"Feehan, Christine - Lover Beware 03 - Brand, Fiona - After Midnight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feehan Christine)

After Midnight
FIONA BRAND

Chapter 1
A SHADOW SLID through the open double doors of the barn, flowed over hay bales that glowed in the late morning sunlight, and dissolved into the dense shade at the rear of the large corrugated iron building.
Jane O'Reilly's head jerked up. She blinked and frowned, her fingers tightening on the paintbrush she'd been cleaning, aware that something had flickered at the edge of her vision, but not sure what it could have been. She hadn't heard a vehicle labouring up her dusty drive, which meant that if anyone was around, they were on foot-and that wasn't likely because she lived so far out of town. The only time she'd ever gotten foot traffic in the seven years she'd lived in Tayler's Creek had been when a tourist had broken down and had wanted to use her phone. Even then, the tourist had been a rarity-without a cell phone, and way off the beaten track-because as Down Under towns went, Tayler's Creek lived up to the cliche of the one-horse, one-pub town; the shopping centre itself so small that if you blinked while driving through, you missed it.
Gaze warily glued to the bright shaft of sunlight and the spiraling drift of dust motes floating in the beam-as if something, or somebody, had just stirred up the small whirlwind-

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she slipped the paintbrush into a jar of cleaning solution and straightened from her crouched position.
Logically, the movement that had startled her could have been caused by a bird, a rat, or even Jess, her dog, but she had a sense that whatever had moved had been large rather than small, and there had been no accompanying sound effects-just the flickering shadow, as if someone had walked silently past the barn door.
Stripping off her rubber gloves, she shoved them in the pocket of her overalls, automatically rolling her shoulders to ease the ache that had crept up on her while she'd been painting the shaded side of the barn. The movement sent a bead of perspiration sliding down her spine, the cold trickle making her feel even hotter and stickier as she skirted the towering aromatic bales of hay. An unfamiliar and faintly annoying apprehension gripped her as she kept to the concealment of the shadows. Unconsciously, she'd made no noise, and now she stopped to listen as she examined every inch of the scuffed, graveled area in front of the barn. She wasn't paranoid, but ever since Patrick had died four months ago, leaving her widowed and alone on the one-hundred-acre block, she'd been conscious of her vulnerability.
Underscoring that vulnerability was the fact that, the previous day, for the first time in living history, Tayler's Creek had made the front page of the national daily for all the wrong reasons.
According to the report, a couple who had recently moved to Tayler's Creek, the Dillons, had become the latest victims of a slew of brutal home invasion crimes that had been perpetrated in the top half of New Zealand's North Island. Aubrey Dillon had been shot at close range, and killed. His wife, Carol, had been raped and beaten and left for dead while the criminals had made off with over forty thousand dollars' worth of appliances.
A small shudder ran through Jane. She loved the peace and quiet of the country, the slow pace and the sense of order and permanence that went with a life that was immutably tied to the land and the seasons. Farming had its setbacks, but there were none that would ever tempt her to go back to the frantic pace of city life with the constant worry about crime and security. Before she'd married Patrick and they'd both moved to

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the farm, she'd been a city girl, an account executive in a high-profile bank, with career prospects, long nails, strappy high heels, and a burgeoning ulcer. Country life, to put it mildly, had been a revelation, but after the initial shock-and that first broken nail-she'd taken to it like a duck to water. She'd found her peaceful oasis, even if at the moment the illusion of safety was evaporating as fast as the water that flowed through her property.
She hadn't known the Dillons, but whether she'd known them or not didn't matter, the crime had been ugly-doubly shocking for a small town where the main topics of conversation tended to be the price of beef and wool, and how badly they needed rain to lift the dropping water table. Like everyone else in Tayler's Creek, she was edgy and alarmed, and ready to jump at any shadow.
Jess barked, breaking the tension that still held Jane rigid. Letting out a breath and feeling faintly ridiculous for overreacting, she stepped outside, bracing herself against the hammer blow of heat and blinking at the hot glare as she skimmed the drive and the semicircle of farm buildings. She hadn't expected to see a vehicle, and there wasn't one.
Berating herself as, if not paranoid, then definitely neurotic, she did a circuit of the buildings, studying the ground, as if she could somehow discern the shape of a footprint in dirt that was packed as hard as iron, or spy a broken stem in the bleached, matlike covering of Kikuyu grass that sprang back, tough and resilient, beneath her sneaker-clad feet.
As she checked the stockyards and the slatted dimness of the shearing shed, it occurred to her that if there had been anyone at all on her property, there was a simple explanation as to who it could have been-her nearest neighbour.
Her heart stuttered in her chest, and her stomach did a nervy little somersault at the prospect of coming face-to-face with Michael Rider, an instant freeze-frame forming in her mind: dark eyes, taut cheekbones, tanned olive skin, black hair that flowed to broad shoulders.
Michael Rider existed in the category that any sane woman would label as dark and dangerous. The fact that he was her neighbour didn't make him any more reassuring. In any city he would stand out; in the small town of Tayler's Creek, he was as exotic and barbaric as a jungle cat in suburbia.

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She'd been avoiding him for the past three days, ever since she'd seen the lights on at his house and realized that he was back after yet another six-month absence. Although, if Rider had called, she was certain he would have made his presence known. She couldn't imagine him doing anything as underhanded as sneaking, despite the fact that he was a special forces soldier and probably trained to sneak.
When she was satisfied no one was hiding, crouched ready to spring, in any of the outbuildings, she shook her head in amused exasperation and strolled through the line of shrubs that screened the barn from the house, riffling slim, tanned fingers through her dark bangs and lifting the thick plait that lay against the back of her neck, allowing air to cool the overheated skin at her nape.
Checking her watch, she noted it was an hour short of lunchtime, but already the sky was hazy, the heat intense; the heavy, somnolent silence broken only by the sawing of crickets, as if every living creature, aside from the legions of glossy black insects, had gone into temporary hibernation. Even the breeze had died, so that the sun blazed down unchecked, sucking up moisture and leaching all the rich colour from the landscape; the distant, wavering heat shimmer lending the hills a sere, arid cast, when just weeks ago they'd been green and lush with early summer growth and an overabundance of rain.
Jess barked again, and Jane postponed the idea of a glass of lemonade, frosted with condensation and tinkling with ice cubes, and walked around the side of the house. She saw Jess in the far paddock-where she'd been, no doubt, hunting rabbits-standing stock-still, staring into the dark rim of the bush that flowed over a good deal of Jane's land.
The cold unease she'd felt in the barn returned, amplified. Just because there hadn't been a vehicle, didn't mean that someone hadn't walked through her place-unlikely as that event might be.
She called Jess, and the small black and tan huntaway trotted toward her, hackles up. Jane dropped her hand to the dog's head, soothing the rough fur.
She hooked her fingers through Jess's collar. "What is it, girl? What did you see?"
Jess whined and turned her head. A long' pink tongue streaked out and licked Jane's wrist. Jane released her hold on

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the little dog and stood beneath the white blue arc of the sky, a hand shielding her gaze as she watched Jess disappear into the edge of the bush.
Minutes later Jess scooted free of the trees and trotted toward Jane with a stick in her mouth.
The saliva-coated offering plopped on the ground beside Jane's foot, and the tension holding her rigid dissipated. For the first time since Patrick had died, her home hadn't felt safe-she hadn't felt safe-and the feeling had rocked her. Maybe there had been no cause for alarm and she had overreacted, but she still felt unnerved and a little shaky.
But then nothing had felt normal or right since Patrick had died. She was still unsettled, still adjusting. Still on edge with her new status as a widow, and with being alone on an isolated property.
When Patrick had been alive, he'd filled her every waking moment with his schedule of medication and bathing, the hours she'd spent trying to coax him to eat-the regular visits to the hospital for chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Later on, when the treatments had stopped, there had been hours spent with the pastor and the steady stream of relatives coming to say good-bye.
When Patrick had finally lost his battle with the cancer that had struck out of the blue, stunning them both, and all of the rituals and formalities that accompanied death had been completed, she'd found herself abruptly alone-wrung out and empty, as if Patrick's death had sucked away all her emotions, and she was simply running on automatic. It was as if, when Patrick had died, a part of her had shut down, too. She went through the motions. She ate her meals, and she slept eight hours a night; she cleaned her house and weeded her garden and tended to the animals. She'd even started doing the extra jobs, like painting the barn. The physical exertion helped fill the void, but the numbing repetitive work didn't solve the curious sense of blankness, as if, like a pupa, she was isolated and enclosed, caught in a curious stasis, waiting for change.
According to her doctor, there was nothing physically wrong with her, other than the natural cycle of grief. The way she was feeling was perfectly understandable given the strain she'd been under. He'd prescribed antidepressants if she wanted them, but so far Jane had resisted medication.

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The years of taking prescription medication for an ulcer that hadn't disappeared until she'd walked away from nervy stocks and volatile futures, which shifted like wet sand with every ebb and flow of the markets, had been enough, and besides, she was stubborn. She was thirty-two, and she'd finally grown into a quiet acceptance of the slow rhythm and flow of country life and her own body. If what was happening to her was a natural cycle, then she would let it run its course.
A shiver struck through her despite the heat and the hard-earned comfort of logic and reason, and wrapped her arms around her middle in automatic reflex. Sometimes she felt so blank and hollow that the emptiness would roll up from deep inside in cold, aching waves, the chill so intense that her skin would roughen, and no matter what she did she couldn't get warm.
Objectively she could feel the warmth, see the intensity of the light, but it was as if the sun, as powerful as it was, couldn't warm her, as if some essential part of her-the hot flicker of life-had been extinguished.
She'd been married to Patrick for ten years. In that time they should have had children. Before they'd found out about the cancer they'd tried, because they had both wanted a family, but nothing had happened. It had been the fertility tests that had shown up the cancer. Once Patrick knew the reason he hadn't been able to make her pregnant, and that he was going to die, he'd begun to make plans. He'd worked for as long as , he could at his teaching job. He'd painted the house and finished building the barn. He'd leased out the orchard so that Jane didn't have to cope with managing the fruit trees at the front of the property. He'd even tried to convince her to sell the sheep, but Jane had put her foot down at the thought of letting the southdowns go. There weren't that many-she was down to thirty now-and the sheep kept her in a steady supply of wool for her weaving business. Besides, she was strong and healthy and more than capable of looking after the sheep and the few hens she kept.
Now that Patrick was gone, sometimes it felt like her marriage had been a mirage, or a chimera, a magical creature of illusion, that had dissolved almost before it began, leaving her stranded, all the bright promise gone.