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She made no comment, but turned her back and began to prepare his ice cream. Her long, dark hair was now pulled back at the nape of her neck, caught and held there by a light blue barrette. Her movements were efficient, but graceful at the same time.
From the back she was quite pleasant to look at, but when she turned to face him, her eyes were fathomless and unfriendly. She set the ice-cream treat in front of him then started to walk away.
“Whom do I talk to about turndown service?” he asked.
She stopped walking and turned back to look at him. She was quite pretty. Her skin appeared flawless, her bone structure delicate, and her lips were full but pressed tightly together at the moment. “That would be me,” she said.
“Great, then I’d like the service.”
“Fine.” Once again she started to move away and once again he stopped her by speaking to her.
“Are you always this friendly with guests or is it just me you don’t particularly like?”
Her cheeks took on a little more color as she drew a deep breath. “It has nothing to do with liking or disliking you. Mr. Mead, I don’t know what brought you to Cherokee Corners, but you should leave.”
The words tumbled from her as if she was unable to help herself. “You shouldn’t be here in this town and you shouldn’t be staying in my bed-and-breakfast.”
Nick wondered if she didn’t know exactly who he was and why he was here. Was it possible she knew something about the murders? “Lady, what in the hell are you talking about?”
Alyssa stared at him, horrified by what she’d said and even more horrified as she realized he expected an explanation from her.
She couldn’t tell him about her visions, he’d think she was some kind of nut. “I just think you should know there is a murderer loose in Cherokee Corners and it isn’t safe for you to be here. It isn’t safe for any men alone to be in town.” There, that didn’t sound too crazy, she thought.
“I know all about the Shameless Slasher.” He picked up his spoon and dipped it into the strawberry-covered ice cream. “That’s why I’m here.”
Alyssa stared at him in surprise. On some level she felt herself examining his sinfully handsome good looks, looking for something that would tell her he was not the man she’d been having the horrible visions about.
His dark hair was clipped neatly, although it had just enough wave to soften the cut. He had a Roman nose and below that a wide mouth with sensual lips. But it was his eyes that made him so striking, those intense blue eyes against the foil of his dark hair and tanned face. Unlike the blue of her eyes, which was dark, more a midnight kind of blue, his were the color of a cloudless summer sky.
The same man. There was absolutely, positively no doubt in her mind that he was the same man who had occupied center stage in her latest bout of visions.
“What do you mean that’s why you’re here?” She finally responded to his words.
“I’m an FBI agent, Alyssa,” he said. “Beginning tomorrow, two other agents will be working with me and your police department to find the killer.”
An FBI agent. Alyssa reeled with this new knowledge. Why had her visions shown her killing an FBI agent who had come to town to offer his expertise in catching the killer?
“Eat your ice cream before it melts,” she said absently, then turned to Tina, the teenage girl who helped her out in the evenings. “I’ll be right back.”
Tina nodded and Alyssa hurried through a door that led to the upstairs so she could attend to the turndown service he’d requested.
She took the stairs that led to the four bedrooms on the second level. She could tell that in three of them the occupants had already gone into their rooms for the night. Doorknob hangers read, Do Not Disturb.
The fourth room, what they referred to as the blue bedroom, was Alyssa’s favorite. The furniture was cherrywood antiques in beautiful condition. The double bed was covered with a light blue gingham print and lace-eyelet spread. Light blue curtains hung at the windows and a gingham tablecloth covered the small table in the corner.
Dark blue throw pillows were thrown on the bed for accent and a cobalt-blue vase filled with fresh flowers had been moved from the table to the top of the dresser. The paintings on the wall mixed the shades of blue to tie everything all together in a lovely, peaceful atmosphere.
But there was certainly no peace in Alyssa as she now entered the room. She immediately spied the briefcase on the table. She knew it probably contained reports on the murders that had taken place in Cherokee Corners. She didn’t want to touch it, didn’t want to even get close to it. She was afraid of what might happen.
She turned on the bedside lamp and searched in her pocket for the mints she would set on the pillow after she turned down the blankets and prepared the bed for night.
She placed the mints on the nightstand, then folded down the bedspread, exposing crisp pale blue sheets. A headache began across the front of her forehead, a frighteningly familiar headache.
Knowing she needed to get out of the room as quickly as possible, she grabbed the mints and placed them on the pillow.
The instant her fingers made contact with the pale blue pillowcase, she froze, blinded by the vision that swooped over her more swiftly, more vividly than any she’d ever suffered before.
She was in the bed…amid the pale blue sheets, but she wasn’t alone. Nick was with her, his naked body pressed against hers. She could feel the warmth of the solid muscle of his chest against hers and taste the fire in his lips as his mouth took possession of her own.
His hands were everywhere, stroking across her breasts, moving down her ribs, sliding across her hips and creating fiery flames wherever he touched. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before…heights of splendor she’d never climbed. As quickly as a blink of an eye, the scene in her head changed.
She and Nick were no longer in between the pale blue sheets, but rather someplace outside. She recognized nothing about the area, saw a misshapen tree in the distance and smelled the odor of an approaching storm.
In this scene, she and Nick weren’t making love, although she straddled him like a lover. Gripped in her hand was the longest, sharpest knife she’d ever seen and she plunged it over and over again into Nick’s chest.
Blood splattered as she hit him again and again with a strength she didn’t know she possessed. Each time the knife disappeared into his chest a surge of power filled her…a frightening, overwhelming and seductive power.
“Are you all right?”
The deep, male voice pierced through the vision of blood and death and she jumped and whirled around to see Nick standing in the doorway.
It took a moment for her to separate vision from reality. There was a time when her visions left her feeling oddly refreshed and invigorated, but lately they left her drained and half-dizzy, as if she remained in a sort of limbo between the surreal world and the real one.
She knew he had spoken to her, could tell by the look on his face that he awaited a reply. But she couldn’t remember what he’d asked her.
She stepped away from his bed, her knees threatening to buckle beneath her. “Excuse me?”
Those eyes of his, those intelligent, intense blue eyes held her gaze for what seemed like an eternity. I asked if you were all right.”
He stepped into the room, closer to her, close enough that she could smell the scent of his cologne. It was a familiar scent. She’d smelled it only moments before when she’d had the vision of the two of them in bed.
“Of course…I was just doing your turndown service.”
He eyed her skeptically. “I stood in the doorway and watched you for almost five minutes. You were frozen like a statue. Are you an epileptic? Do you suffer from seizures?”
Her initial instinct was to tell the truth and say no. But then she realized that might be a perfectly good explanation for the visions she knew would be increasing because of his nearness.
“Yes…I suffer from petit mal seizures,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t be punished for the tiny white lie.
“Are you okay now? Do you need me to get you anything?”
“No, I’m fine.” What she needed more than anything was to escape this room and his presence.
She still felt the impending doom that the vision had left behind. She feared that Nick Mead’s arrival to the town of Cherokee Corners had put into motion events that would forever change her life.
Chapter 3
It was still dark outside when Alyssa pulled herself out of bed the next morning, still dark when she finished showering and got dressed.
Exhaustion weighed her down as she left her small, private quarters and entered the large kitchen. Now she would begin the process of baking muffins and biscuits, browning sausage and frying bacon and all the other tasks that would result in a breakfast to remember at the Redbud Bed-and-Breakfast.
There had been a time when she’d done these chores with joy, but lately the daily grind was beginning to take its toll on her. She was tired, tired all the time, but this morning the weariness weighed heavier than usual.
Of course, it didn’t help that she got very little sleep the night before, she thought as she rolled out the dough for biscuits. Knowing Nick Mead was beneath her roof had kept sleep at bay.
As she worked, she thought about the handsome FBI agent. Just because she’d had horrible visions about him didn’t mean they would come true. She’d long ago learned not to take what she saw in them at face value.
Sometimes they were just what they were, but other times they were filled with symbolism and meaning she only understood after the events in the vision had come to pass.
But, no matter how she twisted and turned the images her latest vision contained, they still frightened her, especially now that the man in her vision was here in town.
She tried to shove thoughts of Nick and her visions out of her head as she worked. She needed to concentrate on what she was doing in order to make the kind of meal guests had come to expect from her.
Dawn was breaking in the east, a sliver of light peeking over the last of the night clouds when she sat at the island with a cup of coffee.
It was almost six and even though breakfast officially started being served then, guests were rarely up that early. It was usually seven before anyone appeared in the dining room.
This was Alyssa’s favorite time of day, when all the preparations for breakfast were finished and she had these few precious moments to sit and reflect.
It was at this time of the morning when whisper-thin memories of her mother visited her. There were few memories, as Alyssa had lost her mother when she’d been four. But she still remembered a familiar scent, a sweet voice and loving hands roughened from basket weaving.
Her grandmother had been a basket weaver, as well. Alyssa had lived with her maternal grandmother until she was eleven, then her grandmother had passed away and Alyssa had been taken into the James family and raised with Savannah, Breanna and Clay by the loving, exuberant Rita Birdsong James and her husband, Thomas.
“Good morning.”
She gasped and tensed at the familiar deep voice. She turned on her stool to see Nick standing hesitantly in the kitchen doorway.
If she’d thought he looked handsome the night before, today he practically made her breathless. Clad in a lightweight, light gray suit, he looked coolly professional. “Something smells wonderful,” he said.
“If you’ll take a seat in the dining room, I’ll be glad to bring you some breakfast,” she replied.
“Actually, a cup of coffee will do me just fine for the moment.” Without waiting for an invitation, he walked over to the coffeemaker, poured himself a cup of coffee, then carried it over and sat on the stool next to hers at the kitchen island.
He was close enough to her that she could smell the scent of a subtle expensive cologne, see the long, individual lashes that framed those startling blue eyes of his.
Before his bottom was firmly planted on the stool, she jumped up from hers, not wanting to be near him. “Would you care for a muffin or something to eat with your coffee?”
There was a small part of her that resented that he was an early riser, that his presence had cut short the time she always allowed herself to just sit and relax.
There was a small part of her that resented that instead of sitting in the dining room like other guests, he’d invited himself into the kitchen area and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“No, thanks. I’m not much of a morning eater,” he replied, looking as comfortable as if he’d spent the last five years’ worth of mornings sitting in her kitchen.
“If you aren’t a breakfast eater, then you probably would have been better off getting a room at the motel out by the highway. It would have been cheaper.” She sounded like a disgruntled crab even to her own ears.
“Yeah, but they don’t offer turndown service.” His eyes twinkled, and there was a tone to his voice as if he was trying to flirt with her.
She turned her back and stirred a pot of gravy warming on the stove. Drat the man anyway. The last thing she wanted was him flirting with her. The last thing she needed was him having anything to do with her.
“I really prefer if my guests stay out of the kitchen,” she said as she turned back to face him. “You understand, liability reasons.”
“Of course,” he said, but didn’t make a move to stand. He took a sip of his coffee, his gaze lingering on her. “You intrigue me, Ms. Whitefeather. I sometimes stay at bed-and-breakfast establishments, and most of the time I find the proprietors cheerful and friendly, or motherly, or overeager to please. You don’t seem to fit the mold.”
His words made Alyssa realize just how odd and unfriendly she’d been around him. Perhaps she was drawing more attention to herself from him than necessary by being so distant and cool.
“I apologize,” she said and forced herself to sit on the stool next to him once again. “I’m usually not unfriendly, although I can tell you I have never wanted to mother any of my guests. You’ve just caught me at a bad time…with the murders happening in town and all.”
Instantly, whatever twinkle had lightened his eyes was doused. Instead, his eyes turned cold, like chunks of blue ice. “It’s been my experience that a murderer on the loose makes everyone on edge.”
He stood, grabbed his coffee cup and smiled. “And now I’ll go into the dining room like a proper guest should do.”
She breathed a sigh of relief as he left the kitchen. Her stomach had been in a knot since the moment he had said good morning. It was the visions, she told herself, and the fear of what might happen, that created the twist in her tummy. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was as handsome as the devil and charming as could be.
Within a half an hour the Harolds had joined Nick. The Harolds were a couple from Kansas City who were staying in the green room. They had been here for two nights and were checking out at noon that day.
As Alyssa filled the table with an array of breakfast foods, she listened to how easily Nick conversed with the older couple on a variety of topics.
He was as charming with them as he’d been with her and that made her feel better. He probably hadn’t been flirting with her at all, he’d just been being himself and that just happened to be exceptionally charismatic.
Within thirty minutes Virginia Maxwell had joined the group. Virginia, a pretty blonde, was the wife of the first victim of the serial killer. She’d moved into the bed-and-breakfast almost immediately after her husband’s murder, and was staying in the pink room.
The fourth person who rented a room from Alyssa rarely made it down for breakfast with anyone else. Michael Stanmeyer was something of a recluse. He’d been a guest of Alyssa’s for the past two years and he usually came down the stairs to the dining room after all the other guests had eaten.
From the kitchen, she heard Nick’s deep voice, although she couldn’t make out what he had said, but Virginia’s peals of tinkling laughter grated on her nerves.
In the three months Virginia had stayed here, Alyssa had found herself alternating between feeling sorry for the pretty woman and wanting to wring her neck.
She gathered up the last of the freshly baked biscuits and took them out to set on the table. “So, Ms. Whitefeather, when do you eat breakfast?” Nick asked.
“Ms. Whitefeather…my, how formal. Call her Alyssa and you can call me Virginia,” Virginia said. “And this is Dave and Cindy.” She gestured to the couple, who beamed at Nick with smiles that looked surprisingly alike. “And even though you’ll probably never see him, weird Michael is in the purple room.”
“Weird Michael?” Nick raised a dark eyebrow quizzically and looked at Alyssa.
“Michael Stanmeyer, and he isn’t weird. He’s just extremely shy.” Alyssa wanted to glare at Virginia, but instead she kept her focus on Nick. “Mr. Stanmeyer is a very nice man.”
“Speaking of nice men…” Nick looked at his watch and pushed away from the table. “I’ve got a couple of my friends to meet. I hope you all have a pleasant day.”
Alyssa could have sworn his gaze lingered on her for just a moment longer than on the others and she felt the beginning of a headache thrum at her temples.
No, she thought desperately. She was not going to have a vision…not here…not now. She had to control it. She had to suppress it. She’d done it before, felt the pressure of a vision trying to get through and had managed to back it away.
What she needed to do was get away…escape to the isolation of the kitchen where she could focus on refusing the vision entry into her mind.
“Excuse me, I forgot something…” She ran for the kitchen and sat on the stool where she had been sitting when Nick had first entered the room.
Gripping the edge of the countertop, she closed her eyes and fought against the dizzying blackness that sought to possess her. “No,” she whispered, the words a half sob.
But, no matter how hard she fought, the blackness came and immediately following the dark was a vision…the vision. Nick’s lips on hers, his hands stroking heat into every area he touched and finally her begging him to take her, to make love to her.
