Bad Karma

“Don’t you want it?” She lifted the robe higher, her arm outstretched. “Here.”

He took three long steps toward her, snatched the robe from her fingers, and disappeared into the bathroom.

“Have a nice shower,” she said, smiling.

Inside the bathroom, Daniel leaned against the door, eyes closed, his heart beating in his ears. Damn. Why the hell had he done that? Why hadn’t he just used a set of handcuffs? He had a pair in the car. But he hated to handcuff a woman. He hated to handcuff anybody, truth be told. And son of a bitch, he hadn’t known she was naked under there. He’d figured she was wearing underwear.

Oh, God, he thought, unable to stop seeing those full, rounded breasts, those sweetly curving hips, that narrow strip of red-gold hair. The boldness in her eyes. The dare. The challenge.

What was she after? A trade? Sex for her freedom?

This whole thing was a bad idea.

He pushed away from the door and turned on the shower, not even bothering with the hot control. Ten minutes later, when he’d gotten all the blood and cola out of his hair and off his skin, he quit the shower, grabbed a towel and dried off. Normally he would have slept in the nude, but there was no telling what Cleo Tyler would do next. A man had to be prepared. He slipped back into his jeans and stepped from the bathroom.

Cleo appeared to be asleep. Probably pretending, lying in bed, covers up to her chin, one bent arm against the pillow. Her hair was partially dry, falling across her face so all he could see were her full, slightly parted lips.

Relieved that there would be no round two-or would it be considered round three?-he pulled the mattress off the nearest bed, covers and all. It was against fire code, but it was the only way he was going to get any sleep.

He dropped it in front of the door so there was no way she could get out without waking him. Then he grabbed a couple of pillows and eased himself down on the mattress.

Chapter Nine

It was the dream again. This time Cleo stood alongside the road, watching as the car approached. She tried to move, tried to shout, but even though she was there, she had no control over the event. It was like watching a movie. But unlike a movie, where you could turn away or leave the room, Cleo could do neither of those things. The car floated around the corner to head directly at her, headlights blinding. She lifted a hand to cover her eyes. Suddenly, somehow, she was inside the car, but she could see herself outside, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt.

She heard Jordan ’s cry of alarm, felt the weight of the car shift, saw a cement wall hurtling toward them.

This part of dream was always the same. The slow motion. The crunch of metal. The shattering of glass. Then her screams.

Don’t look. Don’t get out of the car.

But she did. She always did.

Nobody knew how she got out of the real accident. Speculation was that she’d crawled through the broken front window, because glass shards were found embedded in her knees. But in the dream, she was always just out. Just standing beside the car looking in. But the car was empty.

She turned around, the way she always turned around.

And bumped into herself, into her wild-eyed self. “You’re a bad person,” the Cleo in white said. “Come and see what you’ve done.”

“No.”

Cleo in white grabbed her arm. And Cleo was amazed, because she could feel the deathly chill of the other Cleo’s skin, the pressure of her fingers. “Come and see what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t do it, you did it.” Cleo hung back, planting her feet on ground that kept slipping away. “You killed Jordan. You did it. I can’t look,” Cleo sobbed. “Don’t make me look.”

Suddenly she was in the middle of the road, staring at the broken, smashed pumpkin.

Why, she thought, the way she always thought with such a degree of false confidence, it’s only a broken pumpkin. But then the pumpkin moved. And the pumpkin cried for help.

Jordan.

Jordan ’s voice. Full of pain. Full of beseeching, imploring pain.

Cleo came awake with a start, trying to get her bearings.

At first she thought she was back in the room at The Palms.

No. Not The Palms. A hotel, but not The Palms. She’d tried to get away from The Palms, but Daniel Sinclair had caught her. Sinclair. She was in a hotel with Sinclair.

Had she cried out?

She lay there, listening. Silence, except for a steady, even breathing coming from the vicinity of the hotel room door. No, she hadn’t made any noise.

From beyond the window, transports roared down the interstate. Reassuring artificial light cut in around the curtains, casting the room in layers of shadow. The pillow under her head, and the mattress beneath her, were damp with sweat. Fear covered her body like dew.

Trembling, legs weak, she got to her feet and made her way through the darkness to the bathroom. Once inside, she turned on the heat lamp, then the shower, and stepped inside.

At first Daniel couldn’t place the sound. Rain?

Yeah, rain. He liked the sound of rain. There was something comforting about it. But little by little, reality filtered in until he realized it wasn’t rain at all, but the sound of a shower.

Shower?

Cleo had already taken a shower.

He went from half asleep to wide awake in a fraction of a second. He jumped from his makeshift bed. She’d gotten away. Somehow she’d gotten past him. Somehow she’d stepped over him without waking him, leaving the shower running to throw him off.

Adrenaline pulsed through him. He shoved the bathroom door open so hard it banged against the wall. He ripped aside the shower curtain.

And froze.

Cleo sat in the tub, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs, shaking and rocking.

Daniel reached in and shut off the water. “Cleo?”

Where earlier she’d boldly exposed herself to him, this time she grabbed the edge of the shower curtain and pulled it to her, wrapping it around herself as best she could. She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “C- Can’t a p-person get a l-little p-privacy around here?”

He straightened. “I just thought-” What he’d thought was that she’d gotten away. This hardly seemed the time to explain the reasoning behind his intrusion. Withdrawal, he suddenly realized. She’s going through withdrawal.

He pulled a fluffy white towel from the rack on the wall and handed it to her.

“What are you addicted to?”

“W-what?”

“Crack? Heroin? I can hook you up with some people who can help you.”

Wrong thing to say.

Slowly her head came up. And when her eyes connected with his, they were glittering with anger. “You son of a bitch.”

She stood, towel forgotten, shower curtain forgotten. She stepped from the tub and lifted her hand, poised to smack him. He grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the wall, her hands locked above her head, the soft globes of