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But now, Daddy has to punish you. He took a shambling step toward her. You’ve been a bad girl. And another. A very bad girl.
Her own screams woke her.
She was drenched in sweat, shuddering with cold. She fought for breath, wildly struggled to tear away the ropes of sheets that had wrapped around her as she’d thrashed through the nightmare.
Sometimes he’d tied her up. Remembering that, she made small, animal sounds in her throat as she tore at the sheets.
Freed, she rolled off the bed, crouched beside it in the dark like a woman prepared to flee or fight.
“Lights! On full. God, oh God.”
They flashed on, chasing even a hint of shadow out of the huge, beautiful room. Still, she scanned it, every corner, looking for ghosts as the nasty edge of the dream jabbed through her gut.
She forced back the tears. They were useless, and they were weak. Just as it was useless, it was weak, to let herself be frightened by dreams. By ghosts.
But she continued to shake as she crawled up to sit on the edge of the big bed.
An empty bed because Roarke was in Ireland and her experiment of trying to sleep in it without him, without dreams, had been a crashing failure.
Did that make her pitiful? she wondered. Stupid? Or just married?
When the fat cat, Galahad, bumped his big head against her arm, she gathered him up. She sat, Lieutenant Eve Dallas, eleven years a cop, and comforted herself with the cat as a child might a teddy bear.
Nausea coated her stomach, and she continued to rock, to pray she wouldn’t be sick and add one more misery to the night.
“Time display,” she ordered, and the dial of the bedside clock blinked on. One-fifteen, she noted. Perfect. She’d barely made it an hour before she’d screamed herself awake.
She set the cat aside, got to her feet. As carefully as an old woman she stepped down from the platform, crossed the room, and walked into the bathroom.
She ran the water cold, as cold as she could stand, then sluiced it onto her face while Galahad wound himself like a plump ribbon between her legs.
While he purred into the silence, she lifted her head, examined her face in the mirror. It was nearly as colorless as the water that dripped from it. Her eyes were dark, looked bruised, looked exhausted. Her hair was a matted brown cap, and her facial bones seemed too sharp, too close to the surface. Her mouth was too big, her nose ordinary.
What the hell did Roarke see when he looked at her? she wondered.
She could call him now. It was after six in the morning in Ireland, and he was an early riser. Even if he were still asleep, it wouldn’t matter. She could pick up the ’link and call, and his face would slide on-screen.
And he’d see the nightmare in her eyes. What good would that do either of them?
When a man owned the majority of the known universe, he had to be able to travel on business without being hounded by his wife. In this case, it was more than business that kept him away. He was attending a memorial to a dead friend, and didn’t need more stress and worry heaped on him from her end.
She knew, though they’d never really discussed it, that he’d cut his overnight trips down to the bone. The nightmares rarely came so violently when he was in bed beside her.
She’d never had one like this, one where her father had spoken to her after she’d killed him. Said things to her she thought—was nearly sure—he’d said to her when he’d been alive.
Eve imagined Dr. Mira, NYPSD’s star psychologist and profiler, would have a field day with the meanings and symbolism and Christ-all.
That wouldn’t do any good either, she decided. So she’d just keep this little gem to herself. She’d take a shower, grab the cat, and go upstairs to her office. She and Galahad would stretch out in her sleep chair and conk out for the rest of the night.
The dream would have faded away by morning.
You remember what I told you.
She couldn’t, Eve thought as she stepped into the shower and ordered all jets on full at a hundred and one degrees. She couldn’t remember.
And she didn’t want to.
She was steadier when she stepped out of the shower, and however pathetic it was, dragged on one of Roarke’s shirts for comfort. She’d just scooped up the cat when the bedside ’link beeped.
