She tightened her grasp on the handle of the coffeepot she carried, wondering why the sight of a simple automobile should shake her so. First, she'd babbled out some crazy story about vampires to her doctor, and promptly forgotten the whole thing, and now she was freaking out over traffic.
She'd better get a hold of herself.
Neely poured coffee for her customers and took the pot back to the burner without glancing at the door, even though she felt the rush of cool air when it opened. She was on her way to table 4, carrying two pieces of lemon meringue pie, when she saw the dark- haired man.
He was a stranger, and yet Neely felt a deep connection with him, an almost savage wrenching. It was nothing new; no, this was something ancient, something predating the moon and stars.
He smiled, inclined his head slightly, and said, "Hello, Neely."
The pie plates clattered to the floor. Neely didn't know this man, and yet she did. She knew everything about him, and nothing at all. She had a vague recollection of thrashing on a bed while he loved her, though that was impossible, of course, since they had never met.
She bolted back to the kitchen for a wet cloth, and when she returned, the newcomer was crouched on the floor, gathering up the plates and broken pieces of pie. He took the cloth from her and wiped the tiles.
"Do I know you?" Neely whispered, blushing and painfully conscious of the fact that practically everyone in the restaurant was staring at them with amused interest. His face seemed as familiar to her as her own, so maybe she'd just conveniently forgotten him, the way she'd forgotten telling Dr. Fredricks about those damn vampires.
He shrugged as he rose gracefully to his full height. "Maybe. My name is Aidan Tremayne."
Again Neely felt an inner earthquake; again she had no idea why. "Neely Wallace," she answered. She was flustered all over again. "How did you know my first name?" she demanded.
Tremayne regarded her in wry silence for a moment, then nodded toward the shamble of plates and pies and cleaning cloth in her hands. "Perhaps you'd better tend to business, Miss Wallace. I wouldn't want to be the cause of your getting the sack."
Neely bustled away in a quiet panic, gallantly pretending that all was well. She disposed of the spilled food and dirty dishes, washed and dried her hands, and made a second attempt to carry pie to the people at table 4. She succeeded that time, and everyone in the restaurant cheered.
Neely's cheeks were crimson when she rounded the counter and made herself wait on Aidan Tremayne, who sat at the far end, watching her with laughter in his indigo-colored eyes. "What will you have?" she said, tapping her pencil against the top of her order pad.
He smiled. "I'll take the special," he said, closing the menu. "For now."
Neely narrowed her gaze. She wasn't angry, exactly-as a waitress, she met more than her share of smart guys, and most of them didn't mean any harm. No, it was her own overwhelming attraction to this stranger, the way he'd made her pulse flutter erotically, that troubled her.
"Before I get you the liver and onions," she said in a low voice, "I want you to tell me how you knew my name."
He leaned toward her. "I'm psychic," he whispered.
After that a tour bus arrived, and a crowd poured into the restaurant, and Neely was too busy to pay any more attention to Aidan Whoever.
Tremayne, supplied a voice in her harried heart.
The next day Neely worked the afternoon and early evening shift again, and Aidan came into the restaurant for supper, in the company of half a dozen workers from the construction site just up the mountainside. He was freshly showered and wearing clean but casual clothes, and Neely felt a sting of annoyance because he didn't seem to notice her, even when she asked for his order.
"Who's that?" Angie, another waitress, inquired with interest, her warm-syrup eyes bright with speculation as she looked at Aidan.
Neely glared at the other woman. "He's just some construction worker," she snapped, reaching for a steak platter and a cheeseburger in a basket.Angie popped her gum in good-natured defiance. "Yum," she growled under her breath.
"I think I need some remodeling."
Neely stormed away to deliver her order.
She didn't see Aidan again until Sunday, her day off. She'd been to the supermarket and was carrying in groceries when the expensive sports car purred to a stop behind her dented Mustang.
Neely let the wooden screen door slam behind her when she went into the living room, but she felt a contradictory little lurch of pleasure in her middle when she came outside for another bag of groceries. Aidan was still there, leaning against his Triumph, his arms folded across his chest.
"I've come a long way to find you, Neely," he said quietly. "And I won't be easy to put off."
She felt as though she'd been riding a roller coaster and had stepped off before the thing came alongside the platform. She would have dropped the second shopping bag, but Aidan reached out and caught it just as it slipped from her arms.
"How did you know my name?" This time she wasn't going to let him sidestep the question.
"I own a house in Bright River, Connecticut," he said. "I think I must have seen you there."
Neely saw the confusion and bewilderment in those ink-blue eyes, and it stopped her, put a cap on her rising temper. "My brother, Ben, manages a cafe and motel outside Bright River," she said lamely. "I worked for him for a while, waiting tables and cleaning rooms."
The relief she saw in Aidan's face was too sincere to be false. Something very weird was going on here.
"That must have been where we met," he said. Then he carried the groceries up the walk, onto the porch, and past the green-painted screen door. "Nice place."
Neely felt herself flush again. Suddenly she was embarrassed by the chipped linoleum floors, the television set with foil flags on its antenna, and the cheap, ugly curtains made of dime-store fabric.
Aidan set the bag on the counter, beside the one Neely had brought in a minute earlier, looked back at her over one well-made shoulder, and grinned.
"You're not thinking I'm some kind of lecher, I hope," he said. "I'm a gentleman, Neely, and you've nothing to fear from me. Why don't you stop looking like a deer that wants to bolt into the nearest thicket?"
She smiled and relaxed a little. "Where are you from originally?" she asked, still keeping her distance as she took off her peacoat and hung it up. "You sound English."
"Perish the thought!" he said with drama and yet another nuclear-powered grin. "I'm Irish, though I've spent most of my adult life in the United States."
Neely wanted to know everything there was to know about Aidan Tremayne. She also wanted never to have met him, because he did things to her senses that made her deliriously uncomfortable.
He stayed for dinner.Neely guessed she still would have had a chance if she'd just let things go at that, but Aidan asked her to go for a ride in his fancy car, with the top down and the moonlight playing over them both like liquid silver, and she couldn't resist.
On a high point overlooking all of Pine Hill, he parked the car, leaned over, and kissed her. His lips moved lightly against hers at first, almost mischievously, and yet Neely felt as if someone had just threaded her onto a live wire, like a bead onto a necklace. Things awakened inside her and collided in a mad rush to find their right places.
"I've never known you," Aidan said huskily, when the kiss finally ended. "And yet I've always known you. Can you explain that to me, Neely?"
She thought-as best she could, that is, given the helter-skelter state of her emotions.
"Maybe we were together in a past life," she offered.
Aidan smiled. "Maybe," he agreed without real conviction, and then he kissed her once more.
"I want to see you again," he said a few moments later.
Neely could only nod.
After that she and Aidan were together for at least a part of every day. He rented an apartment on the other side of town, and she helped him furnish it. He chose gracious things, antiques and folk art and one very good painting, and Neely wondered what kind of work he'd done before taking up construction.
"I was a painter," he said when she finally worked up the nerve to ask him. They'd eaten roast chicken, corn on the cob, and salad at her place, and he was helping her take down the horrible living room curtains so she could replace them with the snappy white eyelet ones she'd just bought.
Neely felt afraid, as if she were trying to cross an expanse of wafer-thin ice spanning a deep and frigid river. Caring too much would be the equivalent of falling through; she couldn't afford to love this good-looking, bewildering man because he was just passing by, like the other men who'd come to Pine Hill to build condominiums.
"Did something happen?"
Aidan looked at her curiously, raising one dark eyebrow in that ponderous way he had.
"What do you mean, "did something happen"?"
Neely shrugged, crumpling the new curtains because she was holding them too tightly.
"Last time I looked, you were working on a construction site," she said, and though she tried to offer the statement lightly, it came out sounding momentous.
He grinned. "Nothing dramatic. I just got tired of painting. I'm a sensualist, I guess," he said. "I enjoy the feeling of sunlight on my skin, and the way my muscles move underneath." His blue gaze seemed to caress her for a moment, making her flesh tingle beneath her clothes. "I like everything about being a man."
Neely turned quickly away. Ever since that first time Aidan had kissed her, she'd been sizzling like so much water spilled onto a hot griddle. Some primitive sense warned that he had the power to hurt her as no other man ever could, and Neely's emotions were fragile as it was.
If she waited long enough, maybe he'd go away, and she wouldn't have to take the dangerous chance of loving him.Chapter 20 Twilight gathered behind the mountaintops, then spilled down over the throngs of evergreen trees, shrouding them in pale apricot, and after that lavender, and finally a velvety purple. Neely and Aidan watched the spectacle from the window in the dining room of his apartment, where they sat at the round oak table, each gripping the other's hand.
Neely's emotions were very close to the surface, and the glorious sunset brought tears to her eyes. She moved to rise from her chair, but Aidan held her in place by gentle force.
"Neely," he said quietly. "Don't run away. It's time we talked."
She wanted to look anywhere but at Aidan, but she couldn't; his gaze seemed to hold hers fast. "About what?"
"You know "about what," " Aidan sighed with a touch of exasperation.
Neely bit her lower lip for a moment. "You're leaving," she blurted out. "You've been in Pine Hill for six weeks, the construction job is about to end, and-"
"Yes," Aidan said. His dark blue eyes reflected the faint smile that touched his mouth.
"I'm leaving."
She sniffled and straightened her shoulders. "Okay, good," she said. "So long." She tried again to stand, intending to bolt, but Aidan wouldn't release her hand. She sat trembling for a few moments, refusing to look at him, but then the compulsion grew too strong. "What do you want?" she snapped.
He said nothing, sensing somehow that there was more she needed to say, silently insisting that she come out with it.
Neely shoved her fingers through her hair. "I know we- we haven't made love or anything, but-well-I thought something was happening between us. There's a lot of electricity, or so it seemed to me. Now you're just going to leave."
"There's a great deal you don't know about me, Neely," Aidan said sadly, staring not at her but through the window, glazed with light on the inside now, dark beyond. "And a great deal I don't know about myself."
She narrowed her eyes and sniffled again, then dashed the back of her free hand-Aidan still held the other- across her wet cheek. "I know you're an artist, that you have a house in Connecticut, that you were born in Ireland but raised in the United States-"
He silenced her with an infinitely tender glance. "All those things are true," he said, running his finger lightly over her knuckles. "At least, they seem true. But there are some serious gaps in my memory. You know about my adventures in England, for instance-how I woke up in the hospital, only to be told that I'd been found naked as a flounder in that old pile of stones. What the devil was I up to before that, Neely? How did I get there? Am I some kind of madman? What else have I done that I've conveniently forgotten?"
Neely slipped out of her chair, still holding Aidan's hand, and settled on his lap. From the moment she'd met him, she'd wanted him, with every breath she drew and every beat of her heart, but there had been a certain courtly, old-fashioned restraint in his manner. "I don't know," she assured him softly. "I've got a few ghosts of my own, remember-all that babble to my doctor about vampires, for one thing." He smiled at that but didn't interrupt, and Neely went on earnestly. "There are a lot of mysteries in this life, Aidan Tremayne, but there are also a few things I'm absolutely certain of, and here they are: You are a fine, sweet, gentle man, good to the core of your soul, and I love you." Aidan touched her trembling lower lip with the tip of an index finger. "Suppose you're wrong?" The pain of his own uncertainty was clearly audible in his voice. "Oh, Neely, what if I'm some sort of maniac?"
She rested her forehead against his. "I'll take my chances." She pulled in a deep breath, let it out in a rush, and sat back to look into his eyes. "Is that why you haven't made love to me, Aidan? Because you're afraid you're really a modern-day Jack the Ripper and the fact has simply slipped your mind?"
He chuckled, but there was anguish in the sound. "No, it isn't that-I know I could never hurt you, under any circumstances." Aidan actually looked shy, and she would have sworn there was a blush under that spring suntan of his. "The truth is, I seem to be rather behind the times when it comes to sex. I feel as if I've been searching for you for a thousand years, and when we make love, it's going to be a sacred event."
Neely's tough, scarred heart softened, then melted entirely. "Well, then," she said with sniffly briskness and a pinch of sarcasm, "it makes perfect sense that you're planning to leave, doesn't it?"
Aidan gave her a brief, nibbling kiss, the kind that always drove her crazy and left her aching for hours afterward.
"It does," he affirmed, a few sweetly torturous moments later, "when you consider that I'm asking you to go with me, as my wife."
It seemed that the floor buckled a little just then, and Neely tightened her arm around Aidan's neck, afraid she would tumble from his lap. "You want to marry me?"
Aidan grinned, looking damnably Irish and outrageously handsome. "Do I ever," he replied.
Neely was in a state of blessed shock. All her life she'd been waiting for a man like Aidan, one who could make her heart sing, and help her to be her best self, and she'd been disappointed more than once. In short, Aidan Tremayne seemed too good to be true. "You haven't even said you love me," she pointed out.
He took her chin in his hand and then kissed her, with slow, deliberate heat and a skill that incited a riot of sensation inside her, then drew back. "Haven't I?" he whispered.
"Funny, that's what I thought I was saying when I told you I've been searching for you for a thousand years. I do love you, Neely. Very, very much."
She buried her face in his neck and held him tightly for a long time, overwhelmed with happiness, struggling to assimilate it somehow.
At long last he stood, holding Neely close and looking down into her eyes. "Here, now," he said gruffly. "I'd best take you home, Miss Wallace, before I break my own rule and carry you straight off to bed."
There was nowhere Neely would rather be that night than in Aidan Tremayne's bed, for her senses had been humming with anticipation since the first time he'd kissed her, weeks before. "You know what they say about rules," she ventured tentatively.
Aidan ran the pad of his thumb over her moist lower lip. "This is one I don't mean to break," he said. He held her a little closer, though, and went on. "It's a gypsy's life I'm offering you, Neely. You'll never want for anything, but I've no idea when or where we'll settle. I want to see everything, be everywhere-to dance on mountaintops and make love to you on star-washed beaches-"
She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. "Such a romantic," she said with a happy sigh. "Tell me, though-what about that big fancy house of yours, back in Connecticut?" He sighed again, resting his strong, work-calloused hands on her shoulders. "There's nothing there that I want, Neely- it's as if the place belonged in some other man's life, not my own. I'm thinking of signing it over to one of the universities or perhaps some charitable organization." He frowned pensively. "Would that bother you?"
Neely shook her head. "I think it's a wonderful idea," she said. For now, Aidan was all she needed or wanted; she would take all future days and moments one by one. "Let's get ourselves married, Mr. Tremayne."
He laughed, hooked his thumbs through the loops at the back of Neely's jeans, and hoisted her against him for one deliciously frustrating moment. "The sooner, the better," he answered.
Aidan found Neely's jacket and politely escorted her outside to his car. "Time you were tucked up in your own bed, fast asleep," he said when she was settled in the passenger seat and he was behind the wheel.
Neely blushed and kept her attention focused on the windshield, which had become a star-spangled mural. "Kindly stop reminding me that I'm going to be all by myself."
Aidan grinned, starting the Spitfire's powerful engine and deftly working the gearshift.
"We'll be together soon enough," he assured her. "Be patient."
Neely was anything but patient.
That night she tossed and turned, catching only fleeting minutes of sleep. She felt like a complicated clock, wound so tightly that her inner springs were about to burst out in every direction.
The following day Neely gave notice at the Steak-and-Saddle, and Duke jokingly told her to go ahead and clear out, because he didn't want her underfoot for another two weeks.
She was so grateful that she flung her arms around the older man's neck and gave him a resounding kiss on the cheek.
She and Aidan applied for their marriage license later that morning at the courthouse, and then they went shopping for their new home.
Neely referred to their house on wheels as a recreational vehicle, while Aidan called it a "caravan." It was a sleek, shiny marvel, complete with its own bathroom, a queen-size bed, and a small kitchen. There were so many options that Neely expected to spend at least a week immersed in the owner's manual.
Of course, it would be some week far in the future, when the novelty of being a gypsy bride had worn off.