I Dream of Danger (3 page)

Those nights, as she watched from the ceiling, she would wake up with tears on her face.

A part of her thought she was crazy. And another part of her thought she could somehow travel outside her body.

Whichever it was—and maybe it was both—she’d said the wrong thing to Nick.

He reached across to clamp his big hand over her wrist.

“Did someone tell you something?” he demanded. “Someone spying on me?”

His grip was tight. Not painful, but definitely unbreakable. Nick had always been strong, even as a boy. Now he was a powerfully built man.

Slowly, unsure if her touch would be welcome, Elle laid her hand over his.

“No one told me, Nick,” she said gently. It wasn’t the first time she had to answer how she knew something she shouldn’t. And it wouldn’t be the last. When he lived with them, Nick had never known. Her father hadn’t known.
She
hadn’t known. “You have the bearing of a soldier, and your hair is cut military-short. There is a pale patch on your jacket. Where there would have been an insignia. You look like you’re doing well, but you’re not in a suit. You’ve got combat boots on. They’re sold in stores, too, but taking all these things together—” She shrugged.

Nick relaxed, smiled. Oh, how she’d missed that smile! It had taken him almost two years to smile when he first came to live with them. She’d been only a child, but she understood instinctively that he’d come from pain and cruelty and she’d made it her personal challenge to make him smile.

Once he started, he smiled often. He was breathtaking when he smiled.

Like now.

He shook his head. “I forgot how smart you are. How perceptive. So you put all that together and came up with military, hm?”

It hurt that he forgot anything about her. She hadn’t forgotten anything about him.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t want to guess which branch of the service and how far you’ve climbed.” She tilted her head, studying him. “So . . . was I right?”

“Bingo.”

Elle relaxed. She’d reasoned her way out of the trap. “Which branch are you in?”

A cloud moved across his face, but he answered calmly enough. “Army.”

A word flashed across her mind. She didn’t even know she’d had it in her head, but the information she gleaned in her Dreams had its own agenda. The word came out of her mouth before she could censor it. “Rangers?”

Nick straightened, frowning. “Now, how the hell would you know that?” His look was keen, penetrating, impersonal.

There was no sense now that she had a special place in his heart. None. Ever since Nick had arrived in their lives, she knew he had a soft spot for her. That she could take risks with him. Like a puppy that could pull a wolf’s tail with impunity.

Not now. She had no feeling at all that she was allowed liberties with Nick. His frown was deep and serious, and a little scary.

She swallowed, and started on the lies. She’d never had to lie to him before. “Sorry. That was stupid of me. I have no idea what’s going on with you. There was a movie on TV the other night and the main protagonist was an Army Ranger. That’s what they called him, in fact. Ranger. That’s all. I don’t even really understand what it means.”

Even if she hadn’t Dreamed that he was a Ranger, she’d have wagered money that if there was a special place in the army, Nick would have achieved it.

He relaxed slightly. “A movie hero? That’s not me.”

Oh, but it was. Nick was much more handsome than most of the actors she saw on TV. Most actors had a softness about them that was reflected in their faces. They might spend eight hours a day at the gym, but their faces were puppyish.

Not Nick. Nick had known real tragedy. Wherever he’d spent the first eleven years of his life before he came to them—and he never spoke a word about it—they had been hard, tough years. He’d had the bearing of a man even when young. As a teenager, he’d been wise and tough beyond his years. The other kids in high school either worshipped him or steered clear of him. No one
ever
tried to bully him. They wouldn’t dare.

There was no actor on earth who could look as tough as Nick at twenty-three.

He’d had a rough life, which had made him hard. The military had taken him and made him harder.

He frowned at her. “How come no one was at the graveside? The judge was well known and respected. I’d have thought there would be thousands of people.”

Elle didn’t want to talk about that, about the past. She wanted to talk about the here and now. But he wanted to know, and she was hardwired to give Nick what he wanted.

“There were people at the funeral. Some. Not many. They couldn’t stay for the interment.” She swallowed. “Daddy . . . was sick for a long time.”

Nick narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, you said that. So?”

“He also hasn’t been a judge for a long time. I think . . . I think people sort of forgot about him.”

Nick was really frowning now and Elle understood completely. When he’d left—
Wait
, use the right term. When Nick
abandoned
them, her father, Judge Oren Thomason, had been one of the most important men in the county. Nick had felt her father’s natural authority firsthand. When she and her father had found him behind the house, in their backyard, starving and with a broken wrist, the judge had taken care of everything. Within a month, Nick had become his ward and was regularly enrolled in school.

Nick had often said his real life began the day the judge found him. He seemed to forget that Elle had been there too. A tiny girl, only seven, but it seemed her real life began that day too.

Nick had lived under the judge’s protective aura. So Elle could understand that he found it hard to understand his last years.

“Daddy . . . declined. Mentally. He was forcibly removed from the bench via an injunction.” She swallowed. Her father had been beyond understanding exactly
what
had happened, but he had understood very well that something important had been taken away from him. He’d been agitated for an entire year.

“Alzheimer’s?” Nick asked.

She hung her head.

“Tough,” he said.

You have no idea
. She lifted her head, nodded.

They sat in silence, looking at each other. Finally, he gave a sigh and shifted in his chair. Elle panicked.

He was leaving already!
He’d just arrived, and she hadn’t seen him in five years. She was still gulping up details about him every time she dared to look at him. The hard cut of his jaw, the two wiry white hairs mixed in the thick black hair of his temples. His hands, bigger than she remembered. Clean but callused, with a strip of thick yellow callus on the edges. Judo calluses, or some kind of martial art. She’d read about that.

The shoulders that stretched beyond the shirt seams.

Nick was unshaven, his stubble thicker than she remembered. He was now one of those men who should shave twice a day.

That was new. So many things about him were new.

Including the fact that he was sexy as hell.

That was new, for her. As a child, as a young girl, Nick was . . .
Nick
. The person she loved most in the world after her father. Always there, always dependable, always fun. With a natural authority that made her feel safe and protected. The two men in her life, looking after her. Her father, with his understanding of the law, his status as a well-respected judge—nothing in society could harm her while he was around. And Nick—always strong and tough, with quick reflexes, always alert for trouble. Nothing in life could hurt her while he was around.

It was only now, alone, that Elle understood what a privileged childhood she’d had. And Nick had been a big part of that.

Nick wasn’t her brother. She had no idea what feelings you could have for a brother because she’d never had one, but she instinctively understood she never thought of Nick as one. Nick was her friend, her protector.

She thought he’d always be there. How foolish. It hadn’t even occurred to her that someday he’d fall in love and leave. She didn’t know if he’d fallen in love, but he’d certainly left.

He’d definitely had women. Tons of them. She’d never seen male genitalia in person but in her Dreams . . . Nick was the epitome of maleness. She’d seen him with women, she’d seen him in bed pleasuring himself—

She swallowed, hoping she wasn’t turning red. She’d always been an open book to him. Please God, let him not understand that she was remembering the violently arousing image of him having sex with other women and with himself.

Sitting across from him, she totally understood why women fell for him. As a girl, her feelings had already started turning. But now she was a woman, and what he evoked in her was sexual desire—of a scale and intensity she didn’t know how to handle.

Nick shifted in his chair, huffed out a breath. “Well,” he began. “I guess I’d better be—”

“Where did you come from?” she blurted.

“What?”

“Where were you today? Or yesterday? When you decided to come?”

“Are you asking why I came?”

“No.” And she wasn’t. Why he came was clear, to her at least. They were linked by a thread that had become thin and stretched over time but still held. She’d needed him desperately and he came. That was bedrock for her. She didn’t even question it.

He wasn’t answering her question. She tried another tack. “I can’t let you leave without feeding you. Dad would . . . Dad would have been appalled.”

His hard look softened. “Honey, it doesn’t look like you have much food in the house.”

Elle swallowed, lifted her head. “Dad was very, very ill the last couple of weeks. I didn’t have time to do any food shopping.” She pulled her cell out of her pocket. “I can call Foodwise, though. Jenny would gladly send us a meal. Promise you’ll stay at least to eat.”

There were still a couple hundred dollars left in the checking account. The undertaker’s bill would come later and plunge her into the red, but for the moment she had more than enough to cover a meal. Two meals, even. She didn’t even think of ordering a pizza or a burger and fries. Nick deserved better than that.

He dipped his head. “Okay.”

Elle beamed at him. He wasn’t leaving right this minute. She still had time with him. There was so much to memorize. The lines beside his mouth, brand-new, that disappeared when he smiled. How the tendons in his neck stood out when he turned his head. How she could see his pectorals through his shirt.

How utterly handsome he was.

How he heated her blood.

She had to memorize this effect he had on her, because it wasn’t coming back, not without Nick. She knew herself that well, at least. This was her one shot at feeling sexual desire and it would leave when he left.

Everything about her was aroused. Her skin was supersensitive. The small hairs on her forearms and on the nape of her neck prickled against her sweater. Even the lightest touch against her clothes seemed to burn her skin. It was hard to breathe, as if oxygen had suddenly mutated into a liquid. She had to concentrate to keep her lungs filled.

The biggies. Her breasts, never large, now felt immense and heavy. Her nipples brushed against the cotton of her bra. Between her thighs—that unmistakable feeling of heaviness and heat and emptiness she had when she woke up from ordinary dreams of Nick.

The changes in her body excited her and scared her. Excited her because, well, heat and pleasure were novelties. She’d been cold and hollow for a long time. These tingling sensations, as if her body were waking up after a long sleep—they were wonderful. They also scared her because as far as she knew, only Nick could make her feel this way.

But he was staying for dinner, or as much dinner as she could muster.

Take this second by second,
she told herself.
Enjoy every second.

She watched him as she dialed the number. Jenny herself answered. She had a soft spot for them. Once, when she was a young girl, long before Elle had been born, the judge had kept her out of trouble. Jenny herself had told her; the judge had never said a word.

“Hey, hon.” Jenny’s smoky voice, as always, was warm. Elle could imagine her leaning against a wall on a cigarette break, short gray hair brushed back, her long, lean, elegant frame slightly slouched. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t make the funeral. We had to cater two luncheons. I’m really sorry, honey. If I’d had advance notice . . . but that’s not the nature of funerals, is it?”

“No, it’s not.” Elle smiled. Trust Jenny to say the exact right thing. No doubt in the days to come she’d have thousands of people apologizing for not coming, though in most cases it was simply that the judge had fallen off their radar. He wasn’t off Jenny’s radar. If she’d been free, she would have come. “That’s okay, Jenny. Dad knows you loved him.”

“I surely did, hon. So what can I do for you? Can I send you a dinner over?”

Oh, bless her. “Yes, thank you. Today’s special.” She hesitated. “For two people.”

Jenny didn’t pry. “Two specials, you got it. I’ll send them over around seven, with a nice bottle of wine. All on the house.”

“Thank—” Elle stopped. It was an incredibly generous offer. Dinner would be at least seventy dollars, plus the wine and tips. But . . . that was the beginning of a long slippery slope straight to hell.

So far, Elle had kept up appearances. No one came to the house anymore, so they wouldn’t notice that almost everything that could have been sold was gone. But Jenny knew, or suspected. If Elle started accepting charity now, it would snowball. The wives of former friends of her father would start sending over used clothes—
Just wore it a few times, Elle sweetie. You’re welcome to it.
Maids would start leaving casseroles on her front doorstep.

It didn’t bear thinking about.

Not to mention the fact that Jenny’s smoker’s voice came over loud and clear, and Nick had undoubtedly heard every word.

She injected confidence in her voice. “That’s kind of you, Jenny, but not necessary. I’ll give the delivery boy my credit card. But thanks for the offer.”

She could barely look away from Nick’s dark eyes. It took her a moment to realize Jenny was taking a long time to answer.