Blazing Bedtime Stories (15 page)

Then, as if they’d said everything that needed saying, Lucas reached for the knapsack and hoisted it over his shoulder.

But Hunter wasn’t quite finished. There was one more thing to say. “I don’t know how they found their way here,” he said, hoping his brother heard the genuine sorrow he made no effort to hide. “But if it was my fault—if I was somehow responsible for putting them in the path of your sister—I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

Lucas stared at him for a moment, then replied, “It wasn’t. Frakes has been dealing on this side for years. Long before you paid your first visit.”

Relief washed over Hunter. He closed his eyes for a moment, nodding and sending up a prayer of thanks. “I’m glad.” Then, his voice still quiet, he added, “I’m sorry about Ciara.”

Lucas nodded once, slowly, then walked to the door. Opening it, he peered outside, up at the sky. The full moonlight washed over him, and from a few feet away, Hunter saw the way he swayed forward, welcoming it. His brother’s features looked longer, coarser and when he turned to look at Hunter one more time, Lucas’s teeth glittered in the darkness. There was absolutely no denying his genetics, not now, not in this place when he was bathed in the moonlight that revealed all.

Beside him, Hunter heard Scarlett gasp. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

“I’m going after Stafford,” Lucas said.

Hunter expected nothing less. “Try to take him alive. Because you’re right. Shooting him won’t be good enough. He does deserve the kind of justice he’ll get over here.”

Old-fashioned justice. An eye-for-an-eye justice. His half-brother’s entire family would settle for nothing less.

Lucas cast a quick glance at Scarlett, who still watched, her stunned eyes wide. “You should probably get her out of here. It’s growing season. You don’t want to be stuck here for this next month.” A small smile that looked more predatory than amused widened his mouth, and in the low light, his eyes gleamed. “Nice to meet you, Red. You make him tell you the truth, you hear? Because you sure aren’t in Kansas anymore.”

And then, without another word, Hunter’s brother turned his face back toward the moon and slipped out into the night.

S
HE WAS DREAMING
again. She had to be. Because no way had the man she sensed she could truly fall for just told her the crazy story still ringing in her ears. No way. No how.

“It’s the tea,” Scarlett snapped, “you drugged me. This has all been a hallucination.” Chewing on her lip, she eyed him from behind half-lowered lashes. “But the sex was real, wasn’t it?”

He smiled as he finished cutting down the oversized, flat leather sandals he’d found for her. After he’d dumped that load of BS on her, he’d gone to work on the shoes, telling her she needed time to “absorb” it all.

She could have paper towels in place of skin and never absorb that nonsense.

“Everything I’ve said is true.”

“Bullshit. I don’t believe in fairy tales.”

“They’re not fairy tales here. They’re history. I’d prove it to you if we weren’t short on time.”

More bullshit. This story about there being another world existing alongside theirs…pure fabrication. She didn’t believe in fantasies. Or in crazy stories about alternative universes where fiction had actually happened and mystical creatures actually lived. She wasn’t buying one single bit of it.

“I didn’t believe it at first either. My mother told me on her deathbed about stumbling over here, and I thought she’d lost her mind. Until I came and saw the truth for myself.”

She smirked and rolled her eyes.

He continued, undeterred, his voice never wavering despite the crazy words coming out of his mouth. “I don’t think she’d have told me at all if she hadn’t been calling out Lucas’s name. I asked who he was and she told me the whole story.” He looked down to work
on the second shoe. “She was in love with Lucas’s father, but she was never happy here. She wanted to go back to her other life, wanted him to come with her. But he hated it there as much as she hated it here and refused.”

Drawn into the story, as any true storyteller would be, she couldn’t help asking, “And Lucas?”

“Their son. She left him behind.”

She huffed audibly. “I saw this plotline on
General Hospital
.”

Ignoring her, he added, “She knew she couldn’t possibly take him away from his own kind.”

His own kind. Riiiight.

Except…she’d seen. God, she’d
seen.
With her own eyes she’d seen the way Lucas had looked in the moonlight. He’d been a man…yet, not entirely human.

He was not an animal, by any means, and was nothing like some stupid old black-and-white werewolf movie. But in that flash of moonlight, his body had seemed too broad, his back too curved, his dark hair too thick.

And his teeth too long.

She’d
seen
it.

Swallowing, not even believing she was about to ask, she tried to sound nonchalant. “Is he a…a werewolf?”

Hunter walked over and dropped the shoes onto her lap. “There’s no such thing. That was a story made up by superstitious villagers on our side of the divide. He’s just part wolf.”

Just part wolf. Sure. Uh huh.

You saw
.

He bent in front of her, taking one shoe and sliding it onto her foot, fastening it with a leather strap. Then he did the same with the other.

Putting shoes on her feet. Just like Cinderella.
Gag
.

“So your mother, what, dumped her kid, and left?”

He didn’t reply. Noting the tormented expression on his handsome face, she wished she could curb her sometimes wicked tongue.

“She couldn’t take him. And she couldn’t stay. So she went home, eventually met my father, had me. She kept her secret until her dying day, wracked with guilt and broken-hearted over the choice she’d made.”

Was it possible? Could he really be telling the truth? The anguish on his face appeared too deep, too wrenching, to be faked. “And afterward? What did you do?”

“I came here and saw the truth for myself, including meeting my half-brother.”

“Are you two…friends?”

He barked a humorless laugh. “I wouldn’t say that. But we do have common interests. He’s a lawman.”

Lawman
. Interesting word. Not cop, not detective, not police officer. Yet she sensed the description was still an actual title.

“Ciara?” she asked. “Who was she?”

“Lucas’s younger sister.” His jaw as hard as granite, he rose to his feet, quickly telling her what had happened. How men he worked with had been dealing and thieving over here, and how the teenage girl had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just a random victim of an act of horrible violence.

“And you thought he had killed the men who did it?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head and ran a hand over her brow. “You know I can’t believe any of this.”

“I know. But it’s true. I hadn’t intended to tell you at all, only…”

“Only?”

“Only I’m not going to be able to take you across the border and never see you again,” he admitted. He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. Brushing his fingers across her cheekbone, he added, “Like I said, I might have to keep you.”

“It’ll never work. You’re an insane person,” she said matter-of-factly.

He laughed, loud and long. “How can someone who writes kids’ books have no imagination?”

“I write the dark, realistic side of the kiddie stories, where Prince Charming is a cheating schmuck…”

“He is.”

She ignored him. “And where the helpless princesses get out of their own messes.”

“They don’t. Sorry. The ones I’ve met are brainless twits.”

She groaned, poking her index finger into his chest. “Stop it. You’re nuts. Either that or I’m in a coma in the hospital after my
accident, and I’m going to hate waking up because I think I could fall in love with you, if only you were real and not a figment of my imagination. And, if only you weren’t abso-frigging-lutely insane.”

“I’m not insane and you’re not in a coma. But just in case, here’s a little something else for you to dream about there in that hospital bed.” He thrust his hands into her hair and tugged her close, covering her mouth with his. His lips molded against hers, his tongue diving inside to taste her more fully.

Scarlett whimpered, turned her head and welcomed him deeper. They shared hot breaths and heartbeats and he kissed her so long he claimed a permanent place for himself inside her. No other man could ever kiss her—ever make her feel like this—again.

Then it ended. He drew his hands from her hair. “Believe me. Or don’t. But I’m not lying to you.”

She stared into his eyes, seeing nothing there but honesty, integrity and an emotion she couldn’t quite define.

Thoughts swirled in her brain, the memories of everything that had happened to her over the past twenty-four hours, starting with the appearance of that strange little man in the bookstore.

The man…the electric feeling…the odd sign out on the highway. The road that narrowed into a swamp before disappearing into forest. The oddly colored sky, the flavor of the water, the damned tea. And Lucas.

They jumbled and twisted until her head pounded.

But in the end, it was just impossible. She couldn’t bring herself to believe it. She’d learned from a young age that fairy tales weren’t true and that believing in them only ever led to grief and heartbreak. Her mother had been waiting her entire life for her fantasy world to become a reality, waiting for Scarlett’s father to come back, to make everything right, to give her the happily-ever-after. And Scarlett had spent her childhood waiting, too.

But she was no longer a child.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “If this is a dream, I hope I get to keep seeing you every night for the rest of my life.” Deep down, she knew it wasn’t a dream, that she was here, with him. That he had made beautiful love to her and had begun making her wonder if she really could find happiness with a wonderful man.

If it wasn’t a dream, there was only one other thing it could be.
“Honestly,” she said, swallowing hard, “I think you should get help. And I want you to stay away from me.”

Without another word, she hurried to the door, opening it and rushing out into the night. She’d find her own way back to the road, or to the town, or to Granny’s. Her
own
way. She’d prove to herself, and to him, that the crazy story he’d spun back there had been just that: a story.

Except…bad idea. It was confusing as hell in those woods in the daytime. By moonlight? She was sure to get lost.

Great exit, genius. Now crawl back inside.

She turned around, about to swallow her humiliation and get Hunter to lead her out of here. But before she could do it, a loud sound rent the night air. Like an earthquake, only richer, deeper, as if the ground itself was stretching wide open.

Shocked, she looked again toward the woods. And saw something that simply couldn’t be happening.

H
UNTER HEARD
the sound and recognized it immediately. He’d been grabbing his pack to go after Scarlett anyway. Now…“Screw the pack.”

He almost ran into her. She stood right outside, her back to the cottage, staring up toward the sky. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open in complete shock.

He grabbed her hand. “Come on, we’ve gotta get out of here!”

She didn’t budge, merely lifting her arm and pointing up.

“I mean it, Scarlett, move your ass. It’s growing season.” He yanked her harder this time, dragging her into the woods. Her shock wore off, her adrenaline finally kicked in. Within seconds, she was matching him step for step as they ran through the woods, racing toward the border.

“What
was
that?” she yelled without slowing her stride.

“A way up…and a way
down
,” he snapped, not wanting to take the time to explain. Not until they were through.

He glanced up at the sky. The moon was still high, but it was later than he’d thought. They’d wasted a lot of time. Damn, he should have just brought her back then sat her down and told her the truth.

Finally spying a familiar copse of skeletal trees—trees that were out of place in this thriving forest—he squeezed her hand. “There,” he said, nodding toward the spot. “That’s the opening.”

She didn’t hesitate, just charged forward, trusting him completely. When they reached the trees, they found themselves in a low-lying mist, which should have been unusual on such a clear night. But which confirmed their location. “A few more steps…”

Then they were
there.
They pushed through, the misty air giving one instant of firm resistance before the two of them burst past it and out the other side.

Into a bayou.

Scarlett skidded to a stop, bending at the waist, dropping her hands onto her knees to suck in deep breaths. When she looked up at him, long tendrils of blond hair hung in her face. “What the hell was that?”

“The border.” He heaved in a few breaths of his own. “You okay? It can sometimes be a little constricting.”

She glanced back toward the group of trees they’d just come through. Over here, the mist became moss, long, gray, looping and thick. He preferred coming back to going in. Walking into that Spanish moss was like stepping inside a witch’s scraggly hair. Having met one or two of the old hags, he couldn’t say he liked the visualization.

Scarlett slowly sank to the ground, ignoring the muck and mud, not that her skirt was in very good shape now, anyway. On her knees, she looked up at him, fear, surprise, excitement warring in her eyes. “I meant,” she said, her breaths slowly returning to normal, “what was
that?
Over there?”

He thought about it, knowing what she was asking. He also knew she’d probably think he was crazy again, even though she’d seen it with her own eyes. Jesus, another few minutes and she might have seen a lot worse.

“It’s growing season,” he explained. “And some moron thinking he could get rich planted a bean.”

She thought about it, her brow scrunching in confusion. Then, as though a light bulb had lit up over her head, she got it.

“Oh, my God.”

He nodded.

“Are there really…”

“Yeah. Believe me, we would not have wanted to be stuck over there for a month if one of them comes down. Their feet are the size of Mack trucks and their breath smells like a sewage plant.”

Scarlett was silent for a moment, unmoving, unblinking. Thinking it over. He was prepared for derision, for her to ignore her own senses and cling to the reality she’d always known.

Instead, she shocked him. “Giants,” she said with a snort. She began to laugh…and laugh…and then howl until she had to curl up and clutch her stomach. And when her laughter was finally over, she wiped moisture from her eyes and said, “My agent’s never going to forgive me.”

Hunter squatted down beside her. “Why?”

She grinned up at him, looking so beautiful his heart twisted in his chest. “Because I think I just started to believe in fairy tales.”

And They Lived Happily Ever After…

W
ALKING
hand-in-hand through the night, Scarlett and the huntsman traveled out of the woods, eventually finding their way back to the city by the great river. Their bodies were weary but their souls were light. They had entered the dark forest, had battled monsters created by their own fears and had emerged safe and sound.

But forever changed.

While little Scarlett had learned a few lessons about faith and believing, what she’d learned most of all was that nothing was impossible. Nothing.

With that hopeful mantra as her guide, she allowed herself to open her eyes, her mind and her heart. With every day that passed, she fell deeper in love with her handsome huntsman. Together they explored other worlds, worlds of danger and excitement and fantasy. He sought out the wicked and she shared stories of dark magic and deep dreams.