images linked one to another: sleep, bed, Juliet, naked, hot, needy, desperate. Fumbling for his glass, he took a drink, swallowed hard and blinked to clear his vision. “Yes.” He had spent half the night pacing his apartment and the other half roaming the streets. He’d had a glass of milk at the all-night diner—the cook’s remedy for insomnia—and walked until he was exhausted. He’d needed the ride she’d given him—had been half asleep before it was over—and had slept the sleep of the dead the rest of the morning.
All because last night he had dreamed the dreams of the dead.
“Have you had insomnia since the accident?”
His throat was still tight, his voice still husky. “I don’t have insomnia.”
“But this morning you said you couldn’t sleep.”
And she had assumed, as everyone else did, that by couldn’t, he meant physically unable to. That was what he wanted them to think, wasn’t it? “I wouldn’t let myself fall asleep last night.” His tone was halting, his gaze fixed on his hands. They were familiar, yet strange. Long fingers, callused skin, strong grip, capable of all the things hands were designed for and maybe more. Capable, maybe, of inflicting great pain, of stealing someone else’s very life. “Sometimes I have dreams….”
She leaned forward, and her voice brightened, as if the subject had suddenly become ex—interesting. “About your past?”
“I think so. I don’t know. Maybe not.” Please, God, no.
“What kind of dreams?”
“Just dreams.”
“You don’t remember them?”
His silence let her believe one answer, but the truth was completely different. He remembered too much. Not enough.
“Are you in these dreams?”
“Look, I’d rather not—”
“But they may be important. Maybe the key to your memory is in these dreams, Martin.”
It was the first time she’d said his name. Such a plain, simple name, serviceable but nothing special. But it sounded special in her voice. “Look, they’re just dreams, nothing more. They don’t mean anything. They’re not important.”
“But they disturb you.”
He scowled, wishing he’d let her believe, like everyone else, that he was an insomniac. Since it was too late for that, he chose instead to turn the conversation in a direction that was sure to make her forget his sleep problems. “Not as much as you do.”
She stared at him, her face turning as red as the cloth on the table. “I didn’t…” She fidgeted, then straightened and sat primly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“No, Juliet, I’m sure you don’t,” he agreed quietly, then lightened up. “When you were in school, did the kids tease you about your name?”
Her look was wary, her tone cautious. “Of course. How could they resist?”
“‘What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!’”
“My mother was a fan of Shakespeare. What can I say?”
“There are worse things in the world to be named after.”
“Like a soap opera hunk?”
He nodded.
“I did some reading about amnesia last night.”
“You keep medical books around the house?”
“On the Internet.”
He’d left last night so she could go to bed. If he’d known she was going to stay up late, he would have hung around until she’d shoved him out the door. He would have delayed going home and to bed himself, would have delayed the nightmares. “Learn anything interesting?”
“Lots, but nothing that might help.”
“I don’t think I was computer-friendly. All this online stuff seems like a whole new world to me.”
“It’s the way everything is done now. It can offer some pretty vast possibilities.”
“It can also isolate you. It offers so many possibilities that you lose the need for real people in your life.”
“But if you don’t have real people in your life, it’s a decent substitute.”
He wondered about that. Maybe standing on the sidelines watching life go by via a computer monitor was okay for her, but he suspected it would make him just that much hungrier for human contact.
He was already pretty damn hungry for contact with her.
Finishing with her meal, she tucked the computer newsletter in her bag, picked up her tab and got to her feet. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“I’m heading that way. Mind if I walk with you?”
Her only response was a shake of her head.
The weather was springtime warm, which didn’t mean they were safe from a cold snap or even snow. After all, it was only late April. They could easily wake up any time in the next month and find themselves snowed in.
He knew where he hoped he would be in the event of such luck.
The block-long walk passed quickly. Too soon they were inside the police department, and Juliet was looking eager to gain the privacy of her office. He tried to think of something to say—some excuse to see her again, some courage to ask for another evening of her time—but the words didn’t come. With a faint smile and a murmured “See you around,” she went down the hall to her office. A moment later he saw her through the window, taking a seat at her desk, turning her attention immediately to the computer there.
“Look, Jack, a Peeping Tom right here in the department.”
He glanced over his shoulder to find Stone Richardson and Jack Stryker, another detective who was working the Olivia Stuart homicide, standing behind him.
“What’s so interesting?” Stryker looked, then shrugged. “Oh. The new records supervisor.” He said it as if Juliet were of no more interest than the grandmotherly administrative assistant sitting outside the chief’s office, as if she weren’t the prettiest woman to set foot in Grand Springs in a long time.
Come to think of it, Stone didn’t seem particularly impressed, either. Granted, both men had gotten married in the last year—Jack to Josie Reynolds, the town treasurer, and Stone to Jessica Hanson, the bookkeeper at the ski lodge—but did that mean they’d lost their ability to recognize beauty when they saw it?
To each his own, so the saying went, and apparently it was true. After all, while Martin liked what he knew of Josie and Jessica, he personally didn’t find either particularly attractive. It was clear, though, that their husbands thought differently.
“You looking for us?”
The
