The banked embers in the hearth glowed, while she stroked the purring feline on her lap. A wisp of smoke curled into the chimney, and her mind drifted with it, back in time
Two years of running and pretending to be someone she wasn’t, had taught her well. All the disguises in the world couldn’t hide her stretch marks, nor Eric’s pride when she’d gained weight while she was pregnant. He’d patted her backside right up to the day Cheyenne was born.
“I put that baby inside of you,” he’d breathed between kisses to her sweaty forehead in the delivery room. “Just bring her to home base, and it’ll all be worth it. You’ll lose every last, pinchable ounce, and you’ll be in love with yourself again. Like I am. You’ll see.”
She’d made him happy that day. The grin on that handsome face when the nurse placed his newborn daughter in his arms haunted her.
Delivery wasn’t the problem. The funeral was.
After a particularly heartbreaking visit from her neighbor, she’d run from all that reminded her of that perfect smiling angel she’d never hold again. Never read another bedtime story to. Never smell her minty toothpaste breath at goodnight’s kiss. Never another giggle. Another Christmas morning. Another tooth fairy. All those nevers!
The day she lost Cheyenne, she lost her way. Something inside of her broke, and for once in their perfect married life, she and Eric weren’t in sync. There was no comfort to be found in his arms, and some days, she couldn’t stand to look at him. Like a vinyl record set too long in the sun, the diamond needle of his love couldn’t reach the scream buried in the tracks of her warped and desolate heart.
Yet not a day passed that she hadn’t thought of Eric. Didn’t need him. Didn’t wish he’d look for her and find her.
Professor Grover’s spoon clattered to the floor, drawing her out of her depressing past. He’d fallen asleep with the empty soup bowl on his lap.
Shea rubbed her chilled biceps. Carefully, she extracted it from his grasp and took it to the kitchen. She washed the few dirty dishes in the sink, straightened the counters, and filled a bowl with water for his cat. It seemed a lonely but friendly animal. She lifted it into her arms. “I’m going to call you mittens until I know your real name. My little girl would’ve loved a sweet kitty like you.” And I’d give the world to have her back. Just to see her play with you. Just once...
The feline rubbed its nose against Shea’s chin. Its body arched into the curve of her palm, seeming to crave her touch. So much like another tiny little body…
Time shifted in the quaint little cottage. For a split second, comfort invaded that barren hole in her heart. Holding the cat felt a lot like holding Cheyenne. Mittens was warm and soft. Alive.
A smattering of rain kicked up outside the cottage windows. The professor snored lightly, his head bowed, while the chunks of peat in the fireplace barely glowed anymore, but Shea made a decision. She’d go her way when the rain stopped.
Eric stood at the open door to Rosie’s B&B, mad as hell, with his arms crossed. Sleepy from what had to be a carb overload, Jordan had already gone upstairs to his bedroom while Eric took first watch. Rosie had retired earlier. She’d kindly left a full pot of coffee on the stove. There were no other guests in the home, and no damned Finn Powers.
For hours Eric watched and waited. Midnight came and went. By zero two hundred hours, the rain stopped. Eric doubted Abdul-Mutaal’s ability to track Powers to the ‘Edge of O’Banner’, as far off the beaten path as it was. Unless the genius still carried a GPS enabled cellphone and made it easy. Anything was possible.
When the coffee was gone, Eric called it a night. He climbed the stairs to wake Jordan for his turn at watch. Naturally, Jordan was sound asleep, but he’d left his door unlocked. That saved Eric having to knock and risk waking Rosie.
Jordan roused easily and snapped to like a good troop.
Finally flat on his back in bed, with his pistol on the nightstand beside him, Eric let his mind relax. Jordan would wake him at the first sign of trouble.
Eric stretched, his legs too long for the mattress. Angling his body corner-to-corner, he adjusted the pillow at his neck and strove for sleep. Though short, the bed in Rosie’s B&B was a godsend after a tremendously wasted day.
He tossed. He turned. Eric punched his pillow, cussing at those last two cups of coffee. As every night before, the moment he closed his eyes, his mind drifted back in time. It had only taken once to get Shea pregnant, he was sure of it, not that they’d made love just once in Rio. More like every morning, noon, and night. She couldn’t keep her hands off him, and he’d felt the same about her. Smitten. Totally smitten. Downright intoxicated.
Yes, sex with her was out of this world, but that wasn’t the only way they were good together. Loving Shea was as easy as opening his eyelids in the morning and looking at the sunrise. As easy as breathing in and breathing out. He’d always believed it was at the peak of their first mind-blowing orgasm together that his perfect child came to be. Life only needed one spark.
Despite the caffeine in his blood, Eric fell asleep.
Shea came to him in a dream. His nose filled with the light fragrance of her vanilla musk as she climbed up his body the way she had on their honeymoon. Delightfully bare-naked and tantalizingly horny. Luscious and dripping wet. For him.
She held him down with her anxious lovemaking, not like she’d weighed anything. But being at the mercy of this woman was, at best, Eric’s favorite wet dream. He cupped her hips as he filled her to the hilt, her soft moans and grunts and groans his favorite erotic playlist. “You’re back,” he whispered.
“I never left,” she whispered back.
Even in his dream, he knew better, but she rode him hard, as if she couldn’t get enough, and he let her. Not until she collapsed on his chest with her nails dug into his shoulders, did she kiss his neck and moan, “Eric. Eric. Eric! Ahh…”
His palms found the back of her head, the tangles of her dark brown swirls. Some women screamed in the throes of passion, but Shea always ended with a sexy, throaty moan that climbed up her body from her toes and clenched every muscle along its way, him along with it.
In return, he thrust into her warmth over and over. The dream was good, just not good enough. I love you, Shea. Why can’t I find my rhythm? My release?
She slipped out of his hands and lifted into nothingness. Only the anguish in his heart remained, that bottomless hole he risked falling into. There was no way out. Only—
Shea! Come back! Eric woke covered in sweat and the taste of her in his mouth. Her scent in his nose. The moisture from her hot, silky skin still on his fingertips. It can’t be!
But it was just a dream. He squeezed his eyes shut, sick at heart, his tongue certain he’d just tasted the honey of her lips and the cream of her body. It was enough to make him doubt his sanity. Enough to make him cry. She’d felt so real!
Cheyenne’s pretty face, so much like her mother’s, added to the heartache. Eric bowed his head at the daily struggle he lived with, scrubbing the back of his hand over his eyes.
Goddammit, he’d lost everything that made inhaling another breath—any breath!—worth taking. No one had a clue how tough just the simple act of getting out of bed at the start of every day was. Hell, how impossible pasting a smile on his face was. Yet he’d done it, hoping someday he might actually mean it. For now, all it did was keep people from asking.
The black hole at the core of his soul reached out with long tentacles of despair and melancholy. There was a time he’d fallen. Been sucked into it was more like it. But booze only added more depression to an already bleak time in his life, so he’d worked harder at his job, and he volunteered for longer hours until he was fit for human company. After all, a man had to look himself in the mirror every day. He had to see something looking back at him to keep on keeping on.
Eric pushed out of bed and strode to the window overlooking Rosie’s front yard. The rain had ceased, but left a shimmering blanket of misty fog.
An
d there she stood...
Just beyond the picket fence in a swirling shadow of mist. Waiting. Beckoning him to come hither. Needing him. Calling for him. E-r-r-ric... Her voice drifted along with the clinging fog. One word. The right word. She’d come back to him. E-r-r-ric...
His heart jump started to an impossible beat. It couldn’t be real. Not here. Not her. He blinked, and when he did, the fog swirled. The dark mists claimed her, and Shea dissolved into nothingness. Like before.
He swallowed the ache in his heart before it climbed up his throat and screamed for all the world to hear. Crying didn’t help. This bottomless hurt never healed. Couldn’t begin to. Might never. Not with this kind of crap digging at him!
Why should it? He was a fool to still want the woman who’d cruelly deserted him, but God, what he wouldn’t give to have Shea back. Let her tell her lies. Living without her was a thousand times worse. He’d take anything at her hand if she’d only come back. Just one more day. One more hour. Just call me and talk to me for a minute or two. I’ll understand. I promise I will. I’ll listen.
Eric leaned his forehead to the glass, his knees weak and his heart broken. He was a fool for still loving Shea. He always would be, but he honest to God didn’t know any other way.
The grief groaned out of him. Why now? Why after all this time had he dreamt of her, then seen such an enticing apparition? A nightmare of Berglund or Mikkelson made better sense, but Shea? So full of life? So incredibly beautiful? Why the hell now?
It had to be this ‘Edge of O’Banner’ place. Edge of insanity seemed a better name. Something in its precocious owner had stirred the deepest currents of his soul and brought these wickedly sad memories to the surface. It was as if she knew what he’d suffered and why. As if she’d recognized a kindred spirit.
He huffed out the excess adrenaline mucking up his mind. That had to be it. Rosie had lost her husband. She’d simply recognized another’s grief. That made better sense.
He padded to the door and down the steps, sleep robbed and gone for another night. It made better sense to offer up what little was left of a good night’s rest to Jordan. No demons bothered him. Hell. He could sleep anywhere. He might as well do it now.
“I’m going for a walk,” Eric announced at the front door of the best B&B in all of Ireland. “Go to bed. I won’t be gone long.”
Jordan lifted his cup of coffee in a silent toast. “Later, bro.”
Eric stepped into the mist. He closed the door behind him and took a deep breath of the cool air. Shea wasn’t out there, but peace of mind might be.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shea woke with a start, the warm spot on her lap cold. Barren. Mittens had deserted her, and her professor wasn’t in his chair. The fire had gone out and the darkened room closed oppressively around her. Eerily silent. Chilling.
I need to get back to Rosie’s. Eric will be there by now.
She pushed to her feet, cocking her head to hear any indication where her mentor might have gone. The afghan she’d covered him with now lay folded over the back of his chair, and his shoes were missing. He’d probably gone to bed.
“Professor?” she asked the darkened hallway opposite the kitchen, and, just in case the feline remembered, she called out quietly, “Mittens?”
Nothing. Not even a purr answered.
The floor creaked under her feet as she pressed forward. A man in her professor’s dazed condition might have fallen on his way to bed. She needed to be sure he was tucked in safe and sound before she left.
“Are you in here?” she whispered at the first doorknob. When it wouldn’t budge, she tried the last, but it wouldn’t open either. Locked doors inside? Wasn’t that odd? Could he have gone out? On a drizzly night like this?
Retracing her footsteps to the large window between his chair and the fireplace, she peered through the drawn curtains. A dense fog cloaked the ground. Everything was dark, adding to the eerie ambience of the place. Even the gas lamp at the corner of his well-kept yard, bright and cheery when she’d arrived, was off.
The place felt deserted. Hollow. Shea swallowed hard, her senses now on high alert. He wouldn’t have run off and left me, w-w-would he?
“Professor?” she asked, her tone thin and needy as she stepped away from the window to the front door. Please answer me.
Her fingers had barely touched the knob, when the kitchen doorway behind her filled with a hulking black shadow, punctuated at waist level by the silvery glint of a shining scimitar.
Run!
Like a thief caught red-handed, Shea burst through the professor’s front door, her boots pulverizing the soggy moss beneath them, and her heart jackhammering. Every muscle blazed with sheer adrenaline as she sprinted toward Rosie’s.
Run faster!
Heavy footsteps pounded behind her. The over-sized boots of her bumbling disguise hampered her speedy getaway when she needed it most. She stumbled to one knee, but quickly righted herself before she touched ground. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed more than one monster behind her. Another loomed out of the mist behind them. Who are these people?
Run! Run! Run!
With her lungs on fire, she put her all into escaping. The three men on her heels must have already killed the professor. Beheaded him. Maybe Mittens, too.
I’m next. God, why did I let myself fall asleep! Faster!
The path glistened ahead, wet with rain. Tendrils of inky fog swirled close to the ground, but there was nowhere to hide and nothing to hide behind. She had to keep going and hope a late-night driver or walker intruded upon this desperate scene. Her side cramped, and the coppery taste of blood climbed up her throat, but still she willed her clumsy feet to fly.
Deep male grunts followed. So did the steady slap, slap of heavy boots behind her. They’d gotten closer. A whimper climbed up her throat. Nobody knew her in this country. Poor Professor Grover, if he were still alive, might not even remember her. What an awful way to die, unloved and alone and…
Why is this happening to me!
With one last frantic look over her shoulder, she could see that her pursuers were very nearly on her. In minutes, they’d have her. Maybe seconds! Shea dug for her last ounce of energy and—
Oomph!
She’d hit a wall. A very solid, warm wall that grunted upon impact. A man. Steel bands clenched her biceps as he pulled her behind him, and ordered her to, “Stay here.”
Her heart leapt to her throat. That voice. It couldn’t be. Eric?
“You guys looking for someone?” he barked, his voice hard and a pistol suddenly in his hand, the business end pointed at her pursuers.
Three lethal looking men skidded to a stop, maybe twenty feet away. All of them were hulking brutes, larger and heavier than Eric. One stepped forward, jerking his chin at her. “Walk away, Yank, and mind your business,” a definite French accent answered. “He’s our problem. Not yours.”
Who in France who wants me dead? She raked her brain for anybody she knew from that country. None came to mind. Oh, wait. Hugh Carlson. Do these guys work for him?
Didn’t that notion just make her stomach jump up her throat.
Her rattled brain connected what dots she thought she knew. Phoenix and Gordie were killed after Carlson’s visit. Could he be behind this? But that black-robed monster hadn’t once mentioned the DED. All he’d wanted was—me.
Could these French guys work for Bagani? That made no sense, either. She’d taken on her Finn disguise after she’d eluded Bagani. How could he know where she’d gone when she’d dressed as an overweight man the past year?
Eric leveled his pistol at the man who’d spoken. “Make me, wise guy.” He widened his stance, his shoulders squared, and his chin stuck out. Releasing her wrist, he kept his arm across her body as if drawing a line where his territory began and the French guys ended.
Eric never had a problem facing down a bully, but three against one? She clenched her fist into a tight hard knot, prepared to help as much as she could.
<
br /> Her three assailants approached, but the robes she thought she’d seen had transformed into military-style uniforms. Berets on their heads. Night sticks in their hands, not shiny and certainly not scimitars. She gulped. Okay, so maybe I was scared, and I saw things that weren’t real.
The guy who’d spoken took a step forward then stopped, smacking his open palm with the stick. “How about you and me settle this like gentlemen, monsieur?” Sarcasm laced his tone. “You walk away, and I won’t beat your rich American ass to a wretched, bloody pulp.”
“How about you die trying?” Eric shot back, his weapon pointed at the man’s upper body. The guy outweighed him, but what Eric lacked in size, he made up for in sheer willpower and guts. “You’re mighty brave for a guy with a little stick.”
“And you’re dreaming if you think you can take on the three of us and live through it.”
“He’s got help.”
Shea jumped as another man walked out of the mist, a gun in his hand that was also aimed at the Frenchman. She pressed closer to Eric, panic choking the life out of her. The thought of a gunfight was more than she could stand, but two guns against three bully sticks seemed immensely better odds.
The Frenchman dropped back with his two buddies, all hulks now that she had a chance to look at them. They didn’t resemble the demon from Hell at all. Square heads. Buzz cuts. The worst type of ex-military—mercenaries.
She pressed a hand to Eric’s back just beneath his left shoulder blade, needing some of his strength. The instant her palm felt the warmth of his rock-solid muscles, her heart remembered, and tears threatened. Whether he knew it or not, he’d finally come for her.
The leader of the thugs pointed his stick at Eric. “I’ll remember you. Don’t think I won’t.”
“Count on it,” Eric snarled back.
“And you’d better bring more than sticks next time,” his buddy declared.
Eric (In the Company of Snipers Book 15) Page 6