Protected In His Arms. Suzanne McMinn
can’t,” Mary said. She gathered her packages. “I’m sorry.”
She thought about telling her the new checker was a thief, but then Keely was going to find out on her own pretty soon if that were true, wasn’t she? Just like the librarian was going to find out she was pregnant next week, and somebody was going to get in that Impala in the parking lot and have some superfabulous sex tonight.
Or Mary was just crazy like everybody said. Either way, keeping her lip zipped seemed like a good choice. Even if Keely was maybe the only person in Haven who might, just might, not call her crazy. But Mary knew Keely herself had kept her own experiences after the earthquake close to the vest, even if she had shared one of those experiences with Mary.
Or maybe it was Mary who didn’t want to talk about it and she was projecting, wrongly. A piano teacher by trade, she’d spent ten years hobbying as pretend psychic at community fairs and school carnivals. Until the earthquake had changed everything. The real thing wasn’t quite as much fun.
And what was the point because nobody believed her? People thought she was crazy, other than the occasional crackpot who, thanks to the media circus surrounding her husband’s death, called her for the “psychic” services she no longer offered.
She gave Keely a quick hug. “I’m sorry. I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”
“No, you won’t!” Keely called after her.
No, she probably wouldn’t.
The man was still there, now leaning against the Impala and watching her.
She walked between their cars to her driver’s-side door, juggling packages along with her oversized purse.
“I’m sorry about your husband.”
She dropped the bag of apples.
“What?” She stared at him over the top of his car. It had been nine months since Danny had died. She was used to sympathetic platitudes, even from strangers. But how this stranger knew who she was…She’d never seen him before, she was certain of that.
“I know how it feels to lose someone. I know you know how it feels, too.”
“How did you—” She broke off, stared at him again. A floodlight on the building revealed his features. Square jaw, intensely jade eyes, planed cheeks, a full, straight lean mouth. Dark, thick, almost military-short hair.
How could she forget him if she’d met him before today?
He was the epitome of hot, his mile-long legs clad in worn blue jeans and a plain white T-shirt, untucked yet stretching over impressive pecs, revealing forearms tightly muscled. His pose was lazy like a coiled cat. He wore the bearing of a man who did nothing while he looked as if he could do anything.
Leap tall buildings in single bounds, for example. Action hero material. Definitely.
He belonged on a movie poster with curling flames as his backdrop.
Any woman who got into that Impala with him would be a very lucky woman, indeed.
She felt jittery, sweaty.
It took everything in her to block the sensory assault again. Could she be more lame? Fantasizing about sex with a stranger in a parking lot. Stranger danger, that’s what he was.
And he certainly looked dangerous. Intelligent, street-tough, almost ridiculously gorgeous—but gorgeous like a long, sharp knife. Nope, she didn’t need any of that.
She struggled to get her breathing and her nerves under control.
“How do you know me?” she asked, repeating the question she’d only half managed to get out before.
“I lost a friend on Flight 498.”
Could they have crossed paths at the airport that day? She’d gone there, too, just as had all the other passengers’ family members. They’d stood around, waiting for official information as if some miracle was going to be announced.
She’d known everyone. In her mind.
Lots of people were scared of flying, especially smaller planes. But just because she’d had a severe and highly imaginative panic attack the day her husband had gotten on one, and just because his plane had ended up actually blowing up, didn’t mean she was a real psychic. It just meant she was an hysterical wife.
Coincidence. Nothing more.
It was safer to think that way.
She’d been scared to read anything about the crash victims later. Crazy, that’s what she was. No need to confirm it. And if the victims had matched up to those whose lives had flashed before her eyes that day…She didn’t want to know that either.
She tried to speak to the stranger, to tell him she was sorry for his loss, to speak those empty platitudes of sympathy she knew so well. But her throat felt too tight because suddenly he was right there, in front of her.
He picked up the bag of apples, held them toward her. She stared at him. She didn’t want to take the apples from him. She didn’t want to touch his hand as he handed them to her. Hot instinct ripped through her, even stronger than her so-called psychic flashes. This was women’s instinct.
She just wanted to get out of there. Why did the parking lot feel so empty suddenly?
There was no one else outside the store. The air carried the scent of a coming storm. Wind rustled in the trees behind the building. The occasional car moved down the two-lane highway that led to the restored town square with its beautiful courthouse, cobbled sidewalks and quaint shops and restaurants. Haven, West Virginia, one letter short of Heaven, the cheerful welcome sign coming into town boasted. Surrounded by thick woods of oak, maple and walnut, and the sloped pastures and Gothic-style farmhouses of the Appalachian Mountains, the simple, sleepy scenery backed up the town’s claim.
The pace was no different. Simple. Sleepy. It was a typical early summer night. Time for businesses to put up Closed signs, kids to be tucked into bed, Mary to go home to another lonely evening.
Action-movie-poster man didn’t belong here.
“How do you know me?” she repeated warily.
“I went to your house, but you were leaving. I followed you here. We need to talk.”
Her throat completely closed up.
Screw the apples. Get in the car, drive away. Her pulse thumped and she had trouble thinking.
Was he stalking her? What if he followed her home? Wild possibilities tumbled through her mind. Maybe she was being hysterical.
Maybe she should go back in the store, get Keely. Keely could call the police and—
“I need your help,” he continued. “And you don’t know it, but you need mine. We don’t have much time.”
What?
“I can’t help you.” And the only way he could help her was to go away.
“I think you can. And I think you’re in danger.”
Yes, yes, so did she. From him. He was gorgeous, but a lunatic.
Very, very sad for the women of the world.
She had to get around him to get back to the store. How was she going to do that? Her mind ran jagged, panicky laps, trying to figure out the best way out of the spot she was in.
“I forgot something I meant to get. I have to go back into the store.”
“No.”
No? Her heart jumped with both feet into her throat when he set the apples down on the top of her car.
Relief socked her hard when another car pulled into the parking lot.
She was saved. Thank God.
The dark car screeched to a stop and a window rolled down. Bullets sprayed as the world