Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
S chwartz’s heart pounded in his throat as he threw back the covers and leaped out of bed. He grabbed the pistol from where he’d stashed it in the cupboard above his bed, his gut clenching as the scream sounded again.
“No! Stop, please! Don’t do this!”
Janelle. Oh God, what was happening?
He rounded the corner into the office, raising the pistol to annihilate the threat. He remembered how to do that, even now.
But there was no threat.
Not real, anyway, though he damn well knew how real the imaginary ones could feel.
“No!” she screamed again, and thrashed beneath the covers on the rollaway bed. A nightmare. Her eyes squeezed shut as she fought an invisible attacker, her battle cries fierce and tortured and so goddamn real he wanted to fight them for her.
“Janelle,” he whispered.
She didn’t stir, but her face creased into a nightmare grimace as she fisted the sheet in her hands. She was sweaty and wild and flushed in the moonlight.
Schwartz set the gun on his desk, far out of reach. Then he knelt beside the rollaway and touched the side of her face.
“Janelle,” he whispered again. “Wake up. You’re having a?—”
Pow!
The punch was so swift and so fierce, he never saw it coming. Christ almighty, the woman had a mean right hook.
He caught her wrist before she could swing again, pinning both her hands to her sides. “Janelle,” he said, more loudly this time. “Wake up. You’re dreaming. A nightmare.”
She opened her eyes and blinked at him. “Schwartz?”
“It’s just me.”
“Oh my God, I was having a bad dream.”
“No shit. Where’d you learn to punch like that?”
She struggled to sit up, and he dropped his hands to his sides as she fumbled to hold the sheets against her chest. “I punched you?” She touched a fingertip to his cheekbone, and he felt himself wince.
“Ow.”
“I’m so sorry! Here, let me go get you some ice.”
“Stay put,” he said, ready to pin her down on the bed again if he needed to. “I’m fine. I’ll probably have a black eye, but it doesn’t hurt. Seriously, who taught you to hit like that?”
“Your mother.”
“No kidding?” He felt himself starting to grin. “That sounds about right. Stella was teaching us hand-to-hand combat before we were potty-trained.”
“I don’t think she meant for me to use it on you.”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure she’d approve.” Schwartz sat back on his heels, wanting to put a little space between them. Her hair looked disheveled and sweaty, and her face flushed pink in the moonlight.
He’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
“Want to tell me about the dream?”
She shrugged, looking down at her hands. “It was about Jacques. About what I saw him do.”
Schwartz nodded. He’d read the report, of course, but seeing it firsthand would be a whole different ball game. “I read the details, so you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Good.” She shuddered. “I’d just as soon not relive it.”
“It was the first time you’d seen him do something like that?”
“Of course!” Her mouth fell open. “You don’t think I would have run like hell at the first clue he was capable of something like that? I had no idea?—”
“Okay, okay. I believe you. It’s just hard for me to imagine going from thinking someone’s the sort of person you want to spend the rest of your life with, to realizing he’s a homicidal drug lord.”
“Yeah. Well, clearly my judgment is a little fucked up.”
The darkness in her voice was something he hadn’t heard before, and he drew back a little more. “Hey,” he said, trying to keep his tone soft. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, it’s true.” She looked up at him, and his heart split in two at the sight of tears pooling in her eyes. “My inability to assess someone’s true character is the stuff of legends.”
She was eyeing him oddly now, and Schwartz leaned back to put a few more inches of space between them.
“Want me to get you some water?”
“No. I’ll be fine,” she said. “I just—maybe I won’t go back to sleep.”
“What?”
“I have a deadline coming up for one of my biggest clients. I should probably get to work.”
He glanced at the wall clock. “It’s twelve thirty.”
“I’ll be quiet. I won’t disturb you, I promise.”
“That’s not the point.” He wasn’t sure what the point was or why he was sitting here arguing with her. He should get the hell out of here and head back to bed before he gave in to the temptation to reach out and push the sheet off those beautiful bare shoulders. She’d worn that pink tank top thing again with the tiny little straps and the fabric he recalled felt as soft as forest moss.
Janelle sighed. “Look, I just don’t want to have the dream again. I’m afraid.” She looked down at her hands. “If I get up and start working, I won’t have to risk having the nightmare again.”
“Sure. Sleep deprivation is always a good solution.”
“What?”
“There’s a reason it’s used as a method of torture.”
“Yeah? Well, between that and the nightmares, I’d rather pick the form of torture that lets me be conscious and in control.”
She looked so lost and afraid that Schwartz wanted to gather her in his arms and hold her until she stopped shaking. A stupid idea. Still, he couldn’t leave her alone like this.
He frowned, already regretting the words he was about to utter. “Do you want to share my bed?”
“What?”
“If it’ll help, I mean. We can keep our distance from each other. I just thought maybe?—”
“Yes,” she said, already vaulting off the rollaway. “I know it’s stupid, but I feel better having you there. I promise to keep my hands to myself. I promise I won’t touch you or grope you or?—”
She was still uttering promises as she pulled his sweatshirt over her head and scrambled out of the room, but he’d stopped listening.
Because the truth was that he hoped like hell she’d break every single one of them.
Janelle wasn’t sure which of them drifted off first, but she woke with a start at three in the morning with Schwartz slumbering peacefully beside her.
She glanced around the darkened room, trying to figure out what had jarred her from sleep. The scrape of tree branches against the side of the house? The soft whimpers from Sherman having a dog dream out in the living room? The distant howling of coyotes or wolves or whatever the hell was making all that canine racket off in the distance?
It was funny, really. She’d spent her whole life surrounded by a cacophony of city sounds—the blare of horns, the clatter of streetcars, the shouts of people on the streets.
She’d expected to be enveloped in a blanket of silence here in the Montana wilderness, but that wasn’t the case at all. The sounds were still out there. They were just different sounds. Strange sounds, as unfamiliar to her as the man now sleeping beside her.
She turned on her side to look at him. He lay on his back with his hands balled into fists beside him. He didn’t snore the way Jacques used to sometimes, which surprised her. For some reason, she’d expected a man who looked like a lumberjack would saw logs when he slept.
But Schwartz Patton was turning out to be nothing like she’d expected.
Jacques turned out to be nothing like you’d expected . You’re not exactly batting a thousand when it comes to judging a man.
Right.
There was that.
Janelle couldn’t deny the blaze of attraction surging between her and Schwartz. She was pretty sure he felt it, too, but he was keeping his distance. He’d been quick to nix any possibility of anything happening between them when he’d allowed her into his bed this time.
“You’re kidding me with this, right?” she’d asked as she stood at the foot of the bed earlier, watching him drag a giant bolster pillow out of the closet.
“What?” he’d asked as he dropped the pillow lengthwise down the middle of the bed.
“You’re putting up a barrier between us?”
“Damn right I am.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“I know. Why would they make a pillow that looks like a giant purple hot dog?”
She rolled her eyes and flopped onto her side of the bed, glaring daggers at the pillow. “It’s not purple, it’s aubergine.”
“What?”
“Aubergine. Like eggplant.”
He shook his head. “No, it definitely looks more like a hot dog than an eggplant.”
“It’s not a hot dog, it’s a bolster. Very trendy. Where did you even get this thing?”
“Some website my sister likes. It had to do with a clay farm or something like that.”
“Clay farm?”
“Yeah. That’s the name of the site.”
“Pottery Barn?”
“That’s right. I got it so I have something to lean on when I want to work in bed.”
She rolled her eyes and looked at the pillow again. What did it say that he’d avoided contact with his sister for a decade, but still relied on her advice for home décor? She knew from her own sister that Schwartz had kept in touch with his family in strange ways. He didn’t trust anyone but Grant with his contact information, but he sent thoughtful gifts for birthdays and weddings and Veteran’s Day. When Grant had proposed to her sister, Schwartz had sent flowers to Anna and a card of congratulations. He called his mother on her birthday and Mother’s Day, but he never came to visit.
He clearly didn’t hate his family, so what was the deal with the avoidance?
She’d sighed and poked at the stupid bolster pillow. “So aside from whether it’s an eggplant or a hot dog, it’s a blockade between us?”
“Yep.” Schwartz had flopped down on the opposite side of the bed and turned his back to her and the bolster.
“You don’t trust me to keep my hands off you?” she’d asked.
“Maybe I don’t trust myself to keep my hands off you.”
“Which is it?”
“Good night, Janelle.” He’d flipped off the bedside lamp, plunging them into darkness for a moment. In the silence, she heard him sigh. “If you get scared or you have another nightmare, wake me up, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Mmmph.”
Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by then, and she could see the outline of his shoulder above the bolster. The moon was out, and there were pinpricks of stars scattered across the black felt sky spread above the treetops.
She closed her eyes, and before she knew it, she was drifting off to sleep.
But now it was three in the morning, and Janelle was wide awake. Not just wide-awake, but staring at the sleeping man beside her like some kind of creeper.
She felt a little like a stalker for doing it, but she’d had so few opportunities to study him when his guard was down. If there was one thing she’d learned in the last thirty-six hours, it was that Schwartz Patton’s guard was seldom down.
She’d seen glimmers of an unguarded Schwartz. His childlike love of Pop-Tarts. His unbridled adoration for the shaggy wolf- dog who’d been his companion for eight years. The haunted look in his eyes as he’d stashed the pistol he’d been holding in a cupboard above the bed.
Janelle felt pretty sure he hadn’t known she was watching. At first, she’d merely been surprised to know he’d brought a gun to defend her from her nightmare. But as she watched him stare at the gun before tucking it into the cupboard, she caught a glimpse of something else. There was an odd sort of reverence in the way he handled that gun. Something that told her it was more to him than a tool of self-defense or a means of protecting her.
Janelle rolled over, determined to fall asleep again. She must have done it somehow, because when she woke again, it was nearly six in the morning. Still stupid early, but at least she hadn’t had any more nightmares. She could count her blessings for that.
Or thank Schwartz.
She glanced over to see he hadn’t moved a muscle on the other side of the big purple hot dog. He was still on his back fast asleep with his rugged features arranged in peaceful slumber.
Janelle peeled the covers back on her side of the bed and stepped onto the cold wood floor. The house felt chilly, which meant the fire was out again. She spotted Schwartz’s sweatshirt on the back of a chair and reached for it, comforted by the sheer size of the thing.
Kinda how she felt about Schwartz.
She pulled the sweatshirt on, warmed by both the thickness of it and the knowledge that it had been draped around his body. It smelled warm and woodsy and comforting. The thought of wood sent her padding over to the woodstove. She bent down to peer inside as Sherman looked up and thumped his tail.
“Want to go with me to grab some firewood?” she asked him.
The wolf-dog cocked his head to the side as though considering the offer.
Or considering whether she was up to the task.
“I won’t pick up the ax, I promise,” she assured him. “Or maul. Whatever. I saw him stack a punch of split logs on that rack right outside. I can just grab a few of those and some pieces of kindling and get this thing fired up.”
Sherman pricked his ears, looking skeptical.
“He showed me how to build a fire yesterday. I think I’ve got it. Come on. It’ll take thirty seconds, and I’ll have this place all toasty warm before he gets up.”
The dog still looked uncertain, but he stood up and followed her to the door. She thought about running back to her room for her jeans, but that seemed unnecessary. Her boots were right next to the door and they came all the way up to her knees. Schwartz’s sweatshirt nearly touched the tops of them, so she’d be plenty warm for the thirty seconds it took to run to the rack and grab a couple logs.
She stuffed her feet in her boots and began flipping bolts and locks, grateful Schwartz was cautious about security even out in the middle of nowhere. She pushed the door open and gestured to Sherman.
“You go do your business and I’ll grab the wood.”
A burst of chilly air hit her in the face, and she second-guessed her choice to dart outside in boots and a sweatshirt. But she could see the wood rack right there, and it would only take a few seconds.
She left the door open and scurried across the concrete pad along the edge of the cabin. She grabbed three logs—the most she could carry—and scampered back to the doorway. Sherman was still standing there, looking as pensive as a dog could look.
“Shit, we need kindling,” she said, dropping the logs in the doorway. “Little pieces of wood to get the fire started.”
She turned and scurried back to the rack, but she didn’t see any smaller hunks of wood. She spotted a scattered pile of sticks at the base of a tree just a few feet away, so she hurried over to it, her breath coming fast and foggy in the cool morning air.
She’d just reached the pile and bent to pick up the scraps when she heard Sherman growl behind her. She spun around to see him still standing in the doorway. The fur around his neck bristled like a lion’s mane, and he growled again, a deep, low rumble in his throat.
Holy shit. Was he going to attack her?
“Sherman? What’s wrong, boy?”
The dog barked sharply in response, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at a spot straight ahead, just off to her right.
He bared his teeth and growled again.
Janelle swiveled her gaze that direction and felt her blood run cold.
She gasped, dropping all the sticks in her hands, and opened her mouth to scream.