Not a Moment Too Soon

Kaitlin simply knew and reacted. Like now.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Kaitlin demanded over the phone. “That guy from your past, Hunter.”

This was one time Shauna wished Kaitlin didn’t have her uncanny perception. “Yes,” she said briefly.

“You wrote a story about him and now you’re back together.”

“Not exactly. Look, I need for you to—”

“Manage Fantasy Fare on my own for a while. Yes, I’ve got that. But tell me what’s going on.”

“Some other time.”

“You’re with him.”

“Yes,” Shauna acknowledged.

“And it’s not because you want to be. Oh, heck, it’s really bad, isn’t it? I’m so sorry, Shauna. Can I help?”

“Just take care of things for me. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Okay?”

“Sure. You take good care of yourself, you hear? Don’t take any unnecessary risks. And call me when you can talk.”

As Kaitlin hung up, a shower of shimmering rainbows suddenly appeared in Shauna’s mind, gently tumbling toward the ground. As they fell, they turned upside down till they formed a myriad of colorful, happy smiles.

Despite herself, Shauna laughed aloud. That was one ability she didn’t share with her friend. Kaitlin had the power to implant images into the minds of those whose emotions she sensed, the better to soothe them. Shauna had frequently enlisted Kaitlin’s help in the therapy sessions she held to assist those whose stories she had written.

But where had that warning come from? It wasn’t characteristic of what Kaitlin usually did. Did she see something that Shauna—

“What was that all about?” came a chilly masculine voice from beside her.

Shauna glanced toward Hunter. He still sat stiffly as he watched the road, gripping the steering wheel, as if by manipulating it he could reverse the diabolical incident that had suddenly taken control of his life.

“I had to tell my manager at the restaurant that I was going away for a while and that she’d need to take care of things.”

He finally darted a look at her, his green eyes quizzical but not as icy as before. “It didn’t sound like you did much talking, let alone giving directions.”

Shauna replayed her end of the conversation in her mind. He was right. But knowing Hunter’s antipathy toward anything that smacked of extraordinary abilities, she said simply, “I’m sorry you haven’t met Kaitlin. She’s been my manager for a couple of years, and we’re good friends. To other people it might sound like we talk in code, but we’re close enough that we understand each other.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced, but Shauna doubted he’d push this issue further. She had known Hunter to be intelligent and intuitive in the past. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have made such a good cop. He had also been stubborn, refusing to acknowledge what he chose not to accept or understand. Right now, she suspected he’d gotten the gist of what she wasn’t saying.

But at least he was talking to her again.

“We’re not far from the airport now,” she said, eager for some conversation—any conversation—to avoid their former uncomfortable silence.

He nodded. “I haven’t been away long enough to forget my way around.”

Just long enough to forget her, Shauna thought. Or so he must have wished.

If only their reunion could have been under other circumstances. But there would have been no reunion between them if she hadn’t written that horrifying story.

And now they could only both wish they had never seen each other again.

The plane was finally in the air. The trip to Los Angeles International Airport, abbreviated LAX by most Angelenos, would take about an hour.

An hour too long.

Ignoring the aircraft’s typical loud engine noise, Hunter forced himself to lean back in his narrow seat that, despite the height of its backrest, was too short to cradle his head comfortably. He had to concentrate on something other than his edginess. He had become an adopted Angeleno, like so many other immigrants to the sprawling urban complex. Yet, despite his reason for being there, he’d felt a sense of nostalgia visiting Oasis and his mother. And—though he despised himself for admitting it—seeing Shauna again.

L.A. was home now. His business was there.

His daughter was there…

His restlessness was a demon sitting on his shoulder and taunting him to stare at the still-lit seat-belt sign. He looked at Shauna, who occupied the window seat. He had the aisle, and they were fortunate, in their row of three, that the middle seat was vacant. Shauna had obviously decided to take advantage. She’d pulled her carry-on bag from beneath the seat in front of her and rested it between them. She wrested her laptop from it, opened her tray table and placed the computer on it.

After she turned it on, a look of concentration etched a small furrow between the soft arches of her brows. They were darker than the deepest blond shade of her long hair, which was still highlighted in soft streaks by the Arizona sun. Her unique hair color was something he had found extraordinarily appealing about her long ago. One of many things.

If there hadn’t been a vacant seat, Hunter wondered if he’d have offered to trade with the person unlucky enough to have been assigned the uncomfortable middle. Would he have wanted to spend this hour separated from Shauna that way?

Not that he had any desire to be close to her…although desire was a poor choice of words. Hell, yes, he still desired her. But long ago he’d made self-control an unbreakable habit. It was the only way his P.I. business could survive.

The only way he could survive.

Without so much as a glance toward him, Shauna began to type. Was she writing another of her damned stories that she would use to drive some other poor jerk mad by claiming it would come true?

Muttering something without quite knowing what, Hunter bent to retrieve his small briefcase from under the seat in front of him and yanked out Shauna’s story. He started to read it…until pain forced him to close his eyes.

When he opened them again, Shauna was watching him.

“Hunter, do you want to talk about—”

He hadn’t brought her along to practice her psychology mumbo jumbo on him. “Is that another of your fortune-telling fairy tales?” His words spit out as he nodded toward her computer. Her graceful fingers still rested on the keyboard as if poised to peck out more nonsense.

“That’s not your business.” Her tone was conversational, but the glint in her eyes told him she was peeved.

She was right. It wasn’t his business, unless it concerned Andee. That didn’t make him any less curious. Or less peeved with himself, too, for taking his anxiety out on her. Again.

Maybe she couldn’t help writing that story. How would he know? It wasn’t like he’d bombarded her with questions before, when they’d been together.

He looked around. At least with all the plane noise, no one could have heard what he’d said.

When he turned back, Shauna’s smile was forced. “Actually, I’m writing the story I started out to do when…when the story about Andee came out. I do that, you know—write little tales I read aloud at story time at Fantasy Fare. Kids who come in tell me what they want to hear, and most often that’s what comes out when I sit at the computer. A boy whose parents bring him about once a week asked for a story about his dog Duke, and that’s what I’m working on.”

“Why didn’t you just write your shaggy-dog story before and leave Andee alone?”

He didn’t mean to ask that. Worse, though he could have taken another of her indignant glares, he hated the renewed look of sympathy she turned on him.

Shauna reached over with her closest hand and pulled his from where it clutched the armrest. He didn’t fight her as she rested it on top of her bag on the seat between them, and squeezed gently. Her hand was much smaller than his, but it was strong. He stared at the point of contact between them, at the light polish on her short nails, her slender, curled fingers, feeling as if her strength suddenly radiated through his skin and up his arm.

But it wasn’t her strength that singed him with that deceptively innocent touch.

“So tell me,” he said, trying to sound conversational as he restrained his anger with this woman and her sympathy and her seemingly unconscious seduction.

Or was he angrier with himself? He had been the one to coerce her into accompanying him. And now that they were together, he acknowledged to himself that he wanted her.

He’d missed her.

“Tell you…?”

“About your stories.” He kept his voice even. “You sit down to write something about a dog and a kidnapping comes out instead?”

Her eyes grew huge. Why were they dampening that way? Was she trying to lay a guilt trip on him for just asking a simple—well, maybe not so simple. Even if he believed it.

“You never asked before,” she said in a soft, husky voice. More forcefully, she continued, “And I know how hard it is for you to even pretend to give credence to my…my—”

“Let’s just use ‘fairy tale’ again,” he said wryly. “It’s all-purpose enough to suit many situations, right?”

The smile on her full, kiss-me-quick-or-die-from-wanting lips quivered for an instant, then grew wistful. “Sure,” she said. “You know I don’t ask for that kind of…fairy tale to come out. The firstborn woman in each generation of my family has the ability. It’s easier in some ways for me since I’ve grown up having computers. My Grandma O’Leary would just be sitting at a table somewhere, go involuntarily into…well, let’s call it a trance, and when she woke up, she found she’d engaged in automatic writing, pen to paper. My mother used a typewriter. I just sit at the computer and what I write is there on the screen when I…when I become conscious of it. I don’t know if I actually go into a trance, but my eyes close.”

“And these stories always come true?” He made little attempt to hide his scorn, especially since he knew what she was going to say. He’d heard this part of her claims before.

“You know the answer,” she said quietly, trying to withdraw her hand for the first time. He didn’t let her, exchanging her firm grip for his own. “It’s not so much that they come true. They are true.”

“Because you sense someone’s emotions? How bizarre is that? Is that why you became a shrink as well as a restaurant owner? To come up with an explanation of how those supposed emotions come from people you don’t even know, like this ‘Big T’? And Andee.” His voice grew hoarse on those last couple of words, and he cleared his throat.

“I never said I could explain why, Hunter. And I became a therapist for other reasons. But, yes, the stories emanate from someone else’s strong emotions while they’re feeling them. Like the people in this one. And those years ago when I picked up on those vicious bank robbers you were after.”

“I didn’t ask about that,” Hunter snapped.

“No, you never did.” Shauna’s voice was sad. “Or at least not in any helpful way. You didn’t want to hear about it then, but if you’d like to now—”

Hunter used the excuse of a slight rumbling behind him to turn his head. A flight attendant asked someone what he wanted to drink. “Some other time,” he said to Shauna. Yeah, like the twenty-second century. Pulling down his tray table, he considered ordering an alcoholic drink but discarded the idea. He needed his wits about him.

“Coffee,” he growled when the flight attendant asked what he wanted. “Black. Thanks.”

But what did he really want?

To be in L.A. a lot faster than this plane was going.

And then, his daughter.

Peace.

And Shauna back in Oasis. Out of his life again.

Every time she was in it, she messed with his mind. Made him feel like he’d lost control of everything important to him.

And that wasn’t all. Even now that he wasn’t touching her, he felt uncomfortable. Physically.

For now, and much too frequently since he’d been in her presence again, the involuntary reactions of his much too impulsive body reminded him vividly of some of the reasons Shauna had once been such an important part of his life.

Shauna took a sip of apple juice, then returned the plastic glass to the tray table of the seat between Hunter and her.

He was sipping his coffee.

And reading, again, her story about Andee’s kidnapping.

Anguish knit his thick, dark brows into a single tortured line. Anguish that she, however unintentionally, had helped to paint there.

She couldn’t change the story. But maybe she could ease the rest of this flight for him, if only a little.

“Tell me about Andee, Hunter,” she said.

He glanced at her. “I thought you were writing about a dog.”

She nodded. “But I’d like to hear about your daughter.” She’d known when Andee was born—and not just because Elayne had proudly yet sympathetically revealed to Shauna that she’d become a grandmother.

In fact, Shauna hadn’t had to see photos of Hunter at Elayne’s over the years to recall poignantly how vibrantly male he was—and how painfully missing from her life. Now and then, stories about him had flowed through her fingertips, generated by his own rampant emotions.

Like the day he had opened his own private investigation agency. The day he’d married.

The day Andee was born.

The day his divorce was final.

She had printed those stories and stuck them in one of her file cabinets. With improvements in technology, she’d changed computers over the years, so she’d had to save the stories onto disks before discarding the old equipment. In any event, she hadn’t looked at any of them afterward, on paper or on computer.

“Andee’s a great kid,” Hunter said. “She’s beautiful. Smart. She can even read a little already. She doesn’t deserve what’s in this damn story. And even if it’s not true and she hasn’t been kidnapped, she doesn’t deserve to be lost. Or scared. She’s only five years old.”

His voice cracked. Shauna reached toward him and touched his shoulder in comfort, but he flinched.

That hurt as much as if he had slapped her.

“Of course she doesn’t deserve it.” Inside, Shauna was screaming. What good did it do anyone for her to write those stories? Maybe it was better for people not to know what they’d be facing.

But that was why she had become a therapist: To help the friends and strangers she wrote about through this kind of horror.

But what good was she if she couldn’t, in some manner, help the man she had once loved?

She racked her brain for something she’d learned to balance her own painful emotions and came up with nothing.

“Okay, Shauna,” Hunter said after a long moment. “I never wanted to believe your stories were real, but sometimes things in them seemed uncanny. So let’s work this through, just in case. We tried to fix the ending on your computer but couldn’t save changes. But we hadn’t done anything different from what was on the pages. The story says I start my own search for my daughter. What if, when I return to L.A., I turn it over to the police and stay out of it? If you wrote that into your story, could the changes be saved? Maybe that would fix the ending.” He grabbed his forehead with one of his large hands. “Listen to me,” he muttered. “Talk about buying into craziness…”

“Okay, let’s engage in ‘what ifs.’ You’ve already told the police, and that’s in the story, even though you mentioned your—your ex-wife—said, when she called the second time, that she’d heard from the kidnapper and he said not to involve the authorities. That doesn’t change the story. You could just let the police look for Andee. But that’s not logical for you. You’re a former cop, a private investigator, so of course you’d look for her, like the story says.”

“But what if I didn’t?” he insisted.

Shauna drew in a deep breath. “I’ve learned that even changing in a logical way what happens in real life from the way it’s written in my stories…well, I was never able to save the changes. And the ending always stayed the same.” She’d tried to speak matter-of-factly. It didn’t work. Her respiration increased, and tears closed her throat. She turned to study the now-blank computer screen.

“You’re talking about your father, aren’t you?”

Amazingly, Hunter’s voice was filled with sympathy. Surprised, she darted a glance toward him. This time, he took her hand.

She nodded, wanting to talk about it. Not wanting to talk about it. Not now.

She was relieved when the sound of the aircraft’s engines changed and its altitude decreased. The captain announced the final descent into Los Angeles. She used the distraction to pull her hand back, shut down her computer and start putting it away.

She was not sure whether to be glad or sorry this ride was nearly over. She sensed a truce between Hunter and her.

He still wouldn’t admit to believing her stories…exactly. Nor did he shove his disbelief in her face.

But how would things go in Los Angeles while he searched for Andee?

And when it was all over, and the ending of the story had come to pass?

He might be ambivalent now. But then he would hate her.

So, for now, she had to dredge up every nuance of her psychology classes, everything she’d learned, to help Hunter. And his ex-wife.

And herself.

For, despite everything she had told herself in the past seven years, being with Hunter now made clear one very important thing: she had never completely gotten over him.

Chapter 4

Because it was summer, daylight still glowed when they arrived at Margo Masters’s home.

Shauna noticed right away that the light blue stucco house was larger than the others on its crowded residential block in Sunland, an area in the northern San Fernando Valley. It was the only one with a second floor. Had it had been added by Margo, or had she bought it that way?

Or had this been where Hunter, too, had lived when they were married?

That thought snatched all the charm she’d noticed from the home as she preceded Hunter along the winding front walk between patches of well-manicured lawn.

There hadn’t been a detailed description in her story of where the kidnapping occurred. But then, there never were great descriptions. Sometimes, she had to use intuition to determine the origin of the emotions that set her stories into play.

This time, because it had involved Hunter’s family, the origin had been obvious.

If only all connections with Hunter had been severed when he’d left. That was a laugh, after all those stories she’d written in the interim.

Hunter had driven them here in his sporty silver GTO, which he’d parked near LAX while away on business. Now Shauna waited while he stepped around her and rang the bell. Margo pulled the door open in less than a minute. Shauna recognized her. She’d looked the struggling actress up on the Internet after writing her story about Hunter’s marriage.

“Thank heavens you’re finally here,” she exclaimed, her low, throaty voice conveying simultaneously both relief and criticism. She glanced at Shauna without saying anything. “Oh, Hunter, it’s been terrible.” Tears glittered in her eyes.

“Yeah,” he said, that single word conveying both acknowledgment of her pain and the expression of his own. “Anything new?”

“Yes,” Margo wailed. “You need to control your assistant. And make sure that policeman he called doesn’t do anything to put Andee in worse danger—if it isn’t already too late.”

Shauna, inhaling the strong and probably expensive scent wafting around the woman, forced herself not to stare at her flawless beauty: high cheekbones, smooth skin, softly pouting lips, shoulder-length light brown hair shimmering with auburn highlights. She wore a short white shirt and slim black slacks. Margo wasn’t a tall woman, but even in her wired emotional state she held herself regally, and the movement of her hand as she motioned them inside was as graceful as a model’s.

Her eyes were pale brown. Shauna had no doubt that the way they’d been enhanced with makeup sometime earlier that day would have rendered them outstanding and gorgeous. But Margo’s crying had caused her makeup to run, turning her beauty fragile and sad.

Margo preceded them into her living room. Three men seated in the conversation area around a low, polished coffee table rose at their entrance. A woman, too.

Hunter made the first introductions. “Everyone, this is Shauna O’Leary. Shauna, you met Margo Masters at the door. This is Detective Arthur Banner.” He gestured toward one of the two men who’d been seated on chairs. “And Simon Wells.” Hunter pointed to the guy beside Banner.

Shauna knew that Simon was Hunter’s assistant at Strahm Solutions. He was not quite as tall as Hunter and barrel-chested, and had a brown mustache darker than the longish hair on his head. He wore a tweed sport jacket over a brown mock turtleneck. As he bowed his head in greeting, Shauna had the incongruous impression of old-world courtliness. If they’d been closer, she’d not have been surprised if he’d kissed her hand.

Arthur Banner, on the other hand, was tall, thin, reserved, and seemed to memorize everything about Shauna in a single, prolonged look with small but omniscient gray eyes. Hunter had told her about the police detective, whose nickname “Banger” was a joke, for he was trustworthy, an all-cop cop.

Margo had slipped past Hunter and now stood between the other two people in the room. “My friends BillieAnn Callahan and John Keenan Aitken,” she said, finishing the introductions. Not that Margo had said, but Shauna figured that BillieAnn and John were fellow actors. Though both were dressed casually, their self-possession suggested they awaited their next cue. BillieAnn was taller than Margo, but still resembled a pixie, with her short, wispy cap of dark brown hair around ears that protruded a little too much, pouty lips painted deep red with shiny gloss, and short, clingy blouse with flowing sleeves.

Aitken put a protective arm around Margo. He was of moderate height, slim, a Cary Grant type with an air of savoir faire punctuated by his raised chin and cool smile. The impression was destroyed, though, by his clothes: blue jeans and a muscle shirt adorned with the logo of a Hollywood theater.

“Can I get everyone something to drink?” Margo asked, as if this was a social gathering.

“I’ll get it,” BillieAnn said. But no one took them up on the offer, though Shauna was tempted. Her mouth felt dry.

Hunter sat down at the edge of one of two matched antique-looking sofas that faced one another, both with beige damask upholstery and carved backs and legs. He was brawny enough to look as out of place as the proverbial bull in a china shop. But maybe he liked this kind of furniture now.

Shauna noticed how he’d made himself right at home. And why not? Even though he was no longer married to Margo, he undoubtedly spent time here with their daughter.

Shauna ignored the hurt that constricted her throat. She was long past that particular pain.

As Shauna joined him, Margo’s friends resumed their seats on the sofa matching the one where Hunter and Shauna sat, and Margo slid between them. Simon and Banger sat once more on the high-back chairs they had vacated at the same end of the coffee table.

Vases, figurines and other knickknacks graced the table and glass shelves at the room’s corners. They looked old, too, and valuable.

A five-year-old child had played here? The place didn’t look childproof to Shauna, who made sure there were no sharp corners or anything she valued too much to get broken around Fantasy Fare, particularly in the small room where she told stories three nights a week. Just a lot of plants.

Margo rose again, as if too full of energy to stay seated. She walked to the side of the sofa where Hunter sat. And why not? She had every right to share his pain and partake in mutual comfort.

Instead, shaking her head, she moaned, “What are you trying to do, Hunter?”

She swayed, and BillieAnn and John immediately took their places again at her sides. She tossed them thankful smiles. “I promised to stay calm, so I will. But I told Hunter the kidnapper said we weren’t to tell anyone. And did he listen? No, he sent his assistant.” Pursing her lips, she blinked at Simon. “He called the police, which is even more against the rules.” Banger received her next fearful glower. “I couldn’t take any more, so I called BillieAnn and John. I know I can trust them, at least.” Her demeanor changing from anxious to angry, she took a step toward Hunter. “And then you bring this woman here.” Her glare at Shauna oozed malice. “Your old girlfriend. You told me about her before, and I recognized her name. Do you think this is a joke? Do you want Andee killed?”