shake me.”

The ball’s in your court,
she thought at Jeremy.

Backed into a corner, he responded with a shrug. “Okay. Maybe we can work something out. It’ll have to be after dark, though, because of his schedule. And brief. Wallace takes a bit of getting used to.”