All Tucked In...

His brows furrowed in thought. Thick and bushy, they almost came together, forming a ledge. “And the sleepwalking?”

She shrugged. “That’s hard to say. I live alone.” Once more, there was the reminder that they’d planned to share a home, and she mentally flashed on the two-bedroom apartment further down Fifth Avenue, near the university, which they’d rented. She’d wound up living in it for three years. When he’d married Sandy Craig, she’d decided she needed a change, and after that move, of course, she’d ended up back in the apartment she’d previously shared with her parents.

“So you don’t know if you sleepwalk?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t wake up in places other than your own bed?”

“Uh…no, Tobias.”

He sent her a long look. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

Good Catholic girl that she was, she figured Tobias knew she hadn’t slept with anyone besides him. But maybe he’d actually been fishing. “Of course you didn’t.”

Once more, heat surged between them. A relationship was impossible, of course, she found herself thinking. After all, she’d left him at the altar, and then he’d married Sandy Craig. But Tobias was the only man she’d ever slept with—the only one she’d ever wanted to sleep with—and she’d definitely missed having sex. A lot. The truth was, Carla hadn’t done it in seven years now. The way she’d been brought up, a woman only slept with her husband. Or at least the man she’d thought was going to be her husband.

Sucking in a breath, she collected her thoughts. “Sometimes, come to think of it, I do wake up on the couch,” she said. “As you know, Ma said I definitely sleepwalked as a kid.”

He jotted something in the margin of her intake sheet. “Has anything changed in the dreams?”

“Changed?”

Chewing his lower lip, he thought a moment, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Is anything different?” Shrugging, he added, “Maybe about the room where the dream takes place? Does the man ever say anything new?”

As much as she hated visualizing the dream that had so often disturbed her, she shook her head. “No. Everything’s the same.”

He looked disappointed. “Are you sure?”

She hated to say it. “Absolutely.”

He sighed. “Well…what I’d like to try tonight, assuming you have the nightmare, is some guided dream imagery.”

Now they were getting down to business, and she felt a rush of nervousness. Her hand tightened on the strap of the overnight duffel bag she’d nestled near her feet. “Meaning?”

“When your nightmare’s in progress, I’ll administer electrical impulses.” Interrupting himself as he stood, he added, “It doesn’t hurt. With any luck, it’ll change the course of your nightmare.”

She stood also, feeling surprised when he took her bag. Why, she didn’t know. Tobias was always a gentleman. Still, the bag wasn’t heavy at all, so the gesture was unnecessary. She was squinting at him. “Meaning?”

He considered. “Well…various things can happen,” he explained. “I’ll attach electrodes to your head, then when your nightmare begins, I’ll send small jolts of electricity to your nerve endings.”

“Uh-huh,” she murmured. Already, he was doing a fairly good job of that, so she could hardly wait for tonight.

“Patients say that something new happens in their dreams,” he continued. “For instance, the dark room in which it occurs might suddenly change into an enchanted forest, and the bad people are dealt with, maybe sent away by trusted friends. Or you might confront the man. Either way, the content of the dream changes just enough that you find your way out of it. It turns into a good story with a happy ending.”

She paused, fighting a shudder. She didn’t want her repeating nightmare to occur tonight, much less to confront the man who’d haunted her for so many years. “Great,” she muttered. She was rewarded by the feel of Tobias’s hand. It landed on the small of her back, and he used it to guide her through the doorway.

“Don’t worry,” he said, reassuringly. The creamy brown eyes that cut toward her settled on her face and didn’t pull away. “I’ll be there all night, Carla.”

“You?” Recollections of how he’d held her after her nightmares came back then, and she almost could feel his strong arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her close against his hard, naked body. All at once, she felt a rush of safety, just from the memory. But she also wondered what he was talking about. “You’ll be with me?”

He nodded. “While you’re sleeping, I’ll be right on the other side of a glass partition. As soon as we get upstairs, you’ll see.”

“A GLASS PARTITION,” she murmured.

Tobias could tell she wasn’t entirely happy with the setup. Not that he blamed her. He was just as uncomfortable. Was he really going to spend the night watching Carla DiDolche sleep? Why did she have to show up here, after all these years? And at a time when J. J. Sloane was considering whether or not to give Tobias the lease? Right now, he needed to concentrate, and he could hardly do so with Carla traipsing around the Sloane mansion in a nightgown. “See? It’s just a piece of glass. Last time you were here we hadn’t yet started using this room.”

“I don’t remember coming in here before,” she admitted.

“It’s a nice part of the building. Away from Fifth Avenue,” he said. “Quiet.”

Her eyes slid to the partition again.

His followed.

Before now, the room had never seemed so intimate. By rights, of course, he should have had a standard dream clinic facility, where glass walls separated observers and sleepers; because he’d been forced to convert the old mansion, he and his colleagues had settled on putting glass triparte panels near the beds. “We try to offer sleepers privacy while they’re being monitored,” he explained.

“I see.”

So did he. In just a few hours, Carla was going to be tossing and turning under the covers. Knowing Carla, she’d manage to get the sheets, not to mention whatever nightclothes she’d brought, twisted around her waist.

He chewed the inside of his cheek. Yeah, from what he remembered, Carla favored those little silk numbers that were calculated to drive a man crazy. Not that she’d have brought something like that here, of course. At least he hoped not. No, the staff always advised people to bring something comfortable and unrevealing. And yet…

Maybe it was too bad. As angry as he was with her—would always be with her—and as adamant about never rekindling their romance, Tobias had to admit he wouldn’t mind having sex with her again. At least once. For old time’s sake. Maybe he just needed to know that he could do it and walk away from her, the way she’d walked away from him. Gritting his teeth, he wished she hadn’t shown up here.

After all, on a physical level, no woman had ever excited him as she did. She made his palms itch to touch, his mouth yearn to plunder. His eyes slid to her figure. Her body was so lush. All curves. Her breasts and hips were full. Back when they’d been together, she’d sometimes complained about her weight; for a week or two, she’d deprive herself of the incredible food her mother made, and the sweet, gooey, syrupy cakes they’d served in the café.

But Tobias had thought she was perfect. Soft, just the way a woman was supposed to be. Personally, he hated women who were so thin that you could see jutting bones, not that he’d been able to convince Carla of it.

Realizing a long silence had fallen, he said, “I think you should be comfortable here for the next couple of nights.”

“Nights?” He could see her throat work as she swallowed.

“You really think it will be more than one?”

Just looking at her, he was sorely tempted to keep her here until his lease ran out. Given how his thoughts were progressing, and the way Carla kept dropping her gaze over him as if she, too, was fondly recalling their old times, Tobias had a sneaking suspicion they were soon going to wind up together in the four-poster bed.

So what if he’d nearly married her? Wasn’t that past history now? Wasn’t he over the pain and humiliation of that day? Not to mention over Carla? Wasn’t that why he’d married Sandy? To prove it?

“Can your parents stay?”

She nodded. “They’re here for two weeks.”

He smiled. “Staying with you?”

At that, she grinned back. “That’s why I came here. I needed to escape.”

He eyed her. Even if they had sex, they couldn’t do it at the mansion, he suddenly decided. Not with J. J. Sloane running around looking for excuses to give the lease to the Preservation Society. If J.J. caught him in bed with a patient, Tobias would be ruined. He shook his head to clear it of confusion. Was he really standing here, a foot away from Carla, planning to go to bed with her?