LITMIR.BIZ

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wooden planks, inviting Rose to step forward.

      On her right the red-tiled roof of the house next door came into view as Rose walked slowly to the iron fence at the edge of the balcony. Drawing a slow breath, she placed her hands on the top rail. Cold metal chilled her palms as she gazed at the Golden Gate Bridge, stretching rusty-orange over gray-green water.

      The view from her dreams. Finally.

      Sometimes in her dreams the bridge gleamed in the brilliant sun. Other times it was a scallop of tiny lights against the black sky. Today gray clouds enshrouded the tops of the bridge’s two towers. Below her the ocean crashed onto a narrow beach at the bottom of a sheer cliff, and tiny drops of rain accompanied the wind and set her long, beaded earrings dancing against her neck.

      Rose’s chest expanded with her sense of achievement, only to deflate a second later as the questions began. Why would she dream of this particular view over and over? And why had it seemed so vital that she find this spot so soon after her mother’s death, that she stand here in real life? It wouldn’t change anything. It certainly wouldn’t bring her mother back, nor would it fill that odd, empty, lost place in her soul. It wouldn’t—

      “Do you think you’re fooling anyone, sneaking up the back way?” a deep voice demanded.

      Rose jumped, then swiveled around. Just inside the gate stood a man wearing a brown leather jacket, a crisp white shirt and faded jeans. Approximately six feet tall with broad shoulders, he had a square face and short brown hair, tattered by the gusting wind. She noted rough-edged features that indicated he was in his mid to late thirties. His eyes were narrowed beneath his furrowed brow, preventing Rose from seeing their color, but she knew they would prove to be a muted blend of green and brown. For, just like the bridge, this man had repeatedly appeared in her dreams.

      As the familiar-yet-strange man began to approach, Rose fought a wave of dizziness, and her mind struggled for a foothold in reality. Was any of this—the house on the cliff, the bridge in the distance, the oddly familiar stranger—real? Had she actually gotten out of bed this morning and taken that cab ride to this spot above the sea? Or was it possible that she was still lying on that hard hotel room mattress, sound asleep, lost in yet another dream?

      Or nightmare?

      This must be real, she decided as the man grasped her upper arms. Never, in any of her dreams, had she felt her flesh being pressed beneath his strong grip, nor had she experienced the dream stranger’s warmth as he drew her toward him.

      Looking into his penetrating eyes, she saw they were indeed a warm mixture of brown and green, though perhaps darkened a shade by some emotion she couldn’t discern. Anger, perhaps? Rose opened her mouth to apologize for having trespassed, but the man spoke first, his deep voice harsh with impatience.

      “All right, Anna. What the hell is going on?”

      Rose blinked. Anna? Who was Anna? More to the point, who was this man, and why did he look as though he wanted to kill her?

      In her dreams this man, or the one who looked so much like him, was always smiling—sometimes widely, revealing strong white teeth, or with his full lips twisted into a lopsided grin. Upon awakening from these nighttime visits, Rose was always filled with a languid warmth, prompting her to keep her eyes closed for a few moments so she could hold on to the image of his face, the eyes that teased her and the lips she wanted to kiss.

      None of those half-awake feelings warmed her now. She felt as if she were trapped in a nightmare—cold, terrified, desperate to escape and yet utterly incapable of moving other than to pull her gaze from the thin, tight line of this stranger’s mouth to the combination of fury and worry in his eyes.

      It was the fury that kept Logan Maguire momentarily silent as the wind whipped dark tendrils around Anna Benedict’s pale face, emphasizing the blank, dazed expression clouding her dark-blue eyes.

      Clenching his jaw, he drew in a steadying breath. “What’s going on here, Anna?” he demanded. “You left two messages on my machine saying you were in trouble, that you needed to see me. The next thing I know, there’s a message from your father, worried sick because you’re missing.”

      When Anna only blinked at him, Logan went on, “It’s been a long three days, and the flight back from France was no picnic. Do you have any idea what it was like, retrieving those messages from the phone aboard the plane, waiting anxiously for the flight to end?”

      Upon landing he’d rushed to his car, then swerved through streets clogged with morning commuters, San Francisco traffic, to the Benedict house. All the while he’d cursed himself for allowing Robert Benedict to bow to his daughter’s refusal of a bodyguard six months ago, when the man had decided to run for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Robert’s father, Charles.

      “So,” Logan went on. “I drive like a bat out of hell to get here, hit the remote to open the front gate as I turn onto Sea Cliff Drive, only to see you step calmly through the opening and head for the outside stairs.”

      As Logan had raced up the steps, he’d realized that he’d been worrying about her needlessly. And now, slightly out of breath, bone tired from his long flight and completely out of patience, Logan gripped Anna’s arms more tightly.

      “Well, what was it that sent you off this time?” he asked. “Another excursion to ‘find yourself’?”

      As Logan waited for Anna to reply, he became aware that the soft drizzle had become a steady rain. He watched her half-dazed expression turn to one of utter confusion. She shook her head as if to clear it, and damp curls fell forward to brush her eyebrows and cling to her cheeks. When she started to brush the short tendrils back, Logan grabbed her hand.

      “When you said in your first message that you were in trouble,” he said with far more control than he felt, “please don’t tell me you were referring to the fact that you suddenly decided to cut your hair.”

      Logan rarely spoke so sharply to Anna. He knew that what might seem like vanity to others was Anna’s desperate attempt to maintain the image her mother was so obsessed with. More than once Anna had threatened to chop off her long hair, only to have Elise convince her that the change would spoil the “classic lines” created when Anna’s slightly wild hair was pulled back tightly.

      Releasing her hand, Logan reached toward the damp tangle of curls. His fingers brushed her cheek before they combed through the thick waves at her temples, then encountered the beginning of her familiar waist-length braid.

      “Okay,” he said through clenched teeth. “You cut bangs. Elise will probably hate them, but it is your hair. If she really flips, you can use gel or something to slick…them…”

      Logan’s words trailed off as he became aware that a strange tingling heat had begun to grow in the palm of the hand cupping Anna’s head. The fingers still gripping her slim arm had developed a similar sensation, which was now racing up through his chest, then down his legs, grounding him to the planks beneath his feet like some capricious electrical current.

      Anna’s upturned face registered wonderment blended with confusion. The confusion seemed to be contagious, for Logan suddenly found himself shifting his attention from her shadowed eyes to her lips—noting how full they were, how softly they curved, how the raindrops falling onto their parted surface shimmered in pale pink dots. And for the first time since Logan Maguire had seen Anna Elise Benedict a little over twenty-seven years ago, he found himself wanting to kiss those lips, to pull her slim body into his arms—not as the older brother he’d always considered himself, but as a lover.

      Few things frightened Logan. Not taking the curves of Highway 1 at top speed in his ’65 Mustang convertible, nor negotiating a deal that could make or lose millions of dollars for the family he owed so much to. But this—this sudden change in the way he’d always felt about Anna—scared him silly.

      Instantly he untangled his fingers from her damp hair and released her. As he took a step back, he forced his attention to Anna’s eyes once again and saw that her confusion had been replaced by a look of terror. Logan’s eyebrows moved together in a tight frown.

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