Night Moves : Dream Man/After the Night Read online

  That left one person: Gray.

  Forcefully she rejected that thought. No, not Gray. She remembered his face as it had been when he had come to the shack that morning, and as he had been that awful night. She remembered his fury, his implacable hatred. Gray had thought his father had run away with her mother, and he’d been in a rage.

  But Gray had had the most to gain from his father’s death. With Guy gone, he had taken over the reins to the Rouillard fortune, and made himself even wealthier, from what the librarian had said. He had been groomed from the day of his birth to one day step into his father’s shoes; had he gotten tired of waiting, and put Guy out of the way?

  Faith’s thoughts darted around like a squirrel in a cage, banging against the bars. The door rattled under the force of several heavy blows and she jumped, startled and not a little alarmed. Why would anyone be at her door? No one knew where she was, so there couldn’t be a message from her office. She got up and went to the door, but didn’t open it. There wasn’t a peephole, either, she noticed. “Who is it?”

  “Gray Rouillard.”

  Her heart almost stopped beating. It had been twelve years since she had heard that deep, smoky voice, but she went weak at the sound of it, excitement mingled with fear. He had hurt her worse than anyone else in her life, but still he had the power to electrify every cell in her body with nothing but his voice. Just hearing him again made her feel like the child she had been at fourteen, all shivery and agitated at his nearness. And always, always, was that ugly counterweight pulling her in the opposite direction, the stark memory of him saying, You’re trash. She had never been able to find any balance where Gray was concerned, had never been able to forget him, dream and nightmare combined.

  The timing of his arrival made her skin prickle. Had she conjured him up with her thoughts? She stood there for so long that the door rattled again under the impact of his fist.

  “Open up.” In his tone was the iron authority of someone who expected to be obeyed, immediately, and intended to see that he was.

  Cautiously she unchained the door and opened it, and looked up at the man she hadn’t seen for a dozen years. It didn’t matter. No matter how long it had been, she would have recognized him. He stood there in the doorway, disdaining to come in, and the impact of his physical presence took her breath.

  He was bigger than she remembered, but then six four always seemed taller when you were looking up at it. His waist and hips were still lean, but he was heavier through the chest and shoulders, having achieved the hard solidity of manhood. And he was definitely a man, all hint of boyhood long gone. His face was leaner, stronger, more harsh, with grooves bracketing his mouth and lines of maturity at the corners of his eyes. She stared up into the face of a pirate, and knew why Carlene DuBois had gotten the shivers at the mere mention of his name. His black hair was longer than she had ever seen it before, pulled back from his face and secured at the nape of his neck. A tiny diamond winked in his left earlobe. At twenty-two, he had been impressive. At thirty-four, he was dangerous, a pirate in nature as well as appearance. Looking at him made her feel hot and shivery all at once, her heart suddenly pounding so hard, she wondered that he couldn’t hear it. She recognized the symptoms, and hated her sickness. God, was she doomed to spend her entire life going weak at the sight or sound of Gray Rouillard? Why couldn’t she get beyond that leftover childhood reaction?

  Above the thin blade of his nose, his sinfully dark eyes were still cold and implacable.

  The sensual line of his mouth twisted as he looked down at her. “Faith Devlin,” he said. “Reuben was right; you look just like your mother.”

  But if he had changed, so had she. Faith had won her confidence the hard way. She gave him a cool little smile and said, “Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment. I don’t know why you’re here, and it doesn’t matter. This motel belongs to me. You aren’t welcome. You have half an hour to get packed and get out.” He gave her a wolfish smile that wasn’t really a smile. “Or do I have to call the sheriff again to get rid of you?”

  The memory of that night lay between them, so strong that it was almost tangible. For a moment she saw again the lights, felt the confused terror, but she refused to let him throw her into a state of panic. Instead she gave a graceful shrug and turned away from him, strolling into the small dressing area, where she efficiently swept her few toiletries into her overnight case and took her single change of clothes from the rack. Acutely aware of those dark eyes boring a hole through her, Faith folded the clothes over her arm, slipped on her shoes, picked up her purse, and sauntered past him without ever changing her calm expression.

  As she drove away from the motel, on her way back to Baton Rouge, he was still standing in the open door staring after her.

  • • •

  Faith Devlin! How about that for a blast from the past? Gray stood watching her taillights until they disappeared from view. When Reuben had called to tell him that a woman who was the spitting image of Renee Devlin had checked into the motel, and that she had registered as Faith D. Hardy, he’d had no doubt about her identity. So one of the Devlin spawn had finally worked up the nerve to come back to Prescott! He wasn’t surprised that it was Faith. She had always had more backbone than the rest of the bunch put together. Which didn’t mean he’d been inclined to let her stay.

  He turned back into the lighted room that she had abandoned with so little fuss. Without any fuss, damn it. If he’d wanted a fight, she hadn’t obliged him. She hadn’t even asked for a refund on her credit card. Without so much as a flicker of an eyelash, she had gathered up her stuff and left. It hadn’t taken a minute; hell, he doubted it had taken her thirty seconds.

  She was gone, and except for the wrinkled bedspread, the room was as pristine as if she’d never been there, but her presence still lingered. There was a sweet, faintly spicy scent in the air that overrode the staleness endemic to all motel rooms, and his blood stirred in instinctive reaction to it. It was the smell of woman, universal in some ways, exclusive to her in others. He stepped farther into the room, drawn by that elusive scent, his nostrils flaring like a stallion’s.

  Faith Devlin. Just hearing her name had brought back that night and he had seen her again in his mind, silent and willowy, with that dark-fire hair tumbling over her shoulders and her slender body silhouetted inside her thin nightgown, weaving a sensual spell over the deputies and himself. She had been only a kid then, for God’s sake, but she had had her mother’s sultry aura even then.

  When she had opened the door to this room and he had seen her again, he had been stunned. She looked so much like Renee that he’d wanted to throttle her, but at the same time there was no mistaking her for her mother. Faith was a little taller, still more slender than voluptuous, though she had filled out nicely in the twelve years since he’d last seen her. Her coloring was the same as Renee’s: the dark red mane, the slumberous gold-flecked green eyes, the translucent skin. What had infuriated him, though, was her effortless sensuality, and his own unwilling reaction to it. It wasn’t anything she had said or done, or even what she’d been wearing, which had been a stylish business suit. A Devlin wearing a suit, by God! No, it had been something intrinsic in her nature, something Renee had also possessed. The older daughter—he couldn’t remember her name—hadn’t had that potent allure. She had been easy and cheap, not sexy. Faith was sexy. Not overtly so, as Renee had been, but just as potent. He had looked into those cat eyes and thought of the bed just behind her, thought of tangled sheets and hot flesh, of having her naked beneath him and feeling her thighs clasp his hips just as he found the soft opening between her legs and pushed deep inside . . .

  Gray broke out in a sweat and swore aloud in the empty room. Damn, he was as bad as his father! Give him a whiff, and he was ready to forget everything else in his rush to screw a Devlin woman. No, not every Devlin woman, he mentally amended. Thank God for that, at least. He had seen Renee’s potent appeal but found it resistible, and