“What do we do now?”
He exhaled and met my gaze again. “Try again in a few days? Every session gives us new information to work with. We can only hope sometime soon there’ll be a clue to all of this.”
I nodded. Suddenly I was exhausted, my body and my mind feeling bruised and battered as if I’d been only recently liberated from that labor camp. And my heart—my heart felt newly broken for the friend I’d met and lost in the space of an afternoon. What I wanted more than anything else in the world was for someone—anyone—to hold me, just for a minute. It seemed like forever since I’d felt the warmth of human touch.
I looked at Ethan. “You know, this is probably completely out of line, but I really need a hug right now. Would you mind?”
His face softened in sympathy as he slid next to me on the couch. He gathered me in and held me close, his chest warm against my cheek, his heartbeat steady under my ear. He smelled wonderful, like citrus and spice and something uniquely his own. He didn’t seem to mind that my tears soaked his soft knit tee-shirt through to the skin below. He held me until I had given up all my grief for a life neither he nor I could explain.
When I was done he handed me tissues and offered me the bathroom to freshen up. Then he sent me home with plenty of questions, but no answers.
CHAPTER SIX
Ethan closed the door behind Asia and went to find a glass and the bottle of Maker’s Mark that he kept in a cabinet over the dishwasher. The hand pouring the drink shook, and he knew it wasn’t because he was tired. No, not tired, beat to shit. Or because his leg hurt. Hurt? It was fucking killing him. Or even because he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast—he’d had back-to-back clients since 10:00 a.m. and it was now 8:15 p.m.
He knocked back the bourbon, hissing against the fiery trail it burned into his stomach, and poured another three fingers’ worth. Then he made himself a sandwich and carried it into the den. He eased himself into the recliner and hit the remote, surfed idly for a few minutes before settling on a soccer match between two Caribbean teams, and sat staring at the screen, not watching at all while his mind reeled from the events of the day.
That bastard had almost raped her. That fucking bastard had put his filthy hands on her and . . . Jesus Christ! Ethan couldn’t stand the thought of what she’d been through in that place. And then . . . God, he wanted to scream in frustration. He wanted to go back in time. He wanted to kill that asshole Tomar for touching her. God help him, he even wanted to challenge Mose for the right to be the one to save her. For chrissake, he shouldn’t even believe her, and yet his emotional response was out of control. He felt like a freaking Neanderthal.
And the way she’d felt as he’d held her, soft and yielding against his body. He’d gone hard the second he touched her, and he was sure that no amount of delicate maneuvering could have hidden that fact from her. She’d smelled so good—sweet and exotic, a scent that intoxicated him as he breathed it in and made him want to bury his face between her breasts. It had been all he could do to keep from running his hands through her hair, tipping her face to his, kissing her full lips.
Ethan shook his head, trying to free himself of the images that threatened to drown him in a sensuality he knew was forbidden. He took a mental step back, reaching for an objectivity that was slipping from his grasp, and tried to determine how Asia had been reacting to him. If she was beginning to transfer her emotions onto him . . . but, no, he didn’t see any evidence of it. The experience she’d relived today had been traumatic, devastating. The emotional exhaustion, the grief, the need for comfort had been legitimate and most likely temporary.
“Jesus, she even recognized that it crossed a boundary and asked permission,” he muttered. “How well-adjusted is that? I’m the one with the transference problem.” One that he needed to get under control.
He forced himself to consider a less volatile aspect of the case. Only to find yet another trap. I can’t help her, he thought, and the thought wouldn’t let him go any more than his earlier one. She still wanted to know where those three hours had gone, and he had no more idea than she did. Probably never would.
All this time, all this work, and it’ll end up just like Ida Mickens.
Though he was well aware he shouldn’t think of them in this way, Ethan had accumulated several “failures” in his five years of private practice. People he’d been unable to help. People who had given up before they’d broken through to healing. But he’d had only one other patient he could compare to Asia.
Ida Mickens had been nearly 80 years old when she’d made the 300-mile trip from West Virginia to see him. Mrs. Mickens had said her home was “so far back up in the hills you have to pass the middle of nowhere to get there.” How she’d found him was still a mystery. She merely said she’d prayed on it, and one of those articles mentioning his name had found its way into her hands.
Mrs. Mickens had been plagued with “visions” since she was a little girl. She made it known this wasn’t “the sight,” which would have been a tolerable gift of God of some use to her family and neighbors. Her visions had nothing to do with life in her tiny mountain community. Instead they showed her a world of suffering and pain far from West Virginia: vast stretches of stinking yellow mud under a green sky. Fields of head-high plants with thick, oozing stems and leaves so sharp they gashed the skin. Tribes of children with hands lacerated by the work of harvesting sticky globes from the plants and adults with backs and limbs distorted by years of the same work and worse.
She had come to Ethan to be rid of the visions. They worked with AL for days without results. The money the old woman had brought for living expenses didn’t last long. Ethan asked his friend Dan and his family to put her up. She baked them biscuits every morning, and every afternoon they tried again. The work only served to bring out more details of the horrible place she imagined. After weeks of failure, they gave up.
“Don’t fret over it, son,” she told him when he put her on the bus for home. “Reckon I was meant to remember for a reason. I just hope I live long enough to learn what it is.”
Of course, Ethan had worried about it. For months he questioned whether he had the power to help anyone. Dozens of successes gradually rebuilt his confidence, but he still thought of Ida Mickens on his bad days. Days like today.
He exhaled and stared at the ceiling in frustration. There was still another thought circling his brain demanding recognition, one that was even crazier. One that began What if . . .
What if Asia was telling the truth? What if she really had experienced all the things she described? What if the world she described was real?
He shook his head. “No,” he said aloud.
What he was thinking was not possible by the laws of nature as he understood them. Where was this so-called world? he asked himself. How could she have gotten there and back? And when? The narrative of her life is complete except for three hours. Are we saying that she experienced all these things in the space of three hours of “real time” here on Earth?
“That’s ridiculous.”
Okay, how about a past life? he proposed. People claim to have them all the time. There was even less evidence to support that theory. And it didn’t help explain the missing hours. Shirley MacLaine was going to be no help on this one.
So, we’re back to the theory of another world in this life. His mind skidded away from the obvious explanation, the one many of his clients would offer without hesitation. Still it kept intruding, and he was forced to consider it. The weird thing was that Asia herself hadn’t mentioned it—not once in all of their sessions, except as a joke when she’d teased him about that article she’d read.
He slammed the recliner down and stalked into the kitchen. “So I’m supposed to tell this beautiful, bright, incredibly sexy woman that my explanation for what happened to her is that she was abducted by aliens.” He stared at his reflection in the kitchen window. “Sure. That’ll go over great.”
Better than telling her you have no clu
e how to help her, his reflection answered.
God, he was miserable. His leg ached, despite the bourbon. He picked up the bottle of Vicodin from beside the sink and contemplated it for a long moment. No refills, it said. He had meant it when he’d told Dan Parker he didn’t intend to get a new script, but there were only five pills left. He felt the deprivation already, the need to hoard, to “save up” for those times when he wouldn’t be able to do without. Was this one of those times?
No, he decided. He would try to do without tonight. Maybe the bourbon—and the exhaustion—would be enough.
Elizabeth’s voice on the other end of the line was jittery and shrill, the effect, Ethan suspected, of too much caffeine ingested to compensate for too little sleep. She’d screamed herself awake again last night and refused to let him comfort her. It had become a pattern for them.
“What is it, Liz? I’m just about to go in with a patient.”
“So what else is new? In fact, that’s what I’m calling about. You haven’t scheduled anything after four today have you?”
He sighed. “Elizabeth, you know I have a standing appointment every Friday at four. I’ll be done by five.”
“Damn it, Ethan, this is important. Cancel the fucking appointment. I want you home in time to change. We need to be there on time for once.”
He started to cave, then found he had a backbone after all. “No. Pick me up at the office. I’ll change here. I was going to get the tux on the way home, but I’ll send Cindy out for it at lunch instead. We’ll make it in plenty of time.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. “Fine. I’ll see you at five. But if you’re one minute late coming out that door, I’m leaving your ass. You can take a taxi.” The line went dead.
Ethan woke with a gasp, his heart racing in his chest. He raised his head to look at the clock. Just past two in the morning. Fuck. He shifted to ease the ache in his thigh and tried not to think about the day his mind had dredged up as the subject of his dreams. He concentrated on his breath, consciously relaxing his muscles. He thought of the lake house where he’d spent summers as a kid. And gradually his eyes closed, his mind let go.
His 4:00 appointment sat across from him on the worn leather couch and told him, “This can’t be a dream.”
“Why not, Asia?” Even as he said her name he knew there was something wrong about it. The time was off, or the place, or she wasn’t the person he should be talking to. But it didn’t seem to matter at the moment. All that mattered were those golden-brown eyes of hers. The way she used them to look right into him, to see him the way no one else seemed to see him.
“Because it’s too real.” Her smoky Southern blues voice was barely above a whisper. “I can feel everything as if it’s really happening.”
He realized with a shock that it was the same for him—that the warm breeze coming in the open window was like a caress on his skin, that it carried the light, sweet scent of her for him to breathe in, that her scent and her nearness were sending the blood to his groin in a searing rush. His mouth was suddenly dry and wordless.
The spell was shattered by the blaring of a car horn from the driveway. Elizabeth.
Asia started and turned to look out the window. “Guess my time’s up, huh?”
He glanced at the clock with a frown. “You’ve got five more minutes.”
She stood. “That’s okay. Looks like you’ve got somewhere to be.”
But Elizabeth was impatient. She turned the car around with a spray of gravel and peeled out of the drive without a second look.
Again, Ethan knew in the way of dreams that things had happened differently two years ago. And again, he didn’t care. This was a dream. No matter how real it felt.
“Looks like now I don’t have anywhere to be but here.” His heartbeat accelerated at the thought.
Asia knelt in front of his chair, placed her hands on top of his knees. He could feel her warmth through his jeans. Her eyes were full of—was that sympathy?—as she looked up at him. “You’re not happy. You haven’t been for a long time.”
He swallowed back the emotion that rose to close off his throat. “No,” was all he said.
She began to move her hands, sliding up and down the tops of his quads, her thumbs squeezing gently on the sensitive muscles of the inside of his thighs. He inhaled a shaky breath.
Her head tilted. “Why do you stay?”
“She needs my help.” Though he knew it had done no good.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Her right palm skimmed the hardening flesh of his erection.
“That’s what they say.” The words ended in a gasp as she rolled his aching cock against his thigh. “Jesus, Asia.”
“Shh. Let me take care of you.”
He watched, the muscles of his stomach clenching, as she unbuckled and unzipped him, freed him from his jeans and welcomed him into the cradle of her hands. He bucked at her touch, his hips arching with need as she stroked him.
“Asia,” he whispered. A plea. A prayer.
“Ethan.” Her voice was thick with desire. “We both want this. Don’t hold back.” Then she rose over his hips and took him into her mouth, sending an arrow of intense sensation from his balls straight up his spine. He came within seconds . . .
. . . and woke still pulsing, the evidence of his pleasure wet on the skin of his belly. Groaning, he curled in on himself, his cock still aching. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He hadn’t had a wet dream since college. And this—God, this had to be the most inappropriate wet dream of all time. She was his patient, for chrissake!
The blood pounded in his groin, his erection refusing to flag despite his orgasm. His mind might acknowledge the rules that set clear and inviolate boundaries between him and Asia Burdette. His body clearly did not give a fuck.
Parking was at a premium outside Ethan’s bungalow the afternoon of my next appointment. I was early; his three o’clock appointment—a beat-up Camry I recognized—was still parked in the driveway next to a late-model Cadillac. I found a spot for my Civic on the street and took my time coming up the walk to the front door, knowing I had some extra time. I was quiet when I came in, too, trying not to disturb Ethan with his patient.
The man sitting at Cindy’s desk had his broad back to the door; he didn’t look up or turn around when I came in. But I knew instantly who he was. What gave me an uncomfortable chill was that Dr. Claussen was staring at Cindy’s computer like it held the secrets of the universe. Surely a man like Claussen would carry his own tablet or phone and wouldn’t have to borrow a desktop to check his email?
I cleared my throat.
To give the man credit, he didn’t panic. He hit a key, and whatever he’d been doing vanished from the screen. Then he turned with a smile his face. Either he hadn’t been doing anything wrong or he was really good at hiding it.
“Asia! I was hoping I’d run into you today. You look well.”
“Thanks, Doc. I’m feeling much better.” I realized this was the first time I’d opened my mouth and said the words. To anyone.
But Claussen looked as if he didn’t believe me. “I’m glad to hear it. Dr. Roberts has been able to help you, then?”
“Yes.” My chin lifted. He was the last one I wanted to talk to about it, but I felt I had to defend Ethan. “The AL sessions have been . . . useful. I’m sleeping a lot better now.”
A swift, predatory gleam lit his eyes. “Indeed? Well, that’s wonderful. I’m so glad my recommendation worked out.”
I smiled and nodded, but I didn’t want to give him any credit for what Ethan had done. It hardly seemed possible that these two men, so different from each other, could be associates.
“Um, were you waiting for Ethan?”
Claussen shrugged. “My office takes care of some administrative work for him—billing and such. I had something for him, and I couldn’t just drop it off since Cindy wasn’t here.”
I’d nearly worked up enough courage to ask him about his unau
thorized computer access when Ethan ushered his patient out of his office and came in to greet us.
He seemed surprised to see Claussen. “Doctor.” He held out his hand for a shake. “To what do I owe the honor?”
Claussen waved a hand at a large manila envelope on the desk. “Jerry in Billing asked me to bring that over. Says to sign and return ASAP.”
Ethan grinned at me in apology as he unclasped the envelope. “Insurance stuff. Sorry. Just take a sec.”
Claussen just smiled that oily smile while Ethan read and signed the documents. All I could think was he must be short on patients to have the time to play messenger.
Ethan put everything in order and handed the package back to the old man. I could see there were the same questions in his mind that were swirling around in mine.
But Claussen forestalled him. “I was hoping I could entice you to leave your little office for an early drink at the club this evening, my boy, but I see you are engaged.” He clapped Ethan on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you to it.” With a nod at me, he trundled out of the office.
Ethan stared after him for a moment, then turned to me. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry about taking up your time.”
“No problem. I’m in no hurry today.” I wondered if I should mention Claussen’s familiarity with his office equipment, but decided that was overstepping my bounds. Who knew what kind of arrangements they had?
Ethan seemed to have something else on his mind. He hesitated, shuffling some papers on the desk.
“I tried to call you, in case you wanted to reschedule today’s appointment.”
I looked at him, not understanding. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Cindy’s out today. It’ll be just the two of us in the office.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “The way you’ve been reacting to the AL sessions—they tend to go on a long time. Are you okay with that?”
He stole a quick glance at me. Our eyes met and held, exchanging emotion neither of us meant to share. I couldn’t keep myself from wanting him. And what was it Rita had said about the consequences of him wanting me? Jesus, we were in deep trouble.
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