Just from the brief conversations they had shared, she knew Luke was far too uptight for her. He was wed to structure and routine and she definitely wasn’t. She wanted a man who couldroll with her and be spontaneous. She intended to remain free-spirited and spontaneous as her mother had been.
“You’re overthinking it all,” she murmured to herself as she parked at the swamp’s entrance. It had just been an unplanned lunch together.
She reminded herself that she was a job to him and he was nothing more than a bodyguard to her. They weren’t dating. There was really no relationship except an odd sort of budding friendship between them.
She hadn’t lied about a nap. That was definitely her plan for the afternoon. After that she would be ready for the night ahead and maybe this would be the night Pierre would dig up her mother’s book and the case would finally be over.
She got out of her car and headed in to her shanty. The walk seemed unusually long today. The late hours of the night before were definitely weighing on her, although she would never admit that to anyone.
Despite her exhaustion, the surrounding swamp comforted her with the fragrances and look of home. It smelled green with the underlying scents of various flowers in bloom. There was also the rather unpleasant smell of decay, which she had gotten used to a long time ago.
The white piece of paper on her front door was visible from the bottom of her bridge. What on earth? She approached her door and pulled the note off. It read YOU WILL BELONG TO ME.
The letters were written in bright red with the wordwillunderlined several times. A shiver crawled up her spine. She quickly shot a look around. Who had left it for her? She didn’t see anyone lurking around.
She stared down at the note once again. What did it mean? With a chill flooding through her veins, she opened her door andquickly went inside. She locked the door behind her and then sank down on the sofa with the note still in her hand.
You will belong to me.
Even though the words themselves weren’t exactly violent, it felt like a prophecy of danger.
ASLUKE DROVE HOME, his head was filled with thoughts of Dominique. She had looked so attractive in a brown sundress that was the exact chocolate color of her eyes. Her hair had been pulled back at the nape of her neck, exposing gold hoops at her ears. A gold necklace with a small locket had looked lovely against her medium skin tone.
There was no question that he had a smoldering desire for her. He hadn’t expected that he would like her as much as he did. She was very easy to talk to and he found many things about her so interesting. She was like no other woman he’d ever dated before.
He pulled himself up short at this thought. But of course, he wasn’t dating Dominique, and he would never be interested in dating her. He liked structure and routine, and she had said she had none. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live with her. All he knew for certain was she was definitely the wrong woman for him.
He got back home and decided to take a note from her book and catch a nap. If last night was any indicator, the night to come would be long and probably frustrating.
He went into the kitchen and set his keys next to his holster and gun and then went into the living room and got into his recliner chair.
It didn’t take him long to drift off to sleep and into dreams of his childhood. The dreams were snippets, moving quickly from one vision to another. His mother passed out on the living roomfloor…his brothers crying with hunger when there wasn’t any food in the house. Angry banging on the door with the landlord wanting rent.
He woke up two hours later, surprised by the dreams that had tortured his sleep. It had been years since he’d had those particular visions while sleeping. What had brought them all back to him now?
Once he was awake, he spent the next hour seated at the table while he cleaned his gun. It was a task he didn’t mind and one he did regularly. It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d had to shoot a man.
When a suspect in Mystique’s murder case was caught with meth-making materials in his shanty, he had wound up shooting Daniel and then Luke had shot him. Thankfully, Daniel had only been grazed in the shoulder and Luke had shot the suspect in the leg, making it an easy arrest and nobody had died.
Once the gun was clean, it was dinner time. He pulled a frozen Salisbury steak dinner out of the freezer and popped it into the microwave. Not exactly a delicacy, but he didn’t feel like cooking anything else.
When he was finished eating, he put on a clean pair of black jeans and a black T-shirt. Surveillance clothes, he thought with wry humor, although there was nothing humorous about what Dominique was doing.
By that time, he was ready to leave for Dominique’s. Even though he had spent his lunch time with her, he still looked forward to seeing her again.
While he’d been inside, the skies had become angry looking. He hadn’t heard the latest weather report, but it looked as if it might rain at any moment. Which wasn’t all bad.
He would assume if it was raining then the night’s activities would be canceled, and he could definitely live with that. Itwould be one less night he had to worry about Dominique’s safety.
It still wasn’t raining when he got out of his car at the swamp’s entrance, but the air smelled like fresh ozone, letting him know the rain was coming very soon. The dark clouds swallowed up any twilight that might have occurred.
He turned on his flashlight to traverse the narrow paths, eager to get there and get inside before the skies opened up. When he reached the shanty, he knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” her voice called out.
He frowned in surprise. Last night she’d opened the door without checking who it might be. “Dominique, it’s me… Luke.”
He heard the sound of the lock and then the door opened and she gestured him inside. Once he was in, she immediately locked the door after him.
