Love Everlastin' Book 3

LOVE EVERLASTIN’

Book 3

by

Mickee Madden

* * *

Smashwords
Edition

© 2011 by Mickee
Madden

****************************************************

Smashwords Edition, License
Notes

This ebook is licensed for
your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or
given away to other people. If you would like to share this book
with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each
recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or
it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to
Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting
the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Mickee
Madden

* * *

For Steve. May we see
another 30 years together. For Denise, who I dearly miss. For my
critique members, and for the readers. Thank you!

* * *

Glossary

afeared/ afraid —
afore/before — althegither/ altogether — anither/another

aught/anything —
bahookie/buttocks — brither/brother — canna/cannot

corbie/crow —
couldna/couldn't — craiture/creature — daith/death

didna/didn't — dinna/don't /
faither/father / haud yer wheesht/ / hold your

noise — havena/haven't —
ither/other — mair/more — mair'n/more than

maist/most — mither/mother —
na canny/unnatural — naught/nothing

orra/odd —
shouldna/shouldn't — thegither/together — verra/very

wasna/wasn't — weel/well —
willna/will not — winna/won't

wouldna/wouldn't

***

For information on up-coming
e-books by Mickee Madden

please contact her at:
[email protected]

C
hapter 1

Milky fog emanated from the
still waters of Loch Ken and rolled languidly across the
night-cloaked land. The dense chilling mist blanketed three months'
worth of packed snow. In a little more than two weeks it would be
spring. A time of rebirth and newness. A time of revitalization.
The winter had been a particularly harsh one, wrought with one
storm after another. Many anxiously awaited the passing of the
season, but to one man, snow, rain or sunshine, he would never
again feel anything but numbness. Physical and emotional
numbness.

Sitting half-frozen in his
parked dark blue Audi, he vaguely acknowledged the deathlike
nothingness threatening to consume him. His clenched hands lay atop
his lap. Shaggy black hair and an unkempt beard and mustache framed
his cadaverous-pale face. Dark circles punctuated the vacantness in
his light gray-green eyes. Slouched in the front seat behind the
steering wheel, his back to the door, he stared unseeingly at the
frost-coated window on the passenger side. Sometime ago, ice had
formed on the glass, cutting off most of his view of the house
which loomed atop a hill on the opposite side of the road. He'd
been staring at the place for several hours, trying to work up the
courage to approach the inhabitants.

It had taken him two months
to get this far. The last hurdle, the actual act of forcing himself
to get out of the Audi and climb the driveway and rap on the front
door, seemed utterly beyond his capability. It was as if he had
died shortly after parking on the shoulder of the road. His deep
inner fears of further losing himself had vanished and had been
replaced with numbness. His desperation to find emotional solace
had dwindled beneath a suffocating shroud of numbness.

His willpower had deserted
him. Numbness. Even his anger was gone. After so
long...
gone.
The
numbness was all, the omnipresence of his existence. And since the
cold had penetrated his meager clothing and his skin and his bones,
he could no longer feel what he clutched in his right hand. The
remnants had been so very important to him since last Christmas
Eve.

His only link to his wayward
sanity.

His heavy eyelids drooped,
now covering half of his bloodshot eyes. He told himself he was
slowly freezing to death, but he couldn't even summon up a modicum
of concern, of regret. He'd walked away from everything. Lost all
he had, including not only the respect of his peers, but his
self-respect. With the Phantom no longer a threat to society, he
should feel exhilaration, triumph, but Rose's death had taken the
heart out of him. His soul, the very essence of the man he'd been,
had been wrenched from the flesh-and-bone shell that now housed his
pathetic remains. There was no going back. Not to the agency, his
flat, or his unsympathetic family. He now knew that his psychic
gifts had been leading him to this point for many years.

Winston Ian Connery would
cease to be this night.

He would be found frozen to
the seat, his unbuttoned black trench coat haphazardly draped on
him. Eventually, when his identity was known, it would be said that
this promising young man had unfortunately succumbed to exposure
after falling asleep in his car. The highlights of his career would
be mentioned. His family would lament their grief, when in fact he
knew they would secretly be grateful the black sheep had passed on
without further embarrassing them.

No regrets. Except
Rose.

He would have gladly
sacrificed his own life to have given her the chance to return to
her husband and two small sons. They had wept at her passing, and
psychically imbibing their grief had been the darkest, most
shattering experience of his life.

Winston's existence had been
enmeshed with the lives of strangers for most of his life. He had
experienced genuine emotion only through them. Loved, hated, feared
and rejoiced only through others. Left on his own, he was but a
shell. His lot in life had been that of a psychic conduit, but now
that, too, was denied him.

He'd come to Baird House on
the slim hope its magic would save him, or at least grant him the
ability to feel something of his own. But he couldn't bring himself
to intrude. The inhabitants of the mansion had been through enough.
It wasn't his place to ask them for anything, to ask anyone to help
him. Not when he couldn't help himself.

Releasing a thready breath,
Winston drowsily watched vapors rise in front of his face. He tried
to will his palm and curled fingers to acknowledge the texture of
the rose petals against his skin, but he couldn't even feel his
hand. His limbs had lost all sensation a while ago.

Rose. Rose.

She hadn't deserved to
suffer as she had. If only he could have brought her here, to this
house, to be touched by the magic he had witnessed Christmas
Eve.

Or had that been a
dream?

A spark of fear
returned.

No! Not a dream! Not a
hallucination!

When he attempted to
verbalize a protest, only a croaking sound passed his
lips.

I have to know!
he mentally cried, panic enlarging his
eyes.
It had to have been real! Laura
Bennett. She should have died, but I saw....

He gulped past the agonizing
rawness in his throat.

I know wha' I saw. I know
wha' I saw,
he silently chanted, a wild
almost maniacal gleam igniting in his irises.

Roses in the
snow.

Rose died. The bloody
symbolism's there!

Why can't I think
clearly?

Rose?

You bastard bureaucrats!
You let her die rather than trust me to help her!

I found her, didn't I? It
should have been up to me, you frigging hypocrites!

Red tape.

A bitter, caustic laugh
boomed inside his skull.

The world's being rent
apart by numbers and red tape!

The time's coming when
we'll no' have names. "How good to see you Mr. 10583-67-991472.
Wha' can I do for you this fine..bright...morn?"

The magic has to be real!
Sweet Jesus, don't take tha' from me, too!

Anger made a miserable bid
to heat his blood.

He had to know for sure if
he'd only imagined last Christmas Eve when Lachlan Baird had
transformed a winter's night into something from out of a fairy
tale. All else in Winston's life could prove false right now, but
not the significance of the rose he'd carried with him since the
ghost's "miracle".

Determined to banish his
doubts before it was too late, he turned on the seat.

Thought he had turned, when
in fact, he hadn't moved at all. It suddenly struck him that he
couldn't move his limbs. They were blocks of ice. Dead.
Useless.

Unbidden, tears brimmed his
eyes.

All the mistakes he'd made
in his thirty-six years flooded to the fore of his mind. He winced.
The cases he had solved, the lives he had saved, all paled in
significance to the life of denial he'd led. No one had ever
understood that his "gifts" had left him vulnerable. Had taught him
he couldn't lead a normal life. Had taught him he couldn't ever
hope of having anything more than what he already
possessed.

There would never be a woman
with whom he could share his life.

What woman would tolerate a
man who would know their every thought, their every
secret?

And what woman could
possibly love a man incapable of feeling his own
emotions?

He would never experience
fatherhood. Even that biological proclivity was something he had
only experienced through the tapped-into psychic byways of existing
fathers he'd encountered.

Since the age of three, he'd
been little more than a breathing psychic machine—a highly evolved,
intricately-designed conduit with which to decipher the human
condition. His sole purpose revolved around the suffering of
ordinary people. Ironically, without murderers, kidnappers, robbers
and drug dealers, nature likely would have shelved him years
ago—much as his parents had done for the sake of the family's
reputation.

"Anonymity," his father
would say, "has its price." And that price had been to sacrifice
his only son.

To prevent friends and
associates from learning of Winston's peculiar gifts, from the age
of four to twenty-two, his parents had boarded him in one private
school after another. If he hadn't happened upon the Shields
Agency—a job in which his “gifts” were not only utilized but
considered invaluable—he could almost believe he would still be in
a classroom.

Now he was learning a lesson
of a different kind.

A shudder coursed through
him as he told himself it wasn't right to die this way. Not in this
place. Not at this time.

Is this wha' it's like for
someone contemplating suicide? Teetering on the brink o'
uncertainty? Wondering if their despair could possibly amount to
something else? Something painless. Something tha' perhaps even
felt...good?

An agonized groan gurgled in
his throat. It escalated into a strangled outcry when the door
bracing his spine unexpectedly gave way. He pitched backward. In a
blur of motion and confusion, his world went round and round,
right-side up and upside down, leaving him with the impression that
he'd been vacuumed into a spinning tunnel.

He was vaguely conscious of
someone trying to right him onto his feet, but his legs wouldn't
cooperate. They dangled beneath him. Stiff. Unfeeling. Bent at the
knees like the plastic molded legs on baby dolls. Words tried to
penetrate the layers of befuddlement blanketing his brain. None
passed his raw, cracked lips. He continued to sink deeper and
deeper into a void of merciful oblivion, until at last his torment
and pain were released within the inky blackness of
unconsciousness.

Unaware of the passage of
time, sounds drew him from his safe haven. Soft voices spoken so as
not to disturb him. The crackle and snap of flames rendering wood
to ashes. There was also a backdrop of silence so full it seemed
like a presence leaning over his shoulder, its chilling breath
fanning the taut muscles in his neck and face.