Dangerous Lover

by Maggie Shayne

  He thought there was more to it than that, but he didn’t say so. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it.”

  “No, I know that. You just need more time to get used to it.”

  The comment took him aback, but he chose to ignore it, and instead dug into the meal.

  “Good?” she asked when his plate was half empty.

  “Great. The bacon’s a little…different.”

  “That’s because it’s not bacon. It’s Fakin’ Bacon. One hundred percent meat-free. Hard to tell the difference, huh?”

  He frowned at her, and took another bite of the food in question, chewed and swallowed. “That’s not meat?”

  “Nope. Good isn’t it? Tessa’s a vegan. I figured there had to be a few vegan-friendly foods here.”

  “Does that mean she has pointy ears and no emotions?”

  “No. It means she’s a vegetarian like me, but one who not only doesn’t eat meat, but any other animal products. Like dairy and eggs and honey.”

  “Wow, that’s extreme.” He took another bite of the phony bacon. “It’s pretty damn good. Better than I would have expected.”

  “Even better when you consider that no animals had to die to provide us with it, and that it’s only got a tenth of the fat and calories, and no cholesterol at all.”

  “Healthy as hell, huh? So how come you’re not eating any?”

  “Because I prefer oatmeal.” She nodded at own plate and bowl. The bowl held oatmeal, and the plate, half a slice of toast. She was eating the other half, with jelly on it.

  “So do you have a plan for the day?” he asked her.

  “After breakfast, I need to drive to the nearest pay phone. The cell’s got basically no signal. I have to let my mother know where I am, or she’ll worry herself sick.”

  “I’ll go with you, if that’s okay with you.”

  She glanced at him. “Of course it is.” Then she studied him a moment, and tipped her head to one side. “You don’t trust me, even now, do you?”

  “Who said I didn’t trust you?”

  “You did. Just now. Do you think I’m going to sneak off to meet with whoever’s trying to kill you, or that I’m going to call him and tell him where to find you?”

  He licked his lips. “It crossed my mind.” Though he realized he was more and more convinced she was as innocent as she claimed to be. Still, telling her that would be a mistake. At least it gave him a viable reason to keep her at arm’s length.

  “Damn. You’re a tough nut to crack, aren’t you? I wonder if you were always this cynical or if it’s just a side effect of the amnesia.”

  “Wish I knew.”

  She shrugged. “Guess time will tell, huh?”

  He didn’t want to say that he doubted there would be time. Not with her, at least. If he ever remembered his past, his life, he was pretty sure he would want to get back to it. And she’d pretty much convinced him that his former life wasn’t here in Big Falls, Oklahoma.

  He finished his breakfast, and tried not to watch her as she finished hers. But he couldn’t help but watch her. Every time those white teeth closed on a bit of the toast, every time that pink little tongue darted out to lick the crumbs from her luscious lips, every time her throat moved when she swallowed, his attention was riveted.

  He wondered just how long he’d been without sex, and thought it must be a very long time, if watching a woman eat toast could get him this hot.

  Finally, she leaned back in her chair to sip her coffee. He took the opportunity to jump up and clear the table. She started to get up, too, and he met her eyes, shook his head sternly. “No way. You sit there. It’s my turn.”

  She sank back, smiling softly and watching him as he washed the dishes.

  Cory could feel her eyes on him, watching his every move. He hated that he was starting to trust her. Even to like her. Damn, if he couldn’t keep some distance and perspective, he was liable to dig himself into a hole too deep to get out again. And keeping his distance was going to be damn tough when he fully intended to have intense, incredible, blood-boiling sex with her. Repeatedly.

  Chapter 7

  Selene got into the passenger side of her sister’s new station wagon, just to see what Cory’s reaction would be. He glanced at her through the window, shrugged his incredible shoulders—Goddess, why couldn’t she stop noticing his body?—and got behind the wheel. Selene had the keys in the switch and the engine running before he’d even closed his door. She didn’t want him taking time to think about it.

  And he didn’t. He backed the wagon up, shifted into Drive, and eased the car onto the dirt track that passed for a road, heading back the way they’d come. “You didn’t feel like driving?”

  She didn’t answer right away, just watched him maneuver the car around a smattering of potholes, and take a hairpin curve with long-practiced ease. “I just wanted to see if you had a license back in your old life.”

  As soon as the words were out, he jerked the wheel and the car swerved.

  “Knock it off,” she said. “You know how to drive. You handle the car like a pro.”

  He glanced at her, got the vehicle under control with little more than that slight veering off course. “For a second it hit me that I might not. That was kind of risky, wasn’t it? What if I didn’t know how to drive? I could have put us into a ditch.”

  “If you didn’t know how to drive, you would have got behind the wheel and felt awkward and confused. You wouldn’t have just started driving as if it were second nature.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “No. But it seems logical. Besides, I cast a protective ball of energy around the car to keep us safe, just in case.”

  He reacted to that remark with a slight raising of his eyebrows, and nothing more. “You’re a little bit impulsive, aren’t you?”

  She smiled in his direction. Did she dare take that question as a sign he was interested in getting to know her? “You’re just noticing that, huh?”

  “It seems to be one of the patterns I see emerging.”

  “Yeah? You notice any other patterns?”

  He nodded. “You’re enthusiastic. You’re optimistic. And friendly.”

  “Not bad for a one-night acquaintance.”

  “I wish I knew as much about me.” He reached the bottom of the dirt track, where it spilled onto a paved road. “Which way?”

  “Left. Down to the main road, then right. There’s a convenience store with a pay phone about three miles down.”

  He took the turn, and drove a bit faster.

  “And I think I do know as much about you, you know.”

  “Yeah? Hell, you’ve been batting a thousand so far. Go for it.”

  “Well, I guess I think you’re a bit of a…a player.”

  “A player?” He sounded offended.

  “I don’t mean that in a bad way.”

  “I didn’t know there was a good way.”

  She shook her head hard and started over. “Okay, maybe that’s the wrong word. What I mean is, you seem really interested in sex. But completely uninterested in…romance.”

  “If by romance you mean commitment, I think you might be right.”

  “I guess that’s what I mean. I wonder if you’ve always been that way.”

  “I have no idea. But it seems to come pretty naturally.”

  “You’ll get over it, though.”

  He lifted his brows and stared at her. “I will?”

  “Sure. When a person meets his soul mate, all that resistance and fear just melts away.”

  “It does?”

  “Sure it does. You’ll see.”

  He frowned at her, taking his attention off the road.

  “There’s the store, right there. See the pay phone out front?”

  He jerked his attention back to the task at hand and pulled into the store’s parking lot, swerving close to the phone booth. He put the car into Park and shut off the engine, but didn’t open the door right away. Instead he sat there for a minut
e, staring at his hands on the wheel.

  “Something wrong, Cory?”

  Lifting his head, he met her eyes, and his were narrow and probing. “Yeah. I just uh, was wondering—you seem to be implying that…um…I’ve met my soul mate. I mean, is that what you meant?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I meant.” She couldn’t help but smile, and damn, she knew she was probably scaring the hell out of him, but she honestly didn’t believe in beating around the bush. He might as well know the truth. She’d grown so frustrated in trying to guess his feelings—if he even had any feelings—for her, that she was no longer capable of keeping quiet about her own.

  “So you think that you…and I…”

  “We’re destined for each other, Cory. It’s as simple as that.”

  He puckered his lips and blew a sigh, and his eyes looked worried.

  “Oh, come on, think about it,” she said. “Do you know how big those woods around the falls are? It’s a thirty-thousand-acre forest, Cory. What are the odds you would find your way straight to me when you could have gone a hundred other directions? What are the odds on that knife wound leaving you with just enough strength to make it to my side before you collapsed? What are the odds against all of that happening on the one night in the month when I was even out there?”

  He gnawed his lip. “I take it you don’t believe in coincidence?”

  “Synchronicity. Not coincidence. I was asking the universe to be sure and send me a sign to tell me when the man I was meant to love forever came into my life. And the girls were joking about what the sign would be. One said you’d fall at my feet, another that you would die without me. Tessa said there would be a fork-tailed comet to tell me it was you. Well, you fell at my feet, Cory, and you would have died without me. And I saw the comet. I saw it.”

  “Selene, you’re really over the top with all this.”

  “You ran out of the hospital and right in front of my car last night. How do you explain that?”

  “I don’t.”

  She sighed, because she wasn’t getting the reaction she had hoped for from him. Hell, nothing she had said or done to him since the day they’d met had elicited a reaction she would have hoped for. Instead of softening up and pulling her to him or telling her he felt the same, he just looked kind of panicky. “I’m scaring you, huh?” she asked.

  He lifted his brows and nodded. “Yeah. You might say that.”

  “Don’t be scared, Cory. I’m not gonna pursue you or try to guilt you into marrying me after we have sex tonight. I’m not wired like that. I’m totally into living in the moment, and milking every bit of life for all the joy you can get out of it. If I’m right, and we’re meant to be, you’ll feel it, too, and you’ll let me know. If I’m wrong, then we’ll just enjoy this for what it is. No pressure. No expectations. No regrets. Okay?”

  He blinked.

  “Okay?”

  “Uh. Sorry. I kind of lost the thread after you said we were going to have sex tonight.”

  She searched his eyes, knew he was teasing her, and punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Moron.”

  “Thanks for—reassuring me, I guess. I just hope you’re not saying what you think I want to hear. Because…I really want to have sex with you.”

  She went warm right to her toes. “Me, too.”

  “But I don’t want any—strings. It can’t mean anything.”

  A little pinprick of pain stabbed her in the heart. She ignored it, denied it, kept her chin high. “It’ll mean something, Cory. To me. But I can handle it not meaning anything to you. I’m a grown-up. I wish it were different, but, stupid as it probably is, I want you either way.”

  Selene opened her car door, and dipped into her backpack for some change, then went to the pay phone. Maybe, if nothing else, he might be starting to trust her, she thought. But no, that wasn’t the case either. At least, he didn’t trust her enough not to get out of the car and stand close enough to listen to her conversation.

  It chafed, but it turned out to be a good thing.

  She dialed her home number, but her mother didn’t answer. Maya did.

  “Maya? What are you doing there?”

  “Selene. Oh, thank God, Selene. Honey, you’ve got to come home.”

  “What’s wrong?” Her blood seemed to slow and chill in her veins, as a sense of dread washed through her. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Lying in bed with an ice pack on her head. Selene, a man broke in here last night. Mom interrupted him and he knocked her down the stairs.”

  “What? Is she all right?”

  A hand lowered on Selene’s shoulder, and she turned to see Cory staring at her, a worried look on his face and his eyes full of questions. She covered the mouthpiece with a hand. “Someone broke into the house and knocked my mother down the stairs last night,” she said, filling him in. Then she reached up to cup his nape, and drew his head down beside hers, while tipping the phone slightly to allow him to listen in.

  “Is she okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, she’s fine, just mad as hell and worried about you. Selene, whatever the guy wanted, he apparently thought he’d find it in your bedroom. That’s where he was rummaging around.”

  “Did he take anything?”

  “Not that we could see. But…oh, God, Selene, I don’t know how to tell you this.”

  “What?”

  “Jimmy checked your outgoing calls log on your phone, thinking that if he knew who you’d called he might have a clue where to find you. The last call you made was to your friend, Tessa. So he drove over there. Him and Colby.

  She didn’t like the sound of Maya’s voice. “Tessa has nothing to do with this, Maya. Don’t let anyone drag her into this.”

  Maya didn’t reply. A long beat went by.

  “Maya?”

  “Tessa’s dead, Selene.”

  She thought she might have whispered the word no, but she wasn’t sure. There was a thundering tempo pounding in her brain, and a rush of iciness rising through her body.

  “She and Chet were murdered last night. Someone shot them as they lay sleeping in their own bed. Jimmy thinks it’s all related.”

  Selene’s eyes were clouding now, welling with tears that burned and blurred her vision. “Tessa,” she whispered.

  “Selene, you have to come home. If this has anything to do with that man in the woods, that stabbing—”

  “Why…why would it?” she managed.

  “Was Tessa one of the women in the woods with you that night?”

  She didn’t answer but the gasp might have given her away.

  “They found books on Witchcraft in her house, Selene. It’s too late to try to protect her now. But you don’t have to tell me. Just know this. Jimmy thinks that whoever stabbed that stranger in the woods might be systematically trying to track down any witnesses who might have seen him. Meaning you and those other women who were with you. Do you see that now? You have to come home, where we can protect you.”

  “No,” she whispered. “I have to warn the others. I have to tell them.”

  “Selene—”

  “I’m safe, Maya. Don’t worry. Tell Mamma I’m sorry.”

  “Selene, don’t you dare hang up! There’s more you don’t know. That man, the stabbing victim, someone tried to kill him in the hospital, and now he’s vanished. No one knows where he is.”

  She glanced up and into Cory’s eyes, though his image swam because of the tears in her own. “He’s with me.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because he’s supposed to be,” she said. He heard it, flicked his gaze away momentarily. Forget that, she didn’t even care. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this. And no one else is going to die, Maya. Tell Mamma that I’m safe. I’m not alone, and I’m safe, and I’m sorry for all of this. Tell her I’ll be in touch.”

  She turned and tried to put the phone onto the hook, but missed. Warm, strong hands closed over hers, taking it from her, hanging it up.

  “I’m sorry, Selene,
” he whispered. “I’m so sorry about your friend.”

  “I can’t believe she’s dead.” She could still see Tessa, dancing under the moonlight, wearing nothing but a sarong skirt knotted at her slender waist. She could see her wide smile and her shining eyes, and hear her voice chanting the names of the Goddess. “I love her.”

  Cory pulled her into his arms, and even though she knew he was probably regretting doing it, that he was only holding her because he felt he had to, given the circumstances, she let him. It hurt. It hurt losing Tessa. And it hurt having this man hold her as if he cared when he probably didn’t. She’d said she could deal with it—with him not giving a damn about her, not feeling anything for her at all. But she’d lied. Deep down, she wanted him to love her.

  God, how she wanted it. But it didn’t matter, not now. Tessa mattered. And Chet. Two lives snuffed out before their time. How could she even think about her own problems at a time like this?

  She closed her eyes, and let her tears soak into Cory’s shirt at the shoulder. She felt his strength surrounding her and tried to absorb some of it into herself. When the sobs began to wrack her body, he held her even tighter. But eventually, he lifted his head, and whispered, “People are starting to notice us. We should get out of here.”

  She nodded, her face moving against his shirt. “This time I really do need you to drive.”

  “All right.” He took her to her side, opened her door, and helped her get in. Then he went to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel. “Where to? Back to the cabin?”

  She couldn’t seem to stop the flow of tears, but she nodded anyway. “But not for long. They know I called Tessa before I took off. It won’t be long before they find out her husband had a cabin and come looking for me there. We should pack up some supplies and get out of there and warn my friends.”

  He nodded. “And then what?”

  “Then we’re going back into those woods. And we’re going to find anything that might need finding there. Anything the police might have missed. Anything that will lead us to the sonofabitch who stabbed you and murdered my best friend.”