Charon's Crossing

Kathryn checked the door one last time. She was an old hand at finding reason in the midst of chaos, thanks to her parents. Living with them had been like riding a roller coaster, all highs and lows with very little in between.

She had learned early to ignore the fireworks around her by concentrating on emotionless things. Things she could trust, like math and computers.

And mops and brooms and plain, unvarnished hard work.

It had amused her father and baffled her mother to emerge from the scene of their latest battle, where the plates and whatever else they'd both hurled at the walls still lay broken on the floor, and find their daughter busily cleaning her bedroom or reorganizing her closet.

"Honestly, Kathryn, what are you doing?" Beverly would say in the same tone she might have used if she'd discovered a spaceship on the lawn.

"Nothing," Kathryn would answer, and she'd go right on cleaning and scrubbing and rearranging.

Now, she didn't even hesitate. She headed straight for the kitchen, banged open half a dozen cabinet doors before she found what she wanted, and set to work.

* * *

The explanation for what had happened came to her out of the blue in midafternoon.

She was on her knees in the downstairs bathroom, busily scrubbing away at a marble floor that had lightened and brightened perceptibly with a little elbow grease and a lot of Mr. Clean, when the answer popped into her head.

"Of course," Kathryn cried, "of course!"

She dropped her scrub brush into the bucket of grungy water, sat back on her heels and pumped her fist in the air in triumph.

It was so simple. So wonderfully simple. She'd tried to make sense out of Matthew McDowell's dreamtime appearance, imagining everything from smoke and mirrors to a hidden movie projector, and all the time the truth had been just waiting for her to recognize it.

She was busy cleaning up the cobwebs and junk that had accumulated in the house. Well, her brain had done the same thing. Dreams were nothing but a way of processing the odds and ends that lay around in a person's subconscious.

She grinned, thumbed her hair behind her ears and got to her feet. The only surprise was that it had taken her so long to figure it out.

She'd told Olive she'd never heard so much as a word about Charon's Crossing until she'd inherited it, or about Lord Arthur Russell and his daughter until today.

Well, that was true.

It just wasn't accurate.

Kathryn plucked the scrub brush out of the bucket and upended the dirty water into the toilet. Then she dumped the brush back in, collected the bottle of Mr. Clean, and made her way to the kitchen.

Her father would have surely talked about Charon's Crossing and its occupants at some point during the years. Trevor would have reveled in all that history and romantic nonsense. A mansion set in the midst of a tropical paradise, built by an ancestor with a beautiful, passionate daughter caught up in what might have been a love triangle...

Hell. Trevor wouldn't have been able to resist.

Of course, he'd have talked about it. Kathryn had either been too young to care or she'd tuned him out, something she knew she'd done a lot once she'd figured out that her father was never going to settle down and be like everybody else's father.

Either way, her trusty subconscious had obviously stored the information neatly away until she'd gotten word that she'd inherited Charon's Crossing. The news had unlocked that long forgotten mental file drawer, and she had dreamed. Of the house, the garden... of Cat Russell's lover. And yes, the dreams would have been rich in detail. Her father would have described everything, thanks to his artist's perspective.

Kathryn put her cleaning tools back into their cabinet, slammed the door with a flourish, and smiled.

"Sorry about that, Matthew," she said, "but that's the end of the story."

Her smile wavered. Well, no. Not quite. The tales her father had told her couldn't explain the sexiness of her dreams. Her own imagination had taken over there.

So what? A little erotic fantasy might be good for the soul. Good for her relationship with Jason, too, she thought as she trotted up the stairs towards her bedroom for a quick shower.

It really would have been nice if he'd been able to fly down with her. A little sun, a little R and R... who knew what might have happened? Charon's Crossing, decrepit as it was, might be just the aphrodisiac they needed...

"Damn!"

Kathryn paused midway up the steps, her hand on the banister and her face tilted up to the shadows that late afternoon had brought to the second floor landing.