Chapter Two

Watching Ravyin twist and bend across the car seat had almost been Corporal Grant Michaels’ undoing. Thank God for the fibreglass door that separated them. Watching her drive away, he couldn’t help visualizing the way her close-fitting violet v-neck had parted from the hip-hugging black denim. Christ, they looked like they’d been painted onto the smooth curve of her thighs and the sumptuous roundness of her bum. When her sweater had lifted, revealing a strip of satiny-smooth skin, he’d seen the top edge of red lace panties just peeking over the low waist of her jeans, and had felt himself harden instantly in pure male response.

He shifted uncomfortably in the vehicle seat, images churning in the back of his brain even as he made note of the stop. A strong gust of wind shook the car briefly.

She was even more beautiful than Grant remembered, which probably meant that she was even more dangerous. Rayvin had figured prominently in all of his teenage fantasies. He couldn’t shake the guilt of wanting her even after she had attempted to kill his best friend. The sight of her should have made his blood run cold.

He had burned for her then, and had known that he would burn in hell for it. Then she had left, arrogantly walking out of town toward the highway without even an apology for what she’d done, a heavy backpack weighing down that sexy strut, and his relief had been mingled with his disappointment. It had taken several years and many relationships—all of them brief—to get her out of his head. She was dangerous, unbalanced, a killer without conscience.

Perhaps that was part of her allure.

Once, she had had the ability to turn him on with just a glance. There was something about the way she carried herself, and the slow curving smile she’d offered him, once or twice, in high school. Even though she was shorter than most of the other girls, she stood out from the crowd somehow, and it wasn’t just the beauty of her long red hair. Sometimes, she wore spike heels or push-up bras, bustiers and short-shorts or goth makeup to accentuate her looks, but she didn’t need any of it.

Her legs were perfect, she was round and luscious in all the right places, her grey eyes huge with long smoky lashes. Rayvin was untamed, intelligent, and unapologetic, all of which he’d found appealing, admirable, and incredibly sexy. She had the courage to be different, and to enjoy her difference, which was a rarity in a small town like theirs.

He remembered her saying interesting things, thoughtful things, and wishing he could speak to her in an intelligent way. Afraid he would sound like a fool, he had never attempted to strike up a conversation with her. Rayvin Woods was out of his league, and he’d known it. So had most of his buddies.

But all of her shyness had been a facade, a trick to divert her peers from the truth about her: she was powerful, selfish, cold, and wild. A threat to others. She knew damn well what she could do with those devastating, compelling eyes. Having used them once to her advantage, chances were she would do it again, if she hadn’t already. Who knew what she had done to others since he’d last seen her? Maybe she’d succeeded in a subsequent attempt at murder.

Grant inhaled, slowly, trying to lower his blood pressure. A hint of her scent still lingered in his senses, an intoxicating mix of wildflowers and cedar. The scent of a summer night. He forced himself to lower the window and take a deep breath of crisp night air to clear his head. He still wanted her, and he hated himself for it.

“The more things change,” he muttered to himself, willing his blood to redirect itself to more appropriate appendages.

The moment her little red hatchback had passed him on the highway, the second it had taken to register the sight of her profile, even at 80 kph, all the years since the last time he’d seen her had fallen away to nothingness. Once again, he had found himself following her, like a dog in heat.

He wouldn’t not allow himself to be embarrassed like he’d been in high school, constantly failing in his efforts to have her talk to him, smile at him, or just look at him. The memories of his friends’ taunts and the sting of rejection were still raw. No, he would not let her have any power over him now. He was a police officer, an upstanding citizen. Grant Michaels’ reputation would not suffer because he had a case of blue balls over a chick from high school.

Rayvin’s face rose in his mind. His body rebelliously followed suit. Long, curly hair in all shades and tones of red. Pink lips, moistened with a darker pink tongue. Eyes the colour of water under ice, the grey at the edges darkening to nearly black.

Grant gripped the steering wheel as the past came back to him. Memories of his unrealized plans to get her alone and beg a kiss, to touch her neck with his tongue, nibble her ears, run his hand along the contours of her perfect body. Rayvin Woods, the first woman he had truly lusted after. He leaned his head back against the head rest, recalling how he’d daydreamed that they might have their first time together. At the time, he didn’t know how likely it was that she’d already been with someone.

When he was fifteen, he’d fantasized that he and Rayvin would come together, sharing a sleeping bag in a tent somewhere on the shores of Lake Temiskaming, on a hot summer night with the stars blazing above. His imagination had supplied many details: the way she would rise above him, their bodies naked, her fragrant, silky hair tumbling all around him. He’d wondered if her nipples looked like strawberries, and what they would feel like to touch, or to put in his mouth. His fantasizing had not been limited to the privacy of his bedroom, either.

With chagrin, Grant recalled watching her work with clay in an art class and envisioning her hands moving over his chest before circling to his back, her nails raking along his spine as he made her cry out with pleasure. He’d listen to her responding to the teacher’s questions and imagine the sound of her voice begging him to kiss her again.

Though he’d never practiced his moves, he was confident that she would enjoy having him as a lover. He thought of them in every position, and he dreamed about her almost every night, it seemed. And until Jason got hurt, he had lived for every time she looked at him with her soft, mysterious eyes. He’d struggled to find ways to get her to speak his name or to give him one of her slow, pretty smiles. When she passed and glanced in his direction, his head would swing around hoping for another look. Grant could never be sure if she was actually trying to tell him something. He’d been addicted to the mystery of her gaze.

It might have been easier if he had hooked up with her, then. If they had had sex, he might have been able to purge her memory from his system with another lover. Instead, he still had these goddamned unfulfilled fantasies. She was an addiction he’d never beaten. He had never worked up the guts to ask her out, and after a few years, he figured she thought herself too good for him. Too good for any of them. Or that she was gay. His pride wouldn’t let him see any other alternatives, and the fact that she would have none of him had only turned up the heat of his infatuation.

And then in their final year of high school, the tragedy happened. Jason Lucas, his best friend, voted most likely to succeed, had fallen from a bridge, ending up paralyzed for life, and Rayvin had been charged with his attempted murder. The evidence had been circumstantial. Even though they had been on a date, nobody had actually seen her push him over the rail, but everyone in Talbot knew she was guilty, even if the court had found her innocent.

Finally, he had seen his lust for what it was, a sickness. When he looked at her, passing in the street or in the halls, desire turned to bile. He shared the opinion of the community: Rayvin Woods had no conscience. She had tried to kill someone, and somehow, she had covered it up.

The good people of Talbot had gathered around their best son, casting their own judgment against a criminal who had been able to work the system while Jason, on the precipice of adulthood, had been forced to accept life imprisonment in a wheelchair. Sentencing was swift and complete; the community rallied to show Rayvin that she was not welcome. Conversations ceased when she entered a classroom; hateful eyes followed her every move; clerks refused to serve her when she entered stores. All but one of her friends deserted her. No wonder she had chosen to leave.

The citizens had been pleased at their victory and Talbot had become a peaceful community again.

So why had she come back? She had to know that she would not be welcome in this town, no matter how much time had gone by. Jason was now a prominent citizen, an established contributor to the community. His family and friends were a tightly bound support network. They would, without doubt, remember her on sight. Not a pleasant situation to contemplate.

Could he persuade her to leave again? Or more disturbingly, did he want her to disappear again?

Grant had always been one to follow his instincts, which were usually correct; listening to his gut had nearly always put him in the right place, at the right time, which was a distinct advantage for a police officer. This time, it told him to follow her, stop her, do whatever it took this time to protect others from her corruption. He would not allow himself to be taken in by her sexuality: She had been dangerous in the past, and from the way he felt his hackles rising, she was likely still dangerous.

The law may not have branded her as a killer, but the law had been known to make mistakes. Whatever damage she had done in the past, whatever she was running from now, she would not do more on his watch. So tonight, as soon as he had recognized her, he had hit the gas, put on the flashers, and pulled her over even though she hadn’t done anything wrong, technically speaking.

Unfortunately, he had needed to give her a reason for his approach. And he had to write something in the report. Technically, he hadn’t been certain that her seatbelt had been fastened, which was a valid reason for a ride check. As she’d waited, her insurance papers held out, he’d taken some perverted pleasure in making her wait with the setting sun in her eyes. She couldn’t see his face with the light behind him and he took advantage of her confusion. He’d permitted himself a moment. The mirrored lenses of his sunglasses had allowed him the luxury of drinking in the glory of her hair, the highlights glowing like embers in the sunset; the high cheekbones that balanced her heart-shaped face; the flush that was spreading across her fair skin as she waited, biting her lip subconsciously in nervousness. That little nibble had made the breath catch in his throat as an old, familiar ache followed the heat coursing through his midsection to his thighs. Ten years after high school, she was still nearly impossible to resist.

Too bad she was also nearly a felon.

Grant wrote up the seatbelt check, turned off the cruiser’s flashers, and pulled back into the road. Up ahead, he could still see her taillights in the gathering dusk, getting closer to Talbot. He increased his speed with a guilty twinge, until he was about fifteen yards back. Forcing himself to ease off the gas, knowing that tailgating would be a mistake, the slow burn she’d left in her wake flared again as he watched the back end of her car swerve slightly as she took the bend in the road, the trailer swinging a little too far onto the shoulder for comfort. The spray of slush thrown out by the wheels confirmed that she was driving a tad too quickly for the road conditions. He figured that their encounter had made her nervous. By now, if she was an attentive driver, she was probably aware that he was following her. Well, his job was to patrol the highways; he had just as much right to drive in this direction as Rayvin did. Hell, maybe just a little more, in her case.

Grant cursed under his breath as she swerved again, shaking his head. Desire and anger were cooling now, into resentment and frustration. What was she thinking? How did she dare, after everything that had happened? It had taken years for the community to clean up the mess she’d made; for everyone she’d hurt to put their lives back together. Did she think that it had all been forgotten?

Rayvin’s unexpected return was going to rock the town’s easy atmosphere, an environment he felt was as much his to protect as the people who contributed to it. No matter his personal feelings toward that woman—his physical reaction, he corrected, there were no real feelings to think about—the citizens he had sworn an oath to serve had to come first. He wasn’t an animal; he could control himself, and would.

Of course, how he approached her, or left her alone, would entirely depend on how she behaved herself. If her crazy driving was any indicator, Rayvin Woods had just about as much inhibition as she ever had, which was next to none.

“If you swerve that thing just one more time,” Grant promised himself, muttering. “I swear, I will pull you over again and you will not get off easy.”

The last time he’d seen her, she had been walking away, back bent slightly under the weight of her pack but shoulders still somehow straight. Defiant. Proud. He’d made no move to stop her then, though he had wanted to. To demand the answers no one had been able to find out. Like why she’d tried to kill Jason, for starters. To allow himself to touch her, once, so he could satisfy his own curiosity and finally know what her skin felt like. To take that kiss from her full lips, knowing somehow in his soul that this was his last opportunity. The whole situation, it just wasn’t fair.

His loyalty to his friend had been stronger than his lust for her, and Grant had held himself back. Still, the pain of losing her had been almost physical, even though he knew it was better that she was gone. Rayvin was nothing but trouble, nothing but danger. She aroused him simply because she was forbidden.

Understanding this, he had moved on with his life, his career, and become even closer with Jason and his friends. Her absence should have been a relief, and yet for a long time, it seemed the colour of the world had blanched. No other woman had ever struck him as vital and real as she had.

He’d tried to put her out of his mind, had gone on dates and had a healthy sex life, but every relationship, no matter how extended, was pale in comparison to the fantasies he’d once had about Rayvin Woods. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, body hard to the point of pain, with images of wild red hair sliding across his chest, a curvaceous body in his bed, grey eyes and pink lips smiling at him before they faded into the dark.

It bordered on obsession. Rather than admit it to himself, Grant had chosen distraction as a coping mechanism. He had thrown himself into his work, earning promotions quickly and citations for good service. He had even been offered first pick of a new posting, which he had professionally declined in order to stay in the community he loved.

During his off time, he had poured that same dedication into his physique, becoming a regular at the local private gym. He could consistently be seen on the town’s main thoroughfare as he ran for sixty minutes before and after each shift in the cruiser. He particularly enjoyed running in the winter, when the bitterest cold of midwinter tested his endurance almost to its limits. This intense physical program left him more energized now, in his early thirties, than he had been as a teenager; he was proud of his self-control, and the sense of authority he exuded, even out of uniform.

He had become a figure to respect in the community, which was something he didn’t take lightly. Grant was not going to take any chances on losing that position, no matter what some crush from his high school days said or did or looked like now.

Which brought him back to his original curiosity. What was she doing back here? Of all the places that woman might choose, she was setting up housekeeping in the worst possible location: the place where she had been virtually run out of town on rails over a decade earlier. She had to know that, didn’t she?

Grant pursed his lips, considering. It was possible that she was just visiting the few friends he knew had kept in contact with her, though the number of boxes and bags filling up her vehicle suggested otherwise. She had to know that she wasn’t going to expect a warm welcome; if she was smart, she’d keep a low profile to begin with, and let the rumour mill carry the word of her arrival at a comfortable pace rather than shocking everyone with her sudden reappearance.

Rayvin had reduced her speed, as the highway became the main thoroughfare. Grant was now less than five car-lengths behind her. She made the sharp s-bend past the first fenced-in historical head-frame that marked the physical town limit; automatically, he steered the cruiser smoothly along the same route. His mind continued to work the problem.

Passing the senior citizens’ residence on the left, Grant checked the building’s visible doors and windows with a swift habitual glance to the side while resolving to keep the whole encounter to himself, barring its inclusion in his report at the end of the shift. If the rumour mill was going to turn, it could do so without his help.

As he followed her down the short, steep hill past the post office, the second of three cordoned-off abandoned head-frames in the downtown core, and a handful of small glass-fronted shops, it was only practiced, well-trained reflexes that allowed him to brake and swerve when a hole the size of a minivan yawned suddenly in the road between his cruiser and Rayvin’s vehicle at the end of the block. Forcing the wheel to the right, heart pounding with the surge of adrenaline, he brought the car to a squealing halt perpendicular to the gap in the pavement. The gap had opened right in front of the town playhouse, a restored 1920s theatre, which had just opened its doors to welcome guests for a costumed dinner party. Within moments, he had hit both his emergency lights on the roof and his siren to alert the rest of the traffic on the two-lane strip.

Grant sat still for the space of a breath, before moving carefully toward the passenger side door. The street just beyond the driver’s side ended abruptly in open space, at least thirty feet deep. He assessed the situation with a practiced eye. Leaving the door open, he was already moving to the trunk as he called dispatch with his shoulder-mount radio. Smoothly lighting the flares he extracted from the cruiser’s emergency kit, he placed the first on the edge of the hole closest to the left rear bumper of the vehicle, and then lengthened his stride to quickly place the second on the farther corner. Straightening, arms out to discourage the theatre patrons who had already started to gather, his voice failed as he suddenly made eye contact with Rayvin Woods.

She had pulled over and gotten out of her own car at the end of the block, probably because she had seen the lights or heard the siren. She was hesitating, standing beside the open door of her own vehicle. He couldn’t look away from the cascade of her hair or the curve of her body, illuminated by the streetlights and the neon store sign behind her. She took a step towards the hole in the road. Towards him.

Meanwhile, the unbroken part of the road was rapidly filling with spectators. The crowd included patrons of the theatre who were attending the fancy dress party inside, and the array of fantastic costumes added an air of unreality to the scene. Everyone wanted to get a closer look at the sinkhole. Rayvin included, it seemed. The stupid woman would likely be recognized immediately if she came any closer, and that would make the situation worse than it needed to be. There were a number of prominent citizens here who had known her ten years ago. They could turn around at any moment and see her. Psychologically shaken by this event, they would use her to vent their fright and confusion. All hell was about to break loose.

In desperation, he cleared his throat.

“Keep back, please, folks, keep your distance, please,” he called out, and with the second breath, was able to hear his baritone echoing off the fourth story of the office complex to the right of the theatre. “You need to stay back.”

He continued to caution the on-lookers, as they began to gather in small groups and speculation grew louder. He let his eyes fall on Rayvin again. Shaking his head slightly, he tried to communicate a soundless warning to her. Amazingly, something must have gotten through because she stopped in her tracks, a crease forming between her eyebrows. That’s right, he thought. If you’re smart you’ll turn around and get back in your car. This is neither the place nor the time for people who don’t want you here to see you.

Rayvin’s face blanched, as though she’d been slapped without warning. Then, she turned abruptly. As if in obedience to his unspoken order, she got into the car she’d left running, and in a moment, she had driven around the corner, and was gone.

In that same moment, Grant caught himself reflecting contemptuously that the last time there had been something resembling a disaster in this town, Rayvin had been there, and had taken off running then, too. He mentally shook himself, as his fellow officers began to arrive with reinforcements from the fire department. That was a ridiculous connection to make. There was absolutely no way to link Jason’s injury to a hole that had just opened in the street. Logically, he knew that it was probably just the pilings of an old mine tunnel which had finally rotten and given way. In the old days, mine shafts and tunnels had been burrowed under the town as well as in the hills and valleys surrounding it; the miners had followed the veins of silver as far as they could, no matter where they ended up. It was inevitable that something had to open up, at some point.

It was the timing of the event that was nagging at him, even as he was briefing his commanding officer on the situation. Another few seconds, and he would have been driving into open space. An image of Jason’s body, falling helplessly like a rag doll flung into a void, flashed through his thoughts. Was it even possible that Rayvin had something to do with the break in the street?

In his almost eight years as a police officer, Grant had seen some strange events. However, there had always been a logical explanation for the phenomenon he had seen, or that he had investigated for a witness. But even further back . . . during that brief period when Rayvin had been the unwitting focus of his life . . . he had seen things that he knew he couldn’t explain, not even if he had had the entire forensics department of the Ontario Provincial Police behind him. His lust for her hadn’t blinded him from noticing paranormal events that tended to occur when Rayvin was around.

Like on their grade eleven geography field trip, when some kid had made fun of her for something trivial, and was pelted by weak branches and pinecones for the duration of their hike through the bush. There had been no wind that day, but the boy had walked in front of him and behind Rayvin; he had actually seen the bits of trees stripping off in her wake to attack the aggressive bully.

In the back of his mind, he remembered that her combination lock always seemed to open of its own accord when she approached her locker, though her hands hadn’t been anywhere near the latch. Snowballs thrown in her direction never hit their intended target, and splashes from cars rebounded as though they’d hit some kind of invisible shield around her body.

Hell, he’d even tried an experiment when he’d felt especially bold one week. His attempt to knock her binders off her desk when he passed had failed. In fact, he’d felt something pass him to pull them back into place. At that point, he’d also come to realize that he’d never seen more than two or three students ever voluntarily talking to her. It was almost as though the entire student body, with few exceptions, had decided to pretend she wasn’t there.

Rumour had it that her mother, who had died of cancer when Rayvin was really young, had not only offered tarot card and crystal ball readings to the public, but also wandered graveyards at midnight with her little girl in tow. These were activities that fairy tales, Hollywood movies, and small-town gossips had related to witchcraft.

And then there was Jason’s accident. Grant himself had reviewed the file after joining the force. Though in the end, after the charges against her had been dropped and the official report stated that he had tripped and fallen off the bridge in a tragic accident, no one believed it. The idea that an athletic guy like Jason had fallen on his own was laughable. Someone had to have pushed him, but not one person had been with Jason. Except Rayvin.

Grant shoved his suspicions to the back of his head; he needed his full concentration now. Mulling over the mystery and danger of Rayvin Woods while trying to monitor and coordinate the removal of spectators from a sinkhole in the middle of downtown Talbot was unprofessional and foolhardy. He would take care of this situation, and then take care of her.