Page 3 of I Dream of Danger (Ghost Ops #2)

The rest of the foyer was naked, too. Watercolors, the huge Chinese rug, the console with the ornate carved mirror atop it, the two Viennese Thonet armchairs on either side of the Art Deco desk with the enormous solid silver bowl full of potpourri—gone.

Nick didn’t react in any way. His face was calm and expressionless.

What was he thinking?

Later, after he’d disappeared, one of her high school classmates said that he’d been earning extra money playing poker with lowlifes, and he always won because he had the best poker face anyone had ever seen.

She was seeing that now. There was no clue to his thoughts.

Perhaps—perhaps she’d hoped to see some softness or gentleness when he looked at her. But no.

She gestured awkwardly toward the back of the house. “Would you—would you like something to drink?”

He nodded his head briefly without saying anything. She turned and walked into the kitchen, knowing he didn’t need her direction. He knew the way.

His showing up had scrambled her brains, but now she forced herself to think, to reason things out. Where had he come from? Had he travelled a long time? Would he stay the night?

Her heart gave a huge thump in her chest at the thought.

“So.” In the kitchen, Elle turned to face him, plastering a smile on her face, making a real effort not to wring her hands. “What can I offer you?”

Oh God.

Too late she realized that there was very little to offer.

If he wanted alcohol there was none in the house.

Her father had had a fine collection of whiskeys, but they had gone years ago and she had never bought another bottle.

There was no food, either, she suddenly remembered.

Only a last frozen pizza in the freezer.

“Coffee would be fine.” His voice and eyes were so calm. She tried to cling to that, to calm herself down, but it was hard.

This was Nick . Nick was here, right now, in her kitchen, squinting slightly at the last rays of the sun shining through the kitchen window right into his eyes.

“Coffee. Right.” There was coffee. Enough for one cup at least.

She turned and tried to keep her hands steady as she opened the cupboard to get the coffee. To her horror, except for the glass canister with an inch of grounds, the cupboard was bare.

Exactly like in some horrible fable.

She closed the cupboard, making a louder noise than she wanted, and set about making coffee with trembling hands for Nick.

Nick.

Who was here.

Preparing the coffee, setting out the pretty Limoges cup and saucer, part of a set that she hadn’t sold because there were only four pieces, setting out a silver spoon and the Wedgewood sugar canister calmed her down a little.

He was still standing and that was another blow to the heart.

This had been his kitchen once, too. He had once been completely at home here. She remembered the thousands of evenings Nick had teased her and made her father laugh in here while Mrs. Gooding prepared dinner.

Now he was standing, needing her permission to sit. Tears blurred her eyes, but she willed them back. She’d had a lot of experience at that. She could do this.

“Please sit.” She pulled out a chair.

He took off his jacket, hung it on the back of the chair, and sat. Underneath the jacket he had on a heavy flannel shirt.

Oh God. She should do the same, of course.

Except she was still cold and underneath the jacket she had on a thin sweater.

She still had a few thick sweaters. Except her mind had been so befogged by the exhaustion of the last days of her father’s life and the funeral arrangements that she’d simply grabbed the first thing that came to hand.

As luck would have it, it was a thin cotton sweater.

But she could pretend with the best of them. She hung her own jacket over the chair and sat down across from him.

They looked at each other mutely.

The coffee machine percolated. Elle sprang up and poured him a cup.

Nick hesitated. “What about you? Still don’t like coffee? You always liked tea. Can I make you some?”

“No!” Elle cleared her throat. “No, thanks.” She’d kill for a cup of tea, but it was in the cupboard above the stove and that was bare too. Two bare cupboards—it was too much for Nick to see.

Nick blew on the cup and sipped. As always, the delicate china looked out of place in his large hand but she knew from experience that it was safe. His hands were huge, had always been huge, but he was far from clumsy.

They sat in silence until he finished half the cup, then looked up at her. “How long had he been ill?”

Elle didn’t sigh, but she wanted to. “Several years. But his doctor thinks, with hindsight, that the illness started five years ago, only he managed to hide it.”

Something—some faint expression crossed his face.

Oh God. He’d left them five years ago. It sounded like she was accusing him of precipitating her father’s decline.

“Must have been hard. For you.”

Elle simply dipped her head. Yes, hard. Very hard.

“So—what will you do now? Go back to college?”

“I wasn’t enrolled in college.”

That surprised him. It took a lot to surprise Nick but she’d done it. “What do you mean you’re not in college? You were a straight-A student, always had been. Or have you already finished college?”

She had to smile at that. She’d had anything but straight As while she struggled to deal with her father’s eccentricities. It would be another year before she understood he was ill. She’d missed almost every other day her sophomore year.

“No, I, ah—it’s complicated.”

Nick was frowning. Ok. That was easier to deal with than that look of pity he’d had. “Well, now there’s nothing holding you back, is there?”

Well, if you didn’t count no money and medical debts, and put like that…”No, there isn’t.”

The answer seemed to relax him. He looked around again then back at her, dark gaze penetrating.

“You’re too thin. And too pale. You need to eat more and get outside more.”

That hurt . Nick had been in her heart always, since he had first come into their lives.

She’d only been seven, but she loved him the moment she laid eyes on him.

She’d been a girl then, but she was a woman now, and everything womanly in her was concentrated on him…

his handsome face, those broad shoulders, the outsized hands.

Every female cell in her body was quivering. And he spoke to her like an elderly aunt would.

Eat more, get out more. Don’t be so pasty-faced and thin.

Yeah.

Next thing, he’d be telling her to bundle up warmly.

“And Christ—what’s the matter with you, going out in this weather dressed like that?”

There you go.

How she’d dreamed of this moment! For years. And now here he was, sitting across from her so closely she could touch him if she simply reached out, and they were talking about her wardrobe.

“Don’t,” she said softly. “I had to get dressed in a hurry. But I don’t want to talk about this. I want to hear how you’ve been doing. Where you’ve been.”

And why you disappeared without a word.

But she couldn’t say that. He was here. Right now she wanted to fill the empty years with images. She could only do that if she could imagine where he’d been, what he’d been doing.

Once upon a time, he’d told her everything.

Nick settled more deeply in the chair, frowning. “I can’t really talk about that.”

“Because you’re in the military?”

He straightened, shocked. “How did you know that? Who told you?”

Nick sounded actually angry. It had slipped out of her mouth without her thinking about it, which went to show how tired she was. She never let slip things she shouldn’t know, but did. She’d learned that the hard way.

She’d seen him. In her dreams. Not normal dreams—that floating phantasmagoria of disconnected images most people had during the night. She had those, too, like everyone else. But she also had Dreams. She went places in her Dreams and it was like being there. Frighteningly, exactly like being there.

She’d visited Nick, without a clue as to where he was, but so real she felt she could touch him. He was exercising with a hundred other men, doing jumping jacks and climbing ropes and crawling under barbed wire. Shooting. Shooting a lot. Jumping out of planes.

And with women. That had been the worst of all.

She’d watched, helplessly, as he made love to a series of women, rarely the same one two nights in a row.

Elle would be looking down from the ceiling, watching the muscles of his broad back stretch and flex, his buttocks tightening and releasing as he moved in and out of the woman.

Usually, he held himself above the woman du nuit on stiff arms, touching her only with his sex.

Those nights, as she watched from the ceiling, she would wake up with tears on her face.

A part of her thought she was crazy. And another part of her thought she could somehow travel outside her body.

Whichever it was—and maybe it was both—she’d said the wrong thing to Nick.

He reached across to clamp his big hand over her wrist.

“Did someone tell you something?” he demanded. “Someone spying on me?”

His grip was tight. Not painful, but definitely unbreakable. Nick had always been strong, even as a boy. Now he was a powerfully-built man.

Slowly, unsure if her touch would be welcome, Elle laid her hand over his.

“No one told me, Nick,” she said gently.

It wasn’t the first time she had to answer how she knew something she shouldn’t.

And it wouldn’t be the last. When he lived with them, Nick had never known.

Her father hadn’t known. She hadn’t known.

“You have the bearing of a soldier, and your hair is cut military-short. There is a pale patch on your jacket. Where there would have been an insignia. You look like you’re doing well, but you’re not in a suit.

You’ve got combat boots on. They’re sold in stores, too, but taking all these things together—” She shrugged.