Vision of Darkness (8 page)

Alex shuddered again, shut the water off. As he rubbed a towel over his head, his breath clouded in the air. Was the heating on the fritz? At least the chill took the edge off his erection.

He wrapped the towel around his waist, snagged his duffle bag and dirty clothes from the floor where he’d dropped them before the shower, and hot-footed it down the cool hallway. Eight doors lined the hall, but only one stood open with light burning inside like an invitation. He hustled inside and shut the door.   

The room felt warmer, maybe due to the candlelight-yellow paint job that gave the place a cozy glow. One wall sloped with the angle of the house, a dormer window overlooking the ghost-white lighthouse tower in the side yard. The beacon flashed through the room every twenty seconds or so.

Fog had rolled in as the storm rolled out, thick as wool as it spread over the ground and curled around the base of the lighthouse. Anyone out at sea would need the light tonight.

Whoa. Déjà vu.

He shook his head to clear it then squinted out the window again. What was the story he’d overheard at the diner? The former keeper—his name was something like Cappy?—had hanged himself from the tower last year.

Alex calculated the height and grimaced. Ouch. Hanging was a bad way to go. If Cappy had wanted to off himself, why not use a gun? It was painless if done right and a hell of a lot easier than climbing up seventy feet worth of stairs, especially if the guy had been full of arthritis.

That pain could be excruciating, Alex knew. His kneecap had been shattered in the military and early-onset arthritis had settled into the joint, making it unbearable to get out of bed some mornings even with his freakishly high tolerance to pain. No way he’d be able to climb that tower when his knee acted up. Definitely no way if that pain infiltrated every other joint in his body. Not unless he had help.    

“God,” he said aloud in disgust. “Looking for conspiracies now, Brennan? Here?” He was starting to sound like Theo. Fatigue, he decided. It made him paranoid. Or, at least, more paranoid than usual.

He shook himself to wake up and prowled the room. Minimalist but comfy. A decent-sized closet took up one wall and another door opened into a small, gutted space he assumed would be a private bath when it was finished. A corner shower stood in the room, but hadn’t been installed yet.

“Not bad.” He tossed his duffle on the double bed and sat down to rummage through it for some pajama pants and his toothbrush. The mattress was memory foam and cupped his ass like a lover. He lay back, groaning in pleasure as he sank into the bed. Really nice.

He stared up at the ceiling for a moment, thinking he’d like to have Pru in this bed with him. The next, he was out cold.

CHAPTER 7

Wade…

“No!” Wade’s breath fogged against the air. He rolled over in his narrow bed and buried his head under the pillow to block her out. He wouldn’t listen to her anymore. She got him in trouble with Pru and tomorrow, J.J was gonna be so angry he wouldn’t let him live in the carriage house anymore.

Wade liked his apartment. He had a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen with a microwave and a fridge, and a giant living room all to himself. He could watch baseball, eat potato chips, and drink Pepsi all day when he didn’t have to work. He even had a satellite hooked to his TV and could watch baseball all year round if he wanted, there were so many channels. He didn’t want to go back to his one room at J.J.’s house and all of J.J.’s rules. He was a grown-up. He could be good.

Wade…

“I’m not listening!” He sat up and launched his pillow across the empty room. “You got me in trouble. Everyone’s mad at me.”

The air warmed to room temperature.

“Hey! Where’d you go?”

Wade…

The whisper came from outside now. He padded over to the window, bare feet icy on the pine floor. The storm had blown over, but the wind still moaned and shook the trees at the edge of the property. A sliver of moon peeked out from behind two dark clouds, spilling soft white light onto the yard as the wind dragged fog in from the ocean. She floated over the storm-whipped grass toward the keeper’s quarters.

“Wait!” Wade pried the window open. The cold air hit him like a baton to the face. “No, don’t be mad at me too. I’m sorry. Are we still friends?”

She gazed over her shoulder with a little smile, just like in the photo in the stairway of the house.

Come with me.
  

Wade bit down on his lower lip and looked around his apartment. Pru said he wasn’t allowed to wander around tonight. “I can’t.”

Your father wants you.

“Dad?” A fist squeezed his heart. He blinked as tears clouded his vision. “You know where he is?”

Come with me.

Shivering with excitement, tears streaming down his face, Wade ran for the door without his shoes or coat. He’d just let The Green Lady take him to see Dad, then come right back inside. If he was quiet, Pru didn’t have to know he disobeyed.    

***

Footsteps creaked overhead again. The sound had stopped for so long that Pru thought Alex finally went to bed. But, nope, he’d started pacing again.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

She pictured him in a pair of sexy, formfitting boxer shorts—he seemed like a boxer-brief kind of guy—retracing his steps over the pine floorboards like a caged wildcat, muscles flexing under taut skin tinged with the dregs of a summer tan. Was his chest hair the same black coffee color of the hair on his head? And what about the happy little trail that led the eye from his belly button to—

Ai-yi-yi.

Ever since that heated moment on the stairs, she couldn’t keep her mind out of the gutter. Or, more to the point, out of Alex’s pants.

Pru huffed out a breath and glanced at her alarm clock. One-thirty in the morning. Why wasn’t he sleeping?

She hoped, with a wicked twinge of satisfaction, that his insomnia was due to a guilty conscience for skipping dinner. When he never came downstairs after his shower, she sat at the kitchen table by herself, picking at her food, checking the clock every other minute until she realized he wasn’t coming back.

Fool
, she thought now in disgust and tossed aside her blankets. Just like a lovesick teenage girl waiting by the phone for her boyfriend’s call, she’d sat there for twenty minutes worrying if he’d like the warm and spicy winter squash soup and deviled ham and pecan sandwiches she’d thrown together.

Okay, so maybe she hadn’t tossed it together at the last minute, though that was what she’d planned to tell him with a little flippant wave of her hand.
Oh, this? This is nothing special.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. She’d been grandstanding, hoping to impress him—and he’d blown her off. The jerk. Probably his way of getting back at her for not joining him in the shower.

Not that she hadn’t considered it but, sheesh, give a girl some time to think things through. Too much, too fast, and the man was like a tornado when he wanted something, flattening everything in his path. No doubt, he’d expected some slippery-hot shower sex tonight—and, for the love of God, she didn’t need that mental picture when she already ached for the man’s touch. She twisted on the bed, trying to find a comfy spot, willing away the heat pooling between her legs.

The footsteps continued. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Oh, forget it.

Groaning, Pru sat up and gazed toward the window where fog as thick as Grandma Mae’s chowder obscured her view of the lighthouse tower. The beacon still shone bright and steady, guiding ships away from the deadly rocks of Danger Ledge.

Was that light keeping Alex up? She should offer to pin a blanket over his window. Maybe then he’d stop pacing and she could push him out of her mind and get some sleep.

As she swung her feet to the cool pine floor, the footsteps upstairs stopped. Finally. Straining her ears, she heard the soft squeak of his door opening and the careful tread of a heavy man trying to be quiet on a creaking stairway. She padded to her bedroom doors and cracked one side open in time to see his broad-shouldered shadow slink across the foyer. He tested the knob on the front door.

Pru smiled and leaned a shoulder against the wall. “Expecting company?”

Spine snapping straight as a poker, he turned toward her. His jeans rode low on his hips, showing a V of muscle that arrowed the gaze down, and his chest was bare. A thin, white ridge of scar tissue started below his collarbone and sliced diagonally, ending just below his left nipple.

Whatever made that mark—a knife, maybe—must have taken him to death’s door. Her heart squeezed in response and she hoped the person who did that to him was dead. She hated violence, and felt a tiny prick of guilt for thinking it, but a person capable of slicing another human up like that didn’t deserve to live.

The scar drew her attention to the spattering of chest hair along his breastbone. He wasn’t a hairy man, but had just enough to be mouth-wateringly masculine. The color was a shade lighter than the hair on his head and—she dipped her gaze to the waistband of his jeans—yup, the happy trail trickling down his abs was a shade darker.

Well, she got her answer about
that
. Her belly muscles tightened. She had to remember how to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Did I wake you?”

Inhale, exhale. “No,” she forced the word out. “I’ve been up.”

Alex’s gaze returned to the front door. “Did you go outside?”

She laughed and that made breathing easier. “Why would I? It’s freezing.”

“I swore I heard …” He shook his head and reached to check the door again. “You haven’t heard anything strange?”

“Nothing but you pacing all night long.”

He froze, one hand mid-way to the doorknob. “I haven’t been pacing, Pru. I was asleep until five minutes ago when I heard running footsteps and the front door slam shut.”

“No, nothing like that. Only you pacing.”

“But I wasn’t,” he insisted. “I crashed after getting out of the shower. Didn’t even dress. Woke up still in my towel.”

Her stomach knotted up again. His long body stretched out on a bed wearing nothing but a towel was another mental image she didn’t need. She forced her muscles to relax and tried to sound casual.

“Aren’t you in the room with the old rocking chair? It’s the one I set up for you.” She gestured to her bedroom. “The one right above me?”

He looked over her shoulder and the line of his jaw hardened. She knew what he saw. She’d only opened one of the pocket doors, but from where he stood, half in the foyer and half in the living room, he had a perfect view of her rumpled bed. His gaze moved to her, slipped over her body like a hot caress, then considered the bedroom again.

Oh, God.

Every nerve ending flared as if he’d doused her in gasoline and lit a match. She hurried to shut the door before he got any ideas and leaned against it, arms crossed over her breasts, keenly aware her nipples had pebbled against the chill in the air. He noticed at the same time she did and his gaze lingered on her chest for several long seconds before lifting to her face. His expression turned dark and hard, his gray eyes bright in the dimness of the room. A hungry predator sizing up his prey.

Pru straightened her spine and drew a calming breath. Like any predator, he would only attack if he sensed fear.

Good grief, what a silly thought. Alex wasn’t a wild animal. He was a man, and there was no reason for her heart to pound in fear of him. Plenty of other reasons for her heart to pound around him, but fear was ridiculous. She just wasn’t used to a man staring at her like he wanted to devour her.

She made herself uncross her arms, but still could not force her heart to steady.

Alex looked away, cleared his throat. “Yeah, my room’s up there.”

What were they talking about? Oh, right. The noises in his room.

“I heard someone prowling around up there.” She skirted the edge of the couch and sat down, padding the air between them with some distance and furniture. “Must be my ghost paid you a visit.”

“Ghosts don’t exist.”

“Are you so sure?” She hated how breathy her voice sounded, but couldn’t seem to help it with the hungry way he still stared. “I mean, you did hear phantom footsteps running down the stairs.”

“I must’ve been dreaming.” He turned away. Without those heated storm cloud eyes focused on her, she could breathe again and took a moment to settle herself down.

Alex wiggled the doorknob as if to reassure himself that it had not magically come unlocked in the past few moments. The door did not budge. He rubbed the back of his neck and for the first time, she realized he held a gun at his side.

He had a
gun
in
her house
.

She stared at it, her heart in her throat.

A gun. He had a gun.

Something clicked inside her, an ingrained flight instinct that shut down higher thought.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” She scrambled to her feet, banging into the coffee table, nearly face planting on the rug before catching herself on the chair and bounding back to her feet. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” She couldn’t stop saying it, like a mantra or a prayer.

Alex moved across the room so fast her brain didn’t register it until his hand rubbed circles on her back. “Pru, what’s wrong?”

She stared at the gun, so close now. She could already feel its cold mouth digging into the base of her spine again, urging her toward the cash register .…

“Pru!” Alex gripped her shoulder with his free hand and gave her a hard shake. That brought her back, but only halfway. The memories, those vicious, life-ruining memories, still played out in her mind’s eye, haunting and yet so very real.

“What—” The words wouldn’t form on her tongue. Her voice came as a panicked squeak. “What are you doing with that?”

“Aw, shit.” He switched the safety on and stuffed the muzzle into the waistband of his jeans behind his back. “It’s gone now, see?” He held up his hands, showing his empty palms.

Her whole body shook, her chest shuddered as she tried to draw in oxygen, her legs threatened to give out. She stared at Alex, but didn’t see him standing there helplessly with worry etching deep lines around his mouth. A masked man stood there, waving that gun, shoving it into her face after she emptied the register, yelling at her to get into the freezer….

She opened her mouth to scream. Nothing came out.

Alex muttered a curse and her feet disappeared from the floor as he scooped her up. He sat down with her cradled in his lap, holding her while she shook and remembered the incident that ended her career and marriage. The screams, the gunshots, the blood, the death. Owen’s accusations, the divorce, the breakdown. A horror she’d tried to escape by coming home and working at Grandma Mae’s diner.

The sobs started as small mewling sounds, like something an injured kitten would make. She tried to hold them in but the floodgate had opened. She curled into Alex’s chest and cried until her eyes ran dry.

***

Sometime later, Pru became aware of his heart thudding under her ear, heard each indrawn breath fill his lungs. Alex’s cheek rested on the top of her head and his hand moved in slow strokes up and down her back. He murmured soft comforts, and the thrum of his voice helped ground her.

She blinked a couple times, eyes gritty, and her nose leaked like a busted faucet all over his chest. So not sexy. She sniffed and looked up at him.

Alex lifted his head but said nothing, just stared into her eyes with concern in his own. He palmed her cheek, his thumb brushing aside a tear. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if there was anything to say. She’d never been held like this during one of her—

Oh no.

Her eyes widened as the last of the disorientation cleared and embarrassment slammed into her. Face hot, she struggled out of his embrace. He let go, sat with his hands on his knees and watched without saying a word.