“Chloe, what the devil were you doing out here, floating around in your sleep?”
“I came out here last night and got lost. No big deal. What the devil are you doing out here?”
He didn’t know what to say. All the words crowded forward, the fear that she was gone, that she’d done something to hurt herself, the relief that she was alive. So he gave in and kissed her, a wet, cool kiss that connected him with her warm mouth.
She made a sound, probably one of exasperation, but her mouth responded to his anyway. She hungrily returned his kiss, her arms going around his bare shoulders, her chest pressing against his. But a second later she pushed him away again. “D-Dylan, why are you d-doing this? Are you t-trying to drive me crazy?” She was shivering, reminding his hazy brain that they were floating in the middle of a cold bay. Her aunts and grandmother were waiting on the bank, their voices calling from the distance.
“Is she all right?”
“Oh my gosh, he had to give her CPR.”
“That wasn’t CPR, you dummy.”
“What are you doing?” Chloe asked him again, this time on a whisper.
“I was … rescuing you.”
“I don’t need rescuing.”
“Because you’re the one who’s always doing the rescuing. But once in a while, it’s okay to let someone rescue you.” Something about her touched a part of him deep inside, a part he didn’t even know existed. Something that wanted to take care of her, to protect her from the world. It was crazy. He didn’t need someone to protect; he had Teddy. And she didn’t need a man to protect her. She was from Lilithdale, where no woman needed a man.
Then why did her dreamy blue eyes tell him that wasn’t true? That she wanted a man to hold her and protect her? Whenever he’d lost his head and kissed her, her first instinct was to pull close and kiss him back.
“Come on,” he said, surprised at his gruff voice. “Let’s try to get you back in the canoe.”
“It’ll never work.” She pulled her gaze from his and eyed the canoe. “I’ll swim back with you. Just get me out of this water.”
She reached in and grabbed a piece of rope tied to the inside bow of the canoe. He took it from her, and they swam side-by-side to the shore.
Stella had brought out some white towels, and she wrapped one around Chloe as soon as he’d helped her from the water. Lena wrapped the other one around him, then stepped back, not sure what to do.
“Oh, honey, we’re so sorry,” Stella said, hugging Chloe.
Betrayal and sadness shadowed Chloe’s eyes as she moved away from her aunt. “I just went out for a late-night paddle and got lost. That’s all.”
While the other two women tried to reach Chloe, Lena stood and watched.
“Look, I need some time alone,” Chloe said at last. “I’m not ready to talk about it.”
Stella and Marilee nodded. “But you won’t do anything …”
“I won’t try to kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said, heading toward her house. On the way, she stopped to pull a strangling vine off a small pine tree.
“You have to tell her about the newspaper article,” Stella said, talking to Dylan but watching Chloe tugging until the vine was pulled loose, then continuing on to the workshop. Stella nudged him toward the door. “Come on, girls. She needs time to heal. We’ve let her down; you can’t expect her to turn to us now.”
“Of course not. But Chloe, hon, I brought you some pickle soup!” Marilee called as Chloe disappeared inside the workshop. “It’s in the fridge!”
He grabbed up his shirt and shoes and left them by the side of the house. He stood in dappled light and looked into the dim room.
“Chloe?”
Her wet clothes were lying on the concrete floor; the same clothes she’d worn last night. The same shirt he’d unbuttoned. She was wrapped in the towel and sitting before a potter’s wheel. Her shoulders and arms were bare, and he could see her legs where the towel split apart.
She closed her eyes and tilted her chin. “Please leave.” Her voice was thick with unshed tears.
He should have left, but his body wouldn’t allow him to. He took a step forward instead.
“You all right?”
Her hands and arms were covered in splatters of mud. “Just great.”
“Chloe, I need to tell you something. It’s not good.”
She looked at him. “Teddy?” The pain in her voice touched him.
“No, not Teddy.”
She visibly relaxed and returned to her task. Her voice was so soft, he had to lean closer to hear her. “I dreamed about him again last night. That he was out there, in a canoe like mine. I tried to reach out to him, but he kept drifting just out of my reach.” She shook her head. “Except now I don’t trust my dreams. Maybe I’m like my mother, who just fooled herself into thinking she had some ability.” Tears slid down her cheeks, crushing his chest. She was wholly focused on the lopsided lump of clay she was working. “It was like I could feel him out there. But it isn’t real. It’s all in my head, just like you kept saying.” She turned to him. “What? What do you have to tell me?”
He knelt down beside her bench. “When the papers came out yesterday about you working with me, being psychic …”
“I’m sorry. I know it was my fault, because I went to your house.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know they’d trace your tag.” He looked around the dim room at the shelves of melting clay pots and the large kiln in the corner. “When I read the paper … and then the calls started coming in, psychic kooks from all over wanting to help to get credit and publicity. I got mad. And I told a reporter that you were a nutcase and I wasn’t working with you. So this morning, in the paper …”
“You called me a nutcase,” she said in a deadpan voice. “Well, thanks for warning me. Not that it matters. They’ll find out about my mother and then …” She searched his face. “They already know, don’t they?”
He nodded, wanting to wipe away those tears from her cheeks. She wiped them away herself, leaving a muddy streak behind. She stiffened her shoulders and fought to keep her expression calm. Her eyes gave her away.
“It’s just like it was for my mother, isn’t it? That’s why you came out here, to make sure I didn’t kill myself too.”
He wanted to explain how he’d tried to rescind his words, but he could only say, “Yes.”
“Well, you can see I’m fine. You’d better go before some reporter finds you here and causes more trouble.”
She went back to her clay. But he couldn’t move, even though he knew it might be true. That’s when he knew he had to tell her.
“My mother was crazy.”
Those words stopped her and made her look at him. “And this relates to me how?”
“I want you to understand … me. Maybe I want to even the score, I don’t know. Nobody knows this, Chloe. Nobody but my former wife and my father. Well, and the entire town I grew up in. Now we know she was manic-depressive. All we knew then was she didn’t make any sense. No one in town talked about it, no one wanted to do anything about it. Maybe they thought pity was enough.
“She used to keep me home from school because she thought the bad guys — that’s what she called them — would try to get to her through me. Then she called the Governor’s office to get me protection when the school protested. We spent a lot of evenings in total darkness and silence so the hidden cameras wouldn’t pick up our movements. If any of my friends came over, they’d get freaked out seeing us in the dark with Mom telling them to shush, trying to pull them into our nightmare. But mostly we kept it to ourselves, hid it. My father worked all the time. He didn’t have the patience to deal with it or the courage to face it. So he hid in his work and came home after we’d all gone to bed. I think he believed if he wasn’t around to witness it, it didn’t happen.
“But I lived with it every day. Kids would ask me questions about my crazy mother like it was some novelty. I never let anyone
come to my house. Most of the parents wouldn’t let me come to their houses either, because if my mother came looking for me, they’d have to deal with her. Once she went to a friend’s house and accused his mother of trying to kidnap me.
“My father told me if we pretended everything was normal, then it would be normal. So I tried. I ignored the looks, answered teacher’s questions the way I should, all the while trying to pretend my life was normal.”
No matter what he’d done, Chloe’s compassion was clear on her face and in the soft way she asked, “How did you cope?”
“I loved to build things with Legos. It was the one way I could impress people and fit in. For a while, the kids would forget about my crazy mom, and even me, and focus on my creation. I did chores to buy more and more Legos. I didn’t want to ask my father for anything, not even money for that. Those Legos were my escape, and my way to fit in. I had a tenuous grip on normalcy, at least for a while.”
“And then what happened?”
“It all fell apart the day my mother tried to kill my father with a butcher knife.”
She looked at him in horror.
“She thought my father had a demon inside, and she wanted to cut it out. She swore she could see it peeking out between the buttons of his shirt. They finally committed her. She died two years later of heart complications. A year later went to college in Miami. I never went back to Michigan, much less my hometown. And I swore I would never give anyone a reason to look at me like that again.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, working the clay again. “And now I’ve given people that reason. Maybe I’m as crazy as your mother.”
“No, you’re not. But you know what it’s like to grow up having people look at you as though you’re some kind of specimen, don’t you?”
She met his gaze again, and he could see it in her eyes.
“You know what it’s like to not fit in.”
“Yes. I understand. I do. I’ll call the papers myself and tell them that you and I have nothing to do with each other. That I’m not helping you. Whatever you want me to tell them.”
He thought it would be hard to tell her about his past. To tell anyone. Somehow telling her seemed natural.
She went back to work on the clay. “I won’t interfere in your search again. I won’t contact you, won’t even call you.” Her voice got thin. “I’ll never give anyone a reason to associate your name with mine.”
“Chloe …”
“There’s nothing else to talk about.”
He stood, dropping his towel on a nearby counter. She was right; he should leave now before he caused any more trouble for himself or for her. Then why weren’t his feet walking — no, running to the door?
He came up behind her. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Fine,” she said on a weak breath. Her head started to lean back toward him, but she jerked away. “Go, please.”
His fingers trailed down her arms, then slid around her mud-covered hands. Her foot came off the pedal, and the wheel stopped turning. He gripped her hands, palms sliding against hers. “Chloe, I need to know that you’re all right.”
She turned toward him, her cheek brushing his. “I’m never going to be all right if you don’t stop this …” her voice got breathy and soft, “kissing me and touching me. Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know.”
Her breath caught and her eyes closed. She turned around to face him then, sliding her hands free of his. Her gaze took in his bare chest and wet hair. She took a deep breath, determination in her expression. He was prepared for her to kick him out. Instead, she leaned forward and took his mouth in a hot, fiery kiss. Her hand slid over his chest, leaving a trail of wet, cool clay. He barely thought about his own hands leaving that same trail as he ran his fingers up along her neck and cradled her face.
He loosened the knot on her towel, and it fell away to reveal soft flesh and nothing else. Even her bruises looked somehow beautiful.
She pushed him back against the closed door, undid his pants and shoved them to the floor. “We’re going to do this, get it out of our systems.” He guessed she had the bulldozer look on her face.
He didn’t let himself think, he just let her lead him. Her gaze roamed over his body in a hungry way, but she pushed onward as though she were on some crazed mission. He understood crazed. Isn’t that why he was doing this? Isn’t that why he was getting lost in her, in the thought of burying himself in her?
She ran her mouth over his stomach, nibbling at his waistband. Which invariably made her chin brush against the tip of him. Just that simple contact sent a wall of fire through him.
She slithered up his body, her hands roaming over his legs and up his stomach. “We’re almost there,” she whispered, looking as though she were anticipating … what?
He could feel the soft fullness of her breasts. Then she was kissing him again, devouring him like a starved woman. And even though some part of him knew this was crazy, that every time they said goodbye they ended up in each other’s arms, he wanted her too much to stop.
Her eyes snapped open, and she came to an abrupt stop. “No. Oh, no!” She scrambled away, frantically searching for and grabbing up her towel and throwing it around her lush, naked body. A look of horror had replaced the dreaminess on her face. “Not you. It can’t be you.”
Still dazed, he started to take a step toward her, then realized his pants were down around his ankles. He yanked them up. “What are you talking about?”
“Everything’s screwed up, that’s all. My bad instincts have gotten worse, and it’s all your fault. You have to go, right now.”
“I know this is crazy, believe me. The timing’s wrong, everything’s wrong.”
“That’s my point.” She was rushing around now, picking up her discarded clothes, pushing the lump of clay into a plastic pail. “Everything’s wrong, so I shouldn’t be having this … right feeling about you.”
He moved closer, holding her hands between them. “What are you talking about?”
She took a deep breath. “All my life I’ve made bad decisions where men were concerned. I mean, I’ve never really loved a man before, but I definitely had some intense infatuations. But I always got the feeling just in time that they were wrong …” She gestured toward the door where only minutes before they’d been close to ecstasy. “So I wanted to get that feeling with you, because that always kills the infatuation.” She shook herself free from his grip. “And that didn’t happen. It felt … right. And it’s crazy, because you and I aren’t right. Not in a million years, when hell freezes over, when the cows come home. See, I am crazy.” She rolled her eyes and groaned. With the clay smeared all over her neck, face, and her hands, she did fit the image. “Crazy. Which means you need to stay away from me, because you don’t do crazy. Or even quirky. And I understand that, I really do. I understand not fitting in and being a specimen, like you said. So go, please.”
She nudged him to the door, then opened it. “Go! Shoo! Don’t come back!”
He stared at her, knowing she was right. Not about her being crazy. Well, maybe she was. But he couldn’t talk. He still wanted her. Clay and craziness and all. So staying away from her was a good idea.
Still, he paused in the doorway. “Chloe?”
She clutched the towel to her chest. “Yes?”
Several sensible thoughts floated through his mind. He must be crazy, because the words that came out were, “If you ever jump me like that again, you’d better mean it.”
CHAPTER 12
Dylan’s cell phone rang on his way back to Naples. His heart always jumped when it rang, and he willed it to be Yochem with good news.
It was Ross Allen.
“Hey, buddy, how are you hanging in there?”
“What’s up?” He wasn’t in the mood to talk to Ross, the man who had seen Chloe naked, who had probably made love with her.
“First, I wanted to tell you how glad I am you disputed the whole Chloe thing. That’s
the last thing our theater needs to be connected with.”
“I’m glad I pleased you,” Dylan muttered, trying not to think about just how connected he’d almost been to Chloe.
“Second, I talked to my bud at Media Plus and got us a spot on the local news show tonight at seven. To talk about Teddy.”
What else would they talk about, Dylan wondered, but said, “That’s great. I’m having posters made and I’m offering a reward.”
“Good, that’ll get the news interested.”
“Get them interested? They should already be interested. There’s a defenseless kid out there!”
“Hate to break it to you, but they don’t care unless there’s something new. Believe me, I know from hearing my buddy talk about it. A kid still missing isn’t news. A reward is. He was sure asking if there was something going on between you and my little Chloe.”
“She’s not your Chloe. Dumping her took away the privilege of calling her yours.”
“Whoa, aren’t you a little testy? So is it true what the papers implied? That you and Chloe are a thing?”
A thing. That would describe it. “We’re not a thing. And what do you mean, the papers implied? They should be saying that I have nothing to do with her and that she’s … a nutcase.”
“They do. But there’s a read-between-the-lines message. You know, cute gal, good-looking guy … they’re always sniffing around for a scandal. If they hear something in your voice, they’ll be on it like hounds.”
“There was nothing in my voice that said Chloe and I were a thing.” Was there? He instinctively cleared his throat.
“You could always talk about your crazy wife. People love that kind of thing, and you could come off real stoic-like, putting up with it all these years. You could even make up stuff. Heck, she can’t dispute you.”
Dylan would have hung up on him, but he needed this interview. “I am not going to talk about Wanda. I want to create interest in finding my son, not in my personal life.”
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