he hadn’t known who she was until he’d pulled her to the ground. He loosened his hands from her neck, intending to let her go and apologize.
Except that he couldn’t take his hands off her. And he couldn’t put any coherent words together. Not yet. Because in the moment of grabbing on to her, something strange happened. Her mind had opened to him in a way that knocked the breath from his lungs and made his heart start to pound.
At least he was able to open his fingers and make the hands that had gripped her neck move to her shoulders.
“Sorry,” he managed to whisper. Or had he even spoken the apology aloud?
His head swam as her memories leaped into his mind.
He saw her as a little girl being scolded for making a mess in the kitchen by a younger version of the woman who had rented him the Cypress Cottage. He saw her in high school squirming away when a boy crowded her into her open locker and tried to corner her there. Wandering alone into the bayou and sitting on a fallen log to get away from a town where she had never felt comfortable. Then later, more satisfied with her life, taking culinary courses and icing a chocolate cake.
Overlaying it all were the most recent, sharpest memory and the emotions swirling around it. Her coming home to discover that her mother was dead.
He cursed under his breath, feeling her pain and also her confusion at what was happening between them now.
As her memories assaulted him, his own memories were streaming into her mind. Especially one particularly vivid scene.
The reason why he was on the run.
Three months ago, he’d been at his computer, working on the book that had gotten him into so much trouble.
He’d heard a noise and turned to see a man with a gun standing in the doorway of his little office.
“You’re finished with that writing project,” the man growled. “Get up.”
Luke got up slowly, reaching under his desk for the fire extinguisher he kept there. As he straightened, he pulled the trigger, spraying the man in the face. The guy choked and clawed at his eyes. Luke lunged forward and clunked the heavy canister down on the man’s skull.
When the assailant went still, Luke reached for the phone cord and used it to tie the man’s hands behind his back. Then he wound packing tape around his ankles and reinforced the phone cord with more tape.
By the time the guy’s eyes blinked open, Luke was holding the gun.
“Rudy Maglioni sent you?” he growled.
The assailant sneered. “Like I’m going to tell you.”
“What happens when you have to go back to him and explain that you failed? Or will you have to skip town?”
The only answer was a string of curses.
Luke grabbed the man’s hair, yanking his head up and using more masking tape to gag him. His heart was pounding, but he began methodically gathering up the papers on his desk.
He unplugged his laptop, took an already packed duffel bag from the closet and walked out of the room, forcing himself not to run when he wanted to dash to his car.
His attention was brought back to the present as he heard Gabriella gasp.
With the memories—his and hers—came physical sensations that walked a line between pain and pleasure. He scrambled to explain it to himself and could come up with nothing beyond the violence of the encounter.
“Gabriella.”
In the darkness, he couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t need sight to know what she looked like. Dark-blond hair cut short. Light eyes. A delicate nose. Tempting lips that drew him with an intensity he had never felt before—much less imagined. He lowered his head, and as his mouth touched hers, he was caught by a blaze of need that radiated to every cell of his body.
They had just met. Met? Not exactly. In his haste to protect himself from another mob attack, he had struck first without knowing who she was.
Yet they’d gone from strangers to intimates in seconds. Without understanding why it had happened, he wanted her. Right here. Right now. Out in the open.
And she wanted him. He knew it by the way her lips moved over his and by the desire reverberating through her mind. Those signals were as clear to him as their shared memories.
He gathered her close, rocking on the weedy grass, frustrated by the layers of clothing separating them. He wanted her naked. In a bed. This would have to do.
Those heated thoughts and the pain pounding through his brain almost wiped out his ability to think, but not quite. Somewhere in his consciousness, he understood that what they were doing was dangerous. That knowledge was as sharp and insistent as the desire binding them together. And the pain in his head.
And she understood, too. He felt her wrench her mouth away, felt her push at his shoulder to free herself.
“No,” she gasped. “We can’t.”
Strange as it sounded, in that frantic moment, he knew he had come close to having his brain explode.
Oh, come on!
Even as he dismissed that notion, he rolled away from her, panting, his head spinning. Still, he was as aware of her as he was of himself. He heard her breath coming fast and sharp. Felt the beating of her heart, although that should be impossible.
He couldn’t label what had happened. Not the psychic … exchange of information. Or the swell of desire. Or the conviction that they skated on the edge of disaster.
Not yet. Maybe never. He was too shaken by the whole encounter. And the worst part was that he knew what she always struggled to conceal—how alone she felt. And she knew the same thing about him.
Both of them had learned to bury that innermost truth but not when someone had invaded your mind.
Invasion? Was that the right word? What the hell had happened?
She broke into his thoughts, speaking in a shaky voice.
“Luke Buckley,” she said. They were meeting for the first time, but she knew his name. “The man who rented Cypress Cottage.”
“Yes,” he answered, knowing her mom could have told her that much. But that didn’t account for her absolute conviction that it was him.
And, unfortunately, she zeroed in on a fact that he needed to keep hidden. “That’s not your real name. You’re …”
“Don’t say it.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
He clenched his teeth. The whole situation was so damned weird that he wanted to shout a string of curses, if that wouldn’t have made things worse.
This wasn’t the way he would have wanted to meet anyone. Particularly not this woman who—what? Who had connected with him in ways that he still could hardly believe.
He heard himself say, “We have to talk.”
He was sure she wanted to refuse, for a whole host of reasons, starting with the way he’d thrown her to the ground, but she answered with a small sound that signaled acquiescence.
The wind had picked up, and a few fat drops of rain began to fall.
“We’d better get inside before it starts to pour. Come to my cottage.”
She dragged in a breath. “You’ve got to be kidding. You just attacked me on my own property.”
“And you know why,” he said again.
He understood she was still making up her mind as more drops plopped down.
“You left the plantation house,” he said. “Because you were afraid to be there alone in the dark.”