Twisted By Love, Reincarnation Tales, Book 1 (21 page)

The bed sat beneath the window. He’d left it
cracked for a little air, but as their extra body heat dissipated,
the night chilled him. He pulled the blankets around their
shoulders.

“What if she was born over in Russia or
somewhere far, far away?”

He snorted. “Worse, what if she was born a
man?”

“Don’t make me laugh,” she said sternly.
“This is serious business.”

“Suze and Jake claim that souls travel
together. If she was really that important in his journey, then
she’ll be back.”

“Obviously Nana believes, too.” She made
finger trails on his abdomen.

Her touch started something stirring again.
“Yep.”

“So what about George and Myra?”

The names had been a joke in the heat of the
moment, both a turn-on and a little levity. It made the sex fun.
That was another thing Livie did for him. “Nana’s an old lady. She
isn’t always completely there, if you know what I mean. Forgetting
something you told her two minutes ago, mixing up names, telling
you the same thing she told you an hour ago. It’s some form of
dementia, not completely debilitating, but...” He let the thought
trail off.

Livie finished it with an accurate
assessment. “But she remembers vivid details of events and people
from when she was young. Like it was yesterday.”

“Right,” he agreed.

“Well—” She bit him lightly, just left of his
nipple, and he twitched inside her. “Then maybe she really does
remember us.”

“She can’t
remember
us from back then.
We don’t look the same.”

“Maybe she recognizes our souls.”

“Livie.” He wanted to deny it. It sounded
ridiculous. But since meeting her, so many things had happened that
made him question his snap judgments.

“No,” she said. “Think about it. We’re both
on the edge of believing we’ve been together in past lives. We feel
it. Let’s go with it. Let’s say it’s possible.”

He’d thought he would be the one to have to
convince her, but she was dragging him along with her. Yet,
remembering the suffocating nightmare, he didn’t say anything. Part
of him didn’t want to analyze why the nightmare had started the
night Toni confronted them.

“Do you remember in the hypnosis when I said
I’d seen my grandfather from that life in this life?”

He hadn’t until this moment. “Yeah,” he said,
giving her permission to go on.

“I said I’d only seen him once, while I was
walking.”

“Yeah?” He ended it with a question this
time.

“I think he was the homeless man.”

Someone walked over his grave. The old cliché
had never had meaning before, but he felt goose bumps rise. He
recalled the man’s words.
She’ll be the death of you. She always
is and always will be.

He felt Livie’s gaze on him. “I remember
him.”

“Maybe he knew us, too, like Nana did.”

He thought of the dead squirrel on his
doorstep. And he thought of Toni.

“You’ve got to admit it’s possible,” she said
softly.

He couldn’t deny it. “Okay, I agree, let’s
say it’s possible.”

She studied him a long moment. “Then let’s
find out more about Myra and George.”

She shifted, moving against him, flexing
around him, and hell if he didn’t want her again, need her, to
banish the chill, to heat his insides, to drive out all thoughts,
all questions. All fears.

She seduced him with her body, with her
words. “I want to know,” she whispered before she took his lips in
a long, drugging kiss. Then she finished the thought as if there
hadn’t been the tick of several seconds. “I want to know if we were
lovers back then, too.”

* * * * *

Toni pulled her jacket tighter around her.
The night had grown cold, and she’d had to turn the engine on a
couple of times to warm the car’s interior.

She would have made a good detective. Sitting
for hours didn’t bother her. She’d waited in the San Francisco
parking garage for half the day. Thank God for that or she’d have
missed them. They hadn’t headed back down the Peninsula to Bern’s
house. Instead they’d gone north via the Bay Bridge and Highway 80.
Neither of them had a clue she’d followed. She was so good. Of
course, they hadn’t been looking either. Then she’d waited at the
end of the street by the big house.

Jesus, he’d taken her to meet his family. It
just about made Toni puke. She hated them in that moment. More than
she’d ever hated anyone in her life. And she was pretty damn good
at hating, so that was saying a lot.

Now they were here in some cute, cozy,
sickening little bed and breakfast. Gag me with a spoon. Bern had
carried their bags inside. They had bags, for God’s sake, which
meant they’d been planning this little trip. How long had Bern been
cheating on her with Livie? All along, she was sure. Because you
didn’t take a woman to meet your family and stay in some cheesy
romantic B&B if you hadn’t known her a while.

The lights had gone on in the dormer of the
top room and shadows moved across the window. Then finally the
lights blinked off. She’d gotten out of the car then, moved closer
to the house, stood beneath a tree at the curb. And watched. It
could have been her imagination, but Toni didn’t think so. She knew
that shifting shadow in the dark was Livie astride him. Once she
was sure she saw the light of the moon across Livie’s face. Then
light and dark morphed and coalesced, and it had been Bern, his
features contorted in ecstasy.

She’d felt a murderous rage in that moment.
Then it, too, had morphed and coalesced into something else. Ragged
determination maybe. Raw desire. And something more: she wanted
revenge.

She didn’t need sleep. She didn’t need food.
She had needs of a less physical nature. She sat in the dark for
hours. Watching. Thinking. Planning.

Chapter Twenty

“I lived up in Red Cliff until I married
Clare’s grandfather right after the war.” Nana didn’t call it World
War Two. To her it was
the
war.

“Red Cliff is about forty-five minutes
north,” Clare added for Livie’s benefit.

The late morning was warm, and they were
seated around a small café table beneath the porch overhang.
Another night without a bad dream. Livie was feeling marvelous.
Especially since she had a mission, which was to discover
everything she could about George and Myra.

She’d heard of Red Cliff, she just hadn’t
been sure where it was. For someone in the Bay Area, anything north
of Sacramento was simply Northern California.

“I need to take my pearls down to Robinson’s
tomorrow to have them restrung.” Nana played with the locket at her
throat, as if touching it reminded her of the pearls.

“We did that last week, Nana,” Clare said, as
if her grandmother hadn’t mentioned the pearls fifteen minutes
ago.

Bern’s sister-in-law had endless patience
with her grandmother. Clare was also an admirable hostess,
friendly, courteous, and solicitous. And she sure knew how to make
a whopping great brunch of Eggs Benedict, fried potatoes, freshly
cut fruit, mimosas, and cinnamon rolls. She couldn’t weigh more
than a hundred and ten pounds, if that, which was a wonder
considering the size of the meal she’d prepared. Except that Livie
had noticed she didn’t eat much. Clare was more concerned about
making sure everyone else ate.

After brunch Bern and his brother Wade had
retired to the den to talk business, specifically their Wednesday
project meeting. Bern’s mom had returned home. She’d be back for
dinner. Jake had never shown up at all. Either he wasn’t as
sociable as the rest of his family or he hadn’t gotten over Nana’s
comment about Dorie.

Livie thought of the discussion with Bern
last night. Dorie. Reincarnation. The homeless man. Myra and
George.

She didn’t want to tackle Nana in front of
Clare, but she didn’t know how to politely get rid of the woman
either. Instead she’d been grilling the old lady about her past and
trying to glean facts that would give her a point of reference to
begin the search for Myra and George.

“Would you like more lemonade?” Clare asked.
A lock of blond hair fluttered in the breeze, and she tucked it
back behind her ear.

“Thanks.” Livie held her glass out for a
refill.

“How about another tart?” It was the third
time Clare had offered. She was certainly all about showing her
love through food.

Livie patted her stomach. “No, really, I’m
full after that lovely brunch.”

“I’ll take one,” Nana was quick to say.

“You’ve already had two, Nana.”

Nana stared at Clare, her mouth agog. “I have
not. This is my first.” Then she snatched a tart off the plate and
began nibbling. Just as she had with the two she didn’t remember
eating.

A phone rang inside the house. Clare jumped
up. And Livie thanked the caller for an answer to her prayers.
She’d now have a few uninterrupted minutes to have a real go at
Nana.

“That’s probably Amber,” Clare said. “She
usually checks in on Sunday.” Then she dashed into the house, the
screen door slapping behind her.

“She’s probably in recovery after some
Saturday night rave and isn’t capable of doing anything else except
call her mother.” Nana’s voice was slightly raspy with age. She
licked the raspberry jam out of her tart.

It was just as Bern said. Nana was all there,
saw everything, and had oddly new-fangled ways of saying things.
Yet she easily forgot something that had happened in the last few
minutes, like the first two tarts and her restrung pearls.

But Nana had not forgotten about Myra and
George.

As they drank lemonade and ate tarts, Livie
had asked questions about Nana’s history. She’d learned with a few
terse statements about the deprivation of the depression and the
hardships of war. Nana had come to Freedom in 1945 at the age of
twenty-two. So where had she known Myra and George?

“Tell me about George,” she asked
bluntly.

Nana sparkled at her. “You certainly had your
eye on him before your sister got to him.”

Livie tossed that right back at her. “What
about you, Nana?”

“Oh my, I was in only my teens when George
showed up.”

“And that was when you lived in Red
Cliff?”

“Of course. George was so handsome.” Nana
clasped her wrinkled, age-spotted hands together and gazed dreamily
at nothing as if she were that adolescent girl again. Then she
pursed her lips. “But he was much older than I was, at least
thirty, and anyway it was your sister who got her hooks into him.”
She leaned close, lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I’ve always
wondered if maybe he
let
everyone think he was killed in the
war. Just so he didn’t have to come back to
her
.” She sat
back once more.

This was all well and good, but it was gossip
and didn’t get Livie any closer to something she could actually
research. “What was his last name?” Weren’t there lists of soldiers
who had died? Livie had no idea.

But Nana gave her an odd look, her head
tipped to the side. “Well, I...” She trailed off in semi-confusion.
“I can’t remember.” She seemed nonplussed by that, as if forgetting
that she’d had her pearls restrung last week was normal, but
forgetting a name from seventy years ago was a calamity.

“That’s all right.” Clare was still on the
phone inside the house, her voice soft. Livie didn’t know how much
longer she’d have for questions. “What about Myra’s last name?”

Nana’s face suddenly brightened. “That’s why
I can’t remember his name. Because everyone always called him”—she
lowered her voice to a deep pitch—“that fortune hunter who married
the eldest Taylor girl.”

Livie’s heart beat a little faster. “Myra
Taylor?”

“Nonono. Betty. Your sister.”

It was kind of funny—odd funny—that Nana
thought Livie was Myra yet she didn’t find it odd that Livie had to
ask what her own last name had been. But there was still a problem.
“Taylor’s a pretty common name.” She had no idea how to search for
a girl who had been born in the twenties with an unremarkable
name.

Nana shrugged as eloquently as a Valley girl.
“But the Taylor house is still there. It’s one of those historical
homes.”

Historical home? Now there was something she
might be able to use. Historical homes were registered. Maybe she’d
discover a history of the house.

She might even find out all about Myra.

* * * * *

“Supposedly all we had to do was ask for the
Taylor house.”

Bern eyed Livie. He’d found a spot on Red
Cliff’s main street. The parking was metered, the storefronts old
but freshly painted, and the sidewalks fairly crowded with Saturday
afternoon shoppers and families heading to the ice cream parlor and
soda fountain.

Livie had been on him the moment he stepped
out of Wade’s den, and despite the seemingly bland desire for
taking a drive, there’d been fire in her eyes. Something was
up.

During the forty-five minute drive north to
Red Cliff, she’d gone on and on about the Taylor house, the Taylor
girls, Myra and Betty, and George No-Last-Name. “What if it’s us?”
She grabbed his arm. “I mean
really
us.”

He created a monster with the whole
reincarnation thing.

The problem? No one in Red Cliff knew
anything about the Taylor house. They’d inquired in the bank, a
grocery store, the library, and the post office. No one knew the
house.

“Don’t forget your source of information is
Nana,” he said dryly.

Livie spread her hands. “It’s the present she
gets confused about. But stuff from when she was a kid, she
remembers that like it really
was
yesterday.”

Old folks could be that way. They mistook
people they’d just met for someone they knew long ago simply from
the line of a nose or something they thought they saw in their
eyes. Wade was not going to be happy they were indulging Nana’s
fantasies. At least Livie hadn’t given a reason for her sudden
desire to take a drive.