Chapter Five
Lainie raced down the River Walk, past the busy restaurants hugging the walkway, skirting the crowds of people taking advantage of the warm Saturday night.
She tried to act normal, tried to act as if the breath wasn’t being squeezed from her.
Mentally she knew the air was making it into her lungs, but physically she still felt as if she were being strangled.
Strangled. She stopped abruptly, her hand going to her throat. The wave of people washed around her. Above, on the balconies overlooking the river, a party was going on, but the noise and the people began to fade.
I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe! Help me! Mon Dieu, please, someone help me. She grabbed at the fingers digging into her neck, her feet kicking out. She tried to buck the person off her but the world began to fade. Please. Pleasepleasepleaseplease.
“Hey, lady, you okay?”
Lainie blinked, bringing the real world back in focus. A man stood in front of her, dreadlocks poking out of a knit hat, scraggly beard and kind eyes. His girlfriend was tucked beneath his arm, looking up at her in concern.
“You okay?” The girl repeated her boyfriend’s question, reaching out a tentative hand to touch Lainie’s sleeve.
Lainie took a deep breath, forcing more air into her lungs, willing her heart to stop pounding. “Fine,” she mumbled. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
She nodded. But she wasn’t okay. She’d just had a vision of herself…
dying. She shuddered and swallowed the bile rising in her throat but it hurt to swallow, as if she really had been strangled.
Her gaze darted around the River Walk. The crowd of people moved on, laughing and talking.
She’d escaped her apartment but now she felt exposed, sensing danger, but not knowing where it came from.
“Is there someone we can call for you?” the girlfriend asked.
Christien. He was the first person she thought of in her apartment and the name that popped to her lips now. Her mind urged her to run to him but what would she say? How would she explain this panic attack?
She took a deep breath and smiled at the couple. Or tried to smile. The action felt stiff and unnatural. “N-no. Thank you. I’ll be fine.”
They looked at each other, shrugged and walked away.
Lainie stood uncertainly while people shifted around her.
Feeling lost and alone in the large crowd, her tears broke loose and traveled down her cheeks.
She wanted to go home. Not to her apartment where she was experiencing weird dreams and strange visions, but to the home she grew up in.
But she didn’t have that home anymore and no one was there for her even if she did.
“Madelaine?” A hand touched her shoulder and she jumped, stifling a cry of surprise.
Christien. What little courage and strength remained, crumbled. She threw her arms around his waist and buried her head in his chest, taking deep breaths to keep the tears at bay.
His arms went around her, strong, supportive. Safe.
He tried to pull away but she held on tighter. He managed to maneuver her to the shadows of a building, blocking her from the prying eyes of the other people.
“Are you all right? I saw you had called, but you didn’t leave a message.”
His strength seeped into her. The woodsy spice of his scent surrounded her. Grateful, she clung to him, all pretense of courage vanishing.
“What happened?” He tried to pull back but she pressed her face into his chest. “Mon amour, you’re frightening me. Tell me what happened?”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t…” She thought of the hand encircling her neck, squeezing the life out of her. It still hurt to swallow.
Christien’s body was strung tight as if he sensed danger.
What could she tell him that wouldn’t make her look like she was losing her mind?
How did she say she had a vision of someone killing her?
“Come, ma chérie.” He tucked her under his arm and steered them back onto the River Walk, his body shielding her from the crowd.
“Come to the nightclub. I don’t like leaving you alone and I can’t be far from the club on a Saturday night. ”
Her heart slowly returned to normal, but she remained weak, drained. It was easier to let him lead her. She would be safe in his club. She wouldn’t think beyond that.
The club was only a few blocks away and it didn’t take long to get there.
“Faster to go this way.” He led her to the front doors and nodded to the bouncer, the man who wouldn’t let her in two nights ago. The guy merely nodded back, barely giving Lainie a second look.
Inside, the techno-pop music was so loud the beat vibrated the floor and resonated inside her chest. The multicolored lights twirled and swirled.
People were dancing, their movements jerky in the blinking lights, reminding her of an old-time movie that skipped.
She felt like her life was one of those disco balls, spinning out of control.
“This way.” Christien had to lean down to speak in her ear. His breath whispered across her skin and she shivered. “We will talk in my private quarters. Let me search out Sabine and tell her I will be indisposed.”
She should argue with him, tell him she was okay, but the thought of returning to her apartment had her throat closing again. “As long as you don’t mind me hanging around,” she said.
He touched her cheek, his eyes flashing silver in the lights. “Ma belle, there is nothing I’d like more than to have you in my living quarters.” Even through the beat of the music, the timbre of his words reached out to her, burrowing under her skin, sending prickles of awareness through her.
She leaned toward him, her bones melting to feel the brush of her body against his. But instead of kissing her lips, he kissed her forehead. “Give me one minute.”
He turned to speak to the woman she’d seen the first night she was in the club and who’d answered the door yesterday. Christien leaned close to speak in her ear, but didn’t let go of Lainie’s hand. The woman nodded, glanced at Lainie and nodded again.
Sabine was a woman of the world and Lainie came from a working farm where the excitement of the year was the county fair and 4-H ribbons.
She looked away, hating that she felt so inadequate.
Her gaze landed on a cluster of women in tight mini-dresses and push-up bras.
Any of them could have easily stepped from the pages of a magazine—they were so beautiful.
They sneered at her scuffed shoes, her worn jeans and baggy sweatshirt.
Then made a point to look at Christien, whispering and laughing to each other.
Lainie lifted her chin and tightened her hold on Christien’s hand. He threw her a worried glance before returning his attention to Sabine. The women continued to whisper and laugh.
Christien touched her shoulder. “This way,” he said above the music.
She knew it was petty and beneath her, but Lainie smiled at the group of women before following Christien into the elevator.
She caught their narrow-eyed look of disbelief before the doors slid shut.
And then she was alone with Christien in the small elevator, feeling horrible for what she’d done and hyperaware of the man next to her.
The heat coming off him wrapped around her. She was acutely conscious of his every breath and every movement.
She tried to put distance between them, but Christien was having none of that. He tugged her closer and turned to her as the elevator rose swiftly. “I am sorry I did not answer my phone.”
She shook her head, feeling foolish for putting him to all this trouble. With him this close, her fear abated. “It’s all right.”
He cupped her cheek in his large hand. Against her better judgment she leaned in to his warmth. “No, chérie, it is not all right.”
He was so close his warm breath caressed her skin.
So close she could kiss him. For a moment their gazes locked, his such a pure beautiful gray she could fall into it and never want to leave.
She had the oddest sensation she’d done this before, looked deep into his eyes and found everything she’d been searching for.
The elevator doors opened, startling her out of the haze of longing and severing the deep connection humming between them. He pulled away and motioned for her to exit. She stepped out and caught her breath.
She expected his living quarters to reflect his office décor. Glass and chrome, hard angles and dark colors. Starkness and simplicity.
Instead elegance, opulence and luxury were the words that sprang to mind. The look was homey instead of stuffy. The kind of place to retreat to after a hard day’s work.
He’d decorated in dark wood, intricately carved, with jeweled tones to complement, offset by creams and beiges.
The living room and dining area were combined, surrounded by cream-colored pillars.
The windows were unadorned, the lights of Milwaukee in the background and the dark void of Lake Michigan beyond.
The couches were formal, yet comfortable. A flat-screen television looked out of place sitting inside a large antique armoire.
Gorgeous, gigantic floral arrangements sat on the coffee table and dining room table and a sword hung above a stone fireplace.
Feet sinking into the deep-piled carpet, Lainie made her way to the fireplace to stare up at the weapon. Her mind flashed back to her latest dream in which the other Madelaine had been watching Christien prepare for battle, a sword almost exactly like this riding his hip.
She knew nothing about medieval weaponry, yet had dreamt about this one in detail, right down to the hammered hilt. Before tonight she hadn’t even known what a hilt was.
In her dream the sword had been nicked and dented. This was polished and gleamed in the recessed lighting but that was the only difference. How did she dream of this weapon when she’d never seen it before?
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Where did you get it?”