twenty-three

Several hours after Merrit left Nathan to get on with the house painting, he staggered out of one of Fox Cottage’s bedrooms. He stopped midway across the living room, listening. Back in the bedroom, Annie snuffled in her sleep, the lightest of whimpering breaths. So, she had nightmares of her own. The thought comforted him. He almost turned back to wake her from her doze and ask her what she saw in her dreams. Instead, he made his way to the kitchen to drink water from the taps. The pipes gurgled and shot out a tepid orange stream of water. Nathan spat out the water and coughed against the metallic taste of it.

He returned to the living room, pausing again. Time had gotten away from him, and realizing that, his vision wavered around the edges. He caught hold of the fireplace mantel and stood still, reaching inward for the normal part of himself that didn’t lose time. He closed his eyes, but it was too late. His hands shook and the buzzing began at the base of his skull.

“Stop it,” he said, his voice sounding far away.

Nothing would happen to him here in Fox Cottage with a lovely naked woman in the next room. This was a safe place. Eyes still closed, he inched his hand along the mantel to the wall and let the wall lead him back to the bedroom. He jerked back at a sticky sensation—blood.

No, wet paint on newly painted walls, he reminded himself.

He opened an eye. Fingerprints in the paint, and paint on his hand. He squinted against the racket inside his head, his gaze still on the wall, but his focus on the rest of the room. An empty room. Nothing to fear here. He stood alone, and being alone, he was safe. He knew this.

Sunlight flared between passing clouds, brightening the room. With care, Nathan turned his head. He stood near inset shelves filled with dusty books. He continued swiveling his head. Nothing but a side chair, a pot without a plant, a plastic-shrouded couch. Paint fumes increased the pounding in his head.

Outside, the clouds shifted again. From the corner of the room, a metallic glint sprang out at him. Sharp in a beam of light, aiming itself at him. He ducked toward the bedroom, toward Annie, fingertips scrabbling against bare floorboards. The cotton batting that encased him squeezed, crushing his breath, squashing his reason.

A touch seared his back. He flattened himself onto the floor, but the tentacle grabbed tight enough to smother. More tentacles engulfed him until he couldn’t breathe. No returning from the brink this time. He wilted, too exhausted to fight any longer.

After a while, he caught the strains of a melody. Below the blood thumping against his ear drums, a tune with no beginning and no end. He latched onto it and climbed up its notes like a lifeline.

“There now,” Annie said. “Deep breaths.”

She lay next to him on the floor, wrapped in a sheet. After several minutes, the molten press of one of her arms and one of her legs softened to the warmth of her skin pressed against his. Nathan caught his breath as his senses returned to him. The cool wood floorboards, the rain percussion, the stink of fresh paint. Fox Cottage, that was all.

On shaking limbs, he rose onto all fours and then to his feet. His body felt stiff, misused, unreliable. He glanced down at himself as he walked into the bedroom with mud-colored walls. He still wore his t-shirt but nothing else.

Behind him, Annie’s sheet dragged on the floor. He yanked on his underwear and jeans with bum facing her, the ultimate disrespect, before turning to her. Better to get it over with, but rather than disgust or judgment, Annie smiled at him.

“You’re full of surprises,” she said. “Are you feeling better now?”

The breath he’d been holding fell out of him. “That’s never happened before.”

She cocked her head as if puzzled. “No?”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m not sure what happened.”

“And I’m not sure I believe you, but I won’t pry any further. As for that”—Annie pointed toward the mussed bed—“I know exactly what happened. You pounced on me.”

“I don’t pounce.”

“Nearabouts anyhow.” She let the sheet drop and stood in the center of the room with hands on her hips as she surveyed the ground. Their shoes and her clothes were scattered about, along with the throw pillows from the bed. “No worries. Faster than I usually go, but I’ve been trying to live in the moment. It’s all we have.”

Christ in heaven, she was a mighty beauty. He saw her with a sculptor’s eyes, the protrusion of her tummy, the rounded contour of her collarbones, the soft flesh of her inner thighs.

“Ah,” she said and toed a pillow aside. With a mischievous grin, she twirled her underwear around an index finger. “Can’t forget these, can I? Can you imagine?” She hooted with laughter. “Having it off in Liam the Matchmaker’s cottage. Talk about wagging tongues.”

She collapsed onto the bed, overcome with the hilarity of whatever she was picturing in her head. “Oh my.” She wiped laughter tears off her cheeks. “Excuse me, that was most unbecoming of me.” She pulled on her underwear and found her jumper. “So much for maintaining a feminine allure.”

Nathan perched next to her on the bed, longing for some of her aliveness to rub off on him. Maybe he had pounced on her, but not for the reason she thought. It hadn’t been about copulation. It was this, right here. Her vitality. Her resilience. A vampiric need to attach himself to her almost overcame him.

She popped her head out of her jumper. A peep of west-slanting light caught the silver in her hair before the sky closed down again. The rain continued unabated. He glanced out the window. Too much time had passed. He’d arrived before noon, and now it was—he wasn’t sure. Well into the afternoon. Past three. “Where’s my mobile?”

Annie stood on one foot, hopping around as she fitted her leg into her jeans and pulled them up. After a moment, she said, “On the bed stand.”

Nathan grabbed for the mobile, his pulse up into his ears again, zero to one hundred in three seconds flat. Not unusual, he told himself. He was still charged up from whatever had happened—the daytime nightmare. Before today, his mind had only tortured him at night.

With a button push, he had the immediate answer he required to calm down again: Zoe hadn’t rung.

“What about Zoe?” Annie said as she fastened her belt.

“I’m sorry?”

“You mumbled something about her. ”

He shoved his mobile into his jeans pocket. “When Zoe gets antsy about me, she leaves messages, but she hasn’t, so I’m safe from having to explain my absence.”

Annie slipped on comfy-looking clogs. “I’m not a parent, so I’m daft about these things, but wouldn’t she assume you’re helping Merrit all day?”

Yes, but that didn’t lessen the urge to hurry home. He excused his way past Annie and went in search of his shoes in the living room. He winced as sunlight flared again. On the floor, a paint can lid caught and held the light, bright as a beacon. A startle of light. He jammed the lid back on the Afterglow paint can and tamped it down harder than necessary.

Afterglow; Jesus, no afterglow here. As far as he could bloody well get from afterglow. He’d gone mad in broad daylight, all because a glint of light reflected off a paint can lid had ignited the figments inside his head.