She gave up and dropped her purse on an empty cabinet. She walked to where Max stood beside the couch.
He held one of the cushions, but he made no move to put it back in place. He remained motionless, his shoulders squared and his feet apart, as if he was bracing himself against the kind of weather he often depicted in his art. His attention was on the painting that lay on the floor. It bore the imprint of someone’s shoe.
She blotted her eyes on her sleeve and moved behind him. “I’m sorry.”
Like the heat from an opened oven door, rage gusted from his mind to hers. It cut off just as quickly. He dipped his chin in a stiff nod.
She slid her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to his back. She sent her thoughts around his the same way. This isn’t fair.
He laughed sharply. “Yeah.”
“What on earth were they looking for? Could they have thought you had Elizabeth’s purse?”
“Sure, why not? They might have even thought I stashed her car in here somewhere.”
“They had no right to be so destructive. They didn’t have grounds to arrest you in the first place.”
He flung the cushion toward the couch. It bounced when it hit, flipped in the air, and landed sideways against the arm. “Since when does what’s right make any difference? Welcome to reality, Delaney. My reality.”
“You’re not without resources this time, Max. If Leo can’t help you, I’ll hire someone who will.”
“I can’t take any more of your money. I’ll pay you back for the bond you posted and for Leo’s fee. First thing tomorrow I’ll contact a security company. As soon as we set up protection, you should get as far away from me as you can before the stink rubs off on you.”
She locked her hands over his stomach. “I’m not going anywhere.”
His control continued to slip. He could no longer rein in his anger completely. It surrounded him in a charged haze. “I believed the past was over. I built this house to bury it. I learned to paint so I could leave it behind.” His body jerked against her arms as he kicked the ruined canvas. It skidded across the floor and hit the stone fireplace with enough force to crack the frame. “I was deluding myself. It was all as phony as the worlds we used to make.”
A fresh spurt of tears blurred her vision. They spilled down her cheeks to soak into his shirt. She imagined spreading herself over his back, shielding him with her body and her mind. “No, Max. You did leave your past behind. You’re much more than the helpless child you once were. You’ve made yourself into a man anyone would be proud to call their friend.”
He reached back to grab her wrist. He spun her to face him. More emotions leaked into hers. Along with the anger, there was pain. “I should have kept away from you. I never wanted the ugliness to touch you.”
She stroked his cheek. “This is all a mistake. Elizabeth will tell them as soon as she wakes up.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
There had been no change in Elizabeth’s condition when Delaney had visited the hospital that afternoon. The doctor hadn’t given her much hope, either. “Then we’ll find some other way to beat this. Toffelmire can’t prove that you’re guilty just because he doesn’t like you.”
“Cops can lie. They can manufacture evidence. People you thought you knew can lie, too.” He stopped. “We’re wasting time. You need to uncover the rest of your memories.”
“You still believe the attack on Elizabeth was connected to me.”
“It must be.” He took her hands in his. “You were right before. We have to combine our minds.”
“But you said they’re my memories. You can’t put them in there.”
“I could try helping you find them. I can make the pictures more vivid.”
“It might not work. We’re both upset. This can wait until we’re thinking more clearly.”
“Toffelmire could come up with some excuse to get my bail revoked tomorrow. If there’s a chance your memories can explain what’s happening, we need to take it. It’s the best way to keep you safe.”
This was what she’d wanted for weeks, yet she hesitated. If they joined their minds when he was in a state like this, it would be nothing like the controlled fantasies they’d shared before. She knew instinctively their union wouldn’t be gentle.
“Please, Deedee.” His voice roughened. “I can’t help you if I’m in prison. Don’t make that part of my past come back, too.”
It was the first time she’d heard him say please. It moved her, even as it held her motionless. Tension arced from every point where their bodies touched. It was too late to resist where this was leading; they were halfway there already. Delaney inhaled unsteadily, dropped her forehead against his shoulder, and put her trust in Max.
The connection didn’t begin with an image this time. He wasn’t giving her a picture; he was giving himself. The emotions he’d been struggling to contain flowed crimson and white across her skin and behind her eyes. Power flared, raw and breathtaking. Her feet remained on the floor, yet she was swept along by the flood. She grasped his shoulders to keep her balance.
Her hands closed over bare skin. His fingers dug into the backs of her thighs. She was naked and weightless, held suspended in the swirl of a shared memory. Before she could fully open herself to absorb it, his mind meshed with hers.
Her legs gave out. In the part of her brain still conscious of reality, she felt Max lift her in his arms. He carried her up the stairs to the bedroom. It had received the same treatment as the rest of the house. The mattress had been flipped and lay askew on the bed, so he sank to his knees on the floor.
The moonlit room filled with colors. Some streaked as pure as the pleasure he’d first shown her weeks ago. Others were a tangled, earthy blend evoking what they’d experienced in the flesh. Her senses wove into his, reflecting every nuance of thought and passion, building and multiplying until the fullness verged on agony.
They didn’t stop to question their actions. Though they’d spoken only of joining their minds, what happened next was inevitable. Fabric ripped. Buttons popped. Her fingers shook as she helped Max rid themselves of the remaining physical barriers between them. When they were finally as naked in fact as they were in their thoughts, the urgency dimmed. They were already joined. How could they possibly get closer?
They did. They came together in one smooth stroke as their bodies meshed as thoroughly as their minds. She felt the cool of polished wood beneath her back at the same time she felt it beneath Max’s knees. She felt his chest hair abrade her nipples, and she learned how the hard nubs felt to him as he relaxed into her embrace. She wrapped her legs around his hips and perceived the slide of her own skin cradling his.
This was more than either of them had bargained for, more than she could have dreamed. Their breath mingled. Boundaries dissolved. Images exploded in a dizzying collage.
She saw herself as a child at the shore of the pond, her hair straggling like seaweed and muddy water streaking her chin. Then she was in the trailer and her mother was crying. The air stank of beer. Delaney reached to help her and felt pain lash across her back.
No. Not mine. Look for yours.
She tried to picture Stanford, the car, the accident. Instead, she saw Max stick a twig in the middle of her imaginary mud pie. He laughed as she tried to blow it out. Afterward, he took her hand to lead her through the rose garden while her father loaded her new pink suitcase into his car. Tears brimmed from her eyes as she waved good-bye through the back windshield. She felt them trickle over Max’s cheeks as he watched her drive away.
We’re too far back. Think of your husband.
She felt the weight of her wedding dress. It was covered with beads that glinted and rustled as she moved, like something that belonged to a fairy-tale princess. She walked toward the front of the church, her steps slowing as her feet grew heavy and the dress became shackles. The prison bus reeked of metal and spit. Whistles and catcalls pummeled her ears as she walked through the cell block.
&nbs
p; Max laced his fingers with hers and held their joined hands to the floor on either side of her head. He was breathing hard. Her lungs felt scoured bare.
The memories continued to cascade, his mixing with hers until she couldn’t tell where his ended and hers started. Time lost its meaning. She didn’t know whether seconds or hours had passed before the first rush subsided and they learned how to direct the wave.
She saw herself in her satin nightgown, her scars vivid white and pink against her skin. Max stood in front of her, a paintbrush in his hand. He stroked a cloud to life behind her left shoulder, but the other side was on fire. Flames screamed and licked at her hair as they tightened their grasp.
She crossed her ankles behind his legs as her teeth began to chatter.
The heater whirred. The engine revved.
“Let go!”
“I told you to turn around.”
She braked hard. The car skidded to the shoulder. She unbuckled her seat belt and reached for the door handle.
Stanford lunged across the console to hold the door shut. “We’re not finished.”
She pushed at his arm. “You’ve had more than the hour you asked for, but you obviously lied about that, too. I don’t care if I have to walk all the way to Willowbank from here.”
“Don’t say that. Not after what it’s cost me to keep you.”
“You’re so obsessed with your wealth and with winning, you don’t recognize what you could have had. You’re pathetic, Stanford.”
“This isn’t over.”
“Wrong. We’re done.” She twisted to jam the sole of her boot against the door and shoved. He lost his grip on the handle, and the door flew open. She had one foot on the ground when the car jerked forward. Stanford had angled himself onto the edge of her seat to reach the gas pedal. She screamed and grabbed the doorframe to keep from falling out.
Stanford caught her by the hair and yanked her back inside. “I won’t be made a laughingstock by a nobody like you. You’re nothing without me.”
They were accelerating. She fumbled for the ignition switch, but he struck her hand aside. She kicked at his leg but couldn’t dislodge it, so she slammed her foot on the brake. “Stanford, stop! This is insane.”
The car swerved across the highway.
Stanford wrenched the wheel to the right to center the car on the road. “You see, Delaney? I never lose. You should—”
She cried out a warning. He’d steered too far. The car wouldn’t make the curve. She fought to take the wheel. Through the open door came the sound of tires skidding on wet pavement and the noise of a V8 shrieking as it overpowered the brakes.
Then came the sound of crashing. Of metal screeching as it buckled, glass singing as it burst. Fire whooshed and crackled, but it didn’t touch her. It was in the distance, and she was cold. Freezing. She couldn’t feel her hands.
Max brought their joined hands to his mouth. He warmed her skin with his breath. That’s enough.
She didn’t want to see the rest. She wanted it to stop, but she knew it wasn’t over. The worst was yet to come. She had to see it all, or she would never be free. She rolled her head back and forth against the floor and looked past him.
She was in a snowbank. That was why she was cold. She had been thrown clear when the car hit the pole, but Stanford was still inside, and he was screaming. Pain sliced through her leg when she tried to stand, so she crawled. By the time she reached the car, flames were billowing through the rear windshield.
Stanford was crushed against the console between the deflated air bags. His knees were pinned beneath the dashboard. She stretched her arms through the open door to grasp his wrist, but she couldn’t move him and his legs were on fire and oh, God, that stench. It was the smell of her husband’s flesh burning.
He was dying. Through the glaze of pain, the knowledge was there in his eyes.
She shook his arm. “Stanford! Don’t give up. Hang on!”
He fastened one hand in her hair and the other on her sleeve. His face contorted as he bared his teeth. Every muscle contracted with his efforts. But he wasn’t trying to pull himself out; he was pulling her in.
The flames gnawed her fingers. Her sleeve caught fire, then her blouse, then her arm. It clawed from her breast to her neck and her hair. Even her lungs were burning. She couldn’t breathe. Tendrils of seaweed combined with the flames. She was drowning in the midst of the fire.
“You’re mine, Delaney!” Stanford’s voice crackled through her head. “I’ll never let you go.”
No, NO! She tried to move, but her legs were caught by the mud. Her mouth filled with silt. She was sinking deeper. In a flash of awareness she remembered the other time. She saw the long-forgotten void where death had claimed her before . . .
And then she remembered the skinny little blue-eyed boy who had fought for her life.
Power washed through her body, giving her the strength to fight for herself. She barely felt the sizzle of flesh as she grabbed the metal doorframe for leverage. She smashed her elbow into her husband’s throat again and again until she heard bone crunch like celery. His hold slackened. She fell to the ground and crawled back to the sheltering snow.
Delaney didn’t realize she had been screaming until she felt the ringing in her ears.
She tore her mind free. The image shattered.
And the past lost its grip.
TWENTY-NINE
THE COPS HAD GONE EASY ON THE STUDIO. THEY HAD probably exhausted themselves by the time they’d reached it. Apart from a stack of canvases that had been spread on the floor like a deck of cards and the shelf of paints that had been emptied, it had been left relatively untouched. It took less than ten minutes for Max to restore order to the room. Restoring order to his thoughts would take longer.
He cranked open the windows as far as they would go. While the breeze cleared out the last traces of the cops’ intrusion, he retrieved the painting of Deedee from the floor and placed it on his easel. It still wasn’t finished. After the connection they’d forged the night before, he should be able to spot what was missing.
Then again, maybe not. There were still layers of colors and textures they hadn’t had the chance to share. It would take more than one night to experience them all. Maybe more than one lifetime.
“So it was real.”
He turned toward Delaney’s voice. She walked from the bedroom to the studio. She had wrapped a sheet around her shoulders like a cape so only her bare feet and one arm were exposed. They’d pulled the mattress back onto the bed before they’d gone to sleep, and she’d been snoring softly when he’d left her. She appeared as if she’d just woken up. Her eyelids were puffy, and a pink sleep wrinkle creased her cheek. He made a mental snapshot of the image. He decided he would paint her like this someday. “What was real?”
“The portrait. I saw it through your eyes in our minds.” She stopped beside him and regarded the painting. “When did you do that?”
“I started it weeks ago.”
She extended her hand through the gap in the sheet to touch the painted scars. “I don’t know how you managed it, but they don’t look ugly.”
“I told you they weren’t.”
She shifted her hand to his back. “Neither are yours, Max.”
It was another one of those small things that he wasn’t accustomed to yet. Each time Delaney touched his scars, he felt the stretching itch of healing beneath his skin.
He leaned down to kiss her.
Afterimages of memories flashed through his head. A jumble of emotions followed. Sympathy, sadness, longing, loneliness.
No, the loneliness belonged with the memories. After last night, there was no going back. Whether he wanted it or not, she was a part of him now. Like the touch of her hand, he felt her presence right down to his bones. The ease with which their minds had fused made him suspect she had never left him. She’d been there all along, in the secret corner of his heart that he’d given to Deedee on the day he’d turned seven.
; Was this what she called love? It was more than sex, that was for sure. It was more than their mental link, too. Each on its own had packed a wallop, yet combining the two had united them in a way that would take him a while longer to come to grips with. She’d told him he was afraid to love anyone. It must be true, because what he felt right now scared the hell out of him.
She turned her head aside to smother a yawn against his shoulder.
The sound of his laugh startled him. What did he have to laugh about? Nothing had really changed. The life that he’d built was unraveling. He was only a cop’s whim away from getting tossed back in jail. Their efforts to delve into Delaney’s memories had strengthened their bond and had severed her last tie with her husband but had yielded nothing that shed any light on who was behind the recent violence. He had no right to feel happy.
“What’s so funny?”
“Yawning after a kiss is hard on a man’s ego.”
“Your ego needs no encouragement,” she said. “If you weren’t so insatiable I wouldn’t be yawning.” She nipped his shoulder. “I’m surprised you’re up this early.”
“I needed to make some phone calls.”
She stepped back. “If you’re still planning to arrange security for me so I can leave, forget it. I’m staying with you, Max.”
The pleasure that followed her declaration was scary, too. For her sake, he should be tossing her out on her ass. He couldn’t use their bargain to justify keeping her here, either. It had been fulfilled. “You should think about what you’re getting into. I’ve been charged with attempted murder. I know the drill. The arrest was only the start. Things are going to get a lot worse.”
Her thoughts wound a caress around his. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had honestly believed once I remembered what happened with Stanford, everything would become clear. It didn’t help at all. The only person we know who had wanted to hurt me is already dead.”
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