The Stranger Page 8

  “How do you know?” She glanced at me then returned her eyes to the road. “Most people don’t know anything about it.”

  “I looked it up.”

  Her green eyes lit up on me. “Just now?”

  “Yep,” I said. “This morning, after you told me about it.”

  “You’re fast.”

  “I’m a problem solver,” I said. “I needed to know.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “You’re a nosy little witch.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Says the problem solver who needs to know.”

  “Look,” I said. “I might be oblivious sometimes, but stuff does matter to me. The idea that I couldn’t tell you weren’t awake last night bothers the hell out of me.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “Maybe there’s a decent human being beneath all that bluster.”

  For the third time in a row, she smiled at me. I’d hit a lucky streak. Her eyes sparkled like landing lights. Her expression reminded me of the way she’d looked at me after we’d both come last night. I glanced at my lap. Down boy. Pity her approval wasn’t going to last.

  “Hang on to the concept of me being a decent human being if you will.” I turned right at the crossroads. “You’re going to need it, because I looked you up real good.”

  “You looked me up how?” She opened her mouth and closed it. “Wait. You thought I was a trap. You said you had security people. You knew about my ex. You even knew I liked café-con-leche in the mornings. Oh my God.” She figured it out all on her own. “You had me investigated?”

  I lifted a noncommittal shoulder.

  “But...” She grappled with the notion. “Why?”

  “I needed to know who you really were.” I monitored her reaction. “Don’t look so goddamn sanctimonious. I bet you looked me up too. Come on, at the very least, you googled my name.”

  Capillary meltdown. Instant confession. She flushed so red I feared her face might ignite. Lying? Not possible for Summer. She just wasn’t wired for it.

  “Look, I don’t blame you,” I said. “In fact, I think snooping is a sign of brainpower.”

  “I bet.” She eyed me sullenly. “You probably think you’re a genius, especially given that you know intimate details about my life, whereas googling you gave me the company line and squat about who you truly are.”

  “A man in my position...”

  She groaned. “Stop it, will you? I don’t want anything from you, so spare me the paranoia.”

  “I’m just trying to understand your sleeping disorder.”

  “Very grand of you,” she said. “Leave it alone.”

  “I don’t want to leave it alone, which may explain why I called Dr. Sanchez and asked her about it.”

  Her hands fisted on her lap. “You called Dr. Sanchez? My Dr. Sanchez?”

  I felt like a fucking scumbag, but what else could I do?

  She grappled for words. “I... You... How did you even know about Dr. Sanchez?”

  “I looked through your cell,” I said. “I found her name in your contacts along with the number for the Coral Gables Sleep Disorder Center.”

  She was speechless, blown out of the water and not in a good way. If she couldn’t get past this part, what were my chances she’d get over the rest?

  “You looked through my cell?” She gaped. “You called my doctor without asking me?”

  “Hear me out, before you bite my head off,” I said. “I needed to know that everything you said was true. You must admit, your story wasn’t exactly probable. I also needed to know that you were going to be okay.”

  Her brows clashed above her nose. She tossed the hair away from her face with an angry flick and stuck out her chin. “Sure, now you’re all about my well-being. What about your crazy accusations about me working for someone else? Did those have anything to do with your ‘investigation’?”

  She was sharp, mad, and right on, so I opted for the fifth.

  “What about my privacy?” she said. “What about patient-doctor confidentiality?”

  True to myself, it was truth over manners. “When it comes to your privacy, last night pretty much took care of it. I’ve seen parts of you, you’ll never get to see.”

  “Stop!” She slapped her hands over her ears. “Too much information.”

  “As to Dr. Sanchez,” I continued, “she didn’t confirm or deny that you’re her patient. Once I set up my telephone consultation, your name never came up again. She simply listened to what I had to say and answered my questions strictly from a theoretical point of view.”

  “Theoretical my ass!” she snapped. “I might have a rare sleep disorder, but you suffer from a severe personality disorder.”

  “Try not to get upset.”

  “How on earth could I not be upset?” Her green eyes blazed. “You think I’m out to get you somehow. You called my doctor without asking me. And before that, you had sex with me while I slept!”

  “Fuck.” That last point really bothered me. “Now, see, that’s why I had to call the good doctor, because you didn’t look like you were sleepwalking. You were totally present during our...err...activities.”

  “Activities?” She gasped. “You mean we did it more than one time?”

  “We did,” I said. “Several times.”

  “Holy shit.” She buried her face in her hands.

  I should’ve kept that detail to myself.

  “I wonder,” I said tentatively. “Would it help you remember if I tell you what happened?”

  “No!”

  “The doctor said that, sometimes, people who are exposed to footage of their sleepwalking activities remember things.”

  “Pictures?” She stared at me, horrified. “You didn’t, did you?”

  “Of course not.” The security footage didn’t count as a sex tape; did it?

  “Okay, good.” She settled her hand on her chest and forced herself to take in little breaths.

  “But I still need you to remember.”

  “Why?”

  “Because...” It bothered the hell out of me that I’d had the most spectacular night of my life and she didn’t even know about it. “You need to understand. You acted lucid. You wandered all over the house. You drank a pot of soup.”

  “Really?” she said. “I don’t think I’ve done that before.”

  “The doctor told me that each sleepwalking episode is different,” I said. “She also said that in some cases, the sleepwalking behavior evolves into more complex activities, working, traveling, and doing all kinds of stuff while sleepwalking. Last night, you told me you were hungry.”

  “I talked?”

  “Of course you talked,” I said. “You carried on entire conversations.”

  Her forehead wrinkled in thought. She gnawed on her lips. The gesture reminded me of her mouth on my dick. My body remembered every detail even if she didn’t. I got hard on the spot. Dammit.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever talked in my sleep before,” she said. “Tammy and Louise say I’m quiet as the dead. It freaks them out.”

  “You were a regular chatterbox when you were with me.”

  “What did I say?”

  “Lots of things.” I took the ramp off the highway and turned onto a country road. “You talked about my aura.”

  “Your aura?” She scoffed. “I don’t believe in that nonsense.”

  “Apparently you do, at least when you’re asleep.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way,” I said. “You said my aura was a good one.”

  “I did?”

  “Something about a solar flare?”

  She shrugged and shook her head. “Zero, nada.”

  I was getting nowhere fast. “The doctor also said that some
people show signs of enhanced sensorial perception during sleepwalking episodes. You were very—what’s the word the doctor used?—empathic. It was as if you were plugged directly into my emotions.”

  She gave me a ribbing glance. “So you’ve got other emotions besides paranoia, perpetual wrath, and inappropriate curiosity?”

  “Ha,” I said. “Very funny.”

  “Good to know.” She allowed herself a crooked little smile then sobered up. “How was I plugged into your emotions?”

  I didn’t really want to talk about my shit. But Summer, something about her, she made me feel like maybe I could. Besides, I needed to establish a baseline with her. I had to give something—or at least make an effort—to get something in return.

  “First off,” I said, “you didn’t mind my scars.”

  “Why should I’ve minded your scars?”

  “People don’t like to look at stuff like that.”

  “Scars are just that, scars,” Summer said. “My dad had several scars from his fight with cancer. I didn’t think they were ugly. They were just part of his body’s history.”

  Now there was a novel concept I could dig.

  “Your scars show that you have amazing healing abilities,” she said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s hard to think about what you went through when you got those, but you survived and you’re a good-looking guy any day, with or without scars.”

  Her heightened sense of empathy extended to her waking hours. Plus, she thought I was good looking. Or was she playing me like a goddamn fiddle? I spotted nothing but sincerity in her eyes.

  The road came to an end. The pavement turned into a gravel road covered with snow, mud, and potholes the size of lunar craters. I slowed down and, edging the worst of them, drove forward.

  “What else did I say last night?” she asked.

  “You said something along the lines of me being sad.”

  “Oh.” She took that in. “And were you?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  It took all I had to push the words out. “I lost a good friend of mine yesterday. His name was Danny. He shot himself.”

  “I’m sorry.” She reached over and gave my arm a little squeeze. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I said. “He was the one who died.”

  Her touch zapped through my arm and jolted me to the core. Up and down, my cock was beginning to feel like a busy drawbridge. I found myself regretting that her touch had been so brief. The sympathy in her eyes fucked with my head. I swallowed a dry gulp.

  “Were you guys close?” she asked.

  “We flew many missions together.”

  She cocked her eyebrows. “Flew?”

  “Helicopters,” I said. “Alaska Air National Guard.”

  “Oh, so on top of everything else, you’re a pilot for the National Guard?”

  “I was.”

  “You don’t fly anymore?”

  “Of course I do, fly, helicopters, I mean.” Damn those probing eyes. “I’m just not actively flying for the Guard at the moment.”

  “Is that how you got hurt?” she said. “In a helicopter crash?”

  “We’re getting off topic here,” I said. “The point I was trying to make was that last night you were fully interactive. There was a connection there.”

  “A connection?”

  Time to swing the bat.

  “The thing is, Summer, you intrigue me.”

  Her nose wrinkled. “Intrigue you?”

  “I’d like to get to know you better.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened and, for a full ten seconds, she stared at me, incredulity written all over her face. Then her expression transformed. Gone was the shock, in was a straight-lipped glare, a gesture of pure and absolute defiance. “No, uh-uh.” She poked her finger in the air. “You need to know: Regardless of what happened last night, I don’t sleep with strangers, awake or asleep.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “I promise I won’t ask you to sleep with me. Instead, I’ll wait until you ask me.”

  The blistering look she gave me was strike one. “I would never ask you!”

  She had a way of daring me without even knowing it. “Never say never.”

  “Seth Erickson, you better wipe the smirk off your face right now.” She huffed. “What happened last night was an accident, nothing else. Just because you own half of Alaska, doesn’t mean I’m going to do what you want. I don’t care if you think you’re God’s gift to women.”

  I counted her strong reaction as strike two. I don’t know why, but her calling last night an “accident” raised my hackles.

  “It’s not all in my head.” I charged full steam ahead. “There was an attraction last night, and lots of chemistry. I don’t think we were done.”

  “Not done?” She gawked. “Are you always this blunt?”

  “Yep.”

  The green eyes scoured my face. “Why would a guy like you ever want to hang out with someone like me?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe I find you interesting.”

  “Or easy.”

  This was not going well. “Look, could we maybe just start again from scratch?”

  “Start what?” she said.

  “This.” I motioned between us. “You and I. We.”

  “We?” If looks could pierce, I’d be full of holes. “I don’t get you. Is this your idea of...what? Asking me out or something?”

  “I’m good with that, if that’s how you’d like to call it.”

  “Are you off your freaking rocker?” She stared at me.

  “Is it such a bad idea?”

  “It’s a terrible idea and you know it!”

  “Why?”

  “I’m from the other side of the world,” she said. “I’m tropical, you’re arctic. I’m a surly witch and you’re grouchy as hell. I suffer from a very inconvenient disorder that makes dating very hard. In fact, I’m not interested in dating at all. The only thing that stands between me and disaster every night is a sturdy door chain.”

  “Is that what you do at home?”

  “Yeah, but that’s neither here nor there,” she said. “You and I? We’ve got nothing in common.”

  “Except a really great first night together.”

  “Which I don’t remember,” she said pointedly. “Forget it. This discussion is over. Besides, I don’t date men with prickly beards.”

  I knuckled my stubble. “Technically, this is more like benign neglect than a beard.”

  “I don’t date men with facial hair or whatever you want to call that stuff on your face.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “I don’t date trust fund babies either,” she said. “No, sir. I’m real firm on that rule. I’m pretty sure you’re one of them.”

  “One of who?”

  “Boys with trust funds,” she said. “Men with tons of money who think they can buy women. Nobody owns me, that’s for sure.”

  Ah. She was talking from experience. I remembered what Spider had said about her early marriage to a wealthy Miami socialite. It had lasted less than a year. I suspected things had gone really wrong for her in that relationship. Had it tainted her views on all men?

  “Do you want to talk about him?” I said.

  “Him?”

  “Sergio De Havilland,” I said. “Your ex?”

  She glared at me. “How do you know his name?”

  “I looked you up. Remember? I looked him up too.”

  “Back off,” she said. “You are really testing my boundaries here.”

  “Was marriage that bad?”

  “I’ll never, ever make that mistake again,” she said. “But I don’t want to talk about him
. You will not mention that name in my presence ever again, understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I saluted, half-heartedly. How was that for a strong reaction? “No more mention of the son of a bitch. Just out of curiosity, how many guys have you dated since your ex?”

  “None of your business!”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and say the number is close to zero.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why, with all those rules,” I said, “the statistical probabilities severely restrict the number of likely candidates.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Mathematics,” I said. “Given all your rules, the odds of you finding an agreeable candidate are very low, which is why I can guess—with a respectable margin of error—that you haven’t been dating much.”

  She huffed prettily. “Seth Erickson, you’re way out of line. Who gave you the authority to commentate on my life?”

  “The way I see it, I’m already involved in your life,” I said. “We’ve slept together. I’m in.”

  “Stop.” She lifted a finger in the air. “As soon as I find my sister, I’m going back to Miami and that’s that.”

  She was stubborn all right, but I was fascinated with her and more motivated than ever to stick to my plan. Challenges didn’t faze me—on the contrary, they energized me—and Summer was a challenge in every sense of the word. It was a done deal in my mind. Before this was all over, I was going to seduce her all the way back to my bed.

  I made a turn at the next crossroads. The road was barely visible under a layer of snow. The forest shaded the road and the snow hadn’t melted much. I lowered the snowplow and worked my way up the hill. The truck could only take us so far in these remote parts.

  I spotted the question on her face before she gathered the courage to ask it. “Go ahead, ask.” I changed gears and tackled the steeper terrain. “I’ll be honest.”

  She gave me a crooked little smile. “No offense, but that’s what I’m afraid of.”

  I laughed. The more we talked, the more I liked her. “I admit that in my case, honesty is more of a vice than a virtue. What is it you want to know?”

  The little line that wrinkled her forehead announced her inner struggle. She wasn’t sure she wanted to trust me with anything, including the question clearly boggling her mind. She stole another look at me, took a deep breath, and lowered her voice. “Did I like it?”