Raintree Read online

  She coped. After she was eighteen, she was out of the system and on her own. In the thirteen years since then—for her entire life, actually—she had done what she could to stay below the radar, to avoid being noticed, to never, ever be a victim. No one could reject her if she didn’t offer herself.

  She had stumbled into gambling in a small way, in a little casino on the Seminole reservation in Florida. She had won, not a whole lot, but a couple hundred dollars meant a lot to her. Later on she’d gone in some of the casinos on the Mississippi River and won some more. Small casinos were everywhere. She’d gone to Atlantic City but hadn’t liked it. Las Vegas was okay, but too too: too much neon, too many people, too hot, too gaudy. Reno suited her better. Smaller, but not too small. Better climate. Eight years after that first small win in Florida, she regularly won five to ten thousand dollars a week.

  That kind of money was a burden, because she couldn’t bring herself to spend much more than she had always spent. She didn’t go hungry now, or cold. She had a car if she wanted to pack up and leave, but never a new one. She had bank accounts all over the place, plus she usually carried a lot of cash—dangerous, she knew, but she felt more secure if she had enough cash with her to take care of whatever she might need. Unless and until she settled somewhere, the money was a problem, because how many savings books and checkbooks could she be expected to cart around the country?

  That was her life. Dante Raintree thought all he had to do was educate her a little on her talent with numbers, and—well, what did he expect to happen? He knew nothing about her life, so he couldn’t have any specific changes in mind. Was she supposed to become Little Mary Sunshine? Find other people like her, maybe develop their own little gated community, where, if you ran out of charcoal lighter fluid at the neighborhood barbecue, one of the neighbors could breathe fire on the briquettes to light them? Maybe she could blog about her experiences, or do talk radio.

  Uh-uh. She would rather eat ground glass. She liked living alone, being alone and depending only on herself.

  The phone rang again, startling her. She scrambled across the bed to look at the caller ID, though why she bothered, she had no idea; she wouldn’t recognize the number of anyone calling Dante Raintree, anyway. She didn’t answer that call, either.

  She had sat on the bed, thinking, for so long that the afternoon shadows were beginning to lengthen, and she was drowsy. Thank goodness for that phone call, or she might have fallen asleep on his bed, and wouldn’t that have been an interesting situation when he got home? She had no intention of playing Goldilocks.

  But she was sleepy, as well as hungry. After a late breakfast, she hadn’t had lunch. Why not eat a light dinner now and go to bed early? She couldn’t think of any reason why she should wait for Raintree, since he hadn’t had the courtesy to tell her when he might be back.

  The least he could do was call—not that she would answer the phone, but he could always leave a message.

  Definitely no point in waiting for him. She raided the refrigerator and made a sandwich of cold cuts, then looked at all the books in his bookshelves—he had a lot of books on paranormal stuff, but she chose a suspense novel instead—and settled down in the den to read for a while. By eight o’clock she was nodding over her book, which evidently wasn’t suspenseful enough to keep her awake. The sun hadn’t quite set yet, but she didn’t care; she was still tired from the night before.

  Fifteen minutes and one shower later, she was in bed, curled in a warm ball, with the sheet pulled over her head.

  The flare of a lamp being turned on woke her. She endured the usual grinding fear, the panic, knowing that her mother wasn’t there even though, all these years later, her subconscious still hadn’t gotten the message. Before she could relax enough to pull the sheet from over her head, the covers were lifted and a very warm, mostly naked Dante Raintree slid into bed with her.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she sputtered sleepily, glaring at him over the edge of the sheet.

  He settled himself beside her and stretched one long, muscled arm to turn out the lamp. “There appears to be sand in my bed, so I’m sleeping here.”

  FIFTEEN

  “Don’t be silly. I couldn’t leave the house, so how would I get sand? It’s salt.” Maybe he expected her to deny any involvement, but that would be silly, given that she’d been the only person in the house after he left. Maybe he also expected her to get all indignant and starchy because he was in bed with her, but for some reason, she wasn’t alarmed. Annoyed at being awakened, yes, but not alarmed.

  “I stand corrected.” He used his superior muscle and weight to shove her over in the bed. “Move over. I need more room.”

  He had already forced her out of her nice warm spot, which annoyed her even more. “Then why didn’t you get in on the other side, instead of making me move?” she grumbled as she scooted to the other side of the bed, which was king-size, like every other bed in the house.

  “You’re the one who put salt in my bed.”

  The sheets were cold around her, making her curl in a tighter ball than usual. Even the pillow was cold. Lorna lifted her head and pulled the pillow from beneath her, tossing it on top of him. “Give me my pillow. This one’s cold.”

  He made a grumbling sound, but pushed the warm pillow toward her and tucked the other pillow under his head. She snuggled down into the warmth; the soft fabric already had his scent on it, which wasn’t a bad thing, she discovered. She had known him only a short time, but a lot of it had been spent in close contact with him. The primitive part of her brain recognized his scent and was comforted.

  “What time is it?” she asked drowsily, already drifting back to sleep.

  “You know what time it is. It’s a number. Think about it.” He sounded drowsy himself.

  She had never thought of time as a number, but as soon as she did, the image of three numbers popped into her head. “One-oh-four.”

  “Bingo.”

  Mildly pleased, she went to sleep.

  She woke before he did, which wasn’t surprising, given how early she’d gone to bed and how late he’d gotten in. She lay there through the tense expectation of being hit, then slowly relaxed. The bed was toasty warm; he gave off so much heat that she could feel the warmth even though they weren’t touching.

  Sleepily curious to see if the time thing worked again, she thought of time as a series of numbers and immediately saw a four, a five and a one. She pulled the sheet from over her head; the room was getting a little brighter. Without any way to check—short of getting out of bed and going down to the kitchen, which she wasn’t willing to do—she supposed four fifty-one was close enough. How handy was that, to not need a clock?

  Dante was lying on his side, facing her, one arm bent under his head, his breathing slow and deep. The room was still too dim for her to make out many details, but that was okay, because she wasn’t ready for details yet; the general impression was sexy enough as things were.

  What was a woman supposed to think when a healthy, heterosexual man slept with her for the first time and didn’t even try to cop a feel? That something was wrong with her? That he wasn’t attracted to her?

  She thought he was dangerously intelligent and intuitive.

  Sex was definitely part of their relationship, if knowing someone for roughly thirty-six hours could be described as a relationship. Some of those thirty-six hours had seemed years long, especially the first four or five. She couldn’t say that their time together had been quality time, either. On the other hand, since she hadn’t seen him at his best, she thought she might know him better than someone who had known him for a much longer time but only in a social setting, so she wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t made a pass at her during the night.

  She wasn’t ready for sex with him, might never be ready, and he knew that. If he’d tried to storm the barricades, as it were, she would have stiffened her resistance. By simply sleeping with her and not making any overtly sexual moves, he was, in a way, cou