jerked, startled by the sweet sensation, surprised by how, how much she craved Ethan’s touch.
He looked back up and met her eyes. “I’m going to see you,” he said, his voice full of the kind of conviction that probably made CEOs in business meetings roll over and play dead.
Cleo didn’t even have that much will. She only knew she wanted what Ethan wanted, his gaze on her, his hands on her. Please.
Never hurrying, not appearing the least bit nervous, his fingers started on the row of small buttons holding her dress together.
Cleo closed her eyes. There were too many buttons. He was taking too long. And then he peeled the dress off her shoulders.
Ethan groaned one more time. “Cleo. Hell. Cleo.”
Her eyelids lifted and she saw his body was tense. He was looking at her breasts, and so she looked, too. Between the parted violet fabric of her clingy dress showed the lace of her darker violet bra, and rising from that was the swell of her breasts, taut and trembling.
Ethan’s hands tightened on her shoulders. He leaned forward, kissed her mouth hard, ran his tongue along her bottom lip.
Cleo shivered, only aware of how badly she wanted him to touch her. “I usually don’t…” she said, feeling almost bewildered by the power of the wanting. “I’m not—”
Ethan kissed her swiftly again, then rested his forehead against hers. “I know. And I wish—”
The distant sound of glass breaking cut him off.
Cleo jerked and half rose from her seat. Another sound—a woman’s stifled cry—made her rise completely. “My mother.”
Ethan hastily stood, too, and he pulled Cleo’s dress together, trying to button it. He looked around wildly, as if searching for an intruder or some other explanation. “What could it be?”
She pushed his hands away and quickly fastened the most crucial buttons as she ran through the kitchen. “A nightmare,” she called back, now speeding down the hall. “She has terrible nightmares.”
Cleo threw open the door to her mother’s bedroom. Just as she expected, Celeste was awake. With the help of the dim hallway light, Cleo confirmed her mother had had another run-in with the terrible dream. Tears still ran down Celeste’s pretty face.
“Don’t come in!” she ordered.
Cleo grabbed the doorjamb to halt her forward momentum. “What? Why?”
Instead of answering, Celeste struck a match, her hand wavering with nightmare after shocks as she lit the candle that was always at the ready on her bedside table.
The scent of Louisiana—that was how Celeste always described the aroma of her special white candles—filled the air. In the light the flame gave off, the light that Celeste believed burned the dream’s evil from the room, Cleo saw why her mother had ordered her to stay by the door.
Somehow she’d broken the delicate glass vial that always sat on the small bedside table, as well. In the incongruous shape of a skeleton, the vial had been filled with bergamot oil. Inspired by her time on the bayou, Celeste conferred upon the oil a special power, just as she did the candles. She believed rubbing the stuff on her skin would ease the almost-arthritic cramping of her left hand that invariably followed the horrible dream.
Cleo watched her mother take a long, deep breath. “Are you all right, Mama?”
Celeste closed her eyes, opened them, and a faint smile moved the corners of her mouth. “I’m all right for now, Cleo.”
“I’ll get a broom.” Her heart heavy, she whirled around, and headed back toward the kitchen.
To find Ethan lingering by the sink with his back to her, staring out into the snowy February night.
Cleo automatically lifted her fingers toward the remaining undone buttons of her dress.
Ethan turned around, catching her.
She froze.
His gaze flicked in the direction of her breasts, flicked back to her face. He swallowed. “Is everything all right?”
Cleo self-consciously dropped her hands to her sides. “She has a recurring nightmare that is very…unsettling.”
“Ah.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Please tell her I’m sorry.”
“I will.” Cleo backed toward the utility closet where they stored the broom. “And, um, Ethan.” Her cheeks burned. She wondered if he would want to wait for her to settle her mother back to sleep. She wondered if she had the nerve to ask him to wait. “I’m, uh, sorry, too.”
His mouth curved up but there was no smile in his eyes or his voice. “Don’t worry about it.” He took a step in the direction that would take him to the guest stairs and his second-floor bedroom. “Good night, Cleo.”
Good night, Cleo. Her courage didn’t show itself to ask him for something more than that. Biting her bottom lip, she just watched him head out of the kitchen.
“Wait!” Her voice was squeakily anxious.
Ethan halted, then slowly turned around. One dark gold eyebrow rose. “What?”
Cleo swallowed. “Before…before…” She gave up and just gestured toward the den and the love seat that she’d never look at quite the same way again. “Back there, back then, you…” Impatient with herself, she ran a hand through her hair. “You were saying something. What was it?”
Ethan’s expression didn’t give any of his thoughts away. Cleo supposed his kind of work made that an important trait, too. “Tomorrow, Cleo. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
And this time when he turned toward the stairs, Cleo let Ethan go. Tomorrow.
But when tomorrow came, Ethan Redford left the Big Sky B and B, without a word of excuse or explanation to anyone. As a matter of fact he disappeared from Montana altogether, leaving Cleo with only two imprints as a reminder of him—one of his credit card and the other of his kiss.
One
The thirty-year-old nightmare was older than Celeste Kincaid Monroe’s daughter Cleo, but it gripped Celeste ruthlessly all the same, dragging her instantly from sleep to terror.
The bayou again. Moss hanging like sticky, gray spiderwebs in the trees. The scent of wet decay.
Thunder. Once. Twice.
Then, as always, he appeared, a dark figure carrying something even darker. Fear surged like adrenaline through Celeste’s veins. It sang in her blood, an eerie, high-pitched dirge. She dug her bare toes into the mud.
Turn! Run!
But escape was impossible. The tall silhouette of her brother, Jeremiah Kincaid, kept coming toward her, the water swishing around his knees. The burden in his arms didn’t seem to trouble him. He carried it to Celeste as if it were a gift.
“No,
