“What are you terrified of, Ramie?” he asked gently. “We showed you the surveillance system. We stole quite a few of the brightest military minds from Uncle Sam. These are men who’d make the average guy out there on the streets, just like the punk stalking you, look like freaking kindergartners and, well, I bet the kindergarten girls could kick the shit out of him. Have you ever seen kindergarten girls? They’re freaking scary, let me tell you. My hat is off to anyone who can last an entire day with that many five- and six-year-old girls and boys.”
He asked a question but then gave her no opportunity to answer it. He kept talking, drawing her thoughts from the scare she’d just been delivered and filling the gap with teasing stories of kindergartners.
He was giving her time. To tell him in her own way instead of demanding it and pulling it out of her teeth. He’d likely just recently had to learn that kind of patience. With Tori. It would have frustrated her brothers for her to be uncommunicative because they’d want answers. To everything. And who knows what would have happened had they been able to pull any identifying information from Tori’s fractured dreams.
Ramie yawned and suddenly Caleb was closer, mounding pillows between their backs and the headboard of the bed. Then he pulled her into his arms so she was cradled by his body, his warmth soothing her.
She’d felt the chill the moment Caleb had opened the door to the “guest room,” which was all the way down the hall from the Devereaux siblings and had its own guest bathroom to boot. But she didn’t like the room. It was . . . ?cold. Sterile. Quite frankly it freaked her out.
Caleb brushed his lips over the top of her hair. “What happened, Ramie? Did you have a bad dream?”
“You’re just going to think—know—that I’m crazy. You’ll know it like I’m starting to know,” she whispered.
Even as she was dancing around Caleb’s target, the chill in the room grew even colder. Ramie shivered, her teeth chattering in a not so very attractive manner, but at the moment she didn’t give a shit what she looked like. She just wanted to be warm.
“You’re freezing to death,” Caleb said in disbelief. “Are you sick? Why the hell didn’t you say something? I could have had a doctor come out to see you.”
Ramie threw up her hand. “I’m not sick. I’m not crazy. Those are the only two things I know for sure in my life right now.”
“What was the dream about?” he asked, pinpointing the topic so there’d be no sidestepping.
“It wasn’t a dream,” she whispered. “I wasn’t even asleep yet. I was tired and I was thinking that I was lying on the best bed I’d slept on in months. Lots and lots of months. I was lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling and trying to make my brain shut down. My head was aching a bit around my temples so I was just rubbing my head and trying to relax. And then . . .”
“Then what, Ramie?”
She hesitated, wondering just how far she should take things with Caleb. How much she could trust him with. What if he turned on her? What if he’d worked some sort of sick trade where he handed Ramie over, gift-wrapped and in a bow in exchange for Tori and her continued safety? Maybe they were just throwing her under the bus so that none of their family would be remotely involved—or responsible for a man being brought to justice.
He stared her down with those ice-blue eyes that could at times seem glacial. Like he could freeze someone at a glance. Her skin prickled. As if she weren’t cold enough already.
As if sensing her chill, or perhaps clued in by the fact that the entire bed was shaking with her, he pulled the blankets over them both and tugged Ramie back into his arms so there was no space between.
Heat scorched over her skin, warming her from the inside out. She hated that her T-shirt was a barrier between his bare skin and her own. She slipped her hands, palms down on his chest, between them, ignoring his flinch over the coldness of her touch. Gradually they both relaxed as more of his warmth seeped into her body.
His lips were tantalizingly close to hers. Their breaths mingled and it was so silent she could hear his heartbeat. Could feel it beneath her fingertips.
“Kiss me,” she pleaded softly. “Make me forget.”
Their lips touched tenderly, just a gentle brush that trailed warmth all the way to her heart.
“Forget what, Ramie? You have to talk to me. If I’m going to keep you safe, you can’t keep me in the dark.”
The spell was broken and the cold returned. A shiver stole up her spine and she gathered the covers, rolling onto her back and pulling them to her chin. She stared blindly up at the ceiling as Caleb lay beside her, his strong body touching her side.
“He spoke to me,” she said quietly. “I’m not crazy. It’s not my subconscious or me projecting my fear nor is it the manifestation of my fears or paranoia. He has a link to me. It’s how he always manages to find me. It’s how he knows where I am now.”
Caleb went rigid next to her. She chanced a glance out of the corner of her eye and saw that his face was every bit as tense as the rest of him. What she didn’t see, however, was disbelief.
Relief coursed through her veins, making her heady, dizzy almost, as though she’d just had an IV injection of alcohol or a potent drug.
“You believe me,” she said in wonder. “You believe me.”
He slid his large hand over her belly, splaying his fingers outward and then he continued upward until his fingers gently touched her chin and he pushed it in his direction so her gaze met his.