Dangerous Attraction Romantic Suspense Boxed Set (201 page)

Tyler held out his hand and Keelin placed the object in the center of his palm. A chill shot down his spine. Even in the near dark he recognized it. A fairy charm from the bracelet his daughter always wore.

He remembered Cheryl complaining that he hadn’t been spending enough time with her last summer, that he was too busy with his work. He’d tried making up for his negligence. They’d spent an entire weekend together, Sunday at the Renaissance fair. They’d had a great time. An unforgettable day, just the two of them. The bracelet had been outrageously priced for scraps of leather and small bits of metal, but he’d seen how his daughter’s eyes shone when she’d looked at it, and he hadn’t been able to resist buying it for her. The bracelet was her prized possession and she rarely removed it.

Keelin’s eyes were shining when she asked, “Now do you believe me?”

“I believe you know something about Cheryl,” he agreed, the proof in his hand. “What I don’t know is if you’re telling the truth about these dreams of yours.”

“But the charm–”

He slipped it in his pocket. “Could have been planted. Or you could have had it all along, palmed it, pretended to have found it.” He loomed over Keelin and grabbed her upper arms, wishing he could wring the truth from her. “Did you have anything to do with my daughter’s disappearance?”

The excited light extinguished from her eyes, she said, “No!” and pulled her arms free, one at a time. Features saddened by disappointment and disgust, she turned her back on him and marched across the lawn.

Tyler lost no time in following. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To my hotel.”

“What about my daughter?”

“What about her?” She stopped and faced him. “What truth did she learn that was so devastating that she ran from you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But, deep in his heart, Tyler was beginning to fear he might.

“At this moment, is anything more important to you than your daughter’s safety?”

“Nothing.” She was his whole life. If anything happened to her…

“Then prove it. Take some responsibility and stop placing the blame.”

His “All right” seemed to take her off guard. She blinked and took a big breath.

“Suddenly you believe me?” Keelin asked quietly. “Just like that?”

He couldn’t say the words. “I’ll stop placing the blame,” he promised instead.

Innocent or guilty, Tyler sensed Keelin would lead him to his daughter. In the long run, bringing Cheryl home safe was all that mattered to him.

“So what have we accomplished by coming here?” he asked. “Other than your treading the path in your dream?”

“It makes the connection real for me. I hoped to see something I missed earlier…but I didn’t. Still, it makes tangible what I knew in my heart.” Her tone fervent, she said, “I wish it did for you, as well.”

Tyler held fast to his distrust. “Nothing more? No indications of who might have found Cheryl? What the person looked like, for instance?”

“I’m not a psychic,” she protested. “At least not in the way you’re suggesting. I can’t make predictions. I can’t envision places or people I haven’t
seen
through physical contact. I experience real events and emotions through dreams. That’s it.”

Keelin rubbed a lethargic hand across her forehead, and Tyler responded despite himself. She looked exhausted, as if she could hardly stay on her feet. And there was a fragility about her that he hadn’t noticed before. Not physically, perhaps, but of spirit.

“Perhaps I’d better get you to your hotel.”

Keelin sighed and the sound was a weary one. “I could use some sleep.”

“And maybe you’ll dream again.”

“I cannot force it,” she warned him.

“I’ll take my chances.”

Including the opportunity to talk further with this mysterious woman. If there was one thing he knew how to do, it was to make members of the opposite sex open up to him.

Tyler determined that whatever her game, Keelin McKenna would be no exception.

ON THE SHORT RIDE HOME, KEELIN couldn’t rid herself of the bitter aftertaste Tyler Leighton provoked. He’d brought up all the old insecurities. The feeling of helplessness. Of being thought a liar or a fool. She couldn’t blame him, she supposed, and yet it was difficult to be generous when it was his daughter she was trying to help.

If only she could have done this alone.

The Hotel Clareton, tucked on a side street of the Gold Coast, blended perfectly with other limestone and brownstone buildings surrounding it. Elegant yet understated, the modest establishment offered all the amenities of a larger hotel with even more personal service.

Swinging open the Jaguar’s passenger door, the liveried doorman said, “Miss McKenna, I trust you’re having a good evening.”

Keelin forced a smile and let the polite inquiry hang.

“Take care of the car,” Tyler said, handing the man a large bill.

“Certainly.” The doorman motioned for a younger uniformed man to come forward and move the Jaguar.

In a low voice, Keelin said, “No reason you need to see me to my door.”

When Tyler insisted, “Of course there is,” she had the distinct feeling that he meant to do more than escort her to her suite and leave. Not wanting to argue the point before the hotel’s employees, she spun on her heel and through the hotel’s entry.

Tyler followed her inside, past a lobby decorated in champagne and gold with touches of palest pink. Her suite was decorated in similar fashion, the sofa and two chairs in her sitting room identical to those in the lobby. The walls were a subdued pink with a gold sheen, warming the flawlessly appointed setting. And the coffee table held a spray of matching pink tiger lilies as did the chest in the bedroom. When he stepped inside, she noted Tyler’s raised eyebrows and assumed he was calculating the expense.

Trying to be subtle, she said, “I really am very tired.”

“I imagine you are,” he said, continuing to wander through her temporary living quarters.

All right, so she had to be more direct. “I’m trying to end the evening.”

“Consider it ended.” He dropped onto the sofa.

Keelin shut the door so their words wouldn’t echo down the hall. “Not with you here.”

While she was willing to put up with the man for his child’s sake, she wouldn’t allow him to get too close for her own. He kept prying under her skin, poking and prodding at her innermost being. Knowing he had secrets of his own, Keelin suspected he was exactly the type of man who could get what he wanted from her if he kept at it.

The type of man she made a point of avoiding.

“I’m not going elsewhere,” he stated.

Keelin feared the consequences if she didn’t set boundaries. Drawing closer, she crossed her arms over her chest. “You cannot stay in my rooms.”

“You certainly can’t expect me to drive back to North Bluff. If you have one of your
visionary
dreams, it would take me better than a half hour to get back here, even in the middle of the night. Then how would we get to Cheryl in time?”

Unable to miss his sarcasm even as he made a sensible point, Keelin settled into a high-backed chair opposite him. “So what are you proposing?”

“That I spend the night on your sofa. Don’t worry, I have no desire to invade your bedroom.”

“That never occurred to me,” she hedged, the vision clear in her mind the moment he put words to it.

“No?” His eyebrows lifted fractionally, as if he knew better. “You seem tense.” He looked around the room, his gaze settling on a drink cart. “A little brandy would do us both good.”

Did he hope liquor would loosen her up? Or loosen up her tongue? Keelin thought the latter. Let him try. He couldn’t wring from her a truth he suspected she was hiding, not when she was innocent of any wrongdoing.

While he decanted the brandy, the red glow on her telephone finally caught her eye. Realizing a message awaited her, she picked up the receiver, read the instructions and punched in the code to retrieve it. So many technical advances in this America of her relatives…and her used to a far more simple life.

“Hey, cous, Skelly here. Call me first thing in the morning, would you? I’ve got some info on Tyler Leighton that I think you need to know.”

A beep was followed by an electronic voice telling her she had no more messages.

What could her cousin have learned about Tyler? she wondered. Something she needed to know…And Skelly’s tone had seemed a bit ominous.

She hung up just as Tyler made himself comfortable on the sofa and handed her a glass.

“Who was that?”

“My cousin. Family business.”

Feeling the heat creep up her neck, Keelin cursed her inability to tell the smallest of untruths without telegraphing the fact. But if Tyler noticed the flush spreading up into her face, he didn’t say a word. His expression blank – purposely so? she wondered – he seemed content in his silence until her glass was half-empty.

“So why don’t you make an effort to convince me?” he finally suggested.

He didn’t have to be more specific. Keelin knew he was referring to her ability. “I’m not certain that I can.”

“Me, neither, but you can start with whatever you’re holding back,” he suggested. “The thing that makes finding Cheryl so important to you.”

“I doubt anything I tell you will change your mind.”

“Try me.”

Tyler sounded as if he were serious. And the way he was looking at her, as if he were
afraid
to trust her, touched Keelin. Sensing he meant what he said, that he really wanted to be convinced, she didn’t see any harm in relating the first part of the story.

“After Gran explained everything to me,” she began, “I hated the fact that I was different. But I couldn’t change things, couldn’t run away from who I was. I felt the huge responsibility she spoke of in my heart and in my soul.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Not much older than Cheryl. Heavy stuff for a kid…”

Keelin could almost hear him mentally adding
if it’s true
.

“The dreams always sprang from strong emotions,” she went on. “Sometimes good emotions, sometimes bad, but always very, very intense.”

“And the bad ones upset you?”

Keelin nodded. “Of course, though they weren’t anything of great significance until…” She took another sip of her brandy for courage. Sharing this still wasn’t easy. “My closest chum was a schoolmate. Deirdre Flanagan. One night, I saw her being molested – I
felt
her being molested and fighting a boy we both knew. I woke up near-hysterical, made Da ring the constable. I was certain I was reporting a crime in progress.” The painful memories washed over her. “When they were caught together, Deirdre told the constable that Tully O’Meara was her new boyfriend and that he hadn’t done anything she hadn’t wanted.” She took a deep breath. “Afterward, she and my other schoolmates froze me out for telling.”

“But even if you were wrong, you were trying to help her.”

“And I’m not certain that I wasn’t correct. In my heart, I believe that Deirdre was raped…but I suppose she thought admitting to it would put more of a stigma on her than if people merely thought she fell from the virtuous path.”

“So she lied to save face.”

“And in so doing made me an outcast. A subject of jest. This from a good friend,” Keelin said sadly, remembering as if the betrayal had just happened. “I wanted to die of embarrassment.”

“Being a social outcast as a teenager would be traumatic,” Tyler admitted. “But if you’re saying that’s your motivation, the reason that you’ve got to find Cheryl –”

“No.”

After abruptly cutting him off, Keelin splashed back the last of her brandy and reveled in the smooth burn of the liquor as it slid down he throat. This is what she
could not
speak of. What she had never told anyone but her confessor. The burden she’d carried around with her. The guilt she could never wash away completely. Day after day, year after year, she’d thought it impossible to redeem herself.

But maybe she’d been wrong.

Maybe finding Cheryl Leighton before something terrible happened to the girl was her chance at last.

She set down the empty glass on the table next to her.

“I’m saying ‘tis the reason that, for many years, I chose to ignore the ability I inherited from my grandmother. And there were terrible consequences to be paid.” An image of Galvin Daley’s body caught in the shallows of Lough Danaan danced in her head. Her eyes stung with the vision that haunted her. “I can not let that happen again.”

“So exactly what was it that happened?”

“That’s all I’ll be telling you,” Keelin insisted, bouncing up from her chair, head down so he wouldn’t see the tears trembling on her lids.

Tyler was equally quick. Before she could get around him, he’d blocked her path, and his hands were encasing her arms again. “Tell me.”

“No!” Her refusal was a ragged cry.

“I think you need to talk about it.”

Slowly, Keelin raised her head, forced herself to look at Tyler. Her pulse surged. What she saw etched in his features startled her. Empathy. Concern. For her?

But it couldn’t be.

“What do you care about my needs?” she asked softly, aware of his fingers burning into the flesh of her arms. “You think I’m a fraud. That I am out to trick you of your precious money. Not everyone is motivated by greed.”

The sensation spread, making her want to move closer, to feel those arms around her. She needed succor, and yet she could not ask for it, because she could not be totally honest.

“Experience tells me different.”

“I live a comfortable life and that’s enough for me. Can you say the same?” With that she shrugged free and tore into her bedroom. “You can see yourself out.”

Keelin slammed the bedroom door and set the lock, then threw herself across the four-poster bed. She fisted the pink satin quilt and squeezed. Willed herself not to cry. Too many tears already. Her heart was hammering in her breast so hard she thought she might be sick.

She hadn’t meant to defend herself. But that’s what she had done, had nearly pleaded for Tyler’s trust. Why? He didn’t have to trust her. He only had to go along with her. She knew that. And also knew she wanted more.