Raintree

by Linda Howard

  She’d never actually undressed an unconscious man, and Gideon Raintree was most definitely all man. There was a dusting of hair on his chest, and his limbs were heavy and well-shaped with muscle. He had strong arms that were nicely muscled without being bulky. There was something about a man’s forearms and hands, when they were built just so, that could make any woman’s thoughts wander.

  Besides, she couldn’t look at those hands without remembering when he’d touched her. They’d both been fully dressed, and it had happened so quickly, and yet it had been intimate. Unexpected and powerful—and intimate.

  Hope didn’t want to think about that moment, not the particulars or the whys or the hows, so she attempted to concentrate on Gideon’s health and well-being and put everything else in the past. This time of the night, a generous five o’clock shadow was growing in around his neatly trimmed goatee and mustache, making him look a tad grungy. It was almost a relief to realize that he could be less than perfect.

  Through all her ministrations, she’d left the charm he wore beneath his suit around his neck. Since she didn’t believe in lucky tokens or anything of the sort, she wasn’t sure why she left the doodad alone; it just didn’t seem right for her to remove it, since he believed it had some sort of power. Then again, she also couldn’t explain why she was wearing the charm he had given her last night. It wasn’t like her to believe in such nonsense.

  When her initial round of totally inept doctoring was done, Hope sat in an uncomfortable chair she’d dragged from the corner of the room. She didn’t want to leave Gideon alone or be too far away. What if he needed her? Silly thought, but still…she didn’t leave.

  He didn’t have a modern digital clock by his bed but instead used a vintage windup alarm clock that was probably older than he was. The bedroom phone was another landline. All his talk of electricity and ghosts…she didn’t believe him, but obviously he believed. She’d seriously considered that he was dirty; it had never so much as crossed her mind that he might be mentally unstable.

  She’d used his bedside phone to call her mother, and also to call the very irate motel manager in order to tell him where she’d left his truck. He did have a spare set of keys in the motel office, thank goodness, and an officer who was still on the scene had agreed to give him a ride to his vehicle.

  Hope fidgeted as she watched Gideon sleep. His story was ridiculous. It didn’t make any sense at all. Ghosts. What a crock. Harnessing electrical energy? Also too fantastic to buy. She should be able to completely dismiss everything he said as impossible or continue to go with that “mentally unstable” possibility, but there were a few other things to consider.

  His record as a homicide detective.

  The old cars he drove and the odd way her car had malfunctioned.

  His lack of decent electrical toys and televisions and phones.

  The exploding streetlamps on the riverfront.

  The way he’d knocked her out of a bullet’s path before it had been fired.

  The unexpected orgasm.

  Hope no longer believed in things she couldn’t see with her own eyes or touch with her own hands. Her mother was partly to blame. Growing up with crystals and incense and chanting and auras had been embarrassing for Hope on more than one occasion. She’d made an effort every day of her life to remain firmly grounded in reality.

  But her mother wasn’t entirely to blame. Jody Landers had been the one to finally and completely blow her orderly world to pieces.

  She’d loved him. Love was yet another elusive thing that could not be held or touched or smelled. Yet her love for Jody had seemed so real for a time. It had filled her world and made her happy. And it had been a lie. Turned out Jody had targeted her from day one. Their meeting had not been chance; his love had not been real. He’d been a low-level drug dealer who’d wanted a cop in his pocket as he moved up the chain of command. When she finally caught him and discovered what he’d been up to, he’d claimed that he had come to love her. But she didn’t believe him, not then and not now, four years later.

  She’d eventually been promoted to detective in spite of the embarrassment. Jody was in prison and would be there for some time to come, but there were still people in Raleigh who believed that she’d known all along what kind of man he was. She hated to admit it, but it wasn’t only her mother’s welfare that had brought her home. She’d grown tired of the suspicious looks, the whispers that would never die.

  She couldn’t allow herself to be tainted again by association with the wrong kind of person, the wrong kind of man. She was not going to be a gullible patsy ever again. So what the hell was she doing here? She didn’t owe Gideon Raintree anything. Not her time or her faith or her loyalty.

  Watching him sleep began to get under her skin in a way she couldn’t explain away. She squirmed a little in her uncomfortable chair. This was his bed, his house, and watching him was so personal, as if she were once again spying on him, trying to discover what made him tick so she wouldn’t get caught in the cross fire.

  Gideon seemed to be sleeping well enough. His breathing was even and steady, his heartbeat—which she’d checked a time or two—was strong. With that in mind, Hope shook off her inexplicable need to stand guard and left the bedroom. She was thirsty, and she was hungry. She was tired, too, but she didn’t think she would be getting any sleep tonight. In the kitchen she noted the old propane stove, rather than the electric stove he should have had. No microwave. Cheap toaster. She opened a few cabinets, searching for something to eat, and found one deep storage space that held two additional cheap toasters, as well as an assortment of blenders and at least three coffeepots. Her heart crawled into her throat, and she settled for toast and peanut butter and a glass of milk, all of which were consumed at the kitchen table, where she could look out over the deserted beach. In the darkness she could barely see the waves crashing onto the sand, but they did catch the moonlight as they danced to shore. It was almost mesmerizing.

  She should leave now. Go home, get some sleep, drop by in the morning to pick Raintree up and either take him to the doctor or make arrangements to collect his Challenger from the motel parking lot. He probably wouldn’t be able to drive for a couple of days, but they would think of some way to get his car back here where it belonged.

  Movement beyond the window caught her attention. Given that someone had recently stabbed Gideon, she paid close attention and concentrated, trying to discern what had caught her eye. A glare on the windowpanes made it difficult for her to see as well as she wanted to, so she turned out the kitchen light and focused on the beach while her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  The indistinct figure of a man was walking toward the water. He moved slowly, his feet all but dragging. The night had been clear thus far, but suddenly lightning flashed in the distance. Quickly, too quickly, clouds drifted before the moon, robbing the night of the light Hope needed to see who was out there at this hour.

  The thunder and lightning moved closer, a jagged bolt flashing across the sky, giving off just enough light for Hope to see what she needed to. The man on the beach was near naked, wearing only a bathing suit or a pair of shorts—or boxers. His hair was a little too long, his broad shoulders were tired, his legs were long…and his left thigh was bandaged.

  Hope ran first to the bedroom. The bed she’d left Gideon sleeping in was empty. The curtains covering the large window that overlooked the ocean had been drawn back, and she realized that it wasn’t just a window but French doors that opened onto an elaborate deck.

  Hope ran onto the deck, certain that she could not have seen what she thought she’d seen. Raintree must be sleepwalking, or maybe hallucinating. If he collapsed onto the sand, she would never be able to get him back here alone. And if he walked into the ocean…Dammit, she should have insisted on taking him to the hospital! She ran down the stairs that led to the boardwalk and then to the beach, her steps uneasy once she reached the sand. She stopped to remove her pumps and tossed them aside as another bolt of lig
htning lit the sky and thunder rumbled.

  A stroke of lightning flashed straight down and hit Gideon, and instead of a rumble the thunder was a loud, dangerous pop. Hope stumbled in the sand, her breath stolen away, fear coloring her entire world for that split second.

  “Gideon!” She waited for him to fall to the ground or burst into flame, but he didn’t. He stood there, arms outstretched, and yet another bolt hit him. The thunder was an earsplitting crack, and this time the lightning that found Gideon seemed to stay connected to him, until sparks generated from the blast were dancing on his skin.

  Hope didn’t call Gideon’s name again, but she continued to run toward him. This wasn’t possible, was it? A man couldn’t walk onto the beach and be hit by lightning again and again and just stand there. As she watched the electricity dance on his skin, she remembered what her mother had said after Raintree had left the apartment Tuesday night. Hope had still been shaking from the orgasm he’d triggered with his touch, and her mother had mused with a smile, “His aura positively sparkles. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  “Stop,” he commanded without turning to face her. “It’s not safe for you to get too close.”

  Hope stuttered to a halt several feet behind him. The moon had disappeared behind clouds, dimming the night, but she could see him well enough. She could see him well because he was glowing gently.

  He turned to face her as the storm that had come out of nowhere rolled away, fading and suddenly not at all threatening. But Hope didn’t have eyes for the storm; her gaze was riveted to the man before her. Electricity popped and swayed on his skin, a gentle glow radiating from him. He’d shaved, she noticed, doing away with his goatee and mustache. And his eyes…did they glow, or was it a trick of the light?

  It couldn’t be a trick of the light. There was no light except for that he himself created.

  A part of her wanted to turn and run. She was not the kind of woman who would gladly and openly embrace the impossible. But her feet were rooted in the sand, and she didn’t run. “I was watching from the kitchen window,” she said, her voice weaker than she would have liked.

  Gideon stepped toward her, and tiny sparks swirled where his bare feet sank into the sand. “I know.”

  Nightmares—vivid dreams of his parents and Lily Clark and all the people in between that he hadn’t been able to save—had sent Gideon to the water, where he’d drawn in the lightning to feed his body and his soul, and wipe the last vestiges of the drug from his system. He hadn’t walked far onto the beach before he’d realized that Hope was watching. He didn’t care. Maybe it was right that she know; maybe she needed to know.

  She stood a few feet away, uneasy and unsteady in the soft sand. “Are you all right?” she asked in a soft, suspicious voice.

  “Yeah.”

  The unspoken how? remained between them, silent but powerful. She’d seen the streetlamps explode, been touched by a ghost’s cold fingers, and still she remained skeptical. But there was no explaining this away.

  Her gaze dropped to his thigh, where the electricity was working upon his damaged flesh with a ferocity she couldn’t begin to understand.

  “You, uh, glow in the dark, Raintree.” She tried for a lighthearted tone but fell far short.

  “Only when I’m turned on.” He stepped toward her, and she moved out of the way. Not running, but definitely avoiding being too close.

  “Very funny,” she said, as they walked back toward the house.

  Actually, it wasn’t funny at all. The fact that he wanted this woman naked in his bed was nothing to laugh about. She was his partner, and she was one of those staunch women who questioned everything endlessly. Why? How? When? That made her a great detective, but where he was concerned, such attributes led to disaster. He’d always tried to avoid overly curious women.

  He’d never been caught before. Sure, there had been times when his neighbors, awakened by the storms he drew, later asked, Didn’t I see you on the beach? He always denied it, and they always wrote off what they’d seen to a dream or a trick of the light. After all, what he did, what he was, was impossible to comprehend.

  “You’re walking better,” Hope said as they neared the wooden steps that led to his bedroom.

  “I think the drug affected me more strongly than the actual wound. It’s wearing off.” What remained after the nightmares had passed had been washed away by the lightning.

  “Good.” For a moment Hope didn’t say more, and then she fidgeted and said, “Okay, you have some kind of weird electrical thing going on. I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical medical explanation for everything.”

  “Why does it have to be perfectly logical?”

  “It just does.”

  “Nothing is perfect, and logic is subjective.”

  “Logic is not subjective,” she argued.

  He tried to usher her up the deck stairs ahead of him, but she wasn’t about to let him out of her sight; she didn’t want him behind her, where she couldn’t see him. So he ascended first, after watching Hope collect her shoes. At least she followed him, instead of fleeing into the night. Gideon stepped into the darkened bedroom from the deck. He did glow in the dark. A little.

  Hope closed the French doors behind her but left the drapes open, so they could see the waves not so far away. The sound of the surf was muted but still filled the room as it had all night. It was a comforting sound; it was the sound of home.

  Gideon stood near the end of the bed, drained by the storm as well as being rejuvenated by the electrical charge that continued to dance through his body. “The logical explanation is that my family is different. More different than you can imagine.”

  “That’s not—”

  Possible, she was going to say. He didn’t let her get that far. “My brother controls fire, among other things. He’s Dranir, leader of the Raintree family. My sister is an empath and a talented healer, and her little girl is showing amazing promise in a number of fields. Echo is a prophet. I talk to ghosts. Should I go on?”

  “That’s not necessary,” Hope said coolly.

  “You still don’t believe me.”

  In the near-dark room, he saw Hope shake her head. He could drop the subject, let it lie. She would request her transfer, as he’d wished for just yesterday, and he could go on about his business. She wouldn’t tell anyone what she’d seen and heard here tonight, because she didn’t want to appear foolish in any way. Surely she knew that no one would believe her.

  But he didn’t want to let her go. There was something here that he couldn’t explain. He wanted Hope; of course he did. She was beautiful and smart and ran in high heels. But beneath that, there was something more, though he did his best to ignore it. If he slept with her, she would have to request a transfer. She wasn’t fond of breaking the rules. In fact, it was probably a safe bet that she never broke the rules.

  He slowly unwrapped the bandage at his thigh. At last Hope moved closer to him. “You really shouldn’t do that. Not…” Her voice died away as he removed the last of the bandage and revealed the scratch there. “Yet,” she finished weakly. She reached out cautiously and laid her fingers over the nearly healed wound. She licked her lips, cocked her head, and uttered a succinct word he had never expected to hear from that sweet mouth.

  “How…?” She drew her fingers away, and he immediately missed them. “What did you…?”

  “I’m Raintree,” he said. “If you want a more detailed explanation than that, we’re going to have to make a pot of coffee.”

  They didn’t sit on opposite sides of the room this time. Gideon sat beside her on the couch, and they each held a mug steaming with hot coffee. By the light of the living room lamps she couldn’t tell if he was still glowing or not. A part of her wanted to insist that what she thought she’d seen had been her usually dismal imagination running amok, but she couldn’t lie to herself that way.

  “You’re telling me that everything my mother told me all my life is true?”

 
“I can’t say, since I don’t know everything she told you.” Gideon leaned back and propped his bare feet on the coffee table. He’d pulled jeans on, covering the impossibly healed wound on his thigh. Those jeans were all he wore, along with the green boxers and that silver talisman that rested against his chest, hanging there from a black leather cord and as much a part of him as the color of his eyes or the way his dark hair curled by the ears.

  “Auras,” she threw out. That was, after all, a bone of contention between her and her mother.

  “I don’t see them, but they do exist,” he answered plainly. “It’s another energy thing. In order to see them, you have to be clairsentient.”

  “Yours apparently sparkles,” she said grudgingly.

  Gideon just gave a half-interested hum that sounded almost bored.

  “Ghosts.”

  “Those I can attest to without question,” he said, casting a glance her way.

  Hope leaned her head back against the leather couch. She’d removed her jacket and her shoes but otherwise was still completely and professionally dressed. What she wouldn’t give to get out of this bra and into something comfortable….

  She should be running for the hills; she should be terrified of what she’d seen and heard here tonight. And here she was worrying instead about the way her bra cut into her shoulders and the flesh beneath her breasts. It was going on four forty-five in the morning, and no woman was meant to wear a bra for twenty-two hours.

  “Afterlife?”

  “Yes,” Gideon answered almost reverently.

  Hope closed her eyes. There had been times when she had convinced herself that life could not possibly go beyond the physical boundaries she could see and touch. It was easier that way, most days. Believing we were here, then, one day, we were gone. No expectations, no disappointments. Listening to Gideon’s simple answers…she believed him, and it felt unexpectedly good. “What’s it like?”