“To see your friend the detective, right?” he asked, and there was an edge to his tone.
She was about to say that she could introduce them, but he spoke before she could. “That’s all right. I need to call Brad as soon as I get in, anyway.”
“I would appreciate the ride, though,” she said, and she knew she sounded ridiculously prim, especially considering her current position.
“Fine. I’ll be glad of the company—and the directions.”
He started to rise. To her own surprise, Rowenna held him back. “You don’t need to leave, you know,” she whispered.
He looked down at her and smiled slowly, then shrugged. “Okay, I won’t.”
He lay back down and found her lips.
Making love was easy, she thought. So much easier than she had imagined.
Far easier than hopping back on a bike, she added with a silent giggle.
Later, with him still beside her, she drifted off to sleep. She was glad he was with her, and glad, though still just slightly embarrassed, that she had taken such direct steps to keep him there.
When she started to see the cornfields again in her mind’s eye, she fought the vision.
No, no, please. Not now, not tonight…. Please, just let me have tonight, let me have him….
It was almost as if her prayer had been answered.
She wasn’t alone in the cornfield.
Jeremy was with her.
“Show me,” he said.
“You don’t want to see,” she told him, but she couldn’t stop the motion of the dream. They were running together. Running through the rows and rows of corn.
She knew what was waiting ahead, could already see those malevolently empty eyes, and she tried to stop. But she couldn’t, could only look pleadingly into his eyes, gray, now with a touch of something darker.
Gray, like the color of the sky, and with that hint of the darkness that would soon engulf the fields.
She heard the first crow scream, and knew that it, too, was soaring toward them like a cruel shadow, black against the roiling gray of the sky.
“Run,” he told her. “Run!”
And so they ran.
“Rowenna!”
She woke with a start. He was leaning above her, eyes dark with concern, hair disheveled, his weight on his elbow as he shook her gently.
She stared back at him, the dream fading. Damn Kendall, she thought. Listen to her dreams? Oh, yeah, that was just what she needed.
“I’m sorry,” she said aloud.
“Nightmare?” he asked.
He sounded solicitous, sympathetic.
He was probably thinking that his first impression of her had been right and he was sleeping with a basket case.
“I…guess,” she told him. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“I have to get going anyway,” he told her.
An inexplicable chill washed over her, and she clung to him, then laughed, forcing herself to let go. “Sorry. It’s morning, isn’t it?”
“Morning enough. It’s about six-thirty. And I have to finish packing.”
He rose easily, unselfconscious. But then, he probably didn’t have any hang-ups about nights of wild sex based on impulse. She watched him as he dressed, relishing the breadth of his shoulders.
Light was seeping in around the edges of the drapes, and she felt a vast sense of relief. For some reason, she’d become far fonder of the day than of the night.
In his jeans, pulling his sweater back over his head, he came back and sat on the edge of the bed as he slipped into socks and shoes. “Can I help?” he asked.
“Help?”
“With your dream. Your nightmare.”
“Oh. No. I don’t even remember it,” she lied.
“You’re sure? You could tell me about it. Make it go away.”
She forced a laugh. “No, I’m fine, I promise.” Lying was becoming easier, and that was probably not a good thing, she thought.
For the moment, she was grateful for the ability, though.
He kissed her lips briefly, paused, and kissed her more deeply.
“I’ll see you in Boston, then,” he told her. “Call my cell when you have your luggage. I’ll just pick up the rental car and come around for you.”
“Sounds good, thanks,” she said, smiling.
He didn’t linger or say anything more about her nightmare, and she was glad.
“Lock up behind me,” he said at the door, and he did hesitate then. “And though I’m exceedingly grateful that you opened the door for me, don’t open it again—don’t open any door—unless you know who’s out there, okay?”
She smiled again. “I’ll lock it. I promise.”
When he was gone, she leaped out of bed and locked the door, then turned on every light in the room. And the television.
A little while later, as she was showering, she wondered if there was any way to shut and lock the door to her dreams.
Except that…
She was very afraid that the cornfields in her mind’s eye weren’t a dream at all but something very—and terrifyingly—real.
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