Page 49 of Tair

“Wouldn’t you rather sleep with a willing wench?” Lucy said, trying to stall what she was sure she shouldn’t tell him. “You have several hundred around here.”

The lone dimple appeared on his left cheek. “You’re willing enough, I reckon. You dinnae wish gift me the victory yet, ’tis all.”

“I hate you,” she told him. As he nodded and pulled the bed linens up over them, she wondered how much longer she could hold out against his brutish charm, if there was such a thing. “If I do agree, and you’re planning to gloat about it, you’ve got another thing–”

Tair smothered the rest of what she was about to say with a deep, hungry kiss. When he ended it Lucy drew back and stared at him.

“Aye, I may sway you whenever I wish, with but a kiss,” he told her softly. “Only ’tisnae honorable, to seduce a wench.”

She frowned. “You’re seriously worried about your honor where I’m concerned? Because it didn’t stop you before now.”

“No’ my honor.” He kissed the space between her golden brows. “Yours.”

Lucy would never have believed Tair MacRune capable of that. “You’re going to make me fall in love with you.”

His brows rose. “You’re no’ yet?”

She pretended to smother a yawn. “Good-night, my lord.”

Almost the moment Lucy closed her eyes she fell asleep, but the dreamlessness of the darkness became alive with color, motion and light. She sensed again the incredible softness of the silk shawl wrapped around her, and she was falling endlessly, until she wasn’t.

The window in the void appeared before her just as it had with the two fates she had been shown, but this time she wasn’t looking at Pamela Frazier’s garden. She was suddenly standing inside Justins’s apartment in Miami.

“Why am I here?” she asked, confused.

You must see all you left behind, my child.

Lucy glanced around her. The place looked bare, as most of Justin’s expensive furniture, appliances and artwork had disappeared. She saw a cheap futon in the living room covered with Chinese takeout boxes and empty beer cans. Next to it Justin suddenly appeared, kneeling on the tile floor. He was shaking his folded hands as two men she didn’t recognize came into the room. When he looked up at them, Lucy realized he was terrified.

“Please, tell Mr. Rossi I’ll get the money for him,” her ex-boyfriend pleaded. “Tomorrow at the very latest, I swear. I just got in a huge deposit from an investor in my next project...”

This is why he called me that morning, Lucy thought. He wanted to get back together because he was desperate to repay a loan shark?

While he went on sobbing and begging, one of the strangers took out a gun, calmly attached a silencer to it. He then shot Justin in the chest. Once her ex toppled over face-down on the floor, the man shot him a second time in the back of the head.

Lucy couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. “Stop it, please. I’ve seen enough.”

You must know everything, child.

“How much did he scam out of Giovanni?” the second man asked as he pulled on a pair of black leather gloves like those the gunman was wearing, and tucked a couple of towels under Justin’s corpse.

“Fifty large, and it’s Mr. Rossi to you, dumbass.” The first thug tucked away his weapon before he crouched down and pressed his fingers to the side of Justin’s neck. “Yeah, he’s done. Check the bedroom.”

Lucy watched the men methodically search Justin’s apartment, helping themselves to his collection of rings and a little cash from his sock drawer. They also took all of his guns and ammunition, loading them into a duffel.

“Not enough to settle the account, so we’ll have to check his office, too,” the gunman said, sounding disgusted. “Boss’ll be happy about the guns.”

“Yeah, maybe Mr. Rossi can pin a few murders on this guy,” the other man said before he left the apartment, and returned a few minutes later with a very large suitcase. He opened it to reveal a thick layer of plastic glued to the insides. As he folded Justin’s body in order to fit it into the suitcase, the gunman brought some bleach and a sponge from the laundry room, and cleaned up the blood on the tile. He then put the bloody towels and sponge in the suitcase, and the two men shut off the lights and departed with the suitcase and duffel.

Lucy didn’t know what to think. If Justin had intended to kill her and her client he deserved to be severely punished. Seeing him murdered like this didn’t seem like justice, however. It made her even angrier with her ex, who should have known better than to borrow money from the mob.

“Can’t you do something about this?” she demanded as the apartment around her faded back into the dark gray void. “Why don’t you contact the police in their dreams and show them what happens to him? They could get to Justin before those gangsters do.”

Showing you is all I may do outside the wish, my child. You have no reason to doubt your choice. Besides, you do not know who made the wish that brought you here.

Another window opened, showing the laird in the lists. He was covered with bits of straw, and went over to splash his face with rainwater from a barrel. As he used an old, stained linen left beside it to mop the sweat from his face, his shoulders sagged.

If I could but find a woman who could truly love me.