When Lightning Strikes

She turned to him slowly, gave him an agonizingly frightened look. "You've changed your mind," she said dully. "We're going back to the hideout."

He wished he could blame her for not trusting him. "No," he said quietly. "I haven't changed my mind. Lainie, I'll do everything in my power to get you home."

She frowned at him. "Why?"

It was the second time she'd asked him that, and this time he saw the pathetic pain in the question. It told him so much about her life?a life startlingly like his own. Hollow and empty. "Because I need to." And with that realization, he found a thread of the man he used to be. He clutched it, holding fast. It felt good to be honest, for once. Damn good.

She didn't answer, just looked at him.

He knew he shouldn't say anything, that he should simply back up and walk away. But he felt so drawn to her right now, so connected, that he didn't want to let this moment go. It was the first time in fifteen years he'd wanted to be with someone, wanted genuinely to know someone, and he didn't want to go back to being alone so quickly.

He wanted to touch her, to reach out and stroke her hair and tell her that it was all right, but he was afraid of how she would react. So he sat there, staring at her,

wanting to touch her, waiting to see how close she wanted to be.

A dozen words filled his head, but none of them made it up his dry throat. Their gazes met.

He felt a crushing sense of inevitability; it swept him up in the hot magic of possibility. He stared at her, speechless, wondering if she felt it, too. The heady sense of beginning something new.

"Well," she said finally, "I guess we should get going."

"Yeah," he said, but he couldn't help smiling. He felt suddenly as if he'd been given a second chance in life, a chance to redeem his lost soul by saving her. "Let's go."

Lainie sat as stiffly as she possibly could on the moving horse, her body angled away from Killian's. She was terrified to actually touch him. She wasn't sure why she was so scared; common sense told her it was a ridiculous, baseless fear, but still she felt it, as real as any fear she'd ever known. As crazy and impossible as it sounded, she felt as if there was almost nothing separating them, a barrier as clear and breakable as a piece of glass, and that if she reached out, moved beyond that invisible wall, there would be no going back.

For the past few hours, they'd ridden in silence, through the crisp, predawn darkness and into a blister-ingly hot summer day. And even though they hadn't spoken, the air felt heavy with unvoiced conversations and hidden emotions, like a full gray raincloud ready to burst.

She didn't want to talk to him; more important, she didn't want to listen. At first when she'd landed in this time period, Killian had been exactly what she'd ex-

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pected, the man she'd created from a blue screen and a keyboard. But now he was more ... so much more.

You're safe now.

The words kept coming back to her, irritatingly resilient, terrifyingly seductive. It was a promise no one had ever made to her before, and try as she might, she couldn't make it sound hollow or untruthful. He'd said it so quietly, so simply. She'd waited a lifetime to hear those words, and it seemed horribly unfair and twisted to hear them now, from a possibly fictional man who died one hundred years before she was born. And only days before she would leave him forever.

She tried earnestly not to believe in him or his promise, but she couldn't help herself. The simple words were the most provocative she could imagine, the most compelling thing a man could have said to her.

She stared at his back, broad and solid in front of her. The foamy blue fabric of his shirt was stretched taut across his shoulders, the seams tired and frayed. Sunlight caught in his long hair, turned the wavy strands to a curtain of steel that brushed his collar.

What would it feel like, she wondered, to simply lean forward and rest against his back, to let his silent strength be her shield? To just once, and perhaps to no one but herself, admit that she was scared and didn't want to be alone. To let herself be weak.

Without meaning to, she scooted a little forward. Her crotch slid up onto the thick leather skirt, her thighs came into contact with his legs.

She froze, barely breathing, waiting for him to make some humiliating comment.

She sat that way a long time, stiff and unmoving. The desert fanned out from them on all sides, an endless, searingly hot plain dotted with ocher spires and striated mesas. In the distance a hawk soared, its shadow a gliding feather against the bloodred rock wall. A filmy cloud crept past the sun, throwing a cool blanket across the heat for a split second, and then moving on.

He didn't say anything, didn't laugh or taunt or touch her. The heat from his legs created a curious sense of intimacy. Their booted feet dangled alongside each other's, like lovers' feet at the edge of a sun-warmed lake. She tried to ignore it, tried not to care how good it felt to be this close to him.

A shiver of longing moved through her. It was such a simple thing, a nothing little intimacy that most people took for granted as a normal part of life. But not Lainie. Intimacy had never been simple or expected or received. It was the carrot before the horse's nose that had directed so much of her life. The search for someone to care about, who would care about her in return. She'd sought it with an increasing despair until Kelly's birth. Then, thankfully, she'd found a love she'd never dreamed of, and so much of the cold darkness in her soul had been forgotten.

Or she'd thought it had been forgotten. Now, feeling his body against hers, knowing that she longed to rest her cheek against his back and slip her arms around his waist, she saw the bitter, frightening truth. It had never been forgotten; her little-girl dreams hadn't been completely buried. They'd simply lain dormant, waiting, waiting....

"You can lean on me, Lainie." Killian's deep voice brought her crashing out of her own thoughts.

She fought to regain her composure. "Wh-What?"