Page 23 of Colorado Christmas Carol
“I will,” she said. She drew in a small breath. “There’s something . . .” She frowned, trying to put it into words. “He has something dark and cold coiled up inside him, like an ice pack in a teddy bear.” She looked up again, surprised at his expression. “I put that badly . . .”
“No, you didn’t,” he replied. “It’s an apt observation.”
“You know more about him than you’re willing to tell.”
“Yes,” he replied quietly. “I know things I can’t tell. But we must both make sure that Mellie doesn’t go outside the hotel with him.”
“He’s not a mean person.”
“There are compulsions that make intent useless, Essa,” he said, using her name for the first time. “People do things they don’t expect to do on the spur of the moment. Sometimes more than once.”
The comment went over her head. She felt warm all over when he said her name, and her cheeks colored. With all her after-school activities, she’d had little time for boys, and she hadn’t liked the boys she knew in school. She was a novice at romance, and it showed.
It showed very well to Duke, who’d never had a woman say no to him. This one, however, looked as if she would never say yes to anyone. It was a joke at first, then it was a curiosity. He didn’t dare think of it as a challenge. He had a child to raise, and seducing her new friend wouldn’t help their strained relationship.
“I’ll watch out for her when she’s with me,” Essa said quickly. “Good night.” She almost ran to get past him.
* * *
He watched her go, surprised that she was starting to have an effect on him. Of course, he didn’t like it. Not one bit.
CHAPTER4
Essa lay awake a long time, wondering what Duke knew about Dean. He was obviously not happy with the idea of Mellie going anywhere with him. There must be a reason.
He was a private detective. He’d been an FBI agent. They had ways of ferreting out information that nobody else could get. What had he found out that he couldn’t share?
She scoffed at that idea. Dean was such a smart, kind person. He couldn’t have a mean bone in his body. He’d obviously been put down most of his life, but it hadn’t turned him bad. He was polite and patient even when he shouldn’t have been. He was kind to everyone he met.
So why didn’t Duke want not only Mellie but Essa, too, not to go anywhere with him? And why did he want Essa to help him make sure of it?
She worried the idea until she saw the time. She had to get up early to start the breakfast menu with her helpers. She turned off the light and went to sleep.
Only to have dark and scary dreams. There was a house where a small boy was beaten with a small shovel, beaten bloody, while a woman yelled at him over and over again. There was a little boy who was wrapped in a white sheet and put into a hole in the ground.
She rolled over restlessly as the nightmare continued. Now there was a young woman with a man. She stripped the clothes off the little boy and held him down in a tub of cold water with ice in it. She laughed while she did it.
She wore a blue bow in her dark hair, and she had on a pin of some sort, a colorful pin with a fist.
The boy was dressed now and shivering. The woman had on some sort of silky black pajamas. She was teasing the boy with her feet, with kicks and feints, and laughing wildly.
Then she was wearing a dress again. She looked funny, like a little girl dressing up, with a blue bow in her hair and a short skirt. But when Essa looked closer, it wasn’t the woman in the skirt, it was the little boy. He had the blue bow in his own hair now. There was a man, slight and older than the woman, who cowered as the woman struck him. He was crying.
He turned and his face was a skeleton. And then, suddenly, the face was her own!
Essa awoke with a stark cry of alarm. She was sweating. What a horrible dream. She’d never had any like it. She sat up in bed, holding her head. If that was what she could expect tonight, she’d sit up and watch old movies, she thought.
* * *
The relief cook showed up on time, thank goodness, so she was free to go with Duke and Mellie to ride horses Sunday.
“Have you ever been on a horse?” Duke asked as they drove toward the ranch outside Benton.
“Once or twice,” she lied.
“Good. Maybe you won’t fall off going down the trail,” he added in what she thought of as his mocking tone.
“Oh, I’ll do my best,” she promised from the comfort of the back seat. “Not to fall off, I mean,” she added.
