Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?

by Shawna Delacorte

  He wasn’t sure what to do now. She sat huddled in the corner of the sofa with the blanket wrapped around her. Another hard jolt of lust struck him, tempered by the realization of how frightened and vulnerable she appeared. It had been two years and three months since he had been this close to a desirable woman. The sight played on his emotions and tugged at his senses. He tried to shove away the feelings. He went to the kitchen, took the sack from the grocery store out of the refrigerator and put everything away where it belonged, hoping the activity would give him time to think.

  A few minutes later he returned to the living room. She was exactly where he had left her, scrunched in the corner of the sofa. He swallowed his discomfort and uneasiness as he forced an outer calm.

  “Well, Goldilocks…are you sufficiently recovered enough to talk to me? Do you have a name?”

  She pulled up all the courage she could muster as she attempted to project a commanding attitude. “Do you?”

  “No you don’t, Goldilocks. It’s my cabin. You’re the trespasser. I’m the one who has the right to ask questions and demand answers.”

  She glared at him. “Stop calling me Goldilocks!”

  He suppressed the wry grin that tugged at the corners of his mouth. She had spirit. Even as frightened as she obviously was—as frightened as anyone would be under the circumstances—she had managed to put forth some heated sparks of independence. He found that very appealing. He had never been particularly interested in the clinging-vine type of woman nor the type who constantly needed to have her ego fed—not even as the occasional one-night stand.

  He made eye contact with her and held it for a long moment before speaking. “Then tell me what to call you.”

  Her emotions had been stretched, punched and pulled so taut that she didn’t have anything left other than the underlying current of fear that continued to run just below the surface. “Brandi…” She broke the eye contact as she quickly looked away. “Brandi Doyle.”

  “Well, Brandi Doyle, what are you doing in my cabin?” The question left him uneasy. Was her obvious vulnerability getting to him? Was he allowing himself to be drawn into yet another bad situation with a woman where he would end up regretting that he hadn’t just allowed her to escape into the storm and out of his life?

  “I…I needed someplace where I could get out of the storm.”

  “I didn’t see a car. How did you get here? Why were you wandering around in the storm? Where did you come from?” He reached out and almost touched her face, withdrawing his hand before he made physical contact. “And where did you get those scratches on your face?”

  “I—” This was no good. She didn’t have a clue who he was, other than the owner of the cabin. Or so he claimed.

  True…even though she didn’t have any means of protecting herself, he hadn’t done anything other than bring her back inside from the storm. True…he had released her unharmed, as he’d said he would. True…he just might be an honorable and trustworthy man.

  But could she really trust him with the truth about how and why she happened to be in his cabin?

  She drew in a steadying breath in an effort to calm her galloping anxiety and ease her trepidation. She chose her words with great care. “I apologize for being here. I had no right to break into your cabin.” She rose to her feet and dropped the blanket on the sofa. “I’ll leave so you can go about your business.” She picked up her purse, screwed up her courage and headed toward the door.

  Reece grabbed her arm and with his other hand took the purse from her. “Wait a minute. You can’t go wandering in the woods with a storm raging around you. Besides—” he glanced toward the window “—in another ten minutes it will be dark outside.”

  He eyed her carefully, maintaining his hold on her as she tried to wrest her arm from his grip. “Are you in some kind of trouble? Are you in danger? Was my cabin more of a place for you to hide than merely somewhere to get out of the rain?”

  Her words came out almost as a whisper, her voice pleading. “Please…let go of me. I want to leave.”

  The quaver in her voice answered his questions, and the obvious fear that emanated from the depths of her eyes confirmed those answers. And it also told him that hell must have frozen over while he wasn’t looking. He had just been suckered into helping yet another beautiful woman in distress. Would he live to regret it this time, too?

  She looked up at him, this time holding the eye contact. He saw the confusion in her troubled hazel eyes. He loosened his grip on her arm and guided her back to the sofa. He softened his voice, hoping it would instill some confidence and allay her concerns and obvious fears.

  “Sit down.” He opened her purse and took out her driver’s license. “So, your name really is Brandi.” He noted her address in Rocky Shores, Washington—a city of about thirty thousand people in the greater Seattle metropolitan area. Rocky Shores…he turned that interesting tidbit of information over in his mind as he handed everything back to her.

  He perched on the arm of the sofa and studied her for a moment. “Tell me what’s going on…please.”

  She hesitated as if she wasn’t sure what to do or what to say. She emitted a sigh of resignation as she slumped back and allowed her tensed muscles to relax a little bit. He didn’t seem as threatening as he had earlier. True to his word, he had not harmed her. A lot of the fear had drained from her reality—but not all of it. “I don’t even know who you are. Why would you want to hear about my problems?”

  “Fair enough question. My name is Reece Covington. You’re obviously in some kind of trouble and by breaking into my cabin you’ve involved me in it even if that wasn’t your intention.” Was he about to repeat the same colossal mistake that had landed him in prison for two years? He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then slowly exhaled. He was not at all sure he was doing the right thing. His words came out slowly, surrounded by a touch of the uncertainty that jittered inside him.

  “Perhaps there’s something I can do to help you.”

  “How could you help me?”

  “I don’t know. First, you’ll have to tell me what the problem is, then we’ll see if there’s some way I can help. It could be that the only thing I can do is provide you with a ride back to Rocky Shores.” He flashed an engaging smile, one he hoped would instill a feeling of confidence. “But that would certainly be better than walking back.”

  All the defiance drained out of her body, to be replaced with despair. She didn’t know what to do or what to say. Her words were barely above a whisper, a very frightened whisper. “No one can help. No one believes me.”

  He moved off the arm of the sofa and sat down next to her. “What is it that no one believes?” He was digging the hole deeper and deeper. He was becoming too involved in something that was none of his business—something that could only cause him more trouble than he wanted to accept. More trouble than he needed, especially now.

  “All right.” She screwed up her determination. “You asked and here it is. For the past month someone has been stalking me.”

  It was the last thing he had expected her to say, but it grabbed his attention. He could tell by the expression on her face that she was serious. “Stalking you? In what way?”

  “Well…sometimes it was just a feeling that someone was watching me when I would be out at various places. Things like following me around the grocery store. I would turn around and look, but didn’t see anyone I recognized or even anyone who seemed to be paying any attention to me. At night I would sometimes hear sounds outside my house as if someone was checking to see if any of the doors or windows were unlocked. My phone would ring. I could hear breathing, but no one would answer me. It wasn’t the type of heavy breathing that you would think of as an obscene call, just someone on the line who didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, that could have just been your imagination. Or maybe kids playing a prank.”

  “That’s what the police said when I tried to report it. They didn’t believe me.” A frown
wrinkled across her forehead, an angry frown that matched her tone of voice. “In fact, they were very condescending. They implied that I was nothing more than some hysterical neurotic female with an overactive imagination who should take a tranquilizer and get some rest.”

  A little snort of disgust escaped his throat before he could stop it. “In my experience, that’s typical of the way the Rocky Shores Police Department handles things.”

  “There’s more. There was a voice—a strange, unreal type of voice—that would reach out to me.”

  “What do you mean by strange and unreal? Was it a man’s voice or a woman’s? What was different about this voice?”

  “I’m not sure. It was sort of…well, like it was mechanical or something like that. It was a man’s voice.”

  “Do you mean like a computer-generated voice? Something like that?”

  The light of recognition came into her eyes. “Yes! That’s it. A computer-generated voice, not a real person.”

  “You said it reached out to you. What do you mean? How did it reach out to you?”

  Brandi scrunched up her face as she tried to come up with the right words to explain something that didn’t have any rational explanation. “It was as if it materialized out of thin air when there was no one around, at least no one I could see. Once it was in the fog during the day. Another time it was at night.”

  “What did this voice say?”

  “It called my name and told me to be careful, that it was coming for me. There were a couple of occasions when I could tell that someone had been in my house. Nothing was missing and everything appeared to be in the right place, but I could tell someone had looked through my things.”

  “Your things…what kind of things? Do you mean like some pervert pawing through your underwear?”

  “No. It seemed to be my office and my darkroom.”

  Reece cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “Your office? Your darkroom? You work from home? Are you a professional photographer or is it just a hobby?”

  “It’s what I do for a living. Mostly weddings and portraits, but I’m also working on a coffee-table-type book—scenic photographs depicting the unique and beautiful sights of Washington.”

  A sudden thought struck her, one that triggered a moment of anxiety. She tried to shove down the apprehension as she stared at him with a skeptical eye. She wasn’t sure she should open a can of worms by asking the question or, for that matter, whether she really wanted to know the answer.

  “You sound like a policeman who’s interrogating a suspect. Are you…uh, are you a policeman?” The apprehension churned inside her. She held her breath as she waited for his response. Under normal circumstances a policeman would be a blessing and a relief, but not this time. Not now. Not with what she had seen when—

  “Me? A policeman?” If the thought hadn’t been so preposterous it might have been funny. “No, I’m not a policeman.” A level of caution pushed to the forefront. Something about the way she had asked the question caught his attention. It was almost as if she was afraid he might be a policeman rather than hoping he was one.

  The more she talked, the more he became fascinated with the tale she had to tell. He had dealt with this type of situation before. As a highly paid, very successful private investigator, he had handled several stalking cases during his career.

  Career. He almost laughed out loud at the word, a laugh of bitter resentment. His extremely profitable career had been flushed down the toilet along with two years of his life when he was wrongly convicted and sent to prison. Now, he had enough money socked away from before his arrest to sustain him for a while, plus the profits from selling his house.

  And he had the cabin. He had bought it eight years ago and had taken great pains to conceal its ownership—just as he had the ownership of his SUV—by using a series of dummy corporations and other evasive tactics. At the time he’d purchased it, the cabin’s purpose had been to provide a haven for clients who needed protection and a secure place to hide witnesses for a high-powered defense attorney who had regularly engaged his services. But now his needs were the most basic, and his expenses almost nonexistent.

  And here was Brandi Doyle threatening that anonymity. If he had any sense at all he would drive her back to town, drop her off at her house and forget that she had ever crossed his path.

  “So what does all of this lead up to? What happened today that you ended up in my cabin in the mountains in a rainstorm?” He saw the discomfort in her body language and the wariness in her eyes. Once again she had managed to touch a spot deep inside him that he had tried to protect against the vulnerability she couldn’t hide.

  Brandi stared at the flames in the fireplace. She had already said too much, given more information to this complete stranger than she should have. Had she put herself in additional danger, more than what already pursued her? She wished she had some answers, but all she had were questions.

  Questions and fears.

  Her voice rang hollow. She couldn’t keep her emotional pain tucked away as she spoke. At least he was listening—or maybe just pretending to listen. Either way, it was more credence than the police had given her when she’d tried to report her stalker.

  “Today someone abducted me as I was about to get into my car to go to the grocery store. I managed to escape when he stopped for gas. I ran into the woods and kept running until I saw your cabin.”

  It was the last thing he had expected her to say and one more detail that added to his growing interest in her story. He fought to keep it on a purely intellectual level while attempting to ignore her physical attributes and the vulnerability that continued to reach out to him.

  He maintained his outer composure, making sure he didn’t show her any of his thoughts or feelings. “Do you know who abducted you? Or why?”

  “I have no idea why anyone would want to abduct me. I’m not wealthy. My family isn’t wealthy. I don’t have an ex-husband or even a spurned lover who would be wanting to get back at me for some real or imagined deed. I lead a basically uneventful life. I don’t have any enemies that I’m aware of. I’m at a complete loss as to why this is happening to me.”

  She paused and took in a calming breath before continuing. “I guess I can’t blame the police for not believing me. I know everything I’ve said sounds absurd. And to make things worse, I think…uh, I think the man who abducted me was…” Once again she drew in a deep breath in an effort to still her rattled nerves. She stared at the burning logs, her words a mere whisper.

  “I think he was a policeman.”

  Chapter Two

  Reece’s senses jumped to rigid attention as he rose to his feet and stood facing Brandi. “You were abducted by a policeman?” His words came machine-gun fast as the excitement raced through him. “Are you sure? How do you know he was a policeman? Was he in uniform? Do you know his name? What did he look like? How old was he? Had you ever seen him before?”

  Had he heard her correctly? It was a rogue cop who had framed him for a crime he didn’t commit. A quick surge of anger jolted through him. He would never be able to get those two years back, but he was determined to get the people responsible for sending him to prison. It was all he had thought about for the entire two years. Was it even remotely possible that what happened to him could somehow be connected to her predicament?

  His office had been in Rocky Shores. It had been a detective with the Rocky Shores Police Department who had framed him. She lived in Rocky Shores. Could it be the same cop? If it had happened in Seattle, or some other large city, he would have said it was preposterous—too coincidental to be real. But in Rocky Shores—a city of only thirty thousand people? Or was he desperately grasping at straws in an attempt to connect the two incidents?

  He repeated his question, determined to get an answer that satisfied him. He leaned forward, his hands on the back of the sofa on each side of her head—his face almost touching hers. He slowly repeated the question, clearly enunciating each word in a low voice tha
t left no room for any confusion concerning his seriousness and demand for an answer.

  “How do you know he was a policeman?”

  Brandi stared at Reece in several seconds of stunned silence. He had suddenly come alive, catching her totally off guard. The intensity etched on his features matched the resolve in the depth of his blue eyes. His commanding presence was unnervingly close, his face so near that she could literally feel the strength of his determination radiate to her.

  And that wasn’t all. His clean, masculine scent was as sexy and appealing as if he had just splashed himself with an aphrodisiac guaranteed to work its wonders on unsuspecting women. It was the type of thing that could make the strongest will melt on the spot. She suspected that if they continued in such close proximity she would succumb with very little objection in spite of the earlier frightening physical encounter.

  She tried to douse the flame of desire he had ignited inside her—the totally inappropriate desire—by forcing her attention back to the reality of the present and the danger that had suddenly invaded her life. Something was going on. Something more than the owner of this cabin wanting to know why she had trespassed on his property. He already knew a lot about her, but the only thing she knew about him was his name.

  If that was really his name.

  It left her with a very uncomfortable feeling. He had blatantly displayed how physically vulnerable she was when he had thrown her over his shoulder as if she were nothing more than a sack of feathers and then pinned her to the floor when she had tried to run again. With each ensuing question her emotional vulnerability increased.

  And she didn’t like the sensation—the same helplessness that had beset her for the past month. An emotional upheaval that she couldn’t control.

  Somehow, she had to regain the upper hand over what was happening. She had to once again be in charge of her own life. Whether anyone believed her or not, she knew she was in danger, and it was up to her to protect herself from the unknown person who seemed determined to harm her. She had tried to go to the police and had been dismissed as if she was some delusional nut case—some irrational woman. She didn’t have anyone she could count on other than herself.