Ash turned his back and strolled toward the door, tucking the precious document safely in his coat. She was his. At last. “Save your thanks, Gatlin. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you soon enough.”
Chapter One
Present day
“Damn, damn, damn.” Maddie staggered on her heels as she scurried down the sidewalk. She was late again. Again. How the hell it had happened, she had no idea, but David was not going to be thrilled. She could almost hear his reprimand echoing in her head.
She rounded a corner and the restaurant swung into view, separated from her by a steady whizzing stream of city traffic. With her gaze anxiously locked on the red Do Not Walk light, she reached the post and furiously thumbed the button.
“Come on, come on.” Her newly reset watch read seven twenty-one. Over twenty minutes late. Oh, forget not thrilled—David was going to be livid. She’d tried to call his cell, but he hadn’t answered. Whether he’d silenced it out of respect for the other restaurant patrons or he was just ignoring her, she didn’t know.
David seemed to care an awful lot about what other people thought of him…except, it seemed, for her. Their entire relationship was balanced on a knife’s edge, teetering toward the side of peril all the time. She feared one nudge might send it crashing, but she was probably only being paranoid. God knew it wouldn’t be the first time.
Tonight, she’d been hoping they could talk about what they could do to change things. She was going to tell him how wretched he’d been making her feel lately and, if all went well, they’d sort through it and end up back at his place. Laughing and watching old movies and making love all night, the way they used to in the beginning, when things were good.
Well, that was the fantasy. Now it was shot all to hell.
The light changed and she all but sprinted across the street—as well as she could in these freaking heels, anyway. She was accustomed to sneakers and flip-flops, and already her arches were screaming, “Woman, are you insane?”
Her mad dash up the steps took what remaining breath she had, and she could hardly tell the host that she was meeting someone who’d already arrived. What if David had grown tired of waiting around and left? Oh God, that would be so humiliating. But she couldn’t say she’d blame him.
A sigh of relief escaped her after she told the man David’s name and he turned to lead her toward the back of the restaurant, in the direction of their favorite table. Whew, he was still here. Fuming, no doubt, but depending on his mood, he might get over it in a few minutes and they could enjoy their evening. He was a firm believer in punctuality and often chastised her about being one of the most unorganized people he’d ever met.
Well, she thought sadly, there was really no use denying it. It almost seemed as if something was preventing her from being anything other than a woman with a complete inability to get her shit together. As if some kind of cosmic prankster was constantly shadowing her, throwing monkey wrenches into her life. And it was all coming to a head, about to culminate in…something. She didn’t know what, but it was nothing good. All her life, she’d lived with the sense that the axe was poised and ready to fall. It was only a question of when and where and how many necks it was going to sever.
David’s sandy-blond head came into view and she fortified her resolve with a deep breath as she stepped around the table and dropped into the chair the host pulled out for her, the apology already forming on her lips. When she lifted her gaze from David’s slowly drumming fingers to the anger simmering in his eyes, the words died before she could lend them voice.
In her lap, she twisted her fingers together. She bit her lip for a second and tried again. “David, I’m-”
“What was it this time? Flat tire? Wardrobe malfunction? Alien abduction?”
All my clocks were wrong. All of them.
She knew how crazy it would make her sound if she spoke the truth, that she’d thought she was right on time until she left her apartment, got into her Jeep and saw the time on the radio display. Weird, she’d thought. It must’ve been running fast. Then she’d seen it on the sign as she drove past the bank up the street from her house. And heard the DJ say it on the radio.
Giving up on an explanation that would satisfy him, she shrugged. “All I can say is I’m sorry.”
“It wouldn’t be such a big deal if it didn’t happen all the time.”
“I get that you’re upset, and I even deserve it, but don’t you think we could talk about this some other—”
He seemed to pretend she wasn’t even speaking. “I don’t get you. The biggest problem is you’re getting worse.”
“I’m getting…worse?”
“You’re never on time, you’re absentminded, clumsy, the nightmares are getting more intense and you’re seeing things. I think it’s time you went to talk to someone, Maddie. I mean it.”
Her eyes flew wide and her fingers clamped together hard enough to nearly snap the bones. She found it impossible to swallow around the horror lodged in her throat. “You’re saying you think I need a shrink? You think I’m crazy?”
“I didn’t say you were crazy. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“What else am I supposed to glean from that?” The truth was, given everything he’d just described, she would think the very same thing if their positions were reversed. That he needed help.
But she didn’t like thinking about the nightmares. Or about some of the other things that had been happening. It was nothing she hadn’t seen since she was a little girl, which was the reason she usually tried to turn a blind eye to it, but it was…escalating. David confirming what she’d been thinking lately sent ice water trickling down her spine. And the thought of talking about it to someone, a stranger, made her break out in a cold sweat.
“The truth is, you’re scaring the hell out of me, Maddie, and I just…”
She cleared her throat, untangling her fingers to lift her linen napkin and smooth it over her lap. “Nothing is wrong with me. So I’ve been preoccupied lately. All the other weird stuff…hasn’t happened in a while.” She dropped her gaze as she uttered the lie and took a sip of her water. “I think you’re being unfair. I was running late. It doesn’t mean I need a doctor or a therapist. So can we just forget it and enjoy ourselves tonight? I promise I’ll do better next time.”
Maddie got the distinct impression he wanted to slam his fist on the tabletop. His voice bordered on a hiss. She knew if they’d been alone, it would be a roar. “You promise that every time.” Gathering his composure, he swept a gaze around at the other quietly dining patrons and leaned across the table toward her. “Look, it’s not just the fact that you can’t be on time to save your life. It’s annoying, but I could deal with it. Last weekend when you stayed over…” He broke off and shook his head, his handsome brow furrowed.
Last weekend when I stayed over, what? Did she want to know? No. She didn’t.
“Just…stop.”
“Maddie—”
“Did I talk in my sleep again? Tell me that much. Is that it?”
“Yeah, you did. Something about someone coming for you. And you screamed, and you damn near beat the hell out of me when I tried to calm you down, and then you just went…catatonic.”
“Okay.” She concentrated on keeping her breathing steady, placing her palms flat on the pristine white tablecloth. “I don’t remember any of that.” And he hadn’t told her. He’d been up and gone to work by the time she’d awakened, and she’d simply gone home. They’d spoken since only to make these dinner plans, and even then, she realized, he’d been rather subdued on the phone.
She met his worried gaze with her own. “So I guess tonight is about you urging me to get psychiatric help.” So much for her fantasy. His idea of how the evening would end probably involved her being carted away in a straitjacket.
“Regardless of what tonight is about, I want you to get help. You’re scared too. Don’t deny it. You know I’m right.”
What did that mean? There was something he wasn’t saying. She knew him well enough. He wasn’t looking at her, but thumbing the tines of his fork. The silverware caught the soft golden candlelight and glinted. “And?” she prompted.
His brown eyes flickered up at her, and she read everything right there. Sadness, weariness…resignation.
“Oh my God,” she said softly. “You’re leaving me.”
He sighed. “This wasn’t an easy decision to make.”
“So this is your parting advice? ‘Get your head checked and have a nice life’?”
“No, it’s not like that at all.”
“Then what’s it like?”
“I’ll always be here for you.”
“Just like you’re here for me now?”
“I have been here for you, dammit. Don’t sit there and try to tell me I haven’t. That time you called me freaking out in the middle of the night, didn’t I come over, no matter what I had going on the next morning? You keep doing these things and denying there’s a problem, and it’s got to stop. Something is going on with you. You need to get it straightened out.”
“I’ll stop it, then,” she said, hating herself. She’d hated herself for calling him like that then too. “I won’t worry you anymore. I won’t even mention anything is—”
“You’ll keep on denying it? What if you—what if everything only gets worse? You’ll just suffer in silence until you have some sort of breakdown?”
She opened her mouth, but snapped it closed when the waiter came by and asked for their orders. David muttered that they needed a few more minutes, and then they sat in painful silence while quiet conversations went on around them.
She didn’t even tell him some of the things she went through, for the very reason that he was leaving her. Because she was afraid he’d think she was losing her mind. He thought she was crazy enough without her having to tell him about all the clocks tonight. That was a new one, though. She still couldn’t believe it herself.
But there was one thing she had to know. She bit her lip, wanting like hell to keep the question in, but needing to get it out. “If I agreed tonight to do what you ask and talk to someone, would that change your mind?”
Again, he didn’t have to reply. David had always been a fairly easy person to read. For some reason, the devastating truth she saw on his face only prompted her to keep talking, to keep hammering the nail into the coffin of their relationship.
“If I’d never had the first freaky thing happen to me since we met, is this about as long as we’d have lasted? Do you love me? Did you ever love me?”
“I care about you very much. I want only the best for you. And the best for you…honey, it isn’t me.”
“Apparently it’s a padded room.”
“Don’t do that.”