Page 94 of The Lady Has a Past

“I know you did what you felt you had to do to protect your friends and me,” he said. “But you should know by now that I can take care of myself, and you, as well.”

She tossed back a healthy swallow of the brandy and glared. “Okay, so I panicked.”

“Yes,” Luther said. His hard features softened. “But I understand.”

“You do?” She took a moment to absorb that. “Thanks. I think.”

“I understand because if the situation was reversed—if one of the ghosts from my past came back to haunt me and threatened you—I would panic, too.”

“It’s hard—no, it’s impossible to imagine you in a panic.”

“I would do exactly what you did—disappear and try to take care of the problem on my own.”

“To protect me.”

Luther’s eyes burned. “It would be the only thing I cared about.”

“For the first day I was lost in a dream world.”

“Because they were drugging you.”

“But at some point you showed up.”

“In your dream world?”

“Yes.” Raina did not take her eyes off him. “I could barely see you at first but I knew you were there, searching for me. You saw me falling into a whirlpool and you reached down to grab my hand, but I kept falling. After a while I realized you were the one thing that was real in that place. Somehow Iknewyou were looking for me. I managed to surface long enough to realize I was being drugged. I poured the tea down the sink the first morning. But I made the mistake of eating the breakfast rolls. The next day I flushed them down the toilet.”

Luther smiled appreciatively. “And then you figured out how to escape. Setting the fire as a distraction was a brilliant idea.”

“I wouldn’t have made it out of that house if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”

“Don’t bet on that.” Luther used his fingers to sweep the few strands of hair that had escaped her chignon back behind her ears. “I sure as hell would never bet against you, and I used to be in the gambling business. You could say I’m a professional when it comes to estimating the odds.”

She set the unfinished brandy aside. “Just before I got that phone call from the woman I thought was the Ghost Lady, I was drinking coffee at the breakfast table and thinking that it would be very pleasant if you were there with me.”

“I would like that very much.”

She smiled and touched the side of his jaw. “Tomorrow morning you and I will be having breakfast together for the first time. Pity we had to go through so much trouble to get to that stage of our relationship.”

“You aren’t the only one with ghosts in the past,” Luther warned. “Sometimes mine wake me up at night.”

“Sometimes mine do, too. On the nights when that happens we will get out of bed, pour a little brandy, and talk about our future.”

“Are you saying you want a future with me?”

“Yes, but it won’t work unless you want the same future.”

He put his glass down and gathered her close. “I love you, Raina. I would kill for a future with you.”

“Yes, I know. You did exactly that this afternoon.”

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her with the fierce passion of a man who had been alone for far too long. She returned the kiss with the same intensity and for a similar reason. She had been alone for far too long.

The last wisps of fog that had shrouded her future for so many years evaporated. The precise details of what lay ahead were not revealed, but that didn’t matter, because the most important thing was now crystal clear—she would never again face the future alone.

“I can’t wait to go home to Burning Cove,” she said.

“We have one stop to make on the way,” Luther said.

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