“A vision?”
“How else do you explain it?” she asked quietly, studying his taut profile as he continued to watch the road as he drove toward town. “You pulled me out of it when you said something to me in the truck after we arrived at the tavern. I had no idea what the vision meant.”
His jaw clenched, and his eyes narrowed.
She looked back out the window.
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“We didn’t have a pact back then that I would tell you if I had any visions—and you wouldn’t have believed me anyway. Besides, it didn’t seem important. And I didn’t think about it when we were in the tavern.”
Ryan grunted. “You said you didn’t have them unless they were important to you. So it seems this would have been important. And you said that they were premonitions of something that would occur pretty soon. You should have said something to me. Did you recognize him? See a face?”
“My… my eyes burned. I remember how blurry my sight was when I tried to see him. I thought it was the vision, but I think now it was because my eyes were filled with soap.”
Ryan mulled that over, not saying anything for about a mile, and then shook his head. “Great.”
“Great, what?”
“How does this work, Carol? Do you conjure up the visions? Something trigger them? Or do they just happen?”
She studied his stern face. “They just happen.”
“You can’t force one?” He glanced at her, his eyes trying to read her like a wolf’s would.
She looked back out the window.
He didn’t say anything for some time, but then he pulled over to the side of the road. Startled, she glanced at Ryan, wondering what was up now.
Jake drove up behind them and parked. Ryan’s cell phone rang, and he jerked it off his belt and flipped it open. “Yeah, we’re okay, Tom. We just have to discuss a little matter.” He ended the call and pocketed his phone. “Can you force a vision?”
She frowned at Ryan. “Not exactly.”
“Define not exactly.”
“It’s not normal for me to be able to force a vision.”
“But?”
She took a deep breath. “Maybe it’s the changes in me. Being a werewolf. Or maybe as I grow older I have a little more control. I don’t know. Sometimes I can do so now. Not any particular one, but of something that is close to happening.”
“Like?”
“Darien not being able to shift back.”
“Wishful thinking?” Ryan asked.
She cast him her chilliest look, one that could have frozen the nearby lake despite it being spring. “The night before last, I envisioned someone in a red-and-white-striped jacket tackling me. The feeling I had wasn’t fear but annoyance, so I knew it couldn’t be too bad.”
Ryan swore under his breath, reached out and took Carol’s hand, and squeezed. “Mervin at the game.”
“Yeah. He’s the one that kept me awake half the night with the stupid visions of him.”
Ryan sighed. “All right.” He pulled back onto the road and headed the rest of the way into town.
All right? Now he believed her?
“How about a vision of anything else? Foresee any problems at work, perhaps?”
“No. I’ll let you know about any visions I have. I said I would.”
He drove in silence for a while and then said, “Why did you conjure up the vision of Darien?”
She sighed under her breath. What difference would it make if Ryan knew? She looked out the window and said softly, “To keep from shape-shifting.”
Ryan remained so quiet that she glanced back at him. He snapped his mouth shut. Then he said, “Hell, Carol. You’re a ticking time bomb.”
She smiled. “Really hot stuff you mean?”
“You’re hot, all right. And you’ll work with only werewolf patients, like Darien ordered.” Ryan glanced at Carol, his expression all business. She would obey him, or else.
She smiled back. “Of course. Unless we’re swamped with human patients.”
Ryan ran his hands over the steering wheel. “That’s not the deal, and I won’t go along with it. You’re one dangerous lady. So about these nightmares you’re having…”
She sighed loudly. “They’re about the visions, about being bitten and changed, and they haunt me. Probably brought about by the drug the reds used on me.” She wondered if the drug had inhibited the need to shift last night. She took a deep breath, relieved she hadn’t tried to shift while Ryan was sleeping with her. Or doing anything else. A chill cascaded down her spine. Could having sex trigger a shift?
“Do you… believe in dream mating?” he asked out of the blue.
Chapter 15
HER STOMACH CLENCHING WHEN RYAN QUERIED HER about dream mating as he drove her to the hospital, Carol worried that maybe he believed in such a thing and was searching for the woman of his dreams. And she wasn’t it.
Still startled, she stared at him in disbelief. “Do you?”
“Of course not. But I wondered if you did.”
“Oh.” Her stomach unclenched several degrees. She thought about the stories Lelandi had told her and nodded. “Sure. Lelandi and Darien were dream mated. I didn’t know such a thing could exist until I heard of their case. Why bring it up?”
Ryan remained silent, and Carol huffed. “You tantalize me with some tidbit of news and then don’t share it with me? What if I were to do that with you? Say that you wouldn’t believe the vision I had this morning, but then not tell you what it was.”
“Did you?”
She paused and then let out her breath. “I’m not sure if it was the drug or what, but I saw a golden room and brilliant lights spilling into it from another room. I was drawn to the lights, as if I didn’t have any choice. And then shots were fired, and I heard…” She thought for a moment. Ryan glanced at her. She continued, “I heard Sam shouting. Then more shots rang out. So what brought on this dream mating query all of a sudden?”
Frowning, Ryan tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel and didn’t answer her for some time. Then he said, “Was the golden room a premonition of something to come, Carol?”
“It might have been nothing more than the effect of the drug.”
“Think carefully. You heard shots in the vision? Before Sam shouted?”
“The gunfire might have been outside of the vision. I might have heard it as I was envisioning the room.”
“No,” he said, his voice dark. “Shots rang out after Sam hollered. That’s why they fired in his direction. At the sound of his voice. No gunfire sounded before that.”
Carol considered the implications. Not good. She would be in a room headed toward another filled with bright lights where someone was shooting. Why would she do that?
“What are you thinking, Carol?” He reached over to squeeze her ice-cold hand. His hand felt warm and large and secure.
“The room means danger.”
“Then you’re not going there.” He glanced at her and continued to hold her hand.
“Right.”
He didn’t say anything for half a mile and then let out his breath. “Okay, so what happens in the room?”
“I don’t know. That’s what’s so frustrating about my visions. I don’t know what happens. What about your dream mating inquiry?” Carol watched him, chewing her lower lip. Had he dreamed of her? She was fairly sure she hadn’t dreamed of him, and she was certain she would have remembered.
“Tom said he was waiting for the woman who would reach out to him in his dreams.” Ryan glanced at her. “I thought you should know.”
“Ah.” Which meant that if Ryan wasn’t the one for her, she’d have to scratch Tom off her list, too. She sighed with disappointment. “That’s good to know. But a dream woman is no match for the real thing.” She folded her arms around her waist.