“Agree. Totally. I realize that during these past weeks and months, I’ve been treating you like a china doll, afraid of making the situation worse for you. But things are so much better when we do communicate.”
I smile. I’ve made my point and he gets it. Guy smiles back, taking me in with his slate-blue eyes. He leans down and kisses me on the lips.
My body melts a little into his as his soft, full mouth presses against mine. For the first time I realize that part of my worry has been from our lack of physical connection lately. Unexpectedly, my body flushes with desire. I kiss Guy more deeply and let my hand run up the inside of his legs.
“I want you, Guy. Right now.”
He questions me with his eyes, as if asking, You sure? and I kiss him again, more urgently. He nearly tears off his suit as I tug off my own clothes, and we fall onto the bed. We make love slowly at first, gently, but then with a mounting urgency that leaves me breathless. By the time we’ve both climaxed, my cheeks and chest are burning red. We roll onto our backs, and Guy rests a hand tenderly on my thigh.
“What a brilliant idea of yours, Ms. Harper,” he says. In the dimness of the room I can barely see him, but I sense his grin.
“Not exactly a nooner. More what you’d call a three o’clocker.”
“I wish I didn’t have to head back to work, but I’ve got a four-thirty with Brent. The guy just loves to call a meeting that kicks off at the end of the day.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’ll hang out and enjoy the afterglow.”
“I should be back reasonably early, unless there’s some issue with Brent.” He hoists himself out of bed and grabs his clothes from the chair where he’s tossed them. “Nick emailed and asked if we wanted to join him and Kim for a last-minute dinner at the Saratoga Golf Club, but I said we were tied up. I couldn’t imagine you wanting to go.”
Ever since Barb described Kim’s fascination with me, I’ve wondered if she was the one who left the matches. A dinner with her and Nick would offer the opportunity for a better read on her. I have another motive as well, one that I hate to admit even to myself.
“I wouldn’t mind actually,” I say, propping myself up on an elbow. “Can you call him back and accept?”
“Really? To tell you the truth, it would be good for me to make the time for him. I can see now that he requires more hand-holding than I first expected.”
“Let’s do it.”
Guy grins. “I owe you big-time for this. Let’s figure around seven, and I’ll let you know for sure.”
As he flies out of the bedroom, I lean my head back on the pillow, luxuriating in the moment. There are still a few hours left to the afternoon, and I decide that once I’m up and dressed again, I’ll take another stab at my book proposal. But suddenly my eyelids grow heavy. I feel a gentle wave of drowsiness wash over me, the intoxicating postcoital variety. It seems so refreshingly normal, so different than the body-slamming fatigue that generally ambushes me at this time of day, and I can’t help but give into it. Soon I feel myself slipping into sleep.
And then the nightmare’s back. I’ve woken in a hotel room, smelling smoke. I wrench the blanket off my body and thrust my legs out of bed. Please, I pray, let me get out of here. My feet hit the floor, and I propel myself forward, but the smoke thickens, making me gasp for breath. Each step toward the door is like trying to force myself through water.
“Bryn, wait,” a voice calls from behind me.
“I can’t,” I say. “We need to get out.”
“Please, just wait,” he calls.
For some reason I turn around this time. By now the room is choked with smoke, and suffused as well with an eerie red glow. I squint, desperately trying to see. At first there’s no one in sight, and then a man emerges out of the gloom. He’s tall and broad shouldered, and his expression is fraught with worry.
“Bryn, listen to me,” he whispers.
I wake with a start. I know who the man is, the one calling out to me.
It’s Paul. Paul Dunham. The colleague who died in the car crash that day.
Chapter 14
I shoot straight up in bed. My fists are clenched and my heart is beating hard.
“Paul,” I say out loud, into the utter stillness of the room.
The reveal is a shock, and yet it probably shouldn’t be. I’ve suspected all along, because of the fire, that the dreams are connected to the accident. But I never considered that the man calling out to me was Paul.
Maybe . . . maybe the nightmare is nothing more than a crystallization of my crazy need to know the truth about that morning, the reason Paul drove the car off the road. And in the dream he’s asking me to wait so that he can tell me what I don’t know or can’t remember.
Bryn, I’m so sorry, but I didn’t sleep well the night before, and I dozed off at the wheel . . .
I saw a hawk overhead and let my gaze wander from the road . . .
It just came to me at that moment—a desire to die. Forgive me . . .