The Stranger (8 page)

“Fuck.” That last point really bothered me. “Now, see, that’s why I had to call the good doctor, because you didn’t look like you were sleepwalking. You were totally present during our...err...activities.”

“Activities?” She gasped. “You mean we did it more than one time?”

“We did,” I said. “Several times.”

“Holy shit.” She buried her face in her hands.

I should’ve kept that detail to myself.

“I wonder,” I said tentatively. “Would it help you remember if I tell you what happened?”

“No!”

“The doctor said that, sometimes, people who are exposed to footage of their sleepwalking activities remember things.”

“Pictures?” She stared at me, horrified. “You didn’t, did you?”

“Of course not.” The security footage didn’t count as a sex tape; did it?

“Okay, good.” She settled her hand on her chest and forced herself to take in little breaths.

“But I still need you to remember.”

“Why?”

“Because...” It bothered the hell out of me that I’d had the most spectacular night of my life and she didn’t even know about it. “You need to understand. You acted lucid. You wandered all over the house. You drank a pot of soup.”

“Really?” she said. “I don’t think I’ve done that before.”

“The doctor told me that each sleepwalking episode is different,” I said. “She also said that in some cases, the sleepwalking behavior evolves into more complex activities, working, traveling, and doing all kinds of stuff while sleepwalking. Last night, you told me you were hungry.”

“I talked?”

“Of course you talked,” I said. “You carried on entire conversations.”

Her forehead wrinkled in thought. She gnawed on her lips. The gesture reminded me of her mouth on my dick. My body remembered every detail even if she didn’t. I got hard on the spot. Dammit.

“I don’t think I’ve ever talked in my sleep before,” she said. “Tammy and Louise say I’m quiet as the dead. It freaks them out.”

“You were a regular chatterbox when you were with me.”

“What did I say?”

“Lots of things.” I took the ramp off the highway and turned onto a country road. “You talked about my aura.”

“Your aura?” She scoffed. “I don’t believe in that nonsense.”

“Apparently you do, at least when you’re asleep.”

“No way.”

“Yes way,” I said. “You said my aura was a good one.”

“I did?”

“Something about a solar flare?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “Zero, nada.”

I was getting nowhere fast. “The doctor also said that some people show signs of enhanced sensorial perception during sleepwalking episodes. You were very—what’s the word the doctor used?—empathic. It was as if you were plugged directly into my emotions.”

She gave me a ribbing glance. “So you’ve got other emotions besides paranoia, perpetual wrath, and inappropriate curiosity?”

“Ha,” I said. “Very funny.”

“Good to know.” She allowed herself a crooked little smile then sobered up. “How was I plugged into your emotions?”

I didn’t really want to talk about my shit. But Summer, something about her, she made me feel like maybe I could. Besides, I needed to establish a baseline with her. I had to give something—or at least make an effort—to get something in return.

“First off,” I said, “you didn’t mind my scars.”

“Why should I’ve minded your scars?”

“People don’t like to look at stuff like that.”

“Scars are just that, scars,” Summer said. “My dad had several scars from his fight with cancer. I didn’t think they were ugly. They were just part of his body’s history.”

Now there was a novel concept I could dig.

“Your scars show that you have amazing healing abilities,” she said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s hard to think about what you went through when you got those, but you survived and you’re a good-looking guy any day, with or without scars.”

Her heightened sense of empathy extended to her waking hours. Plus, she thought I was good looking. Or was she playing me like a goddamn fiddle? I spotted nothing but sincerity in her eyes.

The road came to an end. The pavement turned into a gravel road covered with snow, mud, and potholes the size of lunar craters. I slowed down and, edging the worst of them, drove forward.

“What else did I say last night?” she asked.

“You said something along the lines of me being sad.”

“Oh.” She took that in. “And were you?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Look who’s talking.”

It took all I had to push the words out. “I lost a good friend of mine yesterday. His name was Danny. He shot himself.”

“I’m sorry.” She reached over and gave my arm a little squeeze. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “He was the one who died.”

Her touch zapped through my arm and jolted me to the core. Up and down, my cock was beginning to feel like a busy drawbridge. I found myself regretting that her touch had been so brief. The sympathy in her eyes fucked with my head. I swallowed a dry gulp.

“Were you guys close?” she asked.

“We flew many missions together.”

She cocked her eyebrows. “Flew?”

“Helicopters,” I said. “Alaska Air National Guard.”

“Oh, so on top of everything else, you’re a pilot for the National Guard?”

“I was.”

“You don’t fly anymore?”

“Of course I do, fly, helicopters, I mean.” Damn those probing eyes. “I’m just not actively flying for the Guard at the moment.”

“Is that how you got hurt?” she said. “In a helicopter crash?”

“We’re getting off topic here,” I said. “The point I was trying to make was that last night you were fully interactive. There was a connection there.”

“A connection?”

Time to swing the bat.

“The thing is, Summer, you intrigue me.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Intrigue you?”

“I’d like to get to know you better.”

“What?” Her eyes widened and, for a full ten seconds, she stared at me, incredulity written all over her face. Then her expression transformed. Gone was the shock, in was a straight-lipped glare, a gesture of pure and absolute defiance. “No, uh-uh.” She poked her finger in the air. “You need to know: Regardless of what happened last night, I don’t sleep with strangers, awake or asleep.”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “I promise I won’t ask you to sleep with me. Instead, I’ll wait until you ask me.”

The blistering look she gave me was strike one. “I would never ask you!”

She had a way of daring me without even knowing it. “Never say never.”

“Seth Erickson, you better wipe the smirk off your face right now.” She huffed. “What happened last night was an accident, nothing else. Just because you own half of Alaska, doesn’t mean I’m going to do what you want. I don’t care if you think you’re God’s gift to women.”

I counted her strong reaction as strike two. I don’t know why, but her calling last night an “accident” raised my hackles.

“It’s not all in my head.” I charged full steam ahead. “There was an attraction last night, and lots of chemistry. I don’t think we were done.”

“Not done?” She gawked. “Are you always this blunt?”

“Yep.”

The green eyes scoured my face. “Why would a guy like you ever want to hang out with someone like me?”

I shrugged. “Maybe I find you interesting.”

“Or easy.”

This was not going well. “Look, could we maybe just start again from scratch?”

“Start what?” she said.

“This.” I motioned between us. “You and I. We.”

“
We?
” If looks could pierce, I’d be full of holes. “I don’t get you. Is this your idea of...what? Asking me out or something?”

“I’m good with that, if that’s how you’d like to call it.”

“Are you off your freaking rocker?” She stared at me.

“Is it such a bad idea?”

“It’s a terrible idea and you know it!”

“Why?”

“I’m from the other side of the world,” she said. “I’m tropical, you’re arctic. I’m a surly witch and you’re grouchy as hell. I suffer from a very inconvenient disorder that makes dating very hard. In fact, I’m not interested in dating at all. The only thing that stands between me and disaster every night is a sturdy door chain.”

“Is that what you do at home?”

“Yeah, but that’s neither here nor there,” she said. “You and I? We’ve got nothing in common.”

“Except a really great first night together.”

“Which I don’t remember,” she said pointedly. “Forget it. This discussion is over. Besides, I don’t date men with prickly beards.”

I knuckled my stubble. “Technically, this is more like benign neglect than a beard.”

“I don’t date men with facial hair or whatever you want to call that stuff on your face.”

“You’re making this up.”

“I don’t date trust fund babies either,” she said. “No, sir. I’m real firm on that rule. I’m pretty sure you’re one of them.”

“One of who?”

“Boys with trust funds,” she said. “Men with tons of money who think they can buy women. Nobody owns me, that’s for sure.”

Ah. She was talking from experience. I remembered what Spider had said about her early marriage to a wealthy Miami socialite. It had lasted less than a year. I suspected things had gone really wrong for her in that relationship. Had it tainted her views on all men?

“Do you want to talk about him?” I said.

“
Him?
”

“Sergio De Havilland,” I said. “Your ex?”

She glared at me. “How do you know his name?”

“I looked you up. Remember? I looked him up too.”

“Back off,” she said. “You are really testing my boundaries here.”

“Was marriage that bad?”

“I’ll never, ever make that mistake again,” she said. “But I don’t want to talk about him. You will not mention that name in my presence ever again, understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I saluted, half-heartedly. How was that for a strong reaction? “No more mention of the son of a bitch. Just out of curiosity, how many guys have you dated since your ex?”

“None of your business!”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say the number is close to zero.”

“Excuse me?”

“Why, with all those rules,” I said, “the statistical probabilities severely restrict the number of likely candidates.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mathematics,” I said. “Given all your rules, the odds of you finding an agreeable candidate are very low, which is why I can guess—with a respectable margin of error—that you haven’t been dating much.”

She huffed prettily. “Seth Erickson, you’re way out of line. Who gave you the authority to commentate on my life?”

“The way I see it, I’m already involved in your life,” I said. “We’ve slept together. I’m in.”

“Stop.” She lifted a finger in the air. “As soon as I find my sister, I’m going back to Miami and that’s that.”

She was stubborn all right, but I was fascinated with her and more motivated than ever to stick to my plan. Challenges didn’t faze me—on the contrary, they energized me—and Summer was a challenge in every sense of the word. It was a done deal in my mind. Before this was all over, I was going to seduce her all the way back to my bed.

I made a turn at the next crossroads. The road was barely visible under a layer of snow. The forest shaded the road and the snow hadn’t melted much. I lowered the snowplow and worked my way up the hill. The truck could only take us so far in these remote parts.

I spotted the question on her face before she gathered the courage to ask it. “Go ahead, ask.” I changed gears and tackled the steeper terrain. “I’ll be honest.”

She gave me a crooked little smile. “No offense, but that’s what I’m afraid of.”

I laughed. The more we talked, the more I liked her. “I admit that in my case, honesty is more of a vice than a virtue. What is it you want to know?”

The little line that wrinkled her forehead announced her inner struggle. She wasn’t sure she wanted to trust me with anything, including the question clearly boggling her mind. She stole another look at me, took a deep breath, and lowered her voice. “Did I like it?”

The question got my heart pumping. “You gave every indication you did.”

She let out a sigh and then cautiously forced the words out. “Did
you
like it?”

My pride and my sense of self-preservation reared up. So did my dick. Putting all my eggs into this basket sounded like the most dangerous proposition yet since coming back from Afghanistan. A sleepwalker. Hell. It was odd as hell. A possible plant with all the dangers that entailed. But those eyes. They were capable of wrecking even the most thorough risk assessment matrix.

“I did like it,” I said. “I liked
you
very much indeed.”

The breath caught in her throat. Her face flushed and her eyes darted away from mine, but not before I caught a gleam of what...satisfaction? The emotions I spotted in her eyes brought back memories she would’ve found completely inappropriate.

The top of the hill confirmed that it would be impossible to tackle the last part of the way in the truck. I cleared a spot on the side of the road and parked. I turned off the ignition, reached to the backseat and handed her snow pants, a jacket, a beanie, and a pair of gloves.

“You’ll need these.”

I reached for my snow pants and, unzipping the ends, maneuvered around the wheel, pulled them over my boots, lifted my hips off the seat and buckled them on. “When did you start sleepwalking?”

“When my mom died.” She zipped up her coat. “She walked to the ocean in her sleep and drowned. I was twelve.”

Tough break. “Do you remember the first time it happened to you?”

“How could I not?”

“Well?”

She hesitated. She really did have a trust issue going on, but hey, so did I, so I couldn’t blame her. The struggle on her expressive face was easy to read. I could almost hear her mind working, trying to figure out if she wanted to tell me and how much.

“I woke up eighteen miles away from home,” she said, “at the cemetery, on my mom’s tomb, drenched from the rain, with my bare feet all cut up. I had no memories of how I’d gotten there.”

Jesus.

She squeezed the bridge of her nose. “I have no idea why I just told you that.”