He sounded as if he was standing right in front of her, but by this time the fog was so dense she couldn’t see through it.
“Where are you?” she called.
“I’m waiting for you! Come back to me…”
“I’m trying to find you! Where the hell—” Alex bumbled off the path and fell, facefirst, into the mossy ground.
“What the hell!” Gasping, Alex tried to sit up, but was totally entangled in her comforter. For an instant she was still in the dream, and she flailed around, thinking that the moss was clinging to her. And where was he? Where was the Aragorn guy with the incredible voice who kept calling for her?
Then a spike pierced her temple and she realized her mouth was dry and disgusting, which meant she had a hangover headache and a cottony mouth.
She wasn’t in an amazing, misty dream forest. She was in her room in the bunkhouse on the tallgrass prairie. Alex freed her arms and shoved off the comforter, rubbing her eyes and glancing blearily at her alarm clock. The luminous dial read 5:10 A.M., exactly five minutes before her alarm was set to go off. She sighed and, with a groan that sounded as if she were almost eighty-five rather than almost thirty-five, hobbled into her bathroom, going through her mental to-do list. She’d shower. Hydrate. Take aspirin. Eat breakfast—a light nongreasy one. Lead the city folks to Buffalo Ridge. She would not let her hangover kill her. She would forget about the weird dream.
Later that day Alex would try to convince herself that accomplishing six to-dos out of seven wasn’t all that bad.
Chapter 3
Alex figured she should be grateful it wasn’t August, one hundred five degrees and perfect tick-swarming weather. Okay, she admitted to herself as she resettled her back against the convenient hump in the ground behind her, today’s assignment has been one of the cushy ones. They’d eaten breakfast in the bunkhouse, and then started the trek to Buffalo Ridge. Alex could have hiked it in less than an hour, but the city folks were chatty and wanted to loiter, so she’d adjusted her pace to theirs, which didn’t really bother her since she was decidedly sleep deprived and hungover. After two hours of a leisurely stroll they were on the ridge, which was when her charges broke out their easels, watercolors, sketch pads and mimosas. They’d asked her if it was okay if they just stayed there on the ridge for the rest of the morning, sketching and drinking, instead of finishing the hike.
Alex had said no problemo.
Since she was responsible for them—and no way could they find their way back to the bunkhouse by themselves sober, let alone after ingesting the half-dozen or so bottles of bubbly they’d brought in their provision packs, Alex settled in to let them sketch the morning away while she caught up on some much needed sleep.
The dream started like the other one. She was in the middle of a dense, gorgeous forest, surrounded by layers of verdant green that could have very easily mesmerized her—had she not already been expecting some weirdness. This time she wasn’t a tourist. She was wary and ready for whatever her obviously stressed-out psyche could throw at her.
She walked down the same path as before, only now she wasn’t gawking at the nature surrounding her. Alex was paying attention to the fact that there were no damn birds.
Okay, a little detail like that might have escaped most people’s radar, especially most dreaming people, but Alex was an experienced hiker and was used to birds chirping away as she hiked. In her dream world, there were no sounds at all, not even the sloughing of wind through the thick green leaves of the ancient trees that formed a living canopy over her head.
“Same place, but it’s like someone pressed the mute button,” Alex said. “Well, at least in my dream I’m not hungover.” She had just decided her previous experience must have been wine-induced craziness when his voice drifted down the path to her.
“Come back to me…”
Had Alex reasoned out what she planned to do on her next visit to this made-up dream world, she would have said that she was going to be logical. She’d demand the man materialize, and if he didn’t, then she’d simply ignore him and go on about her dreaming, still hoping her subconscious would come up with a tryst with Aragorn.
But the dream wasn’t reasonable. It defied logic. The man’s voice had Alex reacting on a visceral level.
“I’m here! I came back! Where the hell are you?”
“Come back to me…I need you!”
“This is just ridiculous!” But even as Alex grumbled, she increased her pace. His voice was coming from down the path in front of her. This time she wasn’t going to wake up until she found out what the hell was going on in this dream.
The fog began to slither across the path.
“Damn it, no! This happened last time and I’m not putting up with it again! Hello! Where are you? Hello!” Alex was jogging now, shifting her gaze from the path to the misty space ahead of her, all the while straining to see through the soupy grayness.
The mist enveloped her. This wasn’t the romantic, cozy fog she liked to dream about lifting from low spots of the prairie on cool fall mornings. This mist was almost sentient. It was grasping, touching her with frigid fingers that crept into her clothes and down her spine, surrounding her body and soul until, panting, she stumbled to a halt.
“Where are you and what’s happening to me?” she whispered as she gasped for air, trying to catch her breath and regain her composure.
“I need your help. You must have the courage to come back to me.”
“Well, tell me who you are and where you are, and I will!” Alex blurted, utterly frustrated by this dream version of cat and mouse.
Ahead of her the mist cleared for just an instant and an image materialized. It was a symbol in the shape of an S, with both ends of the letter curling in and around to form a thick spiral. Its color was a deep sapphire-blue and she knew that this image held answers for her—somehow the S was his.
Automatically, Alex reached up, wanting to touch the pattern she glimpsed within the mist, wondering if the thing could be a part of a ghost. She’d never had a spirit get into her dreams before, but after almost three decades of seeing the dead, she figured nothing would surprise her.
Out of the mist someone grabbed her hand! Alex yipped a surprised “Yikes!” and tried to pull away, but the disembodied whatever kept a firm hold on her.
“Just do not say no. You must come back to me.”
And then Alex’s hand was lifted up into the mist, and she could swear that she felt lips—warm, firm, intimate lips—brush her skin. The touch somehow grounded her, settling her nerves and making her feel calmer, and surer that she was where she was supposed to be. Everything would be okay. This wasn’t a ghost—they couldn’t touch her. This was a man—a sexy dream man she’d conjured to entertain her sleeping mind. Through his strong grip he telegraphed need.
Alex grinned.
Of course he needed her. Of course he was calling for her. She’d dreamed him up. Now all she needed to do was relax. No doubt the mist
