Dangerous Lover

by Maggie Shayne

  He nodded.

  “Come on, Cory. What other options do you have?”

  He sighed. “I’m pretty sure the guy saw me get into your car.”

  “It’s not my car. It’s my sister’s. Mine’s been impounded by the cops. And even if he did see you get in, he wouldn’t know the car, much less be able to follow us. He was on foot. And, besides, I’ve been watching the rear-view. I seriously doubt this would-be killer of yours is a local who knows his way around.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  She shrugged. “Well, you’re not a local.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s a small town, Cory. I’ve lived here all my life, was born here. If you were a local, I’d know you. And if it’s that you still don’t know whether to believe me or not, then ask yourself why no one else knows you, either. No one at the hospital, no one on the ambulance squad. No one at the police department. It’s a tiny town, Cory. If you were local, someone would have recognized you. You’re not. And if you’re not, it stands to reason that whoever is chasing you around trying to kill you isn’t either.”

  He nodded slowly. “That makes sense, I guess.”

  “So I’ve helped you figure out something else already. See that? I’m good at this stuff.”

  He stared at her, completely unsure which way to lean as far as she was concerned.

  “You think I might be working with this guy, don’t you? You think I’m going to take you up into the middle of nowhere and somehow signal him to come and finish you off.”

  He met her steady, light-blue gaze, studied her face in the glow of the panel lights. “It had crossed my mind.”

  She nodded, and glanced behind them. “If you’re afraid I’m going to call him as soon as your back is turned, you needn’t be. The cell phone reception is very hit and miss where we’re going, and the cabin has no phone. But just so you’re sure….” She nodded at the bag, a denim backpack, that rested on the back seat. “Take my phone out of my bag. It’s in the side pocket.”

  He reached back and tugged the bag up onto his lap, then felt around for the phone, and pulled it out. When he did, a small drawstring pouch came out as well. It was brown, with a feather tied in its string, a feather with distinctive rust-colored stripes across its base

  “Are you a Native American?” he asked her, looking up at her blond, blond hair and doubting it.

  “No.”

  “Then this is illegal.” He held up the pouch, let the feather spin slowly from its string. “It’s from a redtail hawk. You can’t legally possess one.”

  “Yeah, not until someone takes it to court and wins. Like a Native American, Cory, that feather is a part of my religion. An important part. The hawk is my animal spirit guide. That feather was a gift, from her to me, dropped during a meditation right where I could find it. I think I have a pretty good case.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe you do, but until then, it’s illegal.”

  “So you going to arrest me?”

  He looked her in the eye, then sighed and shook his head.

  She thinned her lips. “You know about hawks. You recognized the feather. And you seem to be rather conservative, kind of a stiff-assed, by-the-book stick-in-the-mud. Probably a Republican.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  She shrugged. “It’s just a couple more things we know about you. You stick with me, we’ll have all those blanks filled in before you know it.” She took the pouch from his hand, and dropped it into her lap, then nodded at the cell phone he held. “Does that ease your mind any?”

  “It assures me you can’t call and tell anyone where we are. But I suppose he could already know where you’re taking me.”

  “I couldn’t have planned for you to run out in front of my car, Cory.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you could.”

  She tapped the steering wheel, still sitting still in the middle of the road. “It’s not my cabin. It belongs to the husband of a friend of mine, and she’s the only one who knows I’ll be using it for a few days. I don’t have any way to prove that to you, though.”

  He looked at her and finally, he nodded. “All right.”

  “All right?”

  “Yeah. I’ll come to the cabin with you. I don’t see anyone making me any better offers right now, do you?”

  Her smile was quick and unplanned and it damn near floored him when she flashed it, because it reached her eyes, and made them sparkle. “I’m really glad.”

  Yeah, and he knew why. She wanted him. Was as turned on by him as he was by her. And who the hell was he kidding? He’d taken her up on the offer mostly because he was pretty sure he’d get laid before it was over. And he could hardly wait.

  She turned the corner and took the dirt road, which wound uphill, through ever thicker woods. “I know I can help you figure this out.”

  “And what makes you so sure?”

  She smiled even bigger that time. “I’m a Witch,” she said, as if it made all the sense in the world.

  It was really a crying shame she was a card-carrying lunatic, he thought. A crying shame.

  Vidalia Brand couldn’t sleep. She’d tossed and she’d turned and she’d worried for hours, and finally decided she couldn’t wait any longer to have a long-overdue talk with her youngest daughter. She’d raised her girls well. Too well for this nonsense. Well, she would be damned herself before she’d stand by and watch her youngest headed straight for hellfire. Not without a fight.

  She flung back her covers, got out of bed and stood for just a moment, looking at herself in the full-length mirror and feeling way older than she ever had. Her nightgown was flannel. Her bathrobe, terry. Her slippers were fuzzy blue ones, and her hair was pulled into a long, still-black ponytail on one side of her head.

  When had she stopped wearing slinky satin nighties and slippers with heels and clingy red robes? It had been awhile. It had been awhile since she’d had any reason to wear them, anyone to wear them for. For a time, it had been enough to wear them for herself, to remind herself that she was a woman, not just a mother or the matriarch of the Oklahoma branch of the family. But a woman.

  And then, slowly, it had kind of stopped mattering so much.

  She sighed, and refocused on her daughter, the current problem of the day. She knew Selene was awake. She’d heard the sounds of her steps in the house for the past fifteen minutes or so, first in the kitchen and then in her bedroom. It was a good time to talk. And yes, maybe she’d made a mistake in having Reverend Jackson waiting for her when she got home. Maybe it would have been better to talk to her privately first. Witchcraft. What was that child thinking? If that wasn’t enough to throw a God-fearing parent off track, Vi didn’t know what was. So she’d messed up. But hell, she’d never claimed to be perfect.

  Yanking the bathrobe’s sash tighter, she opened her bedroom door, and strolled to the kitchen to make hot cocoa. Maybe if she showed up at her daughter’s door with an offering, the way she used to when Selene was little and pouting over some dead ’possum she’d seen along the roadside on the school bus ride home or something—maybe then they could have a civil conversation.

  Selene had always been different. Always.

  Vidalia filled the kettle from the tap, and set it on the burner, then turned to the cupboard to get down mugs, and set them on the table.

  And that’s when she saw the sheet of paper, folded once and resting on top of a book on the kitchen table. Frowning, she glanced toward the stairs. She could still hear Selene moving around up there. What on earth?

  Unfolding the note, she read the words in Selene’s elegant handwriting.

  Mom, I love you, but I can’t be around you right now. I just need some time to get my head together. And don’t worry, I’m not leaving town and breaking my word to the chief. If you ever calm down enough to want to know exactly what it is I believe, take a look at this book. It’ll answer a lot of your questions. I’ll call. Don’t worry. Love, Selene.
>
  Vidalia’s hand was shaking as she folded the note and glanced at the book on the table. The Truth About Wicca.

  “Nonsense.”

  A thump from upstairs made her look up sharply, and then she frowned. If Selene had left, then who was in her room?

  She glanced at the hook near the door, where Selene’s jacket had been hanging. It was gone.

  Her brows drew together as she noticed the marks on the door, and the fact that it wasn’t closed tightly.

  Swallowing hard, she turned, opened a drawer, and took out the metal mallet she used to tenderize beef. Then she moved toward the phone, picked it up and hit the preprogrammed number 1. Maya’s number. She and Caleb were closest, after all.

  Maya picked up and answered with a sleepy “Hello?”

  “Someone is in the house.”

  “Huh?” Then, with alarm in her tone, “Mom? Caleb, wake up, it’s mom.”

  “Send Caleb down. And call the police. Lock your doors and hold your babies, honey.”

  She hung up before Maya could reply, then she turned, and started for the stairway. She supposed a wiser woman would just slip outside, or hide in a closet until the intruder left. And she was wise, most of the time. Right now, though, righteous indignation was taking wisdom’s place. Some intruder was in her house. Her home. No one messed with Vidalia Brand, and the son of a gun upstairs was going to find that out in no uncertain terms.

  She started up the stairs and got halfway up them before a man appeared at the top, his face covered by a ski mask. She had only a moment to take him in. He wore gloves, but she glimpsed pale skin at one wrist, just below the cuff of his dark shirt sleeve. Dark clothes. Nothing remarkable. Large man, though it was tough to judge. She glanced at the wall behind him and made a mental note that his head was about level with the tiny tear in the wallpaper there.

  And then her time for observing was done, because he came barreling down the stairs, hitting her full force before she could bring her mallet down on his head as he so richly deserved. He hit her hard with both hands, and she flew off the stairs—literally flew. She landed with a huge impact, heard furniture breaking beneath her, thought God, not my coffee table. Then she heard footsteps racing through the house, the door slamming, a car squealing away.

  And what seemed like about a half a second later, Caleb was kneeling beside her. “For God’s sakes, Vidalia—What happened?”

  She lifted her head and speared her son-in-law with her eyes. “Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain in my house, young man.” And then she passed out.

  “This is it.”

  Cory—he was beginning to feel comfortable thinking about himself by that name—eyed the log cabin in the headlights’ glow. It was small, square, with dark-green shingles on its roof. The shutters that flanked the windows were green as well, each with a pine-tree-shaped cutout in its center. The driveway was barely one. More like a worn spot on the forest floor. A pair of massive antlers were mounted above the entry door.

  The woman beside him made a disgusted sound, and he glanced her way quickly. “Not up to your standards or something?” he asked. The place was exactly what he would have expected of a hunting cabin.

  She lifted her brows. “My standards? Wow, you have a lot to learn about me, you know that, Cory?”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Like that I’m as content in a pup tent as I would be in a five-star hotel. More content, actually. The cabin is fine. It’s the dead animal parts as a decorating theme I don’t like.” She nodded toward the antlers over the door.

  It took him a minute to shift his gaze there, because when she nodded like that, her corn-silk hair fell over her face, and she had to push it back with one hand. And for some reason his gaze got stuck on her face, on the way she grimaced at the antlers.

  Then he managed to look back to the rack again.

  “Poor freaking deer,” she muttered.

  “Elk,” he said.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Good question.”

  She frowned at him for a moment, then sighed and got out of the car, hauling her backpack from the rear seat and slinging it over her shoulder. “I guess we might as well go in. It’s too late to seek alternative options tonight. But I swear, if there are animals’ heads mounted on the walls, I’m sleeping outside.”

  He nodded, and told himself it was pretty clear she’d never been up here before, or if she had, it had been awhile. He didn’t think she was faking her reaction to the elk rack. And he saw further evidence of it when she picked up three or four rocks from the ground near the door, before locating the one that wasn’t a rock at all, and took the key from within it. Then she unlocked the door and stepped into the utter darkness inside.

  “Wait a sec. I don’t know where anything is here, but—” He heard movement, the sound of a zipper. Then there was a click, and she was aiming a flashlight beam around the place.

  He spotted a kerosene lamp. There was a book of matches beside it, so he went to it and lit it. As he did so, she was lighting another, and pretty soon they had four of the lamps burning and filling the place with soft, yellow light.

  No animal heads graced the walls, he noted, and was grateful for reasons he couldn’t have named. Just relieved on her behalf, he guessed. They’d walked into a large living room with a cobblestone fireplace as its focal point, and comfortable-looking furniture all around.

  “Tessa said the place was well-stocked. Are you hungry?”

  “Starved. Who is Tessa?”

  She stiffened enough to tell him she hadn’t meant to mention the name. “She’s a friend of mine. This is her husband’s cabin.”

  “I see. Is she one of the other nude-nymphets from the woods?”

  She sent him a frown. “We were not nude.”

  “Nude enough.”

  Shaking her head she said, “I’m not telling anyone who else was out there with me, so there’s no point in asking.”

  “I don’t need to ask. You just told me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t tell you anything. And I’m not going to.”

  “Then you admit you have something to hide.”

  “I don’t have a thing to hide, Cory. But some secrets just aren’t mine to tell. I promised those women I would keep their names out of it, and I keep my promises. Now, why don’t you start that fire and I’ll go see what I can find us to eat.”

  She walked away, across the room and through a darkened doorway, carrying one of the kerosene lamps with her. The kernel of a thought came into his mind that she suddenly seemed to know her way around this place pretty well, but before it became a fully developed suspicion, she reappeared in the doorway, looking sheepish.

  “Nothing to eat in the bedroom,” she said.

  “Oh.” She shot his newborn theory down with a self-deprecating grin that did something to his insides. “Try that one,” he suggested, pointing out another doorway, at the opposite side of the room.

  “On it.” She crossed the room in front of him. “Holler if you need me.”

  He watched her go, and for a second, the image of her, dancing half-naked in the forest, wearing nothing but a colorful cloth tied at her waist, that long silvery-blond hair falling around her shoulders, grabbed hold of his mind and wouldn’t let go.

  He took a mental grip on himself, reminded himself he could be fantasizing about his would-be killer. Or his would-be killer’s accomplice. At the very least, he was fantasizing about a woman with a slight mental break from reality.

  She thought she was a Witch, for heaven’s sake.

  Chapter 5

  By the time Selene had fixed him canned beef stew and located some crackers, her guest had a huge fire burning in the fireplace, and the living room was toasty warm and much brighter than it had been before. He was sitting on the sofa, staring pensively into the flames.

  For just a moment, she paused in the doorway and looked at him. He had a strong jawline, gorgeous cheekbone
s and soft eyes that were muddled brown and green—eyes that could melt a woman with the right look, she thought. Though he hadn’t sent that look her way—yet. He was still shirtless, and his chest drew her gaze almost irresistibly. It was a strong chest. Not bulging with muscle, but lean and tight. Nice shoulders, too, especially undressed. Smooth skin. Tapered waist. Taut abs that made her fingers itch to run over them. Looking at his belly was as erotic to her as watching a porno film would have been, though she couldn’t be sure, having never watched one.

  But she could imagine. That belly—well, the parts not covered in bandages, at least—So hard and smooth, and flat, and the hairs under his belly button making a dark path downward until they vanished behind his button and zipper. And damn, she wanted to touch him there.

  “Do I pass inspection, then?”

  She jerked her gaze upward, and felt her face heat. “Caught me, huh? Well, hell, Cory, if you don’t like me looking, you should put on a shirt. ’Cause, um, I’m not having much luck keeping my focus elsewhere.”

  “So who said I didn’t like you looking?”

  She allowed her smile to erupt, and then she crossed the room to set the bowl of stew on the coffee table in front of him. “It’s hot.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “I meant the stew.” She looked at him, his face, not his abs. “Why don’t you go check out the bedroom, find a shirt. I’ll get some of the astral gunk out of this place while your stew cools off.”

  “Astral gunk?”

  “I can tell just by sitting here that it hasn’t been cleansed in awhile. I don’t think Tessa gets up here much. It’s mostly Chet and his guy friends.”

  “I have no idea what language you’re speaking. But, uh, yeah. I’ll go find a shirt.”

  He got up and went into the bedroom. She got up, too, dug into her backpack and located a plastic bag full of white sage she’d grown and dried herself. She plucked out a bundle of it, leaned close to the fireplace and held it to the flames until it blazed up. Then she drew it close to her face and blew out the flames.