Books by Maggie Shayne (31 page)

Air. God, he was dizzy! Disoriented! Weak.

He stumbled to the sofa where she lay, and gathered her into his arms. Pulling her close, he hugged her to his chest and spoke to her, but she didn’t respond. As he turned toward the door, his knees gave out. He fell to the floor, still holding Annie, and knelt there clinging to her, blinking in the darkness, searching for the door. His eyes burned. He couldn’t breathe. He finally got to his feet, only to fall again.

Damn. He’d drop her, hurt her or the baby if he kept this up. To hell with standing. He remained on his knees and made his way to the door. By the grace of God, he found it, but his fingers fumbled awkwardly with the lock. Finally it sprang free, and he got the door open. It was all he could do to throw himself, still clinging to Annie, through the opening.

They spilled together onto the porch, and he cushioned her with his own body. Ren gasped, inhaling great gulps of fresh night air. His head cleared slightly, slowly, and he breathed deeper, fighting for strength. He had to help her, had to see to it that she and the baby were all right. He got to his feet and scooped her up again, staggering down the steps and away from the house and its noxious gas, not to mention the looming danger of an explosion. And when he’d gone what his fogged mind judged was a safe distance, he gently laid her down in the dewy grass and knelt beside her, bending over her, feeling his heart shatter in fear for her.

She was pale, her face standing out against the night’s darkness like the face of a ghost. He caught her fragile shoulders, shook her gently, then harder. No response. “Dammit, Annie, be all right!” He wasn’t supposed to feel this way. But knowing it did nothing to quell it. He cared for this woman in a way he was only beginning to understand.

There was nothing. She wasn’t breathing. The child’s life hung in the balance. Ren bent closer, covering Annie’s mouth with his own and forcing precious oxygen into her lungs to feed her—and her child.
His child.
Over and over he blew life into her body. And he heard his own heart pounding in fear all the while.

She coughed, pushing him away to gasp on her own. She choked and drew deep, shaky, noisy breaths that had an edge of desperation to them.

“Annie,” he whispered, stroking her hair away from her face, holding her as she dragged in gulps of air. “Sweet Annie, are you all right?” He rubbed her hands and her arms vigorously, as if he could rub the life back into her. God, she was cold. He stroked her face and her eyes opened. She met his gaze, blinking, and then lifted her arms weakly to encircle his neck. Ren gathered her to him, held her hard, and rocked her slowly.

“What… ?” She drew another ragged breath, her body all but limp against his as she struggled to speak.

“Gas,” he told her. “The house was filled with it.” He held her away from him just a little, enough so he could search her face. The way her head wobbled made it obvious she could barely hold it up.

“Listen to me,” he said as her eyes fell closed again. He shook her gently until they opened once more, unfocused and dazed.

“Did you hear anyone in the house, Annie? Did you see anything?”

She blinked vaguely.

“I have to know.” Ren shook her a little more.

She smiled a little crookedly at him. “Don’t leave me, Richard. Not ever again, okay?”

“Annie, come on. Sit up. Breathe. Deeper, come on.“

She inhaled as he instructed. Exhaled. Dropped her head down upon his shoulder. “I love you so much, Richard,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes as the pain took a large hunk of his heart this time. Soon there would be nothing left of it. “I know,” he told her, his voice coarse and barely audible. “I know. Come on, breathe some more. Rest here. I have to go to one of the neighbors. I have to call an ambulance…”

“No. Don’t leave me.” She clung to his neck with renewed strength.

Ren sighed and stroked her hair. “I’m not leaving you. I promise, I’m just going to get help. You need help, Annie.”

She shook her head, lifted it. “Tell me you love me.”

“Annie—”

“You still do, don’t you?” Tears threatened, filling her green eyes to brimming.
“Don’t you?”

Ren swallowed hard. It was the gas. She was muddled, disoriented, only semiconscious, he told himself. She’d pass out again within a minute or two and probably remember none of this when she awoke. “Of course I do,” he said to comfort her. He’d have said anything then if it would help her.

“Then say it,” she demanded. No. Not demanded. It was more like a plea. “Say you love me.”

He shook his head slowly, not knowing what to do. “I… I love you, Annie.” And as he spoke the words, he knew he’d said them a thousand times before. It was as if one of the countless veils between Ren and his past had been removed. The words were warm and real and familiar. And… they even felt…
true.

“Again,” she whispered.

“I love you.” He ached inside. For her. For himself. For what they must have had, what they’d lost.

Annie leaned up and pressed her lips to his.

God! It was heaven and hell all at once. To know what kissing her must have been like for him once. To know it could never be that way again because he was incapable of experiencing passion. He kissed her. Because he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to know just a hint of what he’d left behind.

Dammit, it was unfair and cruel and probably the most unknightly thing he’d ever done, kissing her when she was in this condition. But he did it anyway. And he wasn’t supposed to feel anything. He wasn’t
prepared
to feel anything.

But he did.

A shivering heat uncoiled in his belly as his lips moved over hers. Her tender mouth parted, and instinctively he took it, gently but greedily, because her taste made him hunger in a way he’d never hungered before. In a way he was supposed to be incapable of. So he gave in to it, telling himself it would just be this once. He fed from her sweetness, and she seemed to offer more. And Ren was flooded with sensations as his mouth mated with hers.

It was only when her lips slackened and her body went rag-doll limp against his that he stopped. Her arms around his neck loosened, and she dropped her head to his shoulder once more.

Desire pooled in his groin like lava, and his body responded in a purely mortal way. God, he wanted her. He wanted her more than he’d wanted anything in his life, that he could recall. Swollen middle and all.

He eased her to the ground, untwisted her arms from around his neck, and got to his feet.

“Don’t call an ambulance. She’s fine.”

Ren nearly jumped a foot in the air as the soft, gentle voice addressed him. The girl sat on the ground beside Annie, holding her hand. But she hadn’t been there a second ago…

“The baby, too,” she went on. “She didn’t inhale enough gas to do any real damage. You don’t have to leave her. You don’t have to make that call.”

Ren shook himself. “Of course I have to. I can’t be sure—”

“I can.”

He narrowed his eyes on the girl. Lovely, to say the least. The most stunning young woman he could remember having met. So much wisdom in those eyes of hers, and a strange crescent-shaped birthmark on her neck. There was love shining from her eyes. For Annie?

“I’m sorry, Sara,” he said, watching for her reaction. “It is Sara, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“I thought so. But I can’t take your word for it. For all I know you might be the one…” He bit his lip, realizing he’d been about to say too much.

“The one who’s out to keep the baby from being born?” The girl grinned at him. “If you only knew how funny that is. But look at me, Ren. Do I look like a Dark Knight to you?”

She didn’t, but that was beside the point.

They were tricksters, the dark ones. And he’d already known the enemy would likely be in disguise.

“Touch me, then.” She offered her hand. “Go on. You know what happens when a White Knight holds the hand of a dark one. Do it.”

“It’s forbidden for a White Knight to take the hand of a dark one,” he told her. But something in her eyes made him lift his hand all the same. Ren closed his hand around her much smaller one, half expecting a lightning bolt to knock him to his knees. But it didn’t. Instead he felt a comforting warmth moving from her palm to his and back again. Something softer and sweeter than anything he’d ever felt before.

She squeezed his hand before taking hers away, and then averted her eyes, blinking rapidly, almost as if tears were threatening.

“Who are you?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “I can’t tell you that. Rules. You understand.”

“Rules,” he repeated. But he was puzzled. If she wasn’t a Dark Knight, then who was she? And what did she know about the other realm? How could she know about White Knights and dark—or about him?

“I know what I have to know for now, Ren. Soon I won’t know any of it. I won’t remember ever having known. And I know you understand
that
as well. But for now I just do. Accept it. And accept that just as I know these other things, I know that Annie and the baby are fine and healthy. Out of danger for the moment, thanks to you.“ She took Ren’s hand in her own, placed both on Annie’s abdomen, and closed her eyes.

Ren felt the child Annie carried twist and perhaps stretch, as if waking from a deep nap. The image of that made him smile, and he glanced up at the young girl. But she was gone. Odd, that he still felt her holding his hand as if she remained. Very odd.

“Wake up, now, Annie-girl. Come on. Open your eyes.”

She heard his voice as if from a great distance, deep but quiet. Strong, but barely an echo. As if he were far away. And that thought sent a chill through her body. She didn’t want him to be far away. Not ever again.

“Richard,” she whispered. “Don’t go. Don’t go, Richard…”

“Ren,” he said softly, and his voice was closer now, clearer, but for some reason it had gone hoarse. “It’s Ren. Remember?”

She blinked until she was able to focus. Not an easy task, with the way everything seemed to be weaving in and out of its natural shape.

Her head pounded like a heavy-metal drummer, and she seemed to be lying in a pile of fragrant hay with her head and shoulders cushioned by Ren’s lap. When she stared straight up, it was to see his worried face looking down at her. He smiled a little and picked a bit of hay from her hair.

She didn’t sit up. Sitting up, she sensed, would make her head hurt more. And she was tired, so incredibly tired. “What’s going on?” she asked him.

His smile faded. “You don’t remember?”

The intensity in his eyes burned through her, and she knew then that something was terribly wrong. Closing her eyes, searching for the memory of what had happened last night, how they’d ended up sleeping on a haystack, only resulted in making her head ache more.

“Something happened last night, obviously,” she told him. “Something that must have driven us from the house, into this—” She looked around. “Barn?” Frowning, she met his eyes again, her head still cradled in his lap. “Why did we sleep in someone’s barn?” Then, slowly, a memory did come. But not of last night. It was from a long time ago, and it made Annie smile despite the throbbing in her head.

Ren’s face turned curious. “What?”

“I was just remembering… the last time we fell asleep in a pile of hay.”

He looked away. “Annie, don’t—”

“My parents were away. We had the whole place to ourselves, but we couldn’t even wait long enough to get to the house that night. We’d barely finished tending the horses when you scooped me up and carried me off to the hayloft.”

He shook his head in denial.

“That hay was so scratchy,” she said. “And I thought we’d never get the hayseed out of our hair. Of course, we didn’t notice any of that until morning.” She reached up to touch his face, drawing his gaze back to hers with the action. “You made love to me all night long in the hay, Richard. Don’t you remember?”

“It wasn’t me.”

She sighed in disappointment. But at the same time, she felt a slight tensing of his body, and the place where her head rested on his lap seemed to be coming to life.

“I thought you time-traveling-hero types couldn’t feel desire,” she teased.

His face reddened a little, and he eased her out of his lap and got to his feet. “We don’t.”

“But you do.”

“Annie,” he said slowly, firmly. “You fell asleep on the sofa last night. Do you remember that?“

She sat up, massaged her forehead, and thought back. And then she nodded. She did remember. It was right after dinner, right after she’d watched this man who claimed to be a stranger sit in Richard’s chair and wolf down a plateful of Richard’s favorite food in exactly the way Richard would have.

“Yes, I remember. I must have been more tired than I thought.” Again she shook her head in bewilderment, gazing at the rough wooden beams and hay and rusting stanchions in disbelief. “I don’t even remember leaving the house. What did you do, scoop me up and carry me off to the nearest haystack for old times’ sake?”

His dark blue eyes narrowed as he faced her again. “This is important, Annie.”

Sighing, she finally shrugged. “So tell me what happened after I fell asleep.”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he said. “So I left you where you were. Try to remember, Annie. It’s important. Did you wake up at all after I went upstairs?”

She frowned even harder at the seriousness of his tone. “No. I don’t think so.” He watched her so intently, as if willing her to remember something. “Richard—”

“It’s Ren, dammit.” He bit his lip, lowering his head. “Sorry. Annie, my job here is to protect you and the baby. You’re not making it easy.”

“If you think I’m going to make lying to me easy for you, Ren, you’re sadly mistaken. I want the truth.” She searched his face and saw his frustration. “But for now I’ll settle for knowing what happened last night, and why my head feels as if it’s going to explode.”

A frown of concern appeared on his brow, and he moved closer, kneeling in front of her, his big hands framing her face while his fingers gently massaged her temples. “I didn’t realize you were in pain,” he said. “Are you all right?”