Dallas was dreaming.
He knew it. He was asleep and he was dreaming and he was aware of that, but somehow, he couldn’t wake up.
In fact, some instinct deep inside him was telling him not to wake up. That this was important. That this was a defining moment and if he woke, he’d lose everything.
And so he stayed in the dream. A dim room. An empty dining table. A single rose in a bud vase. And Jane in a sequined formal gown, her lips red and sultry, her eyes on him.
“Aren’t you going to sit? I haven’t finished telling you about what Brody said.”
“Brody?”
“When we walked the beach.”
You told me already, Dallas thought, some part of his mind remembering a conversation from before they’d fallen asleep. You told me when I was awake.
But he sat, and she sipped her wine. “The Woman isn’t just someone who’s been watching us for years. She’s someone we see all the time, too. Can you pass the bread?”
He looked down, and where there had been only a white linen tablecloth, there was now a silver breadbasket.
He passed it, and she took a roll. “It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s important. She’s in our lives.” She shrugged. “Or maybe she isn’t. How can we know?”
“Clues,” Liam said from the third chair. “I’m looking for clues just like you asked me to. Only sometimes clues are easy to miss.” He was wearing a blindfold, and took it off. “Much easier this way.”
“What am I not seeing?” Dallas asked, but no one answered.
A waitress came and refilled his wineglass, then bent close and whispered, “It could be me.”
“What?” He whipped around to look at her, but she was gone. When he looked back, so was Liam. But he saw something in the wine. A face? But it was gone before he could identify it.
Then the wine was gone along with the table, and suddenly he was at the Meadow Lane house he grew up in, standing by the pool with a woman on each arm.
“I’ve been to every party you’ve thrown,” said the redhead.
“So have I,” said the brunette.
“Could it be us?” they asked in unison, then pushed him into the pool.
He sank to the bottom, then floated there, looking up, the ripples on the surface seeming to take the shape of a woman.
He kicked toward the surface, toward the woman, toward the truth.
But it kept getting farther and farther away. His lungs burned. His muscles ached. He wasn’t going to make it. He was going to go down. Drown. Gone.
And then a hand burst through the water and grabbed his wrist and hauled him up, up, up until he was gasping on the pool deck.
Adele.
“Let me help you,” she said. “I’ll always be there to help you.”
—When Jane found him, Dallas had been sitting on the glider on the porch for two hours. It was still dark. And he was wide awake.
He was, he knew, still in shock.
“Dallas?” She came and sat beside him, dressed only in a thin cotton robe. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“Adele,” he said simply. “The Woman is Adele.”
He saw her eyes go wide. Saw her tense and swallow. “Are you certain?”
He stood up, needing to move. He’d been on autopilot for the last two hours, pulling his thoughts together. Hell, pulling his proof together.
And now, goddammit, it was all catching up to him. The horror of this insidious truth. The reality that he had lived. The nature of a woman he had once touched intimately.
Bile rose in his throat.
Oh, god. How the hell did he miss it? How could he not see it?
“Dallas, dammit, talk to me.”
“The pieces just started falling together. Her obsession with getting close to me. The way she knew about our relationship.”
“She’s a therapist. She’s trained to see below the surface.”
“The way she predicted that someone would leak that we had sex when we were in that cell. Who else knows that? Who else has been consistently in our lives?” His voice took on a hard edge. He saw it so damn clearly now, why didn’t she?
Now she stood, too, then started pacing. “But it hasn’t been consistent. Adele didn’t marry Colin until after we were in college. That was years after the kidnapping.”
“Plenty of time to set up a new identity. To change her appearance, even. Heal from surgical scars.”
Jane licked her lips. “But—” She cut herself off with a frown, not sure how to contradict him.
“You see it, too, don’t you?”
“I don’t want to. Oh, god, Dallas, I don’t want to. But it makes sense.”
“It more than makes sense. It’s blindingly obvious now that I’ve backed away. I was too close before. I mean, hell, at one time I even suspected her of writing those damn letters. But I ruled it out.”
She nodded. “You told me. But you ruled her out because the timing was off. Not because you didn’t think she had it in her to go psycho-stalker on you.” She exhaled loudly. “Shit, Dallas. This is—”
“Huge,” he said. “A complete mind fuck. Yeah. I know.”
She sat on the glider. “The letters started while you were still—”
“Together. Yeah.” He felt ill. “The letters were essentially about me not being with whoever was writing them. It didn’t make sense for it to be Adele.”
“But you were still playing the King of Fuck. A girl can get jealous. Especially a psychotic one. Oh, god, Dallas.”
He didn’t want it to be true. Hell, it couldn’t be true. He’d slept with her. He’d done dark, fucked up, wicked things with her.
His knees went weak and he reached for the porch railing.
“Dallas!”
“I’m okay, I’m okay.”
“Adele killed that poor dog,” Jane said, then looked at him. “Are you sure? Can we prove it?”
“That’s what I’ve been working on for the last two hours.”
“And?”
“And so far we know that she flew into Vegas the day before you found the dog in your driveway. She checked into the Bellagio and had appointments at the spa. She returned to the East Coast yesterday morning.”
“It’s not a hard drive from Vegas to LA,” Jane said. “Did she actually go to the spa?”
“Someone using her name did, but I’m betting she paid a show girl to pretend to be her, go have a massage and a facial, and not say a word. Liam’s checking that out right now. But what’s even more interesting, Noah had to really dig for any information on Adele that’s more than five years earlier than the date she married Colin. What he did find has earmarks of being fabricated. He’s verifying.”
“How?”
“Computer checks, follow-ups. But I’m doing my own verification.” He drew in a breath and met her eyes. “I told Quince to ask Colin one very specific question. Was the woman we know as Adele working with him on our kidnapping?”
“You’ve already asked?”
He nodded, then held up his phone. “I’m expecting an answer any minute. Quince has already said that the Woman may have faked her death. That’s why Colin could pass a polygraph saying that she was dead. To him—hell, to her—the woman in the cell with us is dead. A brand-new woman took her place.”
“That’s bullshit,” Jane said.
“Agreed. But it’s the kind of trick intelligence officers use to fool polygraphs. We should hear from Quince soon.”
They both stared at the phone as if it were a live bomb. And when it rang, Jane actually jumped.
Dallas answered before the first ring finished. “Tell me.”
“She’s the one. Sorry, mate. I know she was a friend.”
Except of course she wasn’t. Dallas had only thought she was. Adele had played him in a cell seventeen years ago, and she was playing him still.
Fuck.
Dallas closed his eyes, forcing himself to stay calm. Professional. “No, this is good,” he said to Quince. “This is information. Get out to Connecticut and bring her in. Whatever you need to do, I want her in the cell next to Colin.”
“You got it,” Quince said. “The team’s already en route. They wanted to be positioned if we got the answer from Colin we expected.”
“Call me back when you have her.”
“Will do,” Quince said and ended the call. The minute the line went dead, Dallas deflated, every ounce of professional bravado leaving him. He leaned against the porch rail, Jane right beside him, then dragged his fingers through his hair as he tried to process all the shit that just seemed to keep swirling in his mind.
“I slept with that woman. Hell, I did more than just sleep with her. I did things—let her do things—and I had no idea. No idea at all that she’d touched me before. That she’d fucking used me. Tortured me.”
How could he not have known?
How could he have missed it?
He kept his hands fisted, not so much in anger, but in an effort to hold in every bit of himself. He was on the verge of unraveling, goddammit, and he wouldn’t let her have that, too. He had to keep his shit together or else she won. She fucking won.
“It was dark,” Jane said. Her voice was deceptively calm. “She wore a mask. It was years between the kidnapping and her showing up as Colin’s wife. And god knows Adele has had plastic surgery. You couldn’t have known, Dallas. No one would have even suspected.”
“I should have. I’ve been looking for the bitch for seventeen years. I should have suspected.”
“No.” Her voice was fierce, and when she came over and grabbed his arms, her grip was so tight he thought she might actually bruise him. “Don’t you dare pull back on me because of this. Don’t you dare let her win.”
She sucked in air. “You’re going to work through this. We both will. She played games with you, Dallas. With both of us. Psychotic, fucked up games.”
Tears streamed down her face, but he didn’t think she even knew she was crying. “We’re stronger together than apart. We always have been. We know it, and god knows she knew it, too. It’s why she tried to destroy us. But it didn’t work. It won’t ever work.”
Her words sang to him, and he wanted to tell her that she was right. That she—that they—were what mattered. But the words seemed to get lost in his throat, and he couldn’t speak. Hell, his chest was so full of pain and love and grief he could barely breathe.
But she had to know, and so he pulled her close and kissed her, pouring all of his love, all of his fear, all of his need into that touch, that connection. She was right—they were better together—and as she melted against him, opening herself to him, he drew her in. Her strength, her ferocity, her love.
“You’re everything to me,” he said when they broke apart. They were both breathing hard, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He needed to lay her down and claim her. He craved the sensation of her body pressed against his, giving herself completely to him. Completing him.
“Yes,” she said. It was all she said, but it was enough. He pushed her back until her ass was against the railing, and she was holding on to the newel post with her right hand. He threaded the fingers of his left hand in her hair, holding her head in place as he attacked her mouth while he used his left to untie her robe, letting both halves fall open, exposing her breasts, her belly, her sweet pussy.
He slid his hands down, and his cock hardened even more when he found her slick, wet heat. She spread her legs, her free hand on the back of his neck as he pulled her closer, deepening the kiss even as his fingers thrust hard inside her.
Roughly, he pulled her head back then looked into her eyes, so dark with passion. Her lips were swollen from his assault, and she was breathing hard. “Now,” she begged. “Fast. Hard. Please.”
He didn’t hesitate. He was wearing nothing but the loose athletic shorts he’d pulled on before coming outside, and now he pushed them down, stepping out of them and kicking them off to the side. She still wore the robe, and it fluttered in the breeze as he moved closer, then curled one hand around her waist, under the robe so that he felt the heat of her skin against his palm.
She was breathing hard, looking deep into his eyes. “Only you,” he said.
“I know. God, Dallas, I’ve always known.”
“Put your legs around me,” he ordered, moving closer. He teased the tip of his cock against her pussy as she did, and he was so damned aroused he almost came right then. He held it back, though. He wanted—needed—to be inside her.
Slowly he entered her, watching the passion on her face as she tilted her head back. As her nipples peaked and her breathing became more and more shallow. She bit her lower lip and he knew that she was holding back a cry.
He pushed in more, and then more still when her legs tightened around his ass, urging him closer and closer until he was balls-deep inside of her, enveloped in the heaven of her wet heat.
“Make it hard, Dallas. Make me come.”
He didn’t move a muscle, and she whimpered and squirmed in frustrated protest.
“Do you trust me?”
“You know I do.”
He slid his other arm around her waist, so that he was holding her steady with both hands. “Then let go of the post. Drop your legs from around me. Then lean back. Let your arms fall, too.”
“Dallas, no—”
“Yes.” The command in his voice was inescapable. “I want you to watch the stars, and I want to watch you. And I want to be the only thing keeping you from falling.”
“You already are,” she said, the deep sincerity in her voice filling his heart even as the heat on her face made his cock throb inside her. Slowly, she let go of the post and then leaned back so that only her ass was on the railing. The rest of her was laid out flat, kept from falling only by his hands on her back, and connected only by the length of his cock inside her.
She was his, all right. As surely as he belonged to her.
The thought filled him. Excited him. And he held tight to her waist as his hips moved, pounding a steady rhythm inside her, one that built in power and intensity as she cried out his name. As she gave herself entirely to him, trusting him to keep her safe as she floated under the wide expanse of stars.
“Dallas!” Her cry rent the night, and at the same time, her body clenched tight around him and she shook from the power of the orgasm that broke through her, giving him that final push into a wild oblivion. With a guttural cry, he exploded, filling her, holding her, loving her.
He pulled her back up to him, craving the feel of her skin against his chest and her mouth against his. She clung to him, her body still trembling as her legs once again wrapped around his hips, keeping them connected, so that there was nothing separating them. They were one in that moment. Whole. Complete. Perfect.
When she finally leaned back, he saw the fire in her eyes. “Wow,” she said, and he couldn’t help but laugh with her.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Definitely wow.”
“So,” she said, trailing a fingertip down his chest. “Wanna go inside and go for round two?”
He was still inside her, and though he’d been soft, he felt himself get rock hard again.
She grinned at him. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess you do.”
With a laugh, he started toward the door, holding her tight against him, but the sharp, familiar ring of his phone made him freeze.
“Liam?” she asked as she slid down his body.
With a nod, he grabbed his phone off the table in front of the glider, then answered the call. “Tell me.”
“Her house is empty,” Liam said. “But there’s no reason to think she knows we suspect her. Looks like she’s just gone out of town and a chat with her gardener confirms that.”
“In that case,” Dallas said, “I think I have a way to draw her back home.”
