By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс

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СКАЧАТЬ all the time your brains spend on it, don’t tell me you don’t sort the experience into categories.”

      He grinned at her. “I can’t speak for all men, but I usually think along the lines of good, better, best.” She was lying half on top of him, her arms folded. He took a lock of her hair and twisted it around his finger. “At this very minute, I’m thinking now or later.”

      “Later.” She shoved herself to her knees, intending to start searching for clothes, but she cracked her head on the side of the stone arch.

      And that was when reality hit her. “No. Oh, no.”

      Something in her tone had him sitting up and reaching for her. “You’re hurt. Let me see.”

      “No.” She pushed his hands away, picked up his shirt and shoved it at him. “My head’s fine. Or I thought it was. But I can’t seem to think straight when I’m around you. I definitely wasn’t thinking.” She waved a hand. “Do you have any idea what we just did?”

      “I have a pretty good idea.”

      “You never should have come out here to read my fantasy. I never should have followed you. This was not supposed to happen. What we’ve been doing can’t work. We have to stop right now.”

      Her voice was rising. She was rattled and he realized it was the first time he’d seen her that way. He put his hands on her shoulders, but she twisted out of his grip. “Why don’t you explain what the problem is—and fill in the details?”

      She waved a hand. “You kissed me and I kissed you back.”

      “I’ve kissed you before.”

      “Not here. We just kissed under the stones. We made love here. That was not supposed to happen. A sexual fantasy is one thing. A great thing. But I don’t want to have anything to do with the legend and its power. And I certainly don’t want to fall in love with someone. Do you?”

      “No.” The answer came out quickly. It was the truth. He didn’t want to fall in love with anyone. Something tightened around his heart.

      “Good.” She placed a hand against her heart and rubbed it. “We’re in agreement. What we’re doing. It has to stop now.”

      And what if they couldn’t stop it? What if it was already too late? What if he’d already fallen in love with her? There were things he wanted to say. But before he did, Duncan had to work them out in his own mind. What he said was what he knew for sure. “We’ll figure out a solution, Piper. You’re good at that, and so am I.”

      But Duncan was careful not to touch her as they gathered up their clothes and dressed. And when she handed him the reading glasses he’d set aside, she was careful that her hand didn’t come in contact with his.

      The rain had slowed, and while they’d been safe enough in the stone arch during the Adirondack monsoon they’d just experienced, he wanted to get her back in the castle. He had to agree with her insistence that they put a halt to what was happening between them—because he’d lost track of everything while they’d been making love.

      And Piper’s life was in danger.

      When they were ready to leave the stone arch, the rain had stopped completely, and the early-evening sun was throwing long shadows across the garden. He figured that Daryl and Vi would be arriving soon.

      The sound of gravel crunching had them both turning toward the driveway as a truck pulled to a stop in front of the castle doors. The sign on the door read Margie’s Flowers. Duncan noted that the location was Glen Loch, New York.

      He got a bad feeling then, and he kept Piper behind him as they walked toward the man who climbed out. Before they even reached him, he unloaded a vase of red roses.

      “For Piper MacPherson,” he said with a smile.

      “Do you know who placed the order?” Duncan asked as Piper took the vase.

      The man shook his head. “My wife took the order over the phone. They paid extra for a speedy delivery. Not that they had to. We’re mighty grateful for the business that Miss Vi and Miss Adair are bringing in to all the merchants in Glen Loch.” Then he nodded to both of them and climbed back into his truck.

      “I can call Sheriff Skinner,” Duncan said as he opened the door. “He might be able to get a phone number or trace the credit card.”

      Saying nothing, Piper set the vase on a table in the foyer as he locked the door and reset the alarm.

      Duncan wanted to touch her, to simply run a hand down her arm, to tell her that she’d be safe. More than that, he wanted to pull her into his arms, to tell her … The problem was there was too much to tell her. And it wasn’t the time.

      Instead, he reached for the note on the vase of flowers and opened it. The message wasn’t written on vellum, but it was clear.

      TILL WE MEET AGAIN. AND WE WILL VERY SOON.

      The words told him what he’d already known. Time was running out.

       12

      “THERE’S MORE,” PIPER SAID. “And you’re not going to like it.”

      That’s what she’d said the moment that she’d looked up from the note. Then she’d led him into the library. And she’d been right. He didn’t like it at all.

      Duncan silently cursed himself as he stood next to her and studied the rose petals that had been strewn over the white sheet on the terrace outside the library. He’d contacted Skinner and Adrienne. Lightman had been in plain sight all afternoon—sitting on the park bench and taking in the view of the lake. Richard Starkweather and Sid Macks were both still in D.C., their movements accounted for.

      As he’d relayed the news to Piper, he’d wanted more than anything to simply pull her into his arms and hold her. But he didn’t dare. Everything on the terrace had been pounded by the downpour, but even in the long shadows cast by the late afternoon sunlight, the wet rose petals looked like drops of blood.

      And that could easily have been the case. It could have been Piper’s blood he was looking at. He’d left her alone because his mind had been so full of her, so obsessed with her, that he’d gone out to the stone arch to find out what her secret fantasy had been when she was nineteen.

      Idiot. He cursed himself again. No woman had even come close to turning him into one before. If he was going to keep her safe, it had to stop.

      About fifteen feet separated the scene he was studying from the couch where he’d left her sleeping. And she’d been there alone when the psycho had set up the little tableau for her. A mix of emotions assaulted him as he stood there, imagining what she might have been thinking, feeling. He was furious with whoever was doing this to her and angry with himself that he’d left her alone. But overriding all of that was a cold fear that he wasn’t doing enough to protect her, wouldn’t be able to do enough.

      Ruthlessly, he shoved the feelings aside. None of them were helping him.

      “Take СКАЧАТЬ