Twisted By Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 1 (19 page)

Yet that life as a little boy had been so
utterly real. It fit her nightmares perfectly, explaining
everything. But how was she supposed to tell Bern that she’d
suddenly decided she’d known him in a past life?

* * * * *

The drive from Palo Alto back to Bern’s house
seemed interminable, though it wasn’t more than half an hour. Bern
asked whether she wanted to go home or to his place, then lapsed
into silence.
What’s up with that?
Of course she was going
home with him. She’d apologized for what happened the night before
with Toni. She’s apologized for walking out on him. She’d thought
everything was fine. Until she’d gone into a trance and said she
knew him in a past life.

“Are you mad at me?” Honestly, she wanted to
laugh because it sounded just like the way a typical argument
started with a typical couple. Were they a couple? Everything had
happened so fast, she didn’t know.

He glanced at her quickly before turning back
to the road. “Of course not.”

“Well, you haven’t said anything.”

“I thought you’d want to absorb it all before
having to talk about it.”

He sounded so reasonable. That actually
pissed her off. Yet again she wanted to laugh because that was so
typical, too. They
were
a couple, even if it had been only a
week.

“Don’t you think it was crazy, what your
sister said about past lives?”

He was silent overly long, letting her hang
there until finally he said, “No.”

“That’s all? Just
no
?” She mimicked
his deep voice.

He wrapped both hands around the top of the
wheel. “No, I don’t think it’s crazy.” He shot out a breath,
puffing out the words on the end of it. “I realized the first day I
saw you that I’d known you before.”

She could only stare. He was so down to
earth, she would never have thought it of him.

He took the overpass from 101 to Highway 92,
and they were silent until he’d merged.

“Doesn’t it make sense?” he asked. “You, me,
and your sister? It’s got to be more than coincidence.”

Livie had never jumped into a relationship
the way she had with him. She’d felt something immediately. About
Toni, though, it was harder to judge. She fell head over heels for
any man who paid attention to her.

“Whether it was a fantasy or a dream or
whatever,” she said cautiously, “it’s an exact match with the way
Toni craves attention. If you’d felt like nobody ever saw you, that
your brother got all the attention, wouldn’t you go through life
always seeking it? Could I actually have made up something that
fits Toni and I so perfectly?”

He glanced at her, the lights of a passing
car flashing across his face. “In the past, I thought it was
craziness. Suze is into the whole reincarnation thing. So is my
younger brother Jake. They believe, but I’ve always thought it
was—” He stopped.

“What?”

“An excuse not to move on, not to change.
Like blaming all your problems on what happened to you when you
were a kid. Or what happened in a past life.” His face was
strained, as if he didn’t like the thoughts he’d had.

“But you don’t think so anymore?”

They exited the freeway, and once he’d made
the turn, he laid his hand on hers. “I saw you, and I couldn’t stop
thinking about you.”

“That’s lust.”

Shaking his head, he went back to two hands
on the wheel. “No. I knew you the first instant I saw you. There
was even a name in my mind.”

“Chad?” She said with a trace of humor.

Bern laughed. Finally. “No. A woman’s name.
My sister says we go through lots of lives together, different
genders, different relationships, husband, mother, sibling, friend.
But when I saw you, I was
not
thinking of some five-year-old
boy.”

“You knew your sister was going to try to
regress me.”

“She and I didn’t talk about it specifically.
I only mentioned the bad dreams and asked her to help you with
that.”

“But you suspected.”

He was silent again as they turned onto his
street. Livie scanned the road for Toni’s car. There was actually a
hiccup of fear in her throat for what her sister was capable
of.

“Yes,” he finally said. “I did.”

“You should have told me.”

“You’d have thought I was crazy.”

“Instead I was afraid you’d think
I
was crazy because of what I said under hypnosis. That wasn’t
fair.”

Bern pulled into his driveway. Then he shut
off the engine and turned in his seat. “I don’t know how to explain
that I’m in love with you when you’ve only known me a week. I don’t
know how to explain that your sister scares the crap out of me. I
haven’t been thinking anything through. I’ve just been
reacting.”

The only part she really heard was that he
was in love with her. God help her, she felt the same thing. But
she was practical, no-nonsense, and this was too much all at once.
She wasn’t ready to say the words.

“Maybe you were right about not making me
talk about it all until I got used to it.”

He put a hand to her cheek. “Stay with me
tonight. We’ll worry about the rest later.”

Meaning they’d worry about Toni later. She
was so tired of worrying about Toni. “Deal,” she whispered. “For
tonight.”

That night, she didn’t dream, at least not
about Toni or snakes. She woke only once, to find Bern gone from
the bed, but he returned a few moments later. She burrowed into him
and fell into sweet dreamless sleep.

Maybe the dreams were gone for good. Maybe
the hypnosis, whether it was real or imagined, had cured her.

* * * * *

He woke in the deepest part of the night, a
scream on his lips and his hands curled into fists he’d used to
beat on the walls of his prison. But Livie was there, and he shut
it down.

He climbed from the bed until his heart could
stop racing. That’s when he’d heard it, a noise, a car door
slamming, probably a neighbor arriving home late. Yet his hackles
rose.

Dressed in sweats, he padded to the front
hall. He thought he heard the fading drone of an engine. Opening
the door, he found the night was once again quiet. Then he looked
down.

A bloody mass of mangled flesh lay on the
doorstep. Bern recoiled, the scent of decaying meat raising bile in
his throat. The thing was a rodent, or a squirrel, half its body
flattened, entrails leaking from its belly. A single fly buzzed
around its hind end.

Jesus. It was better if Livie didn’t know
about this.

In the kitchen, he grabbed a trash bag, then,
returning to the porch, he used the plastic to scoop up the mess
and the doormat along with it. After he’d disposed of the corpse,
he closed and bolted his front door. He checked the other doors,
too, even the windows.

He knew who had left the dead animal. Toni
had fed Livie to the snakes in a previous life. Now she was after
them both.

Chapter Eighteen

Livie slept better than she had in weeks.
She’d woken in Bern’s bed feeling positively luxurious. No
nightmares. If only it would last. In the morning, Bern had taken
her to her place for a change of clothes, then driven them to work.
It was utterly domestic. She’d even been bold enough to put a few
things in a bag so she didn’t have to rush home over the
weekend.

With her mind clear, she’d found the sales
error within half an hour. One wrong calculation in the pricing of
a component part had, when rolled up, distorted the sales for
several products. It wasn’t something she could fix since the
system had been closed for the month, so it meant credit memos,
correcting invoices, and an accounting accrual for the quarter.
Still, she felt victorious.

Her cell phone sang out its ringtone. Livie
scooped it up. Toni’s number flashed on the screen. Livie had left
a couple of messages to check on her. She wouldn’t let Toni rule
her actions anymore, but she also didn’t intend to cut her sister
out of her life. There had to be a happy medium.

Yet a little voice inside asked,
What
about the snake in your car?
And another whispered,
She
killed you in a past life.

“Hi,” she said, answering as pleasantly as
possible. “How are you doing?”

“Look, I just need you to give me a break,
okay.”

It was going to be one of those calls. “I
only called twice.”

“Well, I don’t want you checking up on me,”
Toni snapped. “I need a break from you and that man and everything
you’ve done.”

“Toni, I haven’t—”

Her sister didn’t let her finish. “I knew
you’d deny it.”

Livie remembered all the times she’d tried to
explain that things weren’t the way Toni believed, that she hadn’t
tried to steal her boyfriend, and on and on for every slight Toni
imagined she’d sustained. This time Livie wasn’t explaining
anything. “Did you put that snake in my car?”
Did you stand by
and let the cottonmouths bite me until I died?

“What are you talking about?” But her sister
made an infinitesimal hesitation because Livie never accused, never
questioned.

“It could only have been you, Toni. Did you
even think that if I’d been driving when I first saw it, I would
have had an accident?”

“You’re always accusing me of the most
ridiculous things.”

She knew her sister would never admit it. “I
love you”—did she really?—“but I can’t put up with this anymore.
I’ll be seeing a lot more of Bern. You’ll have to accept that.”

“Fine. You’re seeing him. Big deal. I don’t
care. But
I
want a break. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

“All right. But I’m here if you need me.”

“I
don’t
need you.”

In days of old, her ears would have been
ringing with the slam of the receiver. Now there was simply
nothing. Toni was gone. And God help her, Livie actually felt
relieved.

She pushed Bern’s new speed-dial number. She
knew exactly what she wanted from him. “Let’s celebrate,” she said
when he answered.

“You just name how.” He didn’t ask why or
what for.

“Take me away for the weekend.”

That got him. He was silent.

“Mendocino maybe.” If they left straight from
work, it would take only a couple of hours.

“I need to make a trip up to Freedom to see
my mom. Would you come with me?”

“You want me to meet your mother?” A giddy
little thrill streaked through her.

“It will probably end up being my whole
family.”

Okay, the thrill was also accompanied by a
slight sense of panic. “Well…”

She’d been sleeping with him for a week. Her
sister has just cut her out of her life because of him. And she’d
revealed all her dirty little secrets while under hypnosis. Okay,
that was an exaggeration, but she’d certainly come a hell of a long
way with him. Why not take this next step, too?

“All right. Yes. That would be great.”

She thought she heard a sigh of relief before
he said, “Have you got everything you need in the bag you
packed?”

“Yes.” A pair of shoes, jeans, panties,
various sundries, a couple of shirts. Enough for the weekend.

“I’ve got some stuff here that I keep for
quick trips. Let’s do it, Livie, let’s get out of town for the
weekend.”

It sounded as if they were running away.
Maybe they were. Livie didn’t care. Suddenly she wanted nothing
more than to run away with him.

* * * * *

In the end, Livie was able to get away by
four o’clock, something about having solved a major quarter-end
issue. Bern couldn’t believe his luck. She’d been the one to
suggest the trip. True, he’d turned it into an excursion to
Freedom, but his main concern had been making sure she was far away
from her sister.

“It’s gorgeous,” Livie said as they pulled
into the circular drive in front of his brother’s house.

They’d come in through tree-lined streets
with kids playing in yards, riding bikes, shooting hoops. The
houses were big and set far back from the road, the lots meant for
large families. In Freedom, parents weren’t afraid to let their
kids play until the last of the daylight faded. It hadn’t changed
since his childhood.

On the edge of town, Wade’s home was at the
end of the street. The forest rose beyond it, and if you walked
deep into the trees, you’d come to an old stone quarry that had
been a favorite hang-out for teenagers. The massive two-story
farmhouse had a wraparound porch, a swing hanging to the left of
the front door, and dormer windows along the second floor’s
roofline. The property having been in her family since the early
1900s, Clare, Wade’s wife, had taken over the homestead when her
parents moved to Florida. The only condition had been that her
grandmother would continue to live with them. Clare’s older sister
Joni hadn’t wanted the responsibility, but Clare and Wade had been
glad to do it. At eighty-nine, Nana was a kick, but she’d started
having a few memory blips. Once she’d been convinced Bern was some
guy named George whom she’d known prior to World War Two. Even at
seventy, his own mother was young enough to be Nana’s daughter. And
that’s exactly how Nana treated her.

“I wish they hadn’t held dinner for us.”
Livie glanced at her watch. “It’s after seven.”

Despite leaving at four, the traffic out of
the city had still been a bitch, then they’d hit the tail end of
the commute in Sacramento.

“They eat late,” he said.

Livie was nervous about meeting his entire
family. He was pushing again, but they’d known each other forever,
right? He’d already waited too damn long to make her a part of
this
life.

“I booked a room at Marchant’s guesthouse, so
we can leave after dinner.” He hoped that would ease her
tension.

Some day, if things worked his way, he’d like
to move back to Freedom. He missed small-town life. Wade had made a
go of his business here. He traveled for some of his projects, but
Freedom worked well as his home base. Bern could imagine having the
same kind of life with Livie.