Somewhere to Dream (Berkley Sensation) (20 page)

Our eyes met, and I saw the pain in his, the questions I’d put there. He’d promised never to hurt me, but I’d hurt him, leaving him confused and alone. And yet here he was, halfway to Maggie’s. He’d come for me, and something bad had happened to him along the way. Guilt rushed in, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

“Yes, Iain. You can trust him.” I put my hand on Iain’s forearm, encouraging him to lower his weapon. “And even better news for you is that you can leave me with him. He’ll take me back to the village.”

Iain’s sword slowly and noisily slid back into his scabbard, as if he were making sure Jesse knew it was still there and ready to be used at any time. Looking relieved, Jesse limped up to him, hand outstretched.

“Jesse Black,” he said. “Good to meet you, sir. And thank you for taking care of Adelaide.”

Iain’s grunt was one I recognized as grudgingly giving way. “Fine then. Iain MacKenzie,” he said, accepting Jesse’s hand. He squinted at me. “Ye’re sure, lass? He looks a wee bit black and blue. Bit shabby for my taste.”

“You can thank your countryman for that,” Jesse muttered.

“He looks that way a lot,” I told Iain. “I don’t mind. I’m getting used to it.”

“And here I thought you liked me for my peace-loving spirit.” The wink he gave me looked painful. “Are you on your way back?” I nodded, and he held out the flowers, then his arm. “Might I have the honour of accompanying you?”

I felt strangely shy around him. The last time I had seen Jesse, he had been a gentleman, to be sure, but one entirely physical, and one I couldn’t help wanting to grab onto. Now he played the formal role of a man courting, as if he were afraid of my reaction, and I hated that I’d made him feel that way.

“It would be my honour, Mister Black,” I said, smiling and accepting the stems. I glanced up at Iain. “Thank you for bringing me this far, Iain. Please tell Maggie I’ll be just fine. I’m with Jesse.”

Iain frowned down at Jesse, then nodded. “Right. I will. Keep yerself safe, the two of ye. There’s undesirables afoot.” He turned back to his horse, who was contentedly munching on clumps of grass at the pond’s edge. She lifted her head when he swung onto her back, then the pair disappeared into the trees.

CHAPTER
31

Revealing Dreams

We hadn’t touched yet, other than the warm hook of his arm through mine. We hadn’t spoken, either, and I had a feeling he was waiting for me to start up the conversation. He was unsure, which was sweet, but it also reinforced my guilt. I’d taken some of his confidence when I’d run from him. I’d have to figure out how to give it back. After walking maybe thirty feet, the quiet got to me.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

He shrugged, one eyebrow lifted over a crooked smile. “Some angry Scotsman wouldn’t let me past. He was pretty . . . serious about that.”

“What Scotsman? Where?”

“Back at your sister’s. I came to get you, and he wasn’t inclined to help me out with that.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “You came looking for me, and a Scottish man fought you?’

“Yep. Dark-haired bastard with a mean left. I got him, though. He’ll have a limp for a bit.”

But if Andrew had hit Jesse . . . “Was his name Andrew?”

“I have no idea. I only got to know his fists. And they weren’t too welcoming. He said something about protecting his women. Hell, that’s what
I’d
come for. To protect you. Bastard never let me explain. Just kept telling me to leave, which I couldn’t do, of course.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip and frowned at the bruises colouring his face. “Did he—”

“Man’s got a sharp blade.” He lifted up one side of his shirt, giving me a better view of the slice on the side of his stomach, just barely healing. I couldn’t help sucking in a gasp at the sight. It cut across one of the claw marks of his cougar scar, like a
Y
. “Protective son of a bitch, that one. Stubborn, too.”

“Will you let me help you with it?”

“Not right now. I want to keep walking for a bit.”

“Okay,” I said sarcastically, walking beside him again. “As long as he’s the only one who’s being stubborn.”

His smile quirked, forming a funny sort of lump where it was swollen. “Yeah, yeah. I just can’t figure out what put that bee in his bonnet.”

“I think that was my fault,” I admitted, looking down the path ahead of us.

“How’s that?”

“I went to see Maggie, to ask for her help.” He didn’t change expression. “But I guess you knew that.”

“Uh-huh. Learned it from an unlikely source. Dustu told me.”

“Dustu?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. I didn’t think the two of them ever spoke.

He frowned. “Yeah. I had to get the news wherever I could get it, since you never came home.”

“Sorry.”

We walked a few more quiet steps before he nodded, forgiving me—at least for now. “So what happened when you got here?”

“Maggie saw my dream with me, and she told Andrew a man was coming to kill me.”

“She saw your . . .” He puffed a breath through his lips and shook his head slightly. “I’m not even going to ask how that works. But then they assumed—”

“Sorry.” I bit my lip again and stepped ahead of him on the narrow path. I heard the slightly uneven pattern of his limp as he followed me. “I never thought he’d come after you like that. He was . . . expecting someone else. But I’m very glad to see you, Jesse, even though you look like you’ve had better days.”

“Are you?”

I glanced back at him, surprised at the vulnerability of the question. I was more than glad. Being with Jesse made me happy. Just talking to him eased my fears. I felt safe again. Nothing bad could happen to me if Jesse was there. “Yes. Of course. Why?”

“Well, you kind of ran off the other day. Remember that? Remember telling me to get lost and you’d be back in a bit?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“That’s what I heard.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

A few more steps of silence, but this time the tension between us was edged with his anger and my embarrassment.

“I told you I’d come back. You didn’t have to come for me.”

“I figured you meant in a couple of hours, not days. I got worried is all.”

Prickles of pleasant heat rose up my neck and filled my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Jesse. I am glad you’re here. Thank you.”

As the trees parted, he stepped up beside me and shrugged good-naturedly. “Hey, I hadn’t had a fight in a couple of days. It’s good to keep in practice.”

Just like that, the tension was gone. He unhooked his arm and reached for my hand, and I gave it to him, clutching his gift of flowers in the other one.

“Can you tell me now?” he asked. “What’s going on? About your dreams and all that?”

“I can try, but you can’t interrupt. Want to sit down?”

He shook his head. “Seems to me, you think better when you’re walking.”

I was surprised to hear that, mostly because it was true. I’d always felt easier dealing with questions when I was on the move. I suppose it could have frightened me, finding out he’d been studying me that way, but it had the opposite effect. I liked knowing he’d cared enough to watch. And that made it easier to speak about things I’d never said out loud to anyone else.

“I’m not great at dreaming. Not like my sister. She sees what will happen, and she can even make things happen. She can read people’s minds and communicate with animals. I can’t do that. But I do see things. I get caught up in a dream without meaning to. I might be sleeping, or just sitting, but it’ll come and show me things I don’t want to see. My problem is, I don’t have the courage to stick with a dream long enough to see the ending. I never see what’s going to happen, because I’m too scared.”

“Most folks are like that, aren’t we?”

I shrugged. “I guess. But most folks don’t get told important things in their dreams. Things I should pay attention to, you know?”

He nodded, looking as if he were taking it all in, and I was relieved to see it. Maybe explaining this wouldn’t be so difficult after all.

“All right. I think I’m with you so far,” he said. “So what happened the last time? You know, when you ran off on me?”

I blushed, remembering. “I am sorry about that. Really I am. But when you and I . . . when we . . .”

“It’s okay, Adelaide,” he said, smiling. “You don’t have to say it out loud. I remember what we were doing.”

“Okay. Well, something happened—”

“Sure did!”

“Are you going to let me explain?”

He slapped his palm over his mouth and nodded for me to go on.

He was a beautiful man. I could see that through his bruises and cuts, when I ignored the deep circles under his eyes that told me he hadn’t slept for a while. And when he smiled like that, when his eyes danced for me, I felt completely undone. He loved me. His torn shirt was filthy, his golden hair ratty with dirt and leaves. This beautiful, wild creature was mine if I chose to accept him. My heart skipped, and I tried to hide the pleasure that thought brought me.

“All right,” I said, forcing my mind back to the present. “Something happened between you and me that brought back my dreams. And whatever it was, it made them even stronger.”

“What’d you see?”

“Two different things, but they’re tied together somehow.” I ducked under a branch, focusing on the ragged deer path. I didn’t want to watch his reaction. “The first part is that you weren’t moving. You were lying on your stomach on the ground, and your face was bleeding. Your eyes were closed, and I couldn’t tell if you were breathing.” I looked sideways at him. “Oh, Jesse, it broke my heart, seeing you like that.”

“Go on,” he said, suddenly serious. “What was the second part?”

I swallowed. This was where it would get a little harder for him to believe. “I saw a man, Jesse, and he looked a lot like you but older. He was very strong, and he grabbed my throat, backing me into a tree, and he ripped at me, and—”

His hand squeezed mine before I could give in to the panic. “That’s why you were going on about my father.”

“Yeah,” I managed. “There was something so familiar about him, I almost thought it was you at first. And the idea that you might do that, that you could—”

He interrupted without giving those dark thoughts the time of day. “Listen. Maybe it was him. If your dreams really can do that, see folks, it
could
have been my father. Thomas Black hates me. He always has, but even more now since I foiled whatever plans he had at the powwow. And yeah, he’d be glad to see me dead. But you don’t need to worry. He ain’t as quick as I am, and I know all his tricks. As long as I’m around, you have nothing to worry about. You’re safe.” Any hint of hardness left his eyes when he told me, “I’ll tell you that forever, Adelaide. I’ll always keep you safe.”

“But in the dream you couldn’t. I was by myself. And you—”

“Was there anything else to the dream? Anything more?”

I sighed, defeated. The courage I’d felt before abandoned me. I couldn’t tell him about the other part of the dream. I couldn’t. So I lied. “I don’t know. That’s when I escaped from it. But you have to understand, Jesse, that there is nothing I fear more than a man—I mean a man who is intent on—”

“It’s okay, Adelaide. You don’t have to explain,” he said, squeezing my hand again. I was mildly surprised to discover it had started shaking again. He stopped walking and tugged my arm so I came around to face him. Then he took my other hand, and the look he gave me was nothing like what I’d expected. I had thought to see maybe indifference, disbelief surely, but not this sober expression. His eyes caught mine and held on.

“I will not let anyone harm you ever again. You have to believe that. And Adelaide?”

“Yes?”

“I love you. You know that’s true. But I won’t rush you. I won’t demand more than you’re ready to give. I can’t deny I want to touch you and hold you and love you ’til you can’t stand the sight of me, but I can wait. I’ll never do anything to scare you off, I promise. You’ve got me . . .” He hesitated, his eyes searching mine, then he let his breath out, and his shoulders dropped. “You’re too important to me.”

Something in my heart released. My blood sang through my veins as if it had just been freed. No one had ever looked at me that way before, talked to me with so much truth in their eyes. Even my sisters had been careful with my feelings, guarding their words when they wanted to tell me anything. And here stood Jesse, rough, straightforward, holding his heart out there for me to accept . . . or crush.

I was filled with a longing like I’d never felt before. A need, really, to let Jesse fold me into his arms, guard me with his body, protect me with his life. As if I could step off the highest mountain and just float through the air without a care, because I’d be safe knowing he was waiting to catch me.

Then a cold fist grabbed my heart, stifling everything. The truth of it was that I couldn’t allow myself to love him. And I couldn’t let him love me, either. Because I wasn’t what he thought. I wasn’t the perfect, quiet little mouse he thought me to be, all white and clean and innocent. All that was gone. They’d taken it. They’d ruined me, and I would never be good enough for Jesse’s love. So I chose to crush us both.

I shook my head. “You don’t know me, Jesse. Not really.”

He stared at me, his head tilted a little to one side. He hesitated, then asked, “Are you ever gonna tell me what happened to you?”

I shook my head and his mouth opened a bit, as if I’d stopped him mid-word. Then he shut it and frowned, his expression not angry, but probing. He wanted to know, and I’d told both Maggie and myself that I would tell him. But I couldn’t. The wall held me up, kept me alive. The wall I’d built in my head was the only thing that kept me from losing my mind.

I stepped away. “You really don’t know me.”

He was quiet, blinking slowly as thoughts raced behind his beautiful eyes. “I think I do,” he said quietly. “But I’d like to know more.”

I shook my head, but he only nodded. “We can keep walking if you want. I know it helps you think. But Adelaide, I get the feeling you need to get whatever this is out of you. I think if you talk about it, you might not be so scared anymore.”

“I
want
to be brave, Jesse,” I whispered, staring into his eyes. “I have always wanted to be brave. But I never had to be that way. I was always in Maggie’s shadow, and it was safe there.” I looked into the trees. “At least it was until that day. And now she’s here with Andrew. Gone.”

“I’m not, though,” he said and used his thumb to brush a stray tear off my cheek. “You’re safe with me.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.” He held my hands between us. “Adelaide, I want to be the one you trust.”

He wasn’t going to give up. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe if I told him, if I showed him the truth, I could help him get away from me. Instead of walking, I sank down until I sat on the path, all the wind sucked from my sails. If I could let it out, tell him the entire story, at least then he’d understand why he could never love me. I was dirty and damaged with a history no one could possibly look past. I knew well that I wasn’t good enough for any man to marry, let alone him.

“I haven’t thought about this in a very long time,” I told him. He sat quietly beside me, backing up so he leaned against a tree. He didn’t seem to be in pain, but he looked more comfortable now that he was sitting. “It’s like I
can’t
think about it. If I do, it takes over. Maggie says I need to move on, try to forget, but it’s like an itch that won’t go away. If I scratch it, let myself see what happened, it only gets worse.”