“Double cheeseburger, no bun?” he asked the dog, who woofed an affirmative. “If you’d rather stay out here, Duffy will make sure no one bothers you,” he assured Dana, who was looking furtively around the parking lot.
“A cheeseburger is fine with me, too, but I think I’ll take mine with a bun,” she replied. “And a diet cola, please.”
He nodded and went inside. He was out in no time, carrying a tray filled with their food. He handed Dana hers, then placed Duffy’s food on the flattened wrapper on the ground. The dog wasted no time in consuming his treat.
Dana worked on hers more slowly. She nibbled on her burger, worried her jittery stomach might rebel. Luckily, the food stayed down. She picked up a French fry and nibbled on that, too.
She was grateful Mac said little. He asked her once if she wanted any of the ketchup packets, but then concentrated on his own food and offered Duffy a few French fries.
Dana was surprised a little later when she looked down and realized her food was gone. She could only attribute it to Mac’s quiet and undemanding presence. Not that it made him easy to ignore. She doubted he could ever be ignored. She took a sip of her drink and carefully set the cup down.
“I didn’t call that man,” she said quietly. “The things I learned about him were because I’d made some enquiries. And I was very discreet when I did it,” she insisted.
“You didn’t need to do it, to begin with. That’s my job,” he reminded her. “No matter how discreet you are, someone’s going to end up connecting you with him, and that’s not what you want.”
She bit her lower lip. She’d never given in to anyone. Never allowed anyone to take charge. Now she had no choice.
“All right, what do I need to do?” she whispered.
Damn, couldn’t she ask a simpler question? Mac chewed slowly on his French fry, needing the time to think it over.
“We do nothing.”
“How can you say that?” she argued. “No, we have to do something.”
“You do nothing. I make sure Gary Carter stays away. After tonight, if he’s smart, he’ll do just that.”
Dana shook her head, still trying to comprehend what had happened. “He believed he knew me.”
“That’s his problem. We know different,” he reminded her.
“It’s my problem, too! The man insinuated we were having an affair.” Her voice grew shrill with anger.
“Think about it, Dana. Gary Carter only knows what he’s been led to believe. That you’re the woman he’s been with. We both know different,” he said on a final note. “Someone’s been playing with his head just as much as they’ve played with yours.”
Dana felt her food start to travel up her throat. Who could hate her this much?
She carefully folded the papers into a neat square and placed them on the plastic tray. She looked away from him. “I need to go home,” she said abruptly, still refusing to glance at him.
He took one look at her pale features and nodded. “All right.” He gathered up the papers and tossed them in the trash, leaving the tray on top of the table. He unhooked Duff’s leash from the pillar and led him back to the truck.
The silence inside the vehicle was heavily charged as Mac drove Dana home. She didn’t like the emotions bubbling inside her. She felt fidgety and unsettled. A vision of being imprisoned inside a volcano came to mind.
Dana usually prided herself on keeping her emotions well in check. She prided herself on her honesty. Now someone wanted to destroy everything her father, and now she, had worked hard to build. She flip-flopped between screaming and crying.
She swallowed the lump threatening to choke her. She was glad when her house came into view. It was amazing she still viewed it as a haven, when it was where the nightmares had begun.
Mac parked in the driveway. He draped his hands over the steering wheel and stared at the dark windows. “I thought I told you to set up timers on your lamps in all the rooms,” he said brusquely. “You should even hook one up to your stereo system.” He opened his door and climbed out.
Dana had her keys out of her purse and was out of the vehicle before Mac could reach her.
“I forgot. I’ll take care of it this weekend.” She suddenly felt tired. Earlier thoughts of a long hot bath were replaced with a longing for her bed. “Do you think anything else will happen tonight?” She hated the quaver in her voice. She’d hoped she wouldn’t display any fear.
She looked up when Mac touched her arm. The nearby streetlight cast a harsh light on Mac’s face that made it appear carved from granite.
“You have to help me out here, Dana. I made those suggestions as additional safety measures,” he said. “I bet you even forgot to turn on the alarm before you left this morning.”
“It’s not as if the neighborhood is in a bad area or has no protection whatsoever,” she muttered, not willing to admit she had forgotten.
He muttered a curse. “You better stay out here while I check the house.” He took her keys out of her hand and strode up the walkway.
Dana stood by Mac’s truck, her arms wrapped around her body for protection. She watched him unlock the door and step inside, saw his tall form swallowed up by the darkness. She waited for a light to come on, but the house remained dark. She strained all her senses to hear the tiniest whisper of sound, to see even the faintest of shadows. But she detected nothing. Or Mac was so good he was undetectable. She looked over her shoulder when she heard Duffy whining.
“He’ll be back soon.” She whispered a reassurance to the dog as if hearing the words would reassure her, too. It wasn’t easy when her mind was conjuring up dark possibilities of what could happen to Mac in the house.
She breathed a sigh of relief when Mac appeared in the open doorway and made an “all clear” gesture. She wasted no time in reaching his side.
“It’s safe in there?” she whispered, squinting to try to see past him into the inky blackness.
“It all looks fine to me. I didn’t get any feeling that someone had been in here,” he replied in a normal voice.
Dana took a tentative step farther inside. She groped for a light switch. She felt better when light flooded the hallway.
“Timers on the lamps,” Mac reminded her.
She turned to face him. She wanted to beg him to stay because she didn’t want to be alone. Yet she hated herself for feeling helpless.
“Hey.” A roughened palm cupped her cheek. She lifted her eyes. Mac’s usual harsh expression was gone. “I’ll be right outside. You yell, I’ll hear you and be here in seconds. Okay?”
She nodded mutely.
Mac’s thumb rubbed gently across her lips. They automatically parted under his touch, and her tongue appeared to taste the salt of his skin.
Mac groaned. “Sweetheart, things like that won’t get me out of here all that fast,” he said roughly. “Considering I’m here to protect you, I think it’s better I leave while I can.”
Don’t go. Her eyes telegraphed her need.
He hesitated, but refused to break his Eleventh Commandment. Instead, he pressed a hard kiss against her lips. “Lock the door, set the alarm,” he ordered as he walked out, closing the door after him.
Dana grabbed the table as her knees gave out. How could a man’s touch affect her so much?
“It’s because of everything going on,” she muttered, forcing her knees to lock.
Dana stopped by the kitchen long enough to pick up a bottle of water and carry it into her home office. She checked for phone messages and, after finding none, switched on her computer. Within no time, she was logged on to her files at work. She used to be able to bury herself in her work and forget the world around her.
It wasn’t as easy to do when the world insisted on intruding.
She was wearing her favorite party dress. The blue one with lace that her mommy bought her for her sixth birthday. It was the most beautiful dress in the world.
And her hair had been curled and tied back with a ribbon. She sat in
front of her mommy’s mirror because she wanted to see how pretty she looked. Except, something wasn’t right. When she looked in the mirror her reflection wasn’t smiling. But she knew she was smiling.
“Why are you smiling, Dana? You’re ugly,” her reflection told her. “You’re not pretty like me. Daddy always loved me best. You should go far away because no one wants you here.”
“No,” Dana protested, not understanding why her reflection would be speaking to her. “You’re lying!”
The smile on her reflection’s face wasn’t a pretty one. It was a scary smile. Dana wanted to run away from the face looking at her, even though the face looked just like hers.
“Go away. You’re not real,” she told her reflection.
The smile disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and the girl’s face contorted into a horrifying mask. She looked down at her pretty blue dress and pulled at the lace around the collar. Soon it was shredded. She then pulled off the white buttons and tore at the sleeves.
“Stop it!” Dana screamed. “Don’t ruin my dress!”
Her reflection opened her mouth and screamed back. Her scream was terrifying to Dana, but what really scared her was the blood pouring down the side of her head. She cried out, but it was as if no sound emitted from her mouth. She closed her eyes and covered her ears with her hands, but it didn’t stop the screaming nor the memory of the girl’s bloody face. She ran from the room but her reflection’s screams followed her.
“No!” Dana shot up in bed. Her mouth felt sore as if it had been stretched wide from her screams, and her heart beat rapid tattoos against her chest. She looked down and found her fingers clutching the sheet as if it were a lifeline.
Had she dreamed her screams or had she screamed for real? She listened for the sound of Mac pounding on her door. Surely if she’d screamed, he would have heard her. Her eyes darted toward every shadowy corner of the room. Images of monsters she hadn’t feared since she was a child hovered just out of reach. It would have been so easy to reach out and turn out a light to banish those monsters. But she didn’t want to take her hands out from under the safety of her covers.
She wished Mac were here. She knew if he held her, she wouldn’t feel such terror.
She slowly lay back down, but sleep refused to return. She kept her eyes wide open and counted off the seconds until dawn.
Dana was awakened later by the insistent buzz of her alarm clock. She rolled over in bed feeling a painful pounding deep within her head. She hurt so much she wanted to cry.
As she lay there praying the hammering inside her brain would go away, she thought of her dream. She remembered reading how many dreams had a hidden meaning. She dreaded to think what last night’s dream might have been trying to tell her. Even more, she feared the scene in her dream was actually something that only spoke to her when she was asleep.
Could that mean there was two sides to her nature? Suddenly, she felt afraid. What if none of this would end until one destroyed the other?
Chapter 7
Dana’s headache refused to go away even after the two extra-strength aspirin she took as soon as she crawled out of bed. She called her office and told them she would be coming in late. When Marti asked her if she was all right, she assured her she was fine. She just had an appointment she’d forgotten about.
She made a breakfast she couldn’t eat and sat at the kitchen table staring at her plate and the cup of coffee she couldn’t bring herself to drink.
“What’s wrong?”
She looked toward the back door which now stood open. She swore it was still locked when she came into the kitchen.
“Just a bad headache,” she said. “How did you get in?”
“Since you still haven’t put in better locks, I guess I’ll have to do it.” Mac rummaged through the cabinets until he found a coffee mug. He filled it up and drank some. He eyed her plate. “Not hungry?”
“I told you. I have a headache,” she explained. She pushed her plate toward him. “Be my guest.”
He ignored her sarcasm. He settled down in the chair to her right. The eggs and toast were gone in a few bites. He looked around with a hopeful gaze. “Any more?”
“Only if you cook it yourself.”
Mac shrugged, got up and whipped up some scrambled eggs. This time, he portioned some of the eggs off onto another plate and added buttered toast.
“You have any jam? No, wait, I’ll get it myself.” He looked through the refrigerator and brought out jam and a carton of orange juice.
Dana stared at the second breakfast Mac had prepared. The idea of eating even a fraction of what he’d put in front of her was daunting.
“It won’t hurt you. Just try it one bite at a time,” he advised. “I may not be the best cook in the world, but I can promise you you won’t get food poisoning.”
She managed a faint smile and under his coaxing finished a good third of her breakfast.
“How’s the headache?” he asked afterward as he stacked the plates in the sink.
“I’m just grateful it wasn’t a migraine.” She watched him move around the kitchen. She wondered just how many times he’d been here, since he seemed to find some things a little too easily. Something shifted deep within her as she realized he looked all too right here. Conversation hadn’t been necessary during the meal, and the silence between them was a comfortable one.
How could she think of him this way when she knew they were completely wrong for each other? She broke her gaze away from him and glanced up at the clock.
“I’m going in late,” she told him. “You really don’t need to stick around. Thank you for breakfast.”
Mac arched an eyebrow. “You’re not the type to be late to work.”
“When I have a headache the size of Texas, I do.” She hesitated. Should she tell him about her dream? She didn’t want to talk about it. She was afraid if she talked about it, it would somehow become real. But then, she could also hope talking about it would banish the terror. “I had a bad dream last night,” she said in a rush.
She waited for him to make light of her statement. Bad dreams weren’t anything new. Unless it was something like the one she’d suffered. Then it was pure hell.
Mac sat down at the table. “Tell me about it,” he quietly urged.
Dana took several deep breaths. She cast about in her mind for the best way to begin, then decided there was only one way to do it.
“I was six years old,” she said slowly. She kept her eyes fastened on her hands, moving restlessly on the tabletop. “And I was sitting in front of my mother’s mirror admiring my new dress. The odd thing was, while I was smiling, my reflection wasn’t. Then my reflection spoke to me. She said I didn’t need to smile because I’m ugly. She said I wasn’t pretty like she was. That Daddy always loved her best.” Her breath hitched. “She told me I should go far away because no one wanted me.” She choked back a sob.
Mac reached across the table and covered her hands with his. His comforting touch gave her the courage to continue.
“I told my reflection to go away. That she wasn’t real,” she said between soft gasps as the memories flooded through her. “But she didn’t go away. Instead she looked terrifying. She looked down at her dress and it started to shred as she tore at it. I screamed at her and she screamed back.” She looked up, the horror of her dream mirrored in her eyes. “She wouldn’t stop, so I ran out of the room, but I could still hear her. That’s when I woke up.”
Mac moved over to the chair next to her as he reached in his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. “It’s clean,” he assured her as he mopped the tears from her cheeks. Tears she wasn’t aware of shedding until then.
“I woke up feeling so scared,” she uttered in an aching whisper.
He pulled her into his arms, pressing her face against his shoulder. “It’s okay,” he soothed. “Like you said, it was a bad dream.”
“What if it has a deeper meaning?” Her voice was muffled against his shirt front. “So
me people say what you dream means something. What if my reflection is another side of me?”
“Is that what Abby told you?”
“It’s too early to call her.”
“It isn’t now.” After making sure she was calmer, he got up and walked over to her phone. He tapped out a number and waited. “Hey there, Ab. Yeah.” He chuckled. “Can you see Dana Madison today? Something happened.” He nodded a couple of times as he listened. “Okay, we’ll be there.” He hung up. “She’ll see you at ten.”
“I planned to be in my office by then,” she protested. After telling him about the dream, she felt a little better. And a little silly that she had allowed it to bother her so much.
Mac picked her phone back up and punched out another number. He whistled under his breath as he waited for someone to answer.
“Marti Cameron, please,” he said crisply.
“What are you doing?” Dana started to stand up, but he pointed at her with a silent order to sit.
“Marti, Mac McKenna here. Oh, she called, did she?” He gave her a sideways glance. “Forgotten appointment. Yeah, I guess it’s as good an excuse as any. I thought I’d show her how to play hooky.” He chuckled at something Marti said. “Actually, she’s looking as if she’s ready to kill me, but I think I can change her mind. Sure will. Thanks.” He hung up.
“You can’t do that!” she sputtered.
“Do what?” He was the picture of boyish innocence.
Dana threw up her hands. “Make it sound as if we’re lovers! All I had to do was call Marti and tell her I had a doctor’s appointment.”
Mac leaned against the counter, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he watched her pace the length of the kitchen. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d gotten her so worked up she’d forgotten about her headache.
“Maybe I’m mistaken, but I can’t imagine Marti is the gossipy type. At least I didn’t tell her you were seeing your shrink.”
“Marti doesn’t gossip, but that isn’t the point. She still can’t help but think the worst.” How could she make him understand that what her employees thought of her was important to her.
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