Page 11 of Cursed
No! She loved her husband—Trevor Kirkland. She tried to hold on to his image. But it was like trying to hold on to a picture printed in water.
Deliberately, as she had so many times over the past two years, she brought back the last glorious weekend they had spent together down at the shore.
They had taken a few quiet walks on the beach. But mostly they had spent hours holed up in an expensive motel room, making love, ordering Chinese food and pizza and champagne.
He had said he would come back to her. And she had believed him. Then she’d heard about an uprising at a prison compound, and she’d prayed that Trevor wasn’t there—that he was all right. But when two men in business suits had come to her house, her whole body had gone cold. She’d known what they were going to tell her—that her husband was dead. Nothing had mattered after that. Not her friends. Not her job. Not her own life.
Now suddenly, everything had changed, and she didn’t like it.
“Morgan, are you all right?”
A man was speaking. His name was Andre. The owner of Belle Vista.
Pushing herself up straighter, she cleared her throat and gave the only answer she could, the only answer she wanted to give. “I’m fine.”
“You looked … spacey.”
“I’m fine!” she repeated, this time snapping out the words. She had always known exactly who she was and what she believed.
And she would not allow herself to be confused.
Yet she recognized that something had happened inside her mind—something beyond her control.
It had to do with the robe she was wearing. She had put it on, and her consciousness had slipped away from the here and now.
She couldn’t explain it. And cold fingers of fear clawed at her insides. Grimly, she shoved them away, as she had shoved so many emotions away.
A man stood over her, his face anxious. She had dreamed of him a little while ago. Well, not him. Someone who looked a lot like him. A guy with the same name, but dressed in an old-timey shirt, pants and boots. Like somebody out of a big-bucks historical movie. Maybe he was playing a country gentleman from the late nineteenth century.
She gave a small mental shrug. Why try to fix the episode in time? It was just a dream she’d made up because she was having a bad time—here and now in the Louisiana backcountry.
And exhaustion had a lot to do with it, she silently added. She was wrung out, she’d fallen asleep for a few minutes, and she’d tried to escape.
Deep down, she didn’t quite believe the explanation.
What would Andre Gascon say if she told the story to him?
Unable to meet his gaze, she turned her head toward the water. It still flowed across the road, but not as deeply or as swiftly. Soon the flood would be gone, leaving no indication that she’d almost been swept into oblivion.
She shivered, knowing she was wildly off balance, and not just from the near-death experience.
Andre walked around the car and slipped behind the wheel, then shut the door. In the close confines of the car, she breathed in the pungent aroma that clung to him. It was very appealing.
“What kind of aftershave do you use?” she asked.
“Aftershave?”
“Sorry. I was just thinking I liked the way you smelled,” she said, aware that she had shoved her foot farther into her mouth.
Ignoring the comment, he said, “We should go home. It’s going to be dark soon.”
“I’ll feel pretty silly arriving in this robe,” she muttered.
“It’s better than arriving in just a wet blouse.”
She could have done without the comeback. “We could wait until the water goes down. Then we could get my suitcase.”
“That will take too long. The bayou can be dangerous after dark. Especially now.”
