The Man from Nowhere

by Rachel Lee

  He liked the place. Despite being a stranger in a strange town, despite being questioned by a cop in a way he had never before been questioned. Despite being on some foggy kind of mission that he couldn’t quite bring into focus beyond a few visual images and an overriding compulsion.

  He even liked Maude’s manner. At Maude’s, he had concluded, you got what you got and, damn, it tasted good. None of the expense of nouvelle cuisine or soy milk for people who couldn’t just give something up, but demanded a substitute. God help your arteries. If you cared about them, anyway, and he’d quit caring about that, along with a whole bunch of other things.

  So his lawyer hadn’t sold his business to his partners. Well, actually, his partners had probably refused to buy his share. Don was a good lawyer and would have done exactly as instructed, regardless of whether he believed it to be temporary insanity.

  Maybe it had been. After talking with Trish today, he’d started to feel the itch again, a desire to return to his unfinished research. To the equations that painted pictures in his mind of a reality that maybe only someone like Picasso could begin to grasp.

  But now Trish had stopped being afraid of him. Which would have been good, except Trish Devlin still needed to be afraid. She very much needed to be afraid.

  But how could he tell her? How could he get anyone to believe the truth of why he had come here?

  He believed it only because of experience. Only because the last time he hadn’t believed, he’d paid the dearest price imaginable.

  So he had to figure out how to tell her. How to persuade her. Because if he failed, it could cost her everything.

  Slowly, he began to turn things around in his mind, examining what he thought he knew from every angle, seeking the key that would get through to her.

  And then he noticed something he’d never noticed before.

  Popping up from the bed, he pulled on heavy clothing and set out on yet another mission.

  After dropping Grant at the motel, Trish had taken a drive through the country, soaking up the beauty of the day from the warmth of her car. Then she made a short stop at the grocery to find something she felt like cooking for her dinner. After that she did a little research on synesthesia, decided Grant was far from nuts and took another walk, a short one because despite the promise of warmer temperatures the next day, today seemed to be growing ever colder.

  Just as another bank of clouds began to move in, darkening the afternoon, she answered her front door to find Grant standing there with a squirming ball of fur in his arms. “You need a dog,” he said without ado.

  “I do?” She stared blankly.

  “You do.” He held the animal out to her. It appeared to her untutored eyes to be a mutt with golden fur. “Shouldn’t you have asked me first?”

  “Probably, but then I’d have to explain.”

  “You’re going to have to explain, anyway.”

  A rueful smiled curved his mouth. “Why did I figure that would be your reaction?”

  “Maybe because you don’t dump this kind of responsibility on someone without clearing it first.”

  “Point taken.” His smile vanished. “Trust me, you need a dog. This guy was abandoned at the vet’s by someone who couldn’t pay a bill. He’s in perfect health, he’s had all his shots, doesn’t have worms, and I even paid for day care for him in advance so you don’t have to worry about what he might get up to while you’re at work.”

  How was it that he was making her feel ungracious by not taking the dog?

  Just as irritation began to replace shock, those big brown eyes turned toward her, and she received the full impact of floppy ears and an imploring gaze.

  “You are so unfair,” she said, whether to Grant or the dog she didn’t know. She reached out, took the dog in her arms and instantly fell in love. Which was every dog’s stock-in-trade, of course. Instant love. When he licked her cheek tentatively, the deal was sealed.

  “He’s adorable,” she admitted.

  “Small, but not too small, if you know what I mean. The vet says he’s not much of a barker unless something makes him uneasy. Good watchdog.”

  Watchdog. Why should he think she needed a watchdog? The back of her scalp began to prickle uneasily. She looked from the dog to Grant. “I think we need to have another talk. Come on in.”

  He hesitated. “About what?”

  “About why you think I need a watchdog.”

  “Poor choice of word, maybe.”

  “Somehow you don’t strike me as the type who chooses his words poorly.”

  As she watched him, he seemed to go away to some distant place again. Finally, he spoke. “Look, it’s hard to explain. I bought stuff for the little guy, so let me just get it.”

  She looked past his shoulders and saw that he seemed to have arrived in one of the few cars available for rental in town. “Uh, no,” she said. “He can survive with a bowl of water for a little while, and I can provide that. You’re not going to escape so easily.”

  He sighed, seemed to check some inner barometer, then nodded and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. She led the way to her kitchen, where she filled a soup bowl with water for the dog. He seemed grateful for it and lapped happily at it.

  “How old is he, and what’s his name?”

  “Vet says he’s about a year old. Housebroken, although you might have to remind him the rules haven’t changed just because his house has. As for his name…I didn’t ask because I figured you’d want to name him.”

  “How thoughtful.” She couldn’t quite keep the tiniest edge of sarcasm out of her voice. But she waved Grant to a seat at the table and poured coffee for them both.

  He thanked her as she took a seat across from him.

  “So let’s get back to this watchdog thing,” she said, refusing to skirt the issue. “Why did you say that?”

  “It’s…just a feeling I have.”

  “Must be a pretty strong feeling.”

  Again a moment of hesitation, then, “Yeah, it is. Very strong.”

  “Enough to make you dump a dog on me.”

  He returned her stare squarely. “Most definitely.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe your feeling?”

  “You don’t have to believe it. I’m the only one who has to believe it. Although it might help if you’d at least try it on for size.”

  She had been leaning forward on her elbows, but now she leaned back and straightened a bit. “Grant, do you have even the foggiest idea how weird you sound sometimes?”

  “Oh, believe me, I do. I sound weird to myself, even after what I’ve experienced.”

  The dog, still nameless, had begun to sniff around her ankles, learning something about her. The inevitable resulted: she reached down to gently scratch some very soft fur around some very soft ears. “Maybe you need to stop being so enigmatic and start telling me straight out what you think is going on here.”

  “I’d like to. And I will, once I figure out how.”

  “What is so hard about it?”

  “You won’t believe me.”

  They sat there, staring at one another. Trish honestly didn’t know what to say. Worse, even in the face of frustration and annoyance, she was feeling that inexorable tug toward him. That unmistakable yearning that wanted to pool between her thighs. How was it possible to feel desire and impatience at the same time? Both a longing to take him into her bed and throw him out?

  But that’s what she was feeling, and her breath caught as she saw a spark flare in his eyes, as if he felt it, too. And then she saw the same shock she had felt, the awareness that this was not something he wanted to feel.

  “I’ll go get the dog stuff,” he said abruptly. With a grimace, he pushed out of his chair and limped back to the front door.

  “What the hell?” Trish said to the empty room. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought the universe was laughing at her discomfiture.

  For the first time in a long time, the atmosphere seemed pregnant
with possibilities.

  “God, no.” She put her forehead in her hand and closed her eyes.

  She wasn’t going to fall for some nut job who was just passing through. Maybe he hadn’t always been a nut job, but whatever else he was, he was leaving soon.

  A few minutes later he returned to the kitchen carrying a couple of large plastic bags in one hand, and a huge bag of dog food over his shoulder. She looked up and blinked at the size of the dog food bag.

  “What did you give me? A Saint Bernard?”

  “No, but the dry stuff lasts and I didn’t think it would be nice to leave you with a dog and no way to care for it. And you have thirty days to take him back to the vet if it doesn’t work out.”

  She looked at the dog, maybe just a little larger than a cocker spaniel, which started sniffing around the bag of food as Grant put it down. “As if anyone can return a dog after thirty days.”

  “Well, then, tomorrow if you can’t stand it. I’ll even do the dirty work.”

  Afraid of feeling the attraction again, she nevertheless looked up at him. And there it was, a sudden pang in parts she’d been pretending no longer existed. Maybe, said some imp in her mind, it wouldn’t hurt just to have one roll in the hay.

  Even if she wasn’t normally the type to do that.

  Grant sank into his chair again, opening the plastic bags. “Dishes,” he said, showing her the contents of one—two large stainless-steel bowls. “Toys, collar and leash,” he said, opening the other and emptying its contents.

  He picked up a plush toy covered in fake lamb’s wool and squeezed it. It squeaked, which caused the dog, for the very first time, to let out a bark of excitement. Grant tossed the toy and the dog skittered across the linoleum at high speed, crashing into the refrigerator just before it snatched up the toy. The pressure of its jaws made the toy squeak again.

  Now it was time for the kill. The animal began to shake the toy back and forth. Trish didn’t want to admit how adorable the dog was. But he was, anyway.

  “Tennis balls,” Grant continued, pulling out a pack of four. “The vet says he loves balls. Rubber chew toy, rope tug and some treats. Vet says no more than one pig ear every couple of days, but rawhide is fine.”

  Finally she said the necessary words. “Thank you. I mean it.”

  At that he smiled, a heart-melting smile. “I’m glad,” he said simply.

  The dog seized the toy again, making it squeak, then darted off to another room.

  Grant cocked his head. “I think he’s already at home.”

  Somehow those words tugged painfully at her heartstrings. Without a conscious decision, she rose and walked around the table to place her hand on his shoulder.

  Grant looked up, and then, as easily as if he did it all the time, slid his arms around her waist and pressed his face to her midriff.

  “God,” he said shakily.

  Tangled in a morass of emotions she couldn’t label, Trish stroked his hair with her other hand. One thing she knew for sure: she’d been missing this kind of human touch.

  Apparently, so had he, for he pulled her a little closer and turned his head so that his cheek rested against her. He didn’t say anything, didn’t try anything. Just held on to her as if they were both adrift in a stormy sea.

  The problem was, he seemed to be the only one who knew the dimensions of the sea.

  Forcing herself to ignore impulses as old as nature, she eased away. It almost hurt physically to do so. He dropped his arms and looked up at her.

  For a while, they simply stared at one another. She was fighting an internal struggle between wisdom and need. Whatever he was thinking, it seemed to darken his gaze even more and make him look a little bit lost. As if he needed rescuing.

  And he probably did, but she wasn’t in the rescuing business, she reminded herself. She’d fallen for that hook, line and sinker in Boston, and had ever after sworn off any man who appeared to need rescuing.

  But the ever nosy observer in her head reminded her, Jackson had claimed he needed rescuing. This guy hadn’t asked for it in even the smallest way. Quite the contrary, he kept intimating that she needed rescuing or protecting.

  “You have to tell me,” she said. “You have to. How else can I ever trust you?”

  “I know.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his short hair. “I’ve been trying since you dropped me at the motel to figure out a way. I guess all I can do is spit it out and let you make your own judgments, good or bad. But in the meantime, can I move to a softer chair?”

  “Sure. I’ll bring more coffee into the living room. Sit wherever you’re most comfortable.”

  She joined him only a minute later. He’d settled at one end of the couch, his lame leg stretched out before him and propped on the small hassock.

  “Thanks,” he said as he accepted the mug. Nearby the dog was pulling at the squeak toy, holding it between his paws and tugging with his teeth, evidently determined to get at the source of the noise.

  Trish took the easy chair, which placed her close to Grant, but with an end table between them. “So start,” she said.

  “I’m not sure exactly where to begin, so I may ramble.”

  “Ramble away.”

  “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve always been afraid of flying. I don’t know why. I mean, logically it’s about the safest way to travel, and I had to do it all the time. You’d have thought that uneasiness would wear off.” He looked at her.

  “Sometimes people feel that way because of control issues,” she offered. “They feel safer in a car, even though they’re not, because they’re at the wheel.”

  “Maybe. Someone suggested that to me, so I took up playing with a flight simulator. Learning how to fly a plane in the safest place possible—my own desk chair.”

  “Did it help?”

  “I thought so. A little. I was just getting to the point of deciding that maybe I needed to take a few flying lessons. Try to push myself over that hump. I mean, I know I didn’t have a true phobia, because I could still get on a flight, but at the back of my mind I feared that if I gave in to it at all, it might become a full-blown phobia.”

  This guy, she thought, had a lot of grit and determination. Most people she knew with phobias preferred not to even think about them, let alone face them head-on. “Back in Boston I had a coworker with such severe claustrophobia she refused to take the elevator. So every day she went up and down nine flights of stairs.”

  “Good for her health,” he remarked with a small smile.

  “That’s what she said when anyone suggested she might want to get treatment. It made a good excuse, but when you consider her claustrophobia wasn’t limited to elevators, it didn’t make sense. She couldn’t stand to be in windowless rooms, for example. She couldn’t fly anywhere if she had to get on one of those small puddle-jumpers. You know the flights I mean. Thirty passengers max. She felt like the plane was closing in on her and might crush her.”

  He nodded. “That’s tough. And lots of people seem to have that fear.”

  “Along with the fear of flying,” she reminded him.

  Again that small smile. “Right back to the point.”

  “Sorry. That’s the way I am.”

  “I like it.” Again he hesitated. Another deep breath.

  “So, anyway, I thought I was getting past my fear of flying a bit when I started to have these…visions, for lack of a better word. I would suddenly see myself at the controls of a plane that was nose-diving straight for earth.”

  “That must have been awful.”

  “It got worse yet. At first it was just glimpses. Weird, because I’d never been in the cockpit of a 767, let alone at the controls. I brushed it off, figuring my fear was just trying to get the upper hand. I even told myself I was going to get some lessons in a flight trainer so I could put that to rest.”

  She nodded encouragingly, but realized her heart had begun to thud. Somehow she knew there was horror coming.

  “Anyway, I had
to fly to New York to give a talk at a conference. I decided to take my family because Laura loved the city and Penny, our daughter, had never been there. She was only seven. Big family vacation is what I thought, maybe even a stopover in D.C. to introduce Penny to some of our history.”

  “That would have been lovely.”

  “Yeah, it would have. We never got to do it.” He clenched his teeth and his hands tightened into fists. “From the time I made the reservations, those visions became more insistent. More frequent. I kept telling myself it was just ramping up because of the trip.”

  “A reasonable assumption,” she said quietly. Here it comes. She didn’t know if she could bear to listen.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “the night before the trip I had this vivid dream. I was at the controls of the plane again, but this time as we augered into the ground I could hear my wife and daughter screaming.”

  “My God!” Her heart was hammering now, and she could see sweat bead his brow even though the room was a little on the chilly side.

  “Yeah,” he said almost bitterly. “I woke up from that nightmare and spent the next hours before boarding telling myself it was only a nightmare, it couldn’t possibly be anything else, and besides, I’d been warned that when you fight something like a phobia, one of the stages is when the phobia pushes back hard. At least that was the thinking. Besides, how could it mean anything when I saw myself in the pilot’s seat?”

  She nodded, knowing what he was going to say, knowing there was nothing she could offer to change any of it, any part of it.

  “I was afraid to give in to a fear,” he said harshly. “I was going to master it. Yeah, I really did a good job. You read the stories about what happened. It wasn’t till I woke in the hospital three days later that I realized my dream, my vision, had been true. I’d just seen it from the pilot’s perspective.”

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, knowing now what he’d meant about guilt. Her chest tightened until she wondered if she could draw another breath. Aching for him, she closed her eyes and kept her silence. The horror was beyond imagining, yet what she could imagine hurt beyond words. How in the world did someone deal with something like that?