Just Past Midnight

“Nothing.”

“That look in your eyes…where do you go when you drift off like that?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. Sometimes you seem like you’re a million miles away. In a place where I can’t reach you. What happened to you, Dani? Why is it the moment we start getting close, I can feel you pushing me away?”

“You know I don’t like to talk about my past,” she murmured, and tried to turn away again.

But Michael held on to her. Held her as if he would never let her go. “I know you don’t. I’m not a big fan of strolling down memory lane, either. My relationship with my brother…you know it’s a mess.” He sighed and glanced away, battling his own demons.

Dani sometimes wondered about his estrangement from his brother, but she never asked. To query him about his past would be to invite questions about her own. And she’d promised herself the day she left Allentown that she wouldn’t look back.

But that was easier said than done. Four years and nearly two thousand miles wasn’t enough time or distance to ease her pain. Paul’s death haunted her still, and she knew that it always would.

She also knew there were those back home who still believed her guilty of setting that fire. Officer Canton was one of them. She even sometimes had the crazy notion that he might have followed her to Connecticut. She’d caught glimpses of someone who looked very much like him, but she knew those sightings were probably nothing more than her paranoia at work.

And her father…that was the heaviest cross of all to bear. He’d fallen out of the barn loft that day, impaling himself on a pitchfork. It was a miracle he’d survived. After Dani and her mother had rushed him to the emergency room, a team of doctors and nurses had worked on him for what seemed like hours. When they finally managed to stop the bleeding and get him stabilized, Dani had tried to tell her mother about the letters and the phone call.

Rena Williams had turned deathly pale and, clutching Dani’s hand, had made her promise that she wouldn’t tell anyone else about her secret admirer, especially the police. Going to the authorities might put them in more danger. Look what had happened to her father.

Dani had been so fearful for her mother’s fragile health that she’d finally agreed to keep silent. She didn’t go to the police, but the promise her mother extracted from her took a toll on their relationship. They were no longer able to meet one another’s eyes, and it seemed to Dani that her mother blamed her for their terrible secret.

“At least you’ve made up with your brother,” Michael said with another sigh.

“Sort of,” Dani agreed. She supposed that was the one good thing to come of all that had happened to her in the past four years. Until a few weeks ago, she hadn’t heard from Nathan since he’d left home right after the fire. He hadn’t even called after their father’s accident. Then recently, he’d turned up at Drury. She’d come out of class one day, and there he’d stood, looking so different from the last time she’d seen him that she almost hadn’t recognized him.

He’d cut his hair, and the jeans and jacket he’d had on were clean and respectable. With something of a shock, Dani realized that somewhere along the way, her brother had grown up. He was no longer a boy, but a man. He’d just turned twenty-three, but the tentative smile he gave her reminded her of the day her parents had brought him into their home, an uneasy nine-year-old who’d wanted nothing more than to belong.

It would have been so easy to respond to that smile. To reach out to him. Lean on him as she once would have done. But there’d been something in his eyes that day—a lingering darkness that made Dani wonder where he’d been and what he’d done. And why he’d come back into her life.

In her dream, Michael was still holding on to her. “I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?”

“You were willing to give your brother a second chance, so I’ve decided to do the same. I’m going home this weekend. I don’t expect anything to come of it, but who knows?” His expression turned bleak. “R.J. can be a real bastard when he wants to be. The only thing he cares about is making money, and he doesn’t understand why I don’t feel the same way. But…he’s the only family I’ve got. For now,” he added cryptically.

Dani put a hand to his cheek. “Michael, that’s wonderful. I’m so happy for you.”

He gave a short laugh. “Let’s not celebrate yet, okay? I’m not expecting miracles.”

“But at least you’re making the effort.”

“Right. I’m making the effort.” He drew a breath. “I hate leaving you, though. I want you to come with me, but I’m not sure that would be such a good idea—”

She pressed a fingertip to his lips. “Don’t worry about me. You should do this alone. You need time to work out things with your brother, and besides, I plan to spend the whole weekend studying. Midterms are coming up in a couple of weeks.”

“And you’ve got an A in every class. Why do you do this? Why do you put such pressure on yourself?”

His criticism rankled. “Because I’m not rich like you. I don’t have a trust fund to fall back on. If I don’t keep up my grades, I’ll lose my scholarship.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, you don’t have to worry about money? I’ll take care of you.”

She drew away from him. “I’d never ask you for money.”

“You wouldn’t have to ask. I want to take care of you.” He pulled her back into his arms. “Don’t you understand?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m in love with you. I want to marry you.”

“Please don’t say that,” she begged.

“I have to. I want you to know how I feel.” His gaze deepened. “I know you don’t feel the same about me. Not yet. But you feel something. I can see it in your eyes. And I think you could love me, too, if you’d let yourself.”

“I’m not ready for anything serious,” Dani said almost desperately. “I have to concentrate on my grades, finish school—”

“I know, I know. The last thing I want to do is put more pressure on you. But, Dani, do you have any idea how much I want you?” His arms tightened around her. “Sometimes I think I’m going to die if we don’t—” He kissed her then, not roughly or hungrily, but gently. Persuasively.

And it would have been so easy to let herself be persuaded. She loved Michael, too. She did. But something held her back. Something made her pull away even as she wanted to cling to him.

He rested his forehead against hers. “It’s okay. I won’t rush you. We’ll talk when I get back on Sunday.”

He walked away from her then, his shoulders hunched against the cold, a solitary figure trudging through the snow. And as Dani stood watching him, that dark premonition slithered back into her soul.

Someone was watching her.

The dream shifted then, and she was huddled with her roommate in the icy cold dawn, watching in horror as firemen pulled students from the smoldering dorm.

Her secret admirer was there, too. She could feel his cold breath on her neck as he whispered in her ear, “I did it for you, Dani.”

DARIAN AWAKENED from the dream as she always did, frightened, trembling, her heart pounding so hard against her chest that she grew dizzy. The images were so vivid in her mind that she could almost believe she was back on that snowy campus instead of safe and sound inside her Houston town house.

She lay staring at the ceiling, weak and exhausted, as the memories came rushing back. She put a hand across her eyes, but that never stopped them. Might as well let them come.

Rolling over, she glanced at the bedside clock. Just after midnight. Hours still until she had to get up.

Sighing, she let her mind drift back to the aftermath of the fire. It hadn’t been until much later the following morning that she’d learned Michael hadn’t gone away after all, and that the fire might even have started in his room.

The implication had almost shattered her, but the final, devastating blow had come later, when she’d received word of her inheritance. That same day, she’d gotten another letter, written in what looked to be her own handwriting: I did it for you, Dani.

The precise script matched hers exactly—just as it had in the letter she’d received after Paul Ryann’s death—that Dani had even toyed with the terrifying notion she might be suffering from a split personality. Was it possible she’d sent herself those notes? Was it possible she’d set those fires, hurt her own father…and couldn’t remember?

“YOUR DOUBTS ARE NATURAL, Dani. You feel guilty for the deaths of your friends, and you’re looking for answers. But you’re not responsible for what happened,” Dr. Gaines had said when she’d returned to Allentown after Michael’s death.

Dani stared across the desk at him. “If I’m not responsible, then who is? Why is this happening? Why did Michael and Paul have to die just because…they loved me?”

“I think you know the answer to that,” he said softly.

Because some psycho, someone that Dani might not even know, wanted her. Wanted to have her under his complete control. The notion was more than terrifying. It was monstrous.

“I’m more convinced than ever that what we’re dealing with here is a form of erotomania,” Dr. Gaines said grimly. “Your secret admirer is laboring under a false belief that you and he are in love, that the two of you belong together. That conviction keeps him tied to you, Dani. So tied, in fact, that he followed you all the way to Connecticut. I suspect he would be willing to follow you anywhere.”