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“Are you going to work all day every day?” Jack asked when he found Alice still in her workshop at a quarter to two in the morning.
“As long as it takes to get this done.” Alice didn’t even look up from her work. She was putting tiny tucks into a piece of peach cloth. Jack couldn’t guess where that would go.
“If this contract doesn’t work out, there will be others. The quality of your work won’t be overlooked long,” he told her.
“It’s not everyday someone makes a movie like this.”
“Maybe not, but is it worth killing yourself over?”
Alice finally turned his way. “Yes, it is. This is a chance, and whether I win out or not, I want to know I’ve tried my best.”
He could understand that, but he hated to see her so tired and drawn. Her hair was piled on her head and pinned in place, but strands were coming down. She looked like she might simply fall asleep where she sat.
“Anyway, the work isn’t stressing me out.”
“Something else is?” He made a show of examining the blue gown worn by one of the dressmaker dummies, but he was listening intently.
“Landon.”
“He hitting on you again?”
“No. But he called earlier. Was wondering who’d win a game tonight.”
It took Jack a moment to catch up. “You predicted the Raiders game the other day.”
“Exactly. Then I told him about the Celtics. I was right both times, of course. He called again a couple of hours ago looking for more predictions. He’s pretty excited.”
Jack bit back a laugh. Excited about a parlor trick? “Two for two is pretty lucky, but—”
“Luck has nothing to do with it.” Alice dropped her work on the table and stood to face him. “Jack, you have to understand this right now. Luck has nothing to do with it. If you don’t get that, you don’t understand anything about me. Jack, I see the future. Hell, I can show you the future—” She cut off abruptly. “But that’s not allowed.”
She was trembling. She wasn’t making any sense. Jack’s heart sank. Alice was overworked, under too much pressure—
“Damn it.” She shoved the chair out of her way and began to pace. “Cavaliers, Chicago, Raptors—are you writing this down?”
“Should I be?”
“Yes!” She scuffled among the things on the table, pulled out a pencil and a pad of paper and slid them his way. “Write them all down.” She started over and began to rattle off a list of teams that had Jack scrambling to keep up, starting with basketball, but moving to football, and then hockey and then curling, if he wasn’t mistaken.
Jack had never followed curling.
“Those are the winners for the week. You tell me if I know the future or not.” She grabbed the back of the chair she’d pushed away and leaned on it heavily, before wrenching it away from the table and sitting down hard.
When she hugged her arms across her stomach and bent over, Jack dropped the pencil and rushed to her side. “Alice? You okay?”
It took him a minute to realize she was crying. When he did, he felt like a heel. He’d done this. He’d disbelieved her, and now she was in tears.
“Honey, I—”
Alice pushed him away, covered her face with her hands and swayed with silent tears.
“Stop it.” She beat her palms against her forehead. “Stop. Stop it!”
“Alice!” Cass appeared in the doorway suddenly, giving Jack a turn. He hadn’t heard her coming. Hadn’t expected anyone else to be awake this time of night. She wore a winter jacket over her pajamas, her feet shoved into a pair of boots. “I got up to use the bathroom, and I saw the lights out here. Wondered if everything was okay.”
“It’s not. She—” Jack gestured to Alice, who was still beating her palms against her forehead.
“Alice.” Cass rushed across the room, fell to her knees beside her sister and gathered her in her arms. “Alice, what’s happening?”
“I can see—too much—there’s too much!”
Cass turned on Jack. “What did you do to her?”
“Me? Nothing!”
“What happened right before I came?”
Cass’s tone brooked no defiance, and Jack found himself answering. “She was telling me the winners of all the games—for the week.”
Cass gaped at him. “For the week? She can’t be that specific. She gets flashes, not—that’s like Mom.” She turned back to Alice. “Sweetheart, what happened?”
Alice had her eyes shut, the heels of her hands jammed against her face. She was concentrating hard. Wrapped up in some inner struggle. All Jack could do was watch along with Cass. It seemed like hours before Alice slumped forward and Cass caught her.
“Help me,” Cass cried, but Jack was already there, scooping Alice into his arms. “Let’s get her back to the house.”
“She needs to go to the hospital.”
“No, she just needs rest. This used to happen to Mom once in a while.” Cass led the way. A few minutes later they tucked Alice under the covers in her room. Cass went to fetch tea. Jack sat on the bed and smoothed the hair back from Alice’s forehead.
When she opened her eyes and took him in, she struggled to sit up, but Jack shushed her. “Rest. You’re tired.”
“The dresses—”
“You need sleep first.”
Cass hurried back in and set a cup of tea on the bedside table. “You scared me, Alice. Jack said you told him all the winners in upcoming games. That’s not like you.”
Alice made a little sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I just… got so mad. I lost control of it, Cass. It’s like my mind cracked open, and I could see everything—”
“Shh. It’s okay now.”
“He doesn’t believe me.”
The look Cass turned on Jack could have melted lead, and he decided this was his cue to leave. “Rest up, Alice. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She let her head drop on the pillow and closed her eyes.
Back in his room he heard the sisters’ voices murmuring for hours.
“It’s not opening to it that’s the problem. It’s trying to block the flow,” Amelia was saying when Alice woke up. She grasped at the fragments of the dream—sitting on the back porch on a summer’s day with her mother, a glass of lemonade in her hand so cold, droplets of water condensed on the outside.
Opening. Flow.
Alice lost the context. Couldn’t remember what her mother had been saying. It was important—but then all the dreams she’d been having about Amelia lately seemed important. If only she could remember what her mother was trying to tell her.
She’d evaded Jack as much as she could yesterday and spent almost every waking moment in her studio. Last night she’d locked her door so he couldn’t invade her room. She missed his visits more than she could say. It was agony keeping away from him, but she didn’t have time to sort out her feelings for Jack, or what to do about them. The dresses were almost done—again. This time she was sure Landon would like them—and if he didn’t, at least she’d know she’d done the best she could.
She sat up and looked at the phone on her nightstand. Almost time to get up, but for the moment the house was quiet. She slid out of bed, pulled on her thick, old terry-cloth bathrobe and went down to the kitchen, glad to be alone to greet the day. She needed to get back to her workshop. But first she needed to eat.
This late in November, the sky was pitch black, the stars still out at this time in the morning. Soon Cass would be down to rustle up breakfast. The rest of her family would get ready to start their chores. She was blessed to have so many people around her who loved her.
That didn’t make her ache for her mother any less. Amelia would have helped her negotiate the maze of growing up with a gift like hers.
Alice carefully avoided thinking too closely about what had happened last night when she’d collapsed in her workroom. She’d opened the floodgates of her mind wide, greedy to give Jack every proof she could that she wasn’t lying. She’d never opened to her intuition like that. Had never given out such clear information.
Hadn’t known she could.
She’d thought her foresight was a weak, uncertain thing in comparison to Amelia’s.
Now she knew better.
It wasn’t comforting.
Was it her anger that had made her gift more powerful? Or was it Jack’s presence? Or something else entirely?
“Alice?” Jack prowled into the kitchen and turned on the lights, finding her staring out the window into the darkness. “Everything okay?”
“Everyone keeps asking me that, and the answer is never yes.” That sounded defeatist. “I’m fine.”
“Somehow I find that hard to believe.”
“You find everything hard to believe.”
He nodded. “But I also know how important it is to be believed.”
She took this in. Crossed the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water, and then decided to start a pot of coffee.
“I was seven when my parents were killed.”
She stilled. He’d said that before, but she had a feeling more was to come. Jack came and took over the process of making coffee, moving around the kitchen with ease. He was feeling at home here, she realized. She moved to the table and sat down.
“I was hiding under the bed, like you said. I wasn’t a coward; I was following directions. My father had ordered me to hide in the spare room.”
“What happened?”
“I didn’t see it, and I didn’t hear much, either. There were too many of them for my father to fight. He tried—he really tried, but they knew the layout of the house. They came in from several directions at once. My dad got a couple of shots off. He winged one guy, we found out later, but they killed him. Killed my mom. They looked in my bedroom. I heard swearing when they didn’t find me. They checked a couple of other rooms and decided I must be staying somewhere else. They got sloppy there. Too greedy to get to the cash they knew my dad had on hand to pay his hired help the next day. They knew where the safe was—one of them was the nephew of a woman who came to clean our house every week. He’d tagged along with her once to help dig a new garden bed for my mom. That’s how I remembered—” He broke off. “They blew the safe open. Took everything and got out of there. It was a big ranch,” he added, seeing Alice’s confusion. “A big payroll.”
“They were caught?” She liked watching him move around the kitchen, but the pain in his voice was palpable. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for a little boy to keep hidden while all that was happening. To hear his parents die—to wonder if he was next. She ached to take Jack in her arms, as if she could comfort the child he’d once been. That was impossible, as she knew too well. You took pain like that into your very cells, and it never went away.
He nodded again. “Almost weren’t. The first idiots who questioned me didn’t believe a word I said. Didn’t think a little kid like me could keep calm enough to know any of the details. Didn’t listen to me when I told them who did it.”
“You recognized their voices?”
“I recognized the sound of the engine of the truck they drove in. I’d heard it once before.”
“Once?”
He chuckled grimly. “Yeah, once—when the cleaning lady’s nephew came to dig the garden. I remember things like that.”
Alice considered his words. “You have a photographic memory?”
“More than that. It isn’t just images—it’s sounds, smells, details. It’s like I know things I shouldn’t know, because I piece details together other people don’t notice.”
“It isn’t like that for me.” She knew what he was doing. Trying to find common ground between them. A rational explanation for her foresight.
There was no rational explanation.
As close as she’d felt to Jack a moment ago, now the differences between them yawned like a chasm.
“What I’m trying to say is I know how it feels to be different. I want to believe you. It’s just—” He shrugged and took out two mugs for the coffee.
“It doesn’t fit with your rational worldview.” She could see how that rationality was important to a man like Jack. “Someone must have believed you eventually.”
“My adopted father, Richard. Works in intelligence. I didn’t tell you that, though.” He grinned, but the grin slipped away fast as he poured out coffee for both of them. “He saw the potential in me right quick. Made sure I developed it.”
Alice got the sense this was a touchy area. “He pushed you?” she hazarded.
His expression became inscrutable. “Yeah, he pushed me. He’s a good man,” Jack asserted.
“Of course.”
“Didn’t your mother ever push you to be the best you could be?” He set one of the cups down in front of her and joined her at the table.
Alice thought about that. Amelia had taught her many things, of course, and she still shone as a beacon in Alice’s mind as the example of what a mother should be, but when it came to her hunches, Amelia had never pushed her.
“She always said I would come into my own at the right time.”
When Jack’s shoulders drooped a quarter of an inch, she knew he’d been searching for a connection again—and she hadn’t played along. “Do you feel like your father pushed you too hard?”
“I don’t know.” Jack blew on his coffee, and she could sense that he was sorting through memories. Judging them. “Maybe he pushed me more than most men would. He prizes excellence. I’m excellent at what I do.” He sent her a sheepish smile. “You’re one of the few people who’s ever figured out I bugged them.”
“I’ve got an unfair advantage.” She could tell Jack didn’t know what she meant. “That day in the restaurant I could sense you listening. Drove me crazy until I found the bugs. I sensed it again in the hotel room.”
“That’s… impossible. You know that, right?”
“And yet it’s true.”
“I’m trying to accept what you say, Alice, but it’s hard.”
“I think that’s how most people feel about me.”
“But they tell you they believe you?”
Alice searched for a way to discuss this without triggering Jack’s sarcasm or her own insecurities. If their roles were reversed, she’d want answers, and she wouldn’t want to play games.
“They do believe me,” she said quietly, “because unlike you, they’ve witnessed it. And I’m not the only one in town like this. You haven’t met Rose Johnson, the sheriff’s wife. She owns Thayer’s Jewelers. She has a knack, too.”
“A knack?”
“Not quite what I’ve got, and nothing like my mom had. A sixth sense. If she holds your engagement ring, she gets a feeling about whether you’ll stay together or not. It’s not a very comfortable ability—they never are—and she doesn’t tell many people about it, but everyone knows in town. Sadie can sense what growing things need to flourish. Jo can sense animals’—and people’s—emotions when she touches them.”
He remembered the way Jo had touched the General’s arm—and pronounced him lonely. “That’s… bizarre.”
“Here’s the thing,” she said, losing patience. “You can either trust me now that I’m telling you the truth, or you can look up that list of sports teams I gave you and prove it to yourself. It’s up to you.”
“You’re asking—”
“For you to be my friend.” Alice wasn’t interested in a conditional relationship. “Do you want to be my friend?” She took a sip of her coffee.
“I want a whole hell of a lot more than that,” Jack growled.
Wow, Alice thought, her whole body tingling. She wanted more, too. She set her coffee cup down.
“Then come on.” She stood up and held her hand out.
“Where are we going?”
“Where do you think?”
This wasn’t going to end well, Jack thought when he realized where Alice was taking him. They’d pulled on their outer gear, and Alice had unlocked the back door and led him outside into the dark and cold. Dawn wasn’t even a glimmer on the horizon. It would be an hour at least until they sky turned gray. Jack shivered, zipped his coat all the way up and crunched over the icy snow after her.
“It won’t let me in.”
“Have a little faith,” Alice called back. “Above all else, the maze is a romantic.”
Now she was personifying shrubbery? Jack wasn’t sure what to think of that.
As they approached the maze, the opening disappeared, replaced by an unending slate of green.
“Open up,” Alice called and whacked the shrubbery when it didn’t disappear again. “I said, open up. We need to talk to the stone.”
The shrubbery didn’t listen.
“Isn’t there a lever to pull or a button to push?” Jack said—and swore the shrubbery bristled and became even denser.
“Would you knock it off?” Alice asked him. “You aren’t helping.”
Jack pretended to zip his lips and throw away the key. “How’s that?” he asked.
“Completely ineffective.” She turned back to the wall of the maze. “I want him to see the heart of Two Willows. I’m marrying this man—you know that—so you have to let him in.”
Jack straightened. She was marrying him?
The hedge stayed where it was.
“It’s going to take something more,” she said in frustration.
“A sacrificial lamb?” When had Alice decided to marry him? All this time he’d struggled to find a way to get to her, and she’d simply up and decided on her own to spend her life with him?
“A little respect!” Alice faced him, arms crossed. “When I envisioned us having sex, we were in there! Don’t you get it? In… there…” She was talking like he was either very slow or very stupid.
Suddenly Jack realized he was both. “Sex… in there?”
“Would you like me to restate that with an interpretive dance?”
Hell, yeah, he’d like that. But… “Are you saying you want to have sex right now?” And marry him?
“I give up!” Alice whirled away and stomped back toward the house. Jack ran over everything she’d said and done in the last ten minutes.
She wanted him to believe her—without proof. Wanted him to be her friend. Wanted him in the maze—because she’d seen them there in her vision.
Alice… wanted him.
Wanted to marry him, too.
And he was still quibbling over whether people could predict the future.
What the hell was he doing? Making sure he never got that village he was looking for, he realized.
Jack faced the maze. “I love her,” he declared. “I love her, and I believe her, and I believe you. There are moving mazes and women who tell the future, and hold rings and know whether people are getting divorced or not. There are probably fairies and leprechauns and dragons, too, and I’m an idiot for not noticing—”
Jack stopped short. Before him stood the opening to the maze, as if it had always been there. He took a step. Then another. “Alice?” he called, refusing to turn around, afraid the entrance would disappear again. “Alice, you seeing this?”
A second later she grabbed his hand and yanked him forward. “Hurry! Before it changes its mind!”
And they were through.
Jack quickly lost track of the twists and turns of the maze’s passages and knew he’d need Alice to help him retrace his steps or it would take a long time to find his way out. He couldn’t look for details or memorize their way and watch Alice at the same time.
In the fading light of the stars she looked luminous, and for a moment Jack could believe in anything. Maybe Alice wasn’t entirely of this world. Maybe nothing on Two Willows was.
He stopped dead when they reached the center, and the tall gray expanse of the standing stone came into view.
“Hell. How’d that get here?” he asked, tipping his head back. It was old. Everything about it told him so. This hadn’t been upended and buried in the ground anytime recently, but Jack knew Chance Creek’s history only ran back a hundred and fifty years, give or take, as far as settlers were concerned. He had no doubt Native Americans had lived here for thousands of years, but he’d never heard of them building this type of monument.
“No one knows. It’s something, though, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say.” Alice was still holding his hand, and he curled his gloved fingers around hers. In front of an artifact so obviously ancient, he didn’t mind showing his awe. It was good to remember now and then he didn’t know everything.
Alice tugged away from him, drew her gloves off and placed her hands on the stone. “It always answers your questions. And it’s always right.”
Connor, Hunter, Logan and Brian had all mentioned that at one time or another. Jack had always brushed their stories off, but it occurred to him now that none of the other men were the type to sensationalize experiences—well, except for Logan, maybe. He supposed he should have listened to what they said.
Before he could respond, however, Alice closed her eyes. “Am I telling the truth?” She straightened and opened her eyes again. “Now you’ll see.”
Jack waited a bit. “I’ll see wha—Ouch! Hell, what was that?” He dropped into a defensive crouch when something smacked him in the head. Alice’s giggle brought him upright again as she bent to scoop something from the ground.
A newspaper.
“Where the hell did that come from? Who’s here?” he called.
“No one’s here,” Alice chided him. She opened the paper and leafed through it to the sports pages, finally fishing out her phone and putting it in flashlight mode so they could see. “Read it and weep, Soldier.”
Jack took the paper from her and peered at the tiny type as she held the light. A second later he fished the copy of her list from his pants pocket and compared the scores from overnight. On every game he’d checked so far, she’d gotten them right.
“Thirteen for thirteen,” he said grudgingly.
“It’ll be one hundred percent right when the week is up,” Alice told him. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Jack.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” He rolled up the paper and stuck it in his back pocket.
“You’re just not sure I’m sane.”
Jack shrugged. “You’re saying some pretty crazy stuff.”
“I know.”
“But I believe you, Alice Reed, because I want to be with you, and being with you means believing, doesn’t it?”
“Same for you, right?”
Jack couldn’t stop looking at her, drinking in the sweet contours of her face. Her wide eyes, full lips, pert nose—he loved everything about her. “Yeah. Same for me,” he said huskily. “I guess in the end it doesn’t matter how you’re doing it. Just that you are. Can I kiss you?”
The corners of her mouth turned up. “Yes.”
And he did.
Alice closed her eyes and savored the feel of Jack’s mouth on hers. Her toes were cold, but her heart beat so fast the rest of her was warm. When Jack tugged her closer, she came willingly, wanting more of him.
There was something about his hands on her hips that turned her on. Knowing he wanted to get close to her—to be inside her. So much he was willing to give up his beliefs for the chance.
She’d gotten glimpses of his deepest pain—and the questions he asked himself in quiet moments. Had he been pushed too far? And the question he hadn’t voiced—would a father who loved him do that?
Jack wouldn’t ever ask that out loud. Nor would he ask for what he needed: to be loved unconditionally. They were dancing around each other’s edges, wanting to be vulnerable, fearing it at the same time. Alice was beginning to think she’d spent her whole life that way—holding back. Craving closeness.
Fearing it at the same time.
She wasn’t willing to live her life like that. Wasn’t willing to take the sensible steps with Jack, getting closer a bit at a time.
She wanted him now. Wanted this now. Wanted no boundaries between them.
If they weren’t meant to be, she wanted to know that right away, because what she really wanted—
Was to stop going through life alone.
A flash of intuition hit her, and Alice staggered.
“What is it?” Jack caught her.
Alice finally understood something she must have known all along but had never faced head on. Someday she’d open to her gift—truly open to it—like Amelia had—like she had for a moment when she’d channeled that list of winning teams—and she’d need—
She’d need someone to ground her. To stand by her side. To be her rock.
That’s what had made her compassionate, open-hearted mother fall for a man as flawed and mercurial as her father. The General had many faults, but inconstancy wasn’t one of them. He dug his heels in, and he maintained his position.
Just like the standing stone.
Alice had always thought of the stone as a physical representation of her mother’s love. Monolithic. Solid. Never-ending.
But Amelia was the one who’d built the maze around the stone. What had it represented to her?
Probably not her own heart.
Had it stood in for the man she loved? The man who might have spent more time away from Two Willows than at home, but for all that still counted as the rock who anchored her mother’s life?
Alice had seen the love the General had for her mother. Knew it was his pain that had kept him far away from the ranch since she’d been gone.
His love for Amelia was as monolithic as the standing stone. As old as he seemed to her, Alice realized he’d been a relatively young man when he’d lost his wife. And yet never once had he taken a step to replace her.
He never would.
Alice searched Jack’s face. Was he capable of a love like that? “Can you…” she found herself asking. “Can you be there? All the way? For someone like me?”
His expression changed from worry to something like… relief. “Yes.” He cut her off when she tried to speak. “Yes—I can. No matter what happens, or what I believe or think is real or not real—I can be there for you. I will be there for you. Always, if you let me.”
That was all she needed to know.
Alice stepped back, unzipped her jacket and shrugged her way out of it. A moment later she peeled her sweater off, tugged the hem of her shirt over her head.
Would Jack follow her lead? At first he watched, like a man unsure whether to trust his eyes. Then he unzipped his own jacket, flung it aside and started to strip.
“It’s damn cold out here,” he told her.
“You’ll have to keep me warm.”
He surveyed the snowy ground, the bench, the stone. “Where?”
Alice wasn’t going to answer that. She’d gotten them here; let him do a little of the work. She had to unlace her boots and step out of one at a time to get her jeans off and shimmy out of her panties, but she stuck her feet right back in them afterward.
“Alice.” Jack’s wonder at her body was summed up in the single word. He shucked down his pants but left them pooled at his ankles. “Get over here.”
He lifted her up the moment she was in reach, and Alice locked her legs around his waist. Contact with his body sent a surge of heat through her shivering form. She crushed her breasts to his bare chest. “You’re right; it’s freezing.”
Jack shuffled forward, stooped to snag his jacket off the ground and draped it over her shoulders.
“I don’t think it’ll stay on,” she began, but he moved her up against the standing stone, and Alice sighed. His jacket protected her from the worst of the cold, and Jack’s hardness pressed against her was sending all kinds of sexy signals to her brain. “What about you? Aren’t you cold?” she asked.
“Freezing.” He didn’t sound concerned, and he captured her mouth with his, putting an end to that line of questioning. When he skimmed his palms up to cup her breasts, Alice gave up thinking altogether and gave in to the pleasure of his touch, her skin humming under each caress.
She hadn’t realized how lonely she’d been until Jack came along. It was a loneliness that went far beyond the normal wanting between a man and a woman. Howie hadn’t slaked her need. Only someone like Jack—someone who truly loved her—could fill the void inside her.
She clung to him as he explored her curves, first with his hands, then with his mouth. Arching back as he took one nipple into his mouth, she gasped, aching to feel him inside her.
“Jack,” she begged. He kept going, teasing her with his tongue, sliding a hand down to cup her bottom, bringing her hard against him.
“Jack,” she said again.
“Do we need protection?”
She shook her head. She didn’t care about protection—didn’t care about the future. All she wanted was now. She wanted to be known—to be possessed, utterly and completely. She wanted to annihilate the space that loomed between her and everyone else, that kept her isolated and alone even when surrounded by the people she loved most.
Only Jack could fill that gap. She opened to him and gasped when he shifted and slid inside her, filling her until she nearly came right then.
Holding on for dear life, Alice closed her eyes and rode his movements, glorying in the exquisite pleasure of each slip of his skin against hers. She’d never felt this way with a man—like she could lose herself in the sensations between them. Forgetting the cold, forgetting the hard stone behind her, she urged Jack on, digging her fingers into his shoulders.
Jack didn’t disappoint. He was strong—so strong. Holding her up like she weighed nothing. Pushing into her with control and rhythm that built the desire inside her into a dizzying peak.
When Alice thought she couldn’t hold on any longer, his next thrust took her over the edge, and pulse after pulse of ecstasy rippled through her until she buried her face against his neck to keep from crying out.
Grunting with his thrusts, Jack slammed into her, gripping her so tightly she thought he’d never let go. Clinging to him, she gloried in his pleasure, his rough motions stirring desire inside her all over again.
Alice tightened her grip as her need built up to a dizzying level. She’d never come twice—not like this—and for a moment she feared losing control altogether.
“Alice,” Jack panted, and his raw need for her knocked down the barrier she’d begun to build between them. Jack held her gaze, looking straight into her heart, and Alice realized this was the true test of her desire. She’d said she wanted to be known. If she let go—if she showed him the way he was making her feel—she’d expose herself utterly. “Alice, please,” Jack breathed.
He wanted that. Wanted to know her.
She wanted it too.
Gazing back at him, letting go of her fears, Alice gave in and came with a cry. Jack’s strong thrusts played her like a well-tuned instrument; his hands on her body urged her to higher heights as her release pulsed through her. When he lost control, too, Alice cried out again with him, then rode the wave of his orgasm until he finally slumped against her, pinning her against the standing stone, breathing hard, his heart pounding in her ear as she struggled with him to catch her breath.
“More,” he said when he could breathe, and Alice laughed. She wanted more, too.
“Any time,” she promised, but Jack had stiffened.
“What is that?”
Alice held her breath. Now she heard it, too. “Is that a… trumpet?”
Jack laughed. “Hell, must be time to muster.” With a groan, he disengaged from her, set her on her feet with a kiss and hurried to pick up their clothes.
“We don’t have to come when he calls,” Alice told him, barely able to keep up. After such a connection, breaking apart took her breath away.
“You want Corporal Myers hunting us down—finding us like this?”
Alice laughed, too, and relaxed. “No, I guess I don’t.” Although she’d give anything to make love to Jack all over again. “Where has he been hiding a trumpet all this time?”
“Who knows.” Jack considered his clothes, then bent to scoop up a handful of snow. He swore as he cleaned himself off and pulled on his clothes as fast as he could afterward. Alice gingerly followed suit, the icy coldness bringing her back to the real world. She did her best to put her clothes and hair to rights, although she was sure anyone could guess what they’d been doing out here.
When Jack led the way back through the maze, she noticed that dawn had caught up to them. The sun wasn’t up, but the sky was noticeably lighter. Had they missed breakfast?
“There you are,” the corporal said accusingly, lowering the trumpet when he caught sight of them. “Been looking for you everywhere. You’re late.”
Inside, everyone had gathered as usual around the General’s bed, although the man was perfectly capable of moving to another room, Alice thought.
“What’s the hold-up?” the General said when she and Jack slipped in, Emerson following.
“Sorry, sir,” Jack said.
“Lake, make your report so we can all get on with our day.”
“Everything is shipshape, sir.”
“O’Riley?”
“Snow’s expected later today, so I’m making sure we’re ready for it, sir.”
“Powell.”
“What Connor said. Snow’s coming, sir.”
“Hughes?”
“Looking forward to shoveling, sir,” Logan said cheerfully. “And some hot chocolate later.”
“Sanders.”
“Banner day so far, sir.”
Was he smiling? Alice was pretty sure he was smiling. The General gave him a dark look.
“Cass?”
“Laundry’s piling up.”
The General frowned. “Sadie?”
“It’s a splendiferous day, sir!”
“Lena?”
Lena shrugged.
“Jo,” the General growled.
“Fucking splendiferous!”
“Alice.” She had a feeling he was losing his cool, but she simply couldn’t help herself.
“Well, I just got laid—in the maze. So I agree with Jo and Sadie. Fucking-A splendiferous!”
When the General’s face went purple, Alice felt a pang of remorse.
“Out! OUT!” he bellowed. “All of you! Before I—”
Alice didn’t hear the rest.
She ran.