Dark Journey by Stuart Anne

Author:Stuart, Anne [Stuart, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Anne Stuart
Published: 2015-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

"You're up early." Laura poured herself a cup of herb tea, ignoring the tantalizing odor of dark-roasted coffee with a stoic effort. Her doctor had banned even decaffeinated coffee in the past few years, and the enticing scent was almost more torment than the sound of Alex had been, tossing in the bed beyond her wall.

Jeremy yawned, then rubbed his bristly jaw. "I fell asleep by Father's bed," he admitted. "Lucky for me, Cynthia isn't the type to worry."

Laura glanced out at the overcast morning. The wind still whipped through the treetops; the thunder still rumbled. "You've rather gone beyond that stage in your marriage, haven't you?" She took a scone, ignored the butter and sat down next to her brother.

Jeremy managed a boyish smile as he drained his cup of fresh-ground coffee with unappreciative haste. "Well, we've actually been talking about a future."

Laura stared at him. "A future? You mean a reconciliation? I thought things were years past that."

Jeremy shrugged. "Life is full of possibilities, don't you think? On a morning like this, I feel incredibly alive. Like I could do just about anything I wanted."

Laura looked out at the stormy violence of the day, then back to her usually stolid older brother. "I think you should go down to the cottage and get some sleep," she said flatly. "I know why you stayed here, and I'm not very happy about it."

The change in his shallow blue eyes was startling, brief and just a bit frightening. Absurd – there was nothing the least bit frightening about Jeremy. "What do you mean?" he said in a completely expressionless voice.

"You wanted to play chaperone for me, didn't you? For some reason you thought I'd go traipsing off to bed with a perfect stranger, and you didn't even trust your heavy-handed warnings to make him keep his distance."

The tension vanished from his shoulders as swiftly as it had come. "You said he was an old friend," Jeremy murmured. "Not a stranger."

She wasn't used to lying. As a matter of fact, she didn't know where the lie had come from in the first place, or whether it was, indeed, a lie. Alex didn't feel like a stranger. He felt like part of her, and, in some inexplicable way, he seemed bound to her past and her future. And now, suddenly, to her present, as well.

"I wasn't sure you believed me," she said, amazed at how easily the lies were coming.

Jeremy reached out and put his hand over hers. It was a soft hand, with short, pudgy fingers, a hand that had never known a day's physical labor. "We're family, Laura," he said earnestly. "If not by blood, then by caring. We're the Fitzpatricks. We don't lie to each other."

She didn't move. She wanted to pull her hand away from his—an odd reaction, when physical touches were so scarce in her family that she'd always tried to cherish them. She let her hand rest beneath his and summoned up a semblance of a smile.

"It

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