Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set Read online

  Stephanie’s smile was like watching a flower bloom. “I know you did. I was there.”

  Kent shook his head a little. “Okay, this is weird. What’s going on?”

  He saw the hesitation in her expression and waited for her to give him some lame explanation, but Stephanie drew in a short, sharp breath. She took another step back. Squared her shoulders.

  “He’s using their dreams to get their information,” she said. “And I’ve been trying to find him in the dream world, but I haven’t been able to yet.”

  Stephanie had told only three people in her life about the Ephemeros who hadn’t already known about it. The first had been her high school boyfriend, her first love. She’d had a vulnerable moment after the night she lost her virginity and spilled her truth to him. He’d broken up with her the next day.

  The other two had been strangers on a train. Both had been sleeping and had shown up in her world because of the proximity. They’d woken, startled, and given her guilty glances very much alike despite their not knowing each other any more than they’d known her. Her explanation of why the three of them had been having the same dream had spilled out of her on a whim. Rodney and Darryl had gone on to become a couple. They sent her Christmas cards every year.

  Now she sat across from her kitchen table with Kent staring at her, and she waited for him to get up and walk out. Call her crazy. Tell her to never darken his doorstep again.

  Instead, he said, “Can I do it, too?”

  “A little, yes. More than that, I don’t know. I mean, everyone shapes their dreams—it’s just a matter of if they know it and can do it on purpose.” She got up to refill both their mugs of coffee. She’d pulled a frozen cheesecake out to serve, too. Funny how she’d never have bothered to pick up a cheesecake at all before last week, but it had ended up in her cart because of him.

  He nodded but said nothing. He leaned forward to put his elbows on the table, then pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Huh.”

  “Yeah.” She laughed. “Crazy, right?”

  “So when I dreamed about you...”

  “The dream world is a real place. It’s called the Ephemeros,” she told him, picking her words carefully. “What happens in it can affect people in the real world, though most of the time, it doesn’t. When we met there, it was because we were both asleep at the same time, and though geographical proximity is not at all required, it’s usually a factor in who meets up. But you can dream about anyone, anytime. It doesn’t necessarily mean that actual person is in there with you. It just means you’ve shaped them, or that you’ve put out a...well, like a signal. And someone who can shape not only themselves but also everything else comes along and helps your dream be whatever it needs to be.”

  “Someone like you?” Kent asked.

  She nodded. “Yes. Someone like me.”

  “You can make dreams come true?” His smile tipped a bit on one side, rueful. Contemplative.

  “Yes. I can. There are people who do it all the time.”

  He wrapped his hands around the coffee mug. “Hmm. Why?”

  “Because dreams are important,” she said. “Without them, without living out whatever it is we do inside them, well...we go mad. I mean, literally crazy.”

  “I want to try it.”

  Stephanie dug her fork into the cheesecake and let herself savor a bite before answering. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Kent seemed surprised. “Just like that, okay?”

  “Well, sure.” She shrugged. “It’s not like there’s a secret club that you have to apply for membership to. You either can or you can’t.”

  “Can you teach me?”

  “I don’t know.” She thought about that for a few seconds. “I know it’s possible to practice shaping and to get better at it. But I’m not sure you teach someone to do it if they can’t already. Kind of like telling a good story. You either can or you can’t.”

  “The other night, in the field. I made a flower, didn’t I?”

  She laughed. “Yes. You did.”

  “On purpose.”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “The other part is knowing you’re dreaming. Have you ever had one of those dreams, where you knew it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding eager. “Once, I dreamed I was being chased by a shark, but I knew it was a dream and I turned around and punched it.”

  “Yikes. Brave,” she said with a grin. She let out a small breath, then said, “I know you were angry at me about your mom. I really am sorry.”

  “It just makes me all the more determined to catch this jerk. And this is your job? I mean...you do it all the time?”

  “When needed. Yes. I shape in dreams to help sleepers along, to help them reach their goals in the dreams, whatever they are, but that’s not my job. It’s a responsibility.” She shrugged. “I’d been doing that without really knowing why for years before Vadim approached me about joining the Crew. The money’s good. The work isn’t usually hard. And this really shouldn’t have been that difficult for me. I guess I... Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough.”

  “I’m sure you take your job seriously, Stephanie.”

  “I like being here,” she said suddenly, as though daring him to challenge her. “I like working with you. I think maybe I didn’t try hard enough because I knew that once the job was over, I’d have to leave.”

  They stared at each other quietly.

  “Sorry about the date. I really did mean to take you out,” Kent said. “To be honest, I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

  “You didn’t bring the flowers,” she told him with a small grin. “Or the candy. How about I take a rain check?”

  He sat back in his chair. “Deal. So...how do we catch this asshole?”

  CHAPTER 12

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve ended up in a woman’s bed on a first date,” Kent said in a low voice. “But it’s definitely not the way I’d expected things to go.”

  Beside him, Stephanie giggled. She’d lent him a pair of oversize sweatpants and a T-shirt, then tucked them both into her bed. They’d been staring in silence at the ceiling for about ten minutes while he tried to fall asleep by timing his breathing to her steady, even breaths. It hadn’t worked.

  “You’re a little naughty. I like that.” She turned to face him.

  He rolled, too. Their knees touched. He wanted to touch more than that but kept himself from it.

  “I’m not tired,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Me neither.”

  “You don’t have any tricks?” He settled a little more into the pillow.

  “Deep breathing. Um...” Stephanie laughed and pulled the covers up over her nose for a second. “Orgasm?”

  It was not what he’d expected, and he laughed even as several muscles tensed in places he hadn’t been paying much attention to for the past few weeks. “Um...”

  “Sorry, sorry.” She laughed a little breathlessly. “It’s true, but a little too much. I know.”

  “I’d be game, if you are,” Kent said.

  Her laughter eased and she pulled the blanket away from her face. “On the first date, huh? What a player.”

  “I’m the furthest thing from a player you could ever meet,” he told her quietly. “I think you know that by now.”

  Silence.

  “Yes,” she said finally. “I know.”

  Did she move first? He thought so, although he was moving, too. The kiss was light, soft, gentle, the hint of her breath tickling his lips until, oh, damn, her mouth opened and she drew his tongue in against hers with a low groan that got him hard as rock within half a minute.

  She broke the kiss with an embarrassed laugh, though she didn’t pull away. “I thought it would be good, but I didn’t know how good.”

  “So...how