Out of This World (5 page)

“Never.”

Wow. That seemed pretty harsh. It wasn't as if the staff had a lot of places to go, which brought me to another question.

What did people do out here when they weren't working?

“She's gone,” I pointed out, purposely speaking in a regular voice, though I had to admit, I felt a little spooked. “Surely now that's she's gone—”

Marilee vehemently shook her head, her long, gorgeous hair flying around her face. “You're on your own.”

“Okay.” I looked around, uneasy myself. “No problem.”

Yeah right, no problem.

Kellan ran a finger over the huge wooden snowshoes on the wall. “How did she get all this stuff up here?”

“Gertrude had a thing going with Jack's grandfather.”

“A thing?” Kellan asked. “As in…”

“They were doing it,” Marilee said. “Right up until he kicked the bucket last year. Gertrude would order stuff from catalogs, but no one would deliver way out here. So she got Jack to bring her a piece every time he came up here. It took a while.”

Looking at the room, which was so stuffed that pieces were literally on top of each other, I could well imagine it'd taken a while.
Years.

Now I had to decide what to do with it all.

Suddenly it felt so overwhelming. All of it. I had no guests, bills that had to be paid, probably a mortgage of some kind…and no revenue.

“Do you know a good Realtor?” I asked Marilee, thinking,
Who am I kidding? I'd be lucky if she knew
any
Realtor, much less a good one. Who'd be crazy enough to come all the way out here?

More importantly, who would be crazy enough to buy Hideaway?

Marilee turned to me, her eyes no longer unreadable but now filled with shock. “You're selling?”

“I'm just going over my options—”

“But Gertrude told us you'd never sell. That you loved her so much, you'd keep everything status quo. That's why she left the place to you. You weren't supposed to even think about selling.”

Um, okay. Except I hadn't “loved” Gertrude, as Marilee thought. I hadn't even known her. She'd never shown the slightest bit of interest at all in me or my life.

There was a six-pack of water on the coffee table, and since my throat had suddenly become parched, I grabbed one. Only I was still shaking a bit, and the bottle hadn't been perforated correctly, so with a frustrated sound I handed it to Kellan, who had no luck opening it either.

“Look,” I said as gently as I could. “I don't know how I can possibly afford to keep up with everything this place requires.”

“It's not hard.”

Seriously, she had no idea. This place was so far out of my realm, not to mention that it probably required organization and planning skills, neither of which was part of my repertoire.

Plus, Gertrude and I had spoken exactly twice in my lifetime. Once had been at my high school graduation, where she'd handed me a card with five bucks in it, then demanded to know what I was going to do with my loot. The second time had been at my father's funeral, after he'd died from a fall off a building he'd been painting.

Great-Great-Aunt Gertrude had stood by his casket at his funeral and tutted, then looked over at me. “You an artist, too?”

Unable to speak for the grief, I'd nodded.

“Well, that's a damn waste,” she'd said.

Yeah, family closeness at its finest. Needless to say, that she'd left me the inn still had me speechless.

But now Marilee was looking at me, waiting for reassurances that I didn't have. I dug up a small smile. “Looks like I have a lot to think about.”

Marilee seemed as if she might argue with that, but in the end, she only nodded. “Yes.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm just…tired after this whole day. I need a few minutes to freshen up, rest a little bit. Do you mind?”

“No.” Ever the hostess, Marilee bowed her head briefly, expertly masking any emotions, as if she'd never had them. “Of course I don't mind. This is your home while you're here. You do as you please.”

Kellan looked at me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine.”

Nodding, he turned to Marilee. “I'll help you get all the supplies inside.” He sent me a look over his shoulder. “I'll be right back.”

Yep, with your tail dragging, I thought. Ah hell, Kel, don't get hurt.

But of course he would, poor bastard.

“Oh.” Marilee hesitated. “It's Friday afternoon.”

“Yeah.” I waited for more, but she just looked at me expectantly. “What about it?”

Marilee blinked. “You…don't know?”

“I don't know what?”

Another long, assessing gaze, but she didn't answer.

Earth to Marilee…

“Nothing,” she finally said. “Just…be careful.”

Okaaay.

“And, uh, you should stay close,” she added.

As opposed to what—walking back to civilization? “I can do close.”

After she left, with Kellan following her—exuding that eternal hope only a man can summon—I stood there, in the doorway of Gertrude's place, not belonging inside and definitely not belonging outside.

Belonging nowhere.

With the late-afternoon air came a cool breeze that felt crisp and refreshing against my heated skin. I could see a path that wound its way into the woods.

Stay close.

The words echoed in my head. I'd stay really close, and right on the trail, but the scenery drew me. I wanted—needed—to soak it in for a minute. Then tonight, maybe I'd spend some time drawing, to soothe my nerves.

I'd gone about twenty yards when four deer appeared, silent and watchful. They looked shaggier and darker than I'd imagined they would be. But then again, my deer experience was pretty much limited to the movie
Bambi
. Still, they were beautiful in an awesome sort of way, and I stood still.

So did they.

After a moment, at some invisible sign I didn't catch, they all bounded back into the woods, vanishing as quickly as they'd appeared.

I let out a long breath, feeling…changed somehow, and kept going. It was gorgeous out here, I had to admit. Gorgeous but foreign, in another-world kind of way. There were so many trees and bushes and growth that I couldn't see farther than a few yards in any one direction. Yet when I lifted my eyes, I was surrounded by a three hundred sixty–degree vista of jagged, granite mountain peaks that looked like something right out of a book. My artist's soul ached, it was all so beautiful, and my fingers itched for paints.

Maybe my next mural would be of these mountains. You know, when I was back safe and sound in the city.

In less than three minutes, I was completely swallowed by the forest, and I stopped, a little unnerved by how quickly that had happened, and by how isolated I was. I couldn't be more than a football field's length away from the B&B.

Right?

And then I realized something: The temp had dropped. I looked up, and gasped.

The sky had changed from a stunning blue to a dark, swirling mass of black and gray. A storm was brewing, and I hadn't even seen it coming. This storm wasn't like anything L.A. ever saw either. I was talking a big, badass storm.

Adding to the sense of urgency was the utter and astonishing silence. It was as if even the insects had stopped breathing. And then…

Plop.
A single raindrop landed on my head, making the only sound in the entire world.

And then another.

Plop.

The sudden and overwhelming urge to turn back and run like hell to the inn nearly overcame me, but one, I never run, and two, my mother always warned me about running in a storm.

“Rachel!”

I nearly collapsed in relief at the sound of Kellan's voice. He was coming…down the path? I couldn't see him. Why couldn't I see him?

“Rach!”

I whipped around in a circle, but I still couldn't see him. “I'm here!” I yelled.

“Rach?”

He'd sounded so close a moment ago, but now—now he could have been calling to me from another country. Hell, another planet.

“Rachel, where are you?”

I circled again, panic racing up my spine, blocking my throat.

Why couldn't I see him?

“Right here! Kel? Kel, I'm right here!”

“Rachel!”

It was like he couldn't hear me, and the hair rose on the back of my neck, the way it did every time he forced me to go see whatever the latest horror flick was at the movies.

There I'd spend the entire two hours with my face pressed into his neck, listening to him occasionally laugh softly at me, but he was still always there to comfort me.

Damn it, I wanted his neck right now!

And then I thought,
to hell with the moratorium on running. It's okay to be terrified bone-deep and to act on that terror
. So I took off like a bat out of hell.

Only I didn't get very far before I was abruptly and rudely stopped cold by the loudest, most resounding, most terrifying
CRACK
I'd ever heard—

And then nothing, as my world faded to black.

I
love good dreams, and I was in the middle of a doozy. I was hanging off the
HOLLYWOOD
sign painting a mural. It was a typical gorgeous Southern California day, not a cloud in the slightly pink, smog-tinged sky. The temp was in the upper eighties, of course.
Perfect
. And not a worry sat on my mind.

Because in my pocket was a check for a cool mil, payment for said mural.

A million dollars, all mine.

Since I'd never had a savings account with more than even five hundred dollars in it, this fact kept blowing my mind. I wanted to help the poor; I wanted to stop world hunger; but a girl could do only so much on her own. So I kept thinking about the car I was going to buy, one that would run
all
the time and
not
stall in the rain or fail to hop to it when I stomped on the gas to try to get on the 405 in the mornings.

Yeah, this was a good day.

Below, holding and belaying my ropes, stood the gorgeous actor Josh Duhamel, and he kept smiling up at me.

God, he was hot, and I smiled back.

That's when the dream shifted.

Josh wasn't smiling at
me
per se, but at the view up my dress. Odd, since I never wore dresses, but there I was, in a little gauzy number that revealed much more than I'd intended to reveal.

Oh no. No, no, no…

Yeah. I was wearing granny panties.

Shit. Just my luck.

Surreptitiously I looked down the bodice of my dress to make sure, and groaned. Yep, plain white grannies, the ones with the hole over the hip. I'd have thrown them away, but I had a tendency to forget to do laundry, so I'd always saved them for the day when I woke up to no panties in the drawer.

Natch, today had been that day.

Stupid. Hadn't my mother drilled this one thing into me:
Never ever wear underwear with holes because you never know when you'll be in an accident and some cute ER doctor will see your holey panties and refuse to marry you.

I should have just gone commando—

Wait. This was a dream, which meant that, theoretically, I could be wearing anything I wanted. Anything at all.

So I went shopping mentally and picked out a thong. A black lace thong…

“Rachel?”

Hmm. That didn't sound like Josh's voice. And his face was doing something funny now. Sort of smearing, changing…

“Rachel!”

Damn it, that wasn't Josh's voice at all, and I was no longer hanging off the
HOLLYWOOD
sign. I wasn't sure where I was, to tell the truth, because everything was dark.

Waaay too dark. My heart kicked into gear, because suddenly it was all coming back to me.

Hellacious flight from L.A. Dropping the steak. B&B with the oddest staff members. And the coup de grâce: Girl Scout Cookies in the freezer.

“Rachel! Jesus, where are you?”

Yeah, there it was—everything I'd been through in the past twenty-four hours, including my most stupid move of walking into the woods by myself, then the sudden storm and—

Another boom of thunder made me shudder. Had I really been hit by lightning?

Since I could smell something burning—possibly me—I had to come to the conclusion that this was a definite possibility.

Not good.

Just in case it was gruesome, I kept my eyes tightly closed. I'd never been good with blood or guts, always being the one to faint in biology class when we'd had to dissect the poor little froggies.

I could feel rain plopping down on my face—or, at least, I hoped it was rain and not someone slobbering over me.

More smoke…

Maybe it was my own blood I could feel on my face, and with some sort of morbid curiosity, I lifted my hand and touched my jaw, then cracked an eye to peek.

Nope, not blood. Just rain. I closed my eye again, because somehow, ignorant bliss felt good for now.

Guess my mom had been correct about that whole running-in-a-storm thing. And damn, you know I hated to admit that.

“Rachel!”

At the extreme worry in Kel's voice, I forced myself to open my eyes again. I looked up at the individual raindrops falling through the sky in such a mesmerizing pattern, landing on my face. I could feel water from the wet ground soak into my clothes, and probably more than a few bugs along with it, and I
knew
.

Somehow, in some way, I was different.

I peered at the tree next to me. The trunk looked weird, and it took me a moment, but finally I understood why. I could see through it, past the layers and layers of natural wood to the myriad ants crawling inside, winding their way up—

My heart kicked into gear really well on that, right up to heart-attack level, because it turned out I didn't understand at all…

Breath hitching in my chest, I shook my head, and looked up into the sky again. Oh good. Everything there looked normal. But then I focused and…no, not normal.

Not even close.

Already the odd and violent storm was moving on, those horrendous black and gray clouds vanishing before my very eyes. Now I could see the moon, and it looked funny. This was because I could see each and every crater on it—which, by the way, seemed like they might be fun to explore.

One step for mankind and all that.

“Christ, there you are.” Kellan dropped to his knees at my side and leaned over me. He had a smudge of dirt on his jaw, and his glasses hung from only one ear. His hair was plastered against his skull, his shirt saturated. In his hands he held what looked like a pen, but a beam of light came from it.

The guy actually carried a flashlight on him.

“What the hell happened?” he demanded. A few drops of water fell off the tip of his nose onto my face. “Why are you lying on the ground?
Are you okay?
”

Was I okay? Hmm, wasn't that the question of the hour? Trying to figure out that very thing, I looked back up into the sky, watching the raindrops coming down, one by one. Wow, it was really beautiful.

Every part of everything around me seemed deeper, more colorful, richer…

More intense.

“Rach?” Kellan tossed aside his glasses and leaned over me, protecting me with his body, stroking my hair from my face. “You're silent. You're never silent.”

A bird flew overhead, and when I concentrated on its body, its wings flapping, I found I could see its heart pumping, beating…

Oh.

My.

God.

“Rach.”

“I think I broke a nail,” I whispered.

He stared at me. “Tell me you're kidding.”

“I'm kidding.” I lifted my hand and studied my plain, trimmed-by-my-own-teeth nails.

“You're scaring me, Rach. Here, can you sit up?” He took my hand to pull me upright, then steadied me, his hands firm on my upper arms. “Are you all right?”

Without his lenses, his eyes were so clear and blue, I could have just looked at him all day long.

Wow. Gorgeous.

I wobbled, then set my head against his chest. Beneath the drenched shirt, his heart beat a bit fast but steadily, and he was warm, deliriously warm. Sturdy and solid and always-there Kel.

He extended his arms, pushing me back, so he could peer into my face. Man, he was cute. I smiled up at him dreamily, thinking I'd no idea just how cute…and while thinking it, a shiver wracked me. Probably it was the cold, but it might have been the totally and completely inappropriate surge of lust I was experiencing.

Kel kept his hands on me, drawing me back against his warm body, making me all the more aware of him, of his sweet but firm touch, of the strength that allowed him to easily take on my weight. I sighed in pleasure.

“You're scaring the shit out of me, Rach.”

“Did you know you have the most amazing eyes?”

They narrowed on me. “Huh?”

“Seriously,” I said, reaching up, touching his face, which was wet from the rain. “I could drown in 'em. Anyone ever told you that?”

“Uh, no. You're the first. Hold on there, champ,” he said when I tried to get up, holding me down with a hand to the middle of my chest. “Don't move.”

Good idea, since everything had begun to swim. I put my hands to my head. “What happened to me?”

“That's what I was going to ask you.”

He was so cute with all his worry that it made me smile. “Kel? How come we've never gone out?”

“Out?”

“Hooked up.”

He went still, then lifted two fingers. “Okay, how many?” he demanded.

“I'm fine,” I insisted.

“I thought we were erasing that word from the English language.”

I tried to stand up on my own. “Whoa.” I reached for him, because maybe I wasn't so okay after all. “Hey, stop the world, would ya? I want to get off.”

“You're dizzy?” He gripped my shoulders. “What the hell happened? Did you fall?”

I closed my eyes. But just like on the plane, that only made it worse, so I opened them again. I focused on a tree. Again, I saw right through the tree, as if I had X-ray vision, meaning I could still see the long line of carpenter ants making their way through the trunk. I followed their line down to the ground, where they emerged from a hole only a few inches from me.

One crawled out near my foot, and I would have sworn on my own grave that it craned its neck and glared at me for being in its way. I stared at it, stunned. “Uh…Kellan?”

“Jesus,” he breathed, and for a minute my heart surged, thinking he could see through stuff, too, but he shook his head and pointed at my clothes.

They were smoking.

“You were hit by lightning,” he said, and looked into my face. “My God. Are you okay?”

His eyes still seemed luminous, and filled with far more worry than before. I dropped my gaze from his, and then gasped.

Like with the moon, like with the tree, I could see through him. As in
beneath his clothes.

Um, yeah, I was definitely different.

“I can't believe it,” he said. “I mean, what are the chances?” Leaning in again, he began to run his hands over my limbs. Up my legs, over my hips, over my ribs—

“What are you doing?”

“Checking for broken bones,” he said tightly, mouth grim.

“I didn't have an accident.”

“You were hit.” Beneath his shirt, his muscles rippled with every movement, and this mesmerized me. Muscles rippling?
Kel?

When had that happened?

“Kel, I'm okay.” Okay enough to enjoy his hands on me…

“If you're okay, then why are you looking at me funny?”

Because I just realized you have this hard chest and nicely chiseled abs, and you're totally, completely
ripped.

Only two weeks ago, he'd come over to help me wash my car. This had, of course, involved a spirited water fight, and I'd been the victor, nailing him good with the hose from head to toe and back again. We'd laughed, and before going inside my apartment, he'd stripped off his shirt.

I hadn't nearly swallowed my tongue then. Not once.

And yet now, staring at him,
through
his clothes, at his hard pecs, sinewy biceps and that yummy belly, I just wanted to lap him up, or swallow my own tongue.

And then this.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that I must've hit my head after all.”

“Jesus, really?” He pulled me into his lap right there on the wet ground, slipping his hands beneath my hair, cupping my head, gently probing. “I don't feel a lump. I think that's bad. Look at me.”

I didn't want to, but I did. I looked back into those drown-in-me eyes. Then, because I couldn't help myself, because they were such a gorgeous color, I sighed.

“Hurting?” he asked.

“Um…a little. But I'm okay. Really.” My clothes were indeed smoking, a disconcerting fact, let me tell you. “So how much electricity is in a lightning bolt anyway?”

“Enough to fry a few brain cells.”

I laughed, sounding a bit hysterical even to my own ears. So I'd fried a few brain cells. I had spares.

I think.

But how to explain that I could see right through everything? “Kel, can you—Now, I know this sounds weird, but just stick with me here…Can you see through me or anything?”

“Okay, that's it. Stay seated.” He took a good look at my pupils, pretty darn cute in his concern. “You do know who you are, right?”