Stay Page 9
“All right, get up and get moving.” Gritting her teeth, Syd rolled over onto her side. Wincing with pain, hugging her right arm to her chest and digging her toes into the slope for stability, she managed to hoist herself onto her knees.
“Okay, you have two good legs and one good arm. You can make it around the side of the hill even if it takes all night. You can do this. You have no other choice.”
“Damn little fool. She never learns.” Lucas eased his truck up behind Syd’s. The woman was nowhere to be seen. “Where the hell has she gone?”
He followed her boot prints to the edge of the mudslide. He wondered, just for a heart-stopping second, if she’d tried to make her way through the mud covering the trail, but he could see from the prints she’d done an about-face and headed back to the truck.
So that’s what he did. He found her cellphone on the passenger seat next to a long coil of rope. He left the cellphone, but grabbed the rope. No telling what sort of trouble Syd had gotten herself into. If there’s one thing the intrepid woman excelled at, it was finding trouble.
Her footprints led him up and over the hill. Lucas shook his head. What on earth was she thinking, climbing through terrain like this, pregnant and alone?
It was the storm. He would have been here yesterday if the storm hadn’t delayed him. If he’d been here she wouldn’t be up in the mountains alone.
Sydney Blake was the most infuriating woman he’d ever known. She could go toe to toe with anyone when it came to being stubborn and single-minded. Despite his frustration with her pig-headedness, Lucas couldn’t help but admire her. She was smart as a whip, fiery as all hell; and best of all, created from dust to fit his exact specifications.
She was the only woman for him in any plane of existence.
Now he prayed with every fiber of his being she hadn’t done something they’d both regret.
He followed her tracks to the crest and down the far side. The going was rough, the hillside rocky. He was growing more concerned by the minute.
Lucas perched on a rock overlooking the ravine. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “Sydney… Sydney Blake. Where are you?”
“Down here.”
Thank god.
Lucas dropped to his knees and scanned the hillside. He spotted her thirty, forty feet below him, sitting with her back pressed against a tree. “Don’t move. I’m coming down.”
“No,” she called back. “Stay. If you come to me we’ll both be stuck. I can’t help much. I…”
Shit.
Lucas interrupted her. “Are you hurt? Is the baby hurt?”
“The baby’s fine. He’s fine. But I’ve dislocated my shoulder.”
Lucas reached for the coil of rope. “It’s all right, Syd, I’m here now. You’ll be all right.” He skidded down the slope on his backside, sliding to a stop right next to her. He held her face in his hands, overjoyed. “Jesus, woman, you’re a sight.”
He expected her to smack him or tell him to help her up and then get lost, but instead she mustered a wan smile. “Come back to save me again?”
“No.” He ran the pad of his thumb over her muddy lips. “I came back for this.” He kissed her. “Saving your ass is gratis.”
She pointed at the steep hill. “How do you plan to get me out of here?”
Lucas showed her the coil of rope. “Give a cowboy a rope and he can work miracles.”
Stay
eart pounding with excitement, Sydney stood on the porch of her own cabin watching Lucas approach. He’d been in the mountains for three days with her father, Cass and the two ranch hands, working with the cattle. And now he was coming home.
She kept her eyes glued on the growing cloud of dust far down the road. Syd caressed her swollen belly, the fact of the baby’s impending birth soothing her spirit. “Daddy’s on his way, love.”
At last she could see him clearly, sitting tall, strong and confident on his horse. There was nothing sexier in the entire world than a man who could ride a big horse and ride him well.
Syd skipped off the porch and walked up the road, eager to meet Lucas halfway.
He was her soul mate, her one and only love. Wolf and Lucas all swirled together to create a perfect chimera, a chimera who was now her husband.
“Hey,” he said, looking down at her.
“Hey,” she said, looking up. “I missed you.”
“Well, climb on,” Lucas said, his grin wicked. He removed his booted foot from the stirrup and leaned down, offering her his hand.
Despite her advanced pregnancy, Syd was agile enough to lift her foot into the stirrup. She pushed off the ground while Lucas pulled her up and settled her across his lap.
“Nice,” he said. He buried his nose in her hair. “You smell sweet.”
She laughed. “You smell like a horse.”
“Don’t kid a kidder. You love that smell.”
“I do,” she said, “Makes me want to do bad things to you.”
“Ah, then we’d better get going.” He wrapped his arms around her, securing her on his thighs, and he squeezed Bo’s flanks. “We should enjoy our solitude while we have it. We won’t have the house to ourselves much longer.”
Syd rubbed her cheek against his shirt, loving the warmth of him, the masculine smell of him, the power that emanated from him.
He held the horse’s reins with one hand, his free hand lay across her belly. She placed her hand over his. “You think he’ll be all right?”
Lucas rested his chin on the top of her head. “Of course he’ll be all right, Syd. He’s our son. What could be wrong?”
“Well…” She hesitated. “Your history is a little unusual. Your life, I mean, or maybe I should say, lives.”
“No.” Lucas patted her belly. “This is my life, my real life. Besides, there are more like me, and like you.”
Syd looked up at him. “You mean Sara and Nathan?”
“Yes, I do mean Sara and Nathan, but Nathan and I aren’t the only ones. Most of us don’t remember. I can’t say whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. In any case, my granddaughter, Katie, is fine. She’s healthy as a horse.”
“It’s funny, you know, that you have a granddaughter.”
He laughed. “Not something I want to spend much time thinking about—could throw me right back into an existential crisis.”
“Ah, you’re a wise man, Mr. Jennings. I’m so glad I married you.”
“I’m so glad I landed in front of your truck,” Lucas said.
Syd smiled. “Me too, although that’s also not a story I plan to tell our children.”
Lucas snorted. “True.”
Syd leaned back against him, growing drowsy, relaxing to the slow, easy clip clop of the horse.
“Do you remember what I told you the first time?”
“The first time…? The first time we did what?”
“The first time I came here. I told you I would have loved you for all eternity.”
“I can’t forget those words,” she said. “I’ll never forget them. Why do you ask?”
“I think I was wrong.” Lucas guided the horse toward the small shed near the cabin. The mare, Delia, nickered in welcome.
Syd lifted her head. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure I understand. As Nathan pointed out, much is hidden, even from someone like me.” He smiled down at her. “But I think I was wrong to use the words, would have. I’ve come to believe I’ve always loved you, Syd, and I always will. We’d have found our way back to each other no matter what.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. I love you, Sydney Blake. I gave up immortality for you.”
Syd pressed her hand over his heart. “And I found immortality with you, Lucas Jennings.”
He tugged on the reins, bringing Bodacious to a halt.
“You can call me Wolf,” he said. “Anytime you want.”
Syd slipped her hands around his neck, drew his lips down to hers. “Wolf. I l
ike calling you Wolf. Now shut up, Wolf, and kiss me.”
He did.
About the Author
J. R. Barrett writes romantic suspense, science fiction romance, paranormal romance, and the occasional contemporary. You can find her and her other works on Amazon under the names J. R. Barrett and Julia Rachel Barrett. For additional information visit her Website: Julia Barrett’s World
The Soul Series
There is an underground stream in Judaism. One of the concepts in that stream is the transmigration of souls. The men who practiced Kabbalah believed a soul could migrate from one body to another, from one plane of existence to another. Hasidic Judaism has no issue with either reincarnation or the transmigration of souls.
Much of our folklore involves the reincarnated souls of our greatest saints and teachers. In both our written and oral tradition we tell stories of angels walking among human beings, speaking with human beings, guiding and protecting us.
As a child I heard countless bubbe-mitzes (grandmother’s tales) from my own Baubi, stories of angels, dybbuks (demons), ghosts and lost souls. Thus it was no great hardship to imagine my hero in Incorporeal, Natan de Manua, as a human being, a ghost and an unwitting guardian angel.
It took no great leap of faith on my part to picture an angel, Ze’ev (Wolf), my hero in In the Flesh, and feel his loneliness, his longing to experience the pain and the passion of a human being. It was easy to continue Ze’ev’s Pinnochio-like transition into a real man, Lucas Jennings, in Stay.
These are the three stories in The Soul Series:
Incorporeal
In the Flesh
Stay
Sara Wise is sick of ghosts. They’ve haunted her since she was a child, destroying her family, endangering her life. When an incorporeal being appears in her shower, she curses him soundly and orders him out, but this ghost is sticky. Not only does he invade her shower, he moves into her home, invading her dreams, sharing her bed. The reluctant Sara finds herself falling in love with a dead man.
Despite Sara’s objections, Natan de Manua isn’t permitted to leave. Protecting the woman is both his penance and his means to redemption. She’s not easy to protect, she fights him nearly every step of the way, except in her bed. Nathan may have come to regain his soul, but instead he risks losing his heart.
Incorporeal
Lightning in the middle of a blizzard? Dr. Sydney Blake has read about it, but this is the first time in all her life she’s experienced it. Has her truck been struck? Blinded by the flash, she slams on the brakes and dives from the driver’s seat, right into a snow drift.
As a shivering Syd gropes to her feet, she keeps her eyes shut tight, praying she didn’t actually see what she thinks she saw in that flash of light… a golden giant standing smack dab in the middle of the road. No way. Not possible. Or is it?
In The Flesh
Other Works
Writing as Julia Rachel Barrett
Captured ∗Winner of the 2011 Bookseller’s Best First Book Award∗
Anytime Darlin’
Come Back to Me
Pushing Her Boundaries
One Four All (a ménage)
Writing as J. R. Barrett
Beauty and the Feast
My Everything ∗Winner of the 2011 Lorie’s Best Published Single Title Mainstream Romantic Suspense∗
“You Might Just Get It” (short story)
“The Artist” (short story)
“Is It Spicy” (short story)
“Liz and Me” (short story)
Poems of Love and Hate (poetry)
Incorporeal—Book I: The Soul Series
In the Flesh—Book II: The Soul Series
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
About the Author
The Soul Series
Other Works