Rafe Sinclair's Revenge

Routine. The word reverberated in her consciousness, producing a nagging sense of guilt.

That was one of the first things you were taught. Never establish a routine. Vary your route to and from work. Vary the times you travel it. Vary everything in your existence so that no one can know where you’ll be or what you’ll be doing at any given moment of the day or night.

She was a little amused at the clarity of her memory. The problem with following those instructions, even if there had been any legitimate reason for doing so, was that there was only one route from her office to the bungalow she’d bought here three years ago. And she didn’t exactly set her own hours. She could vary the time she headed home, as she had today, but she was the one who opened the office every morning, promptly at nine o’clock.

She didn’t live her life by a routine, she thought, as she released the mirror to turn the key. She had slipped past routine and straight into rut. Small-town rut.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, she told herself determinedly, backing quickly out of the parking place. She had had enough excitement to last her a lifetime. All she wanted now was peace and quiet.

Not exactly all, she admitted with a touch of bitterness as she guided the car out onto the two-lane. Because after all, peace and quiet Magnolia Grove offered in abundance. As for the other…

What was it that Paul Newman had said? Why settle for hamburger when you have steak waiting at home? The analogy didn’t quite fit her situation, but she hadn’t met anyone in Magnolia Grove remotely interesting enough to compete with her memories.

And that’s a hell of a note, she acknowledged.

Maybe that’s why she’d been imagining someone following her. Loneliness. Routine. Rut. Boredom.

All of which were why she was here, she reminded herself. This place ranked at the top in the all-time boredom ratings. That’s exactly why she had chosen it. Just because she was now having some kind of midlife crisis—

Midlife? Her eyes left the road, lifting to the mirror. Although she had to shift her position in order to accomplish it, this time they examined the reflection of her face, which was reassuringly the same.

Slightly crooked nose, hazel eyes, faint chicken pox scar on her left cheekbone. And, she assessed critically, only a few more lines around her eyes than had ever been there before.

Thirty-four was hardly “midlife.” Even if this peculiar sensation of being watched was the product of some sort of dissatisfaction with her present existence, she couldn’t legitimately put it down to middle-age angst, thank God.

Her gaze returned to the blacktop stretching before her. Heat waves rose from the asphalt to shimmer and distort the horizon. There wasn’t another car in sight. A quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed there was no traffic behind her either.

Nobody was following her. Nobody was the least bit interested in anything she was doing. The idea that someone might be was probably just wishful thinking.

And that’s pretty pathetic.

Her mother used to say, “Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.” She had wanted peace and quiet and security. And now that she had it…

Pretty damn pathetic, she thought again, pressing her foot down on the gas pedal to take advantage of the long, deserted straightaway that stretched in front of her.

SOMETHING WAS SUBTLY different about the house. She had known it as soon as she opened the back door. Certainly by the time she’d set the groceries she’d picked up on the way home down on the counter.

Her eyes sought the light on the answering machine first, but there were no messages. Even if there had been, that wouldn’t have triggered whatever she was feeling.

She was sensitive to atmosphere, as most women were, but she certainly didn’t claim to be clairvoyant. Whatever change she sensed here was physical. Something had been moved, perhaps, so that its being out of place made the room feel strange. Or maybe it was a smell. Something that was different from the normal aromas of her home, so familiar that usually they would go unnoticed.

Her gaze traveled slowly around the room. She had opened the kitchen curtains before she’d left for work this morning. Late-afternoon sunlight spilled through the windows over the sink, slanting across the checkerboard pattern of the black-and-white tile floor. Its brightness seemed to belie her uneasiness, which despite any tangible cause was increasing by the second.

She glanced through the doorway that led into the dining room. It was darker in there, at least beyond the reach of the sunlight pouring into the kitchen. Its reflection made the worn hardwood floor just beyond the open doorway gleam.

Nothing in the dining room seemed out of order. No more than it had in here.

She laid her car keys down beside the sack of groceries and took a step toward the front of the house. As she did, it occurred to her that the smart thing to do would be to go outside, to get into her car and to drive back into town to the sheriff’s office.

And tell him what? Something isn’t right at my house. I don’t like the way it feels.

She could imagine what a charge the deputies would get out of retelling that story. The sheriff would probably send someone back with her, and when they discovered there was nothing here…

She made her feet take another step and then another, crossing the kitchen with determination if not alacrity. There was no reason for this apprehension, she reiterated doggedly. It was ridiculous. No one knew she was here. And no one here knew who she was.

She had changed her name. Changed her appearance. Changed her life. She wasn’t about to go through any of that again because something about this place was suddenly giving her the willies.

She stopped at the dining room door, reaching out to flick the switch for the overhead light. As it scattered the darkness to the periphery of the room, nothing out of the ordinary was revealed.

She took a deep, calming breath. The comforting smell of lemon oil surrounded her. And underlying that—

Her eyes found her collection of antique decanters on the sideboard. One of them was open. Its crystal stopper lay on the polished surface of the buffet. And a tumbler was missing from the silver tray beside it.

At least now she had a rational explanation for what she had been feeling since she’d entered the house. Someone had been here. Or was here.

And judging by his choice of that particular decanter, she knew who. Maybe she had changed everything else about her life, but she still kept the best whiskey she owned in the Waterford. Routine.

“What the hell are you doing here, Rafe?” she asked, not bothering to raise her voice. Wherever he was, he would have been watching her since she’d entered the kitchen.

“You’ve cut your hair.”

He always noticed things like that. Maybe too much. Still, the fact that he had noticed, that it mattered enough to him to mention it, caused an unwanted thickness in her throat.

She had spent a very long time without anyone around to notice those things. Not her hair or her clothes or the condition of her soul.

From force of habit, her hand lifted, fingers spread, to rake the chin-length hair back from her face. When she realized what she was doing, she forced her hand down, away from the strands that had once been long enough to tangle around his bare, sweating shoulders as they made love. Long enough to occasionally catch in his early-morning whiskers, the feel of them so sweetly abrasive against her skin.

At the memory, a jolt of sexual heat seared mercilessly along nerve pathways that had seemed atrophied. They weren’t. Painfully, unexpectedly, she knew that now.

“What are you doing here?” she asked again, ignoring those unsettling emotions.

He always managed to suck her in that way. Noticing. Caring. Being aware.

So damn aware. Aware of every aspect of her existence, as no one in her entire life before she’d met him had ever been.

Steeling herself to face him, she walked across the dining room and through the wide double doorway that separated it from the living room. She always kept the French doors open between the two, so that they were really one.

Which meant, she supposed, that after more than five years, she was once more in the same room with Rafe Sinclair. Something she had thought would never happen again.

“And you’ve lost weight,” he added softly.

His voice had come from the shadows near the fireplace. He was standing in the darkest corner of the room, and with the drapes pulled against the force of the afternoon heat, it was very dark indeed.

His left arm was lying along on the top of one of the built-in bookcases that flanked the small fireplace. Sometime in the past a tenant had painted them a glossy white. That paleness provided a stark contrast to the dark gray shirt he wore. It was long-sleeved, buttoned at the cuff, despite the heat.

As her eyes gradually adjusted to the room’s dimness, she was able to discern other details. In his left hand, the one resting atop the bookcase, he held the tumbler that had been missing from the sideboard. It was still half-full.

His right arm hung loosely at his side, the fingers of the hand curled slightly inward. He seemed perfectly relaxed, exuding the same aura of confidence that had always been such a part of him.