Under the Magnolia (4 page)

Addie's hands knocked into his
chest, tangling in his shirt as she took a breath that sounded a
little panicked. "Damn it. We didn't find candles."

Wes covered her hands with his.
"It's okay. They've got to have—" A whirring thump
drowned out his whisper, and dim light swelled in the room. "There's
the emergency generator."

Her expression was a little
self-conscious. "I'm a little old to be scared of the dark, but
it's not my favorite thing."

"Is that..." He cleared
his throat. "Dreams? Is that how you see things? I…I read
that a lot of precognitive visions come in dreams."

"Vivid, horrible dreams."
She sounded haunted, and her hands shook a little. "You wouldn't
believe how bad they can be. Those kids…" Addie
shuddered.

"The campers from the beach?"

"They were going to die,
terrified. Him first, because he loved her and tried to protect her,
but then she gave up...."

Wes’ throat tightened, and he
gathered Addie close to his chest and tucked her head against his
shoulder. "Shh. It's okay now. They're out in town, probably
drinking coffee at the shelter and listening to Mabel Wilson and
Patty Dupree argue over whose apple crumb cake recipe is the best."

"Good." Addie relaxed
against him slowly, her face staying pressed against his neck. In
twenty years, he'd never seen her so vulnerable. Addie had always
been strong, irrepressible, but now her hands were wrapped in his
shirt as she leaned against him, letting him support her.

Protectiveness rose up in him. The
feelings weren’t surprising; he'd been watching out for Addie
in one way or another since the sixth grade. But this was something
different. He felt almost possessive, as if caring for her was his
responsibility. His job. "Come on, honey. Let's find someplace
to sit down."

Addie followed him, one hand
clutched in his. The door past the laundry room opened into an
employee lounge. It looked comfortable enough, with a worn leather
couch, an old-fashioned refrigerator, and several plush chairs
covered in magazines and newspapers.

He led her to the couch and glanced
at the door. "I'm going to go rustle up some blankets and
things, all right? Just...try to relax."

"I'll be okay." She smiled
up at him gratefully. "I just... Sometimes I get a little thrown
by the bad ones."

He tried to give her a reassuring
smile. "Hey, I get it. Just relax. I'll be right back."

There were fewer lights in the
laundry area, so he had to pull the small flashlight from his utility
belt to search the shelves for bedding. He finally snatched up an
armful of blankets and some pillows then leaned against the wall.

Addie was a psychic. It was the sort
of thing that people around town had whispered about for years, every
time she popped up in the middle of some bit of trouble or other.
He'd tried to ignore the rumors, but every time something new and
strange happened, he'd always wondered if he should ask her about it.
Perhaps they could have helped each other through some of the tougher
times. At the very least, he could have made sure she didn't go
rushing off into harm's way.

But it was too late for that.
Something had kept him from mentioning it. If he were going to be
brutally honest with himself, he'd have to admit that he hadn't
wanted to take the chance that she would have no idea what he was
talking about. She'd look at him as if he were nuts, and any chance
he might have had of getting her to go out with him would be ruined.

Selfish damn coward,
he berated himself, then straightened. Whatever his reasons—or
hers, for that matter—the past was the past. All either one of
them could do now was go forward.

He only wished that his heart didn't
skip a beat when he thought about the possibilities.

Chapter Three

By the time Wes returned, Addie had
mostly pulled herself together. Her stubborn, independent side balked
at the fact that she'd almost fallen apart in front of Wes, but the
more practical voice inside her whispered that perhaps it had been
exactly what she needed.

A chance to not be alone. Not that
she was ever
alone
,
precisely, but she had learned early on that it was hard to hide her
abilities when she had a man in her bed. The one long-term boyfriend
she'd had in college had figured it out after a few months of
listening to her whimper in her sleep about disasters that appeared
in the newspaper the next morning.

But Wes knew. She wouldn't have to
pretend with him. She wouldn't have to sneak out of his bed or make
sure he didn't stay in hers. There would be someone there when she
woke up, terrified—

Getting a little head of yourself
there, girlie,
she
admonished silently as he walked back into the lounge, his arms piled
high with pillows and blankets. One little vision of incredibly hot
sex didn't mean she was about to start having sleepovers with Wes, no
matter
how
appealing the idea seemed.

And it was appealing. It was
damn
appealing. She imagined her expression was all kinds of inviting as
she smiled at him. "Thanks, Wes."

He just arched an eyebrow at her.
"For what?"

Both of
her
eyebrows went up before she could stop them. "For driving into a
hurricane to save me, for one thing."

He looked uncomfortable as he tossed
her a pillow and a blanket. "It's my job, Addie."

This was not heading toward hot sex
or anything remotely approaching it. "Wes, did I do something
wrong? I mean granted, I haven't been dating much, mostly due to the
fact that any man who spends the night with me has a good chance of
listening to me predict major catastrophes, so I'm probably out of
practice."

He stared down at the other blankets
in his hands before answering. "No, you didn't do anything
wrong. But maybe if
I'd
done something
right
,
you wouldn't be stuck out here right now in the middle of a damn
hurricane."

She couldn't even begin to fathom
what twist of logic had led him to the conclusion that this was
somehow his fault, but that was something she had every intention of
heading off at once. "How long have you known me, Wesley Saxon?
When's the last time you saw someone stop me from doing something
once I had my mind set on it?"

The line of his jaw immediately
tightened, and he unsnapped his holster, withdrawing his gun. "I'd
been meaning to ask you how you kept finding trouble. I suspected the
truth, but I found ways to put it off, to chicken out. All because I
didn't know how to tell you my own secret." He checked the gun,
laid it down on a long table, then unbuckled his heavy leather belt.
"Like I said, I'm a chicken."

A chicken was one thing she'd never
call him. "Well, now you know. I'm just as nutty as everyone
says, and maybe a little more. But I didn't want to drag you into the
middle of it, Wes. And I thought—" It sounded stupid now,
but she said it anyway. "There are still a lot of people out
there who aren't interested in getting involved with a psychic. But
then I felt guilty about asking you out when I'd have to
lie
to you." Maybe they were
both
cowards. She felt more like a teenager than a woman who had passed
thirty a few years back.

His belt hit the table with a thump,
and he raised his hands to the buttons of his shirt. His expression
had relaxed a little, and he looked amused. "Then can we just
agree that we're both idiots?"

"We're both idiots," she
agreed at once. "I can't believe you thought I'd stood you up
though, Wes. I would never have done that!"

He arched an eyebrow at her as he
unbuttoned his shirt. "Really?"

Oh, that was entirely unfair. She'd
never seen the body that would surely strain whatever T-shirt he had
on underneath his uniform, but her vision had provided her with an
extremely vivid memory of the way the hard muscles of his shoulders
had felt under her fingers as she'd clutched at him in utter
desperation.

She swallowed, forcing her eyes back
to his face. "No," she said. "But I don't know if I
would have dated you in high school. You were sort of bossy."

"Bossy?" The cotton shirt
pulled taut over his chest turned out to be dark blue. Addie had
always thought that all the talk about rippling muscles was a
particularly silly bit of hyperbole, but she'd been wrong. Wes’
shoulders did, indeed, seem to ripple as he shrugged out of his
uniform shirt. "Assertive, I'll give you. But
bossy
?"

"Bossy." She narrowed her
eyes. "You're
still
a little bossy, you know."

He grinned at her and stretched, his
movements slow and lazy. "It's all part and parcel of the job,
Addie Jo. Doesn't mean I'm on some power trip." He lowered his
arms and swung them back and forth a few times. "Why don't you
just ask me?"

It figured that he knew her well
enough to know she'd be burning with questions. Putting aside all
thought of his bossiness, she shifted into a more comfortable
position. "Okay. When did you find out that you were psychic?"

"Freshman year of college."
Wes turned and leaned to sit on the edge of the table. "The
first time I really noticed it, really
believed
,
I was at my Mama's house. I knocked a jar of dill pickles off the
counter, and I didn't move fast enough to catch it." His smile
faded a little. "The damn thing just...froze. Midair."

"Wow." She fiddled with
the edge of her robe as she considered that. "So what did you
do?"

He shrugged and smiled ruefully.
"Tried to pretend it didn't happen. That lasted all of fifteen
minutes. I've never been one to stick my head in the sand, you know."

"Did you find someone to help
you with it?"

"Nope." He clasped his
hands, twining his fingers together, and looked down at them. "What
about you? Did you go to one of those specialists to confirm your
visions?"

"Not one of the government
ones." She could remember all too clearly the fear that had
gripped her as she'd tried to decide what to do. "It was my
sophomore year before I had to admit it. I was twenty and scared out
of my mind, but I'd had a friend...a clairvoyant. She--" Addie
swallowed and closed her eyes. "They've got it even worse than
the precogs do. She went to one of the Psychic Testing Centers, and
two days later some guy from the Center was clearing out her things.
She just disappeared."

Wes looked torn between sympathy and
anger, and he scratched his jaw. "Maybe she wanted to go. I've
heard of some who didn't, though."

Addie doubted very much that Sarah
had disappeared willingly, but there was no point in arguing over it.
"Well, I didn't. I found one of the underground facilities. The
ones run by other psychics. They helped me some...helped me learn how
to deal with it. There was a doctor who prescribed me some sedatives.
It took me five years before I started really sleeping again."

"What about your granny?"

She blinked at him. "Gran? I
know she's the unchallenged ruler of the gossip mill in town, but I'm
not sure she's psychic, no matter what people like to say."

Wes laughed. "I meant, does she
know? The truth, not the rumors."

"Oh. No, I never told her."
She shrugged and looked down at her robe again. "It didn't... It
just didn't feel safe. Like I might be dragging her into my problems.
And that'd be a pretty awful thing to do after she pretty much raised
me."

"I don't know about that."
He pushed off the table and walked across the room to lower himself
into one of the chairs. "My mother knows about me."

A tiny hint of fear spiked through
her. She hadn't even considered the possibility that being psychic
would put Wesley in danger, too. "Do people—I mean, I
haven't heard. If telekinetics are as much in demand as precogs and
clairvoyants."