Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set Read online

  Kent took her hand. “Mom. You’re dreaming.”

  Slowly, her eyes opened. With a furrowed brow, Mom looked at him. Then smiled. “Hello, lovey.”

  “You were sleeping. Why don’t we get you upstairs?” Kent laughed a little. “Must’ve been some dream.”

  Mom frowned. “I don’t quite recall it.”

  She didn’t struggle to get out of her recliner, though Kent stood by waiting in case she did. Physically, Mom had few issues beyond a bit of arthritis. It might’ve been easier, he thought as she made sure he’d appropriately packed up all of his leftovers, if she were frail. He could’ve done something for her to be really helpful, instead of simply suffering through watching her slowly deteriorate mentally.

  “Give my love to Carol,” she told him at the door as he bent to kiss her.

  Kent smiled. “I will, Mom.”

  In the car, it hit him, though. The long lonely night ahead of him. A trunkful of food he would eat standing over the sink. A birthday cake covered in coconut.

  A night of frustrating, sexy dreams featuring Stephanie Adams.

  As far as birthdays went, it had been a pretty shitty one. It got worse when he slipped his phone from his pocket to put in the center console while he drove and saw the missed text from Carol. He didn’t want to read it, but he did.

  Happy B-day!

  It was a nice thing for her to do. To remember. Carol was nice. The life they’d had was nice, at least, Kent had thought so until he came home to find her half of everything moved out and a note on the table telling him that she’d gone to stay with her mother while she looked for a new place to live.

  He missed her, of course, but as he pulled up to his driveway and saw the dark windows, he thought that maybe it wasn’t Carol he missed as much as simply...someone. They’d been together four years, most of them good, and he’d happily have gone on for four more, or forty, probably. Being with Carol had been easy, not a challenge. It hadn’t been much work.

  That was the problem. He hadn’t put much work into things. That was probably why they’d ended up splitting. You had to put the work in.

  Too little, too late, that was the problem. He could think of a hundred ways he might’ve been able to salvage things with Carol, but none of them mattered now. He could’ve answered her text, too, though at the moment he saw no point in it. What was she going to do, chat with him about the day? Ask him again if he was recovering without her? That was only going to rub it in about how terrible a birthday it had been.

  His stomach rumbled. Dinner at Mom’s had been good, but though he’d told her a little white lie about being too full for cake, the truth was he’d left plenty of room for it. And damn it, it was his birthday. Why shouldn’t he celebrate it, even if he had to do it all by his loser, lonely self? It was Friday night. He was hungry. The food in the trunk would keep with the temperatures as cold as they were.

  Instead of pulling into his driveway, Kent kept on going.

  CHAPTER 6

  “I’m not gonna make it.” Stephanie held back a yawn as best she could, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t stop it. Her jaw cracked. Her eyes felt filled with sand.

  Denise frowned. “C’mon, Steph, wake up. It’s not even eleven.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve been up since about three this morning.” After the sexy dream with Kent, her frustration about losing sight of her target had kept her awake no matter how hard she’d tried to fall back to sleep. Nothing had worked. Now she was tired, angry with herself and cranky.

  “Damn. No closer?”

  “No, I’m closer. I actually saw him last night.” She paused. “But then I got interrupted.”

  Denise’s brows rose. “By what?”

  Stephanie definitely didn’t want to tell her friend what had forced her out of the dream. Not only was it an embarrassing failure in her control, but it would let Denise in on the whole crush she had on Kent. Stephanie pressed her lips together.

  “Ooh, he was in your dream, huh?”

  “He was... A lot of people were...”

  “Last night I dreamed I was schtupping my high school biology teacher,” Denise said with a chuckle. “In some crazy hedge-maze thing. Man, that was wild.”

  Stephanie said nothing.

  “You were there!” Denise slapped the table and tipped her head back to laugh so loud it earned her several appreciative looks from the guys at the table behind them. “You and Mr. Bank Manager?”

  “Keep your voice down!” Stephanie shook her head. “It was nothing. It was a dream.”

  “Sure it was. Because nothing that happens in dreams is real,” Denise said with a deliberately blank expression that quickly shifted again into humor. “Uh-huh.”

  “That doesn’t make it okay. Anyway, I’m beat.” Stephanie fought another yawn. “At least tonight I won’t have trouble getting to sleep.”

  Denise sighed and looked around the bar. “Fine. Slim pickings here tonight anyway.”

  “The job’s kicking my ass. That’s all.”

  Denise frowned and leaned a little closer. “What’s Vadim say about it?”

  “He says keep hunting.” Stephanie took a small sip from her beer, letting the flavor roll around in her mouth before swallowing. Last week she’d had a drink in the Ephemeros that had tasted of flowers and chocolate, a combination she doubted would be any good in the real world but which had been almost orgasmic in the dream. “Got a couple new reports that tie in to that same guy.”

  “You need a break.” Denise looked serious. “I know you think of yourself as some kind of lone wolf, but really, you need someone helping you out.”

  Stephanie laughed. “Lone wolf?”

  “You know what I mean.” Denise didn’t join in Stephanie’s humor. “You think you need to take care of it all on your own, but it’s dangerous. Too much time in there, and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I might not come out.” Stephanie shrugged. She knew it was possible, but she couldn’t let it freak her out. She was more likely to end up in a coma from getting hit by a bus than from letting her time in the Ephemeros get away from her.

  “Just because you think you’re invulnerable in there doesn’t mean you are out here,” Denise said.

  Stephanie gave her friend a grin meant to ease her worries. “I’m fine. I promise. Soon as I figure out who this guy is out here, I’ll be done with this case and I can take a vacation.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes. I promise.”

  Denise sighed again. “Maybe we can go away for one of those all-inclusive deals. What do you think? A week or so of sun and fun and hot guys in thong bathing suits?”

  “Oh. God, Denise, ew.” Stephanie laughed.

  “What? They’d be European. Totally hot. With accents,” Denise added, laughing, too. Her gaze cut away after a second, looking over Stephanie’s shoulder, and her giggles became a sly smile. “Oh. Hey. Look who’s here.”

  Stephanie glanced behind her, not expecting to see that familiar long, lean body. Kent Gordon’s profile was angular, his dark hair touched just the tiniest bit with silver at the temples. His steel-rimmed glasses flashed as he settled on the bar stool and nodded at the bartender.

  Pretty much her ideal guy in every way.

  “You should go say hi.” Denise nodded.

  Stephanie turned away, hoping he wasn’t going to turn around and see her there. “Ugh. No.”

  “Why not? You told me you thought he was cute! You’re having sexy dreams with him! He took you on a date.”

  He was cute. That was the problem. “He asked me to join him for lunch. I told you, it was so not a date. And I have to work with him.”

  “So?”

  “So, I haven’t exactly been bringing him anything he can use,” Stephanie said. “And wha