A faulty knot, Burton had said, laying the blame fully on Laurel for tampering with a rope he’d already set. And that had been the coroner’s finding, too. But once Raif had pared away his grief and studied the incident, he’d felt there was more behind the death of his ex-girlfriend than anyone admitted. Burton had never been what Raif could have called a close friend, but after that incident there was no way Raif had been able to stand being in the same airspace as the guy. He didn’t like him and he certainly didn’t trust him.
Which brought him full circle back to Shanal. Another woman who needed protection from Burton. Raif would stand by her and keep her safe for as long as she would let him, the way he wished he’d been there to protect Laurel on the trip that day.
* * *
Raif was locked in a nightmare. One where he hovered between the top of the waterfall and the water hole beneath. He saw the terror and panic on her face as Laurel plummeted past him, bouncing off the rocks before hitting the water with a splash and sliding beneath the surface. She was visible through the crystal clear water, and he could see her hair floating out from under the edges of her helmet. He dived into the pool, but no matter how hard he swam, he still couldn’t reach her. And still her screams echoed, over and over, “No! No!”
He woke with a jolt, his heart racing and a cold sheen of sweat drenching his body. His chest burned with the breath he still held and he forced himself to let it go, and to try and release the horror of the nightmare.
“No!”
It took him a moment or two to realize he was actually hearing a woman’s cry—apparently that part of the dream had been real rather than a figment of his tortured mind. He moved from the bed, reaching for his jeans and skimming them up his bare legs. It took only seconds to swing his door open and follow the passageway to Shanal’s room. As he entered he could see her twisted in the sheets, her movements jerky and confined by the cocoon of bedcovers wrapped around her. She moaned in protest and he quickly moved to her side.
“Shanal, wake up, it’s just a dream.”
Her head thrashed from side to side and he spoke again, more firmly this time, his words a command rather than a suggestion.
In the filtered moonlight from outside he saw her eyelids flicker and open. She stared at him in surprise, her cheeks wet with tears.
“It’s okay, you’re all right,” he assured her.
“I couldn’t get away this time,” she said in a shaky voice. “He wouldn’t let me go.”
Raif tugged at the covers that surrounded her. “You probably dreamed that because you’ve got yourself all caught up in the bedsheets. Here, let me get you free again.”
Shanal pushed herself to a sitting position the moment she was free. Her hand shook as she raked it through her hair. “God, that was awful. It felt so real.”
“Dreams can be like that,” Raif answered, sitting on the bed beside her. His own nightmare continued to leave tendrils of horror clinging to the corners of his mind. “Want to talk about it?”
“I... He... No, not really,” she said, wrapping her arms around her torso and giving a little shiver. “Thank you for waking me.”
“No problem. I’ll leave you to get back to sleep.”
He was at the door before she spoke.
“Raif?”
There was a slight wobble to her voice.
“Uh-huh?”
“I know this is probably inappropriate...” Her voice trailed off.
“What is it?”
“Could you stay here with me tonight? I really don’t want to be alone.”
Stay here? Was she crazy? Hell, was he? He sighed softly in the semidark. Obviously he was.
“Sure.”
He waited until she’d settled back down under her covers, and then lay on top of them beside her.
“Thank you. I feel ridiculous, but there’s a part of me that’s expecting Burton to come through that door any second.”
“Not going to happen. He doesn’t even know where we are.”
“That’s good,” she answered, her breath a tiny puff of warmth against his bare shoulder. “Um, won’t you be cold on top of the covers like that?”
Hardly likely, he thought, given the amount of blood pumping through his system. Did the woman have no idea how alluring she was with her hair all tumbled and dressed only in a thin T-shirt—his T-shirt—that did next to nothing to hide the fullness of her breasts or the shape of her nipples through the well-washed cotton?