The Marriage Maker. Christie Ridgway

or some other explanation. “What could it be?”

      She pushed his hands away and quickly fastened the most crucial buttons as she ran through the kitchen. “A nightmare,” she called back, now speeding down the hall. “She has terrible nightmares.”

      Cleo threw open the door to her mother’s bedroom. Just as she expected, Celeste was awake. With the help of the dim hallway light, Cleo confirmed her mother had had another run-in with the terrible dream. Tears still ran down Celeste’s pretty face.

      “Don’t come in!” she ordered.

      Cleo grabbed the doorjamb to halt her forward momentum. “What? Why?”

      Instead of answering, Celeste struck a match, her hand wavering with nightmare after shocks as she lit the candle that was always at the ready on her bedside table.

      The scent of Louisiana—that was how Celeste always described the aroma of her special white candles—filled the air. In the light the flame gave off, the light that Celeste believed burned the dream’s evil from the room, Cleo saw why her mother had ordered her to stay by the door.

      Somehow she’d broken the delicate glass vial that always sat on the small bedside table, as well. In the incongruous shape of a skeleton, the vial had been filled with bergamot oil. Inspired by her time on the bayou, Celeste conferred upon the oil a special power, just as she did the candles. She believed rubbing the stuff on her skin would ease the almost-arthritic cramping of her left hand that invariably followed the horrible dream.

      Cleo watched her mother take a long, deep breath. “Are you all right, Mama?”

      Celeste closed her eyes, opened them, and a faint smile moved the corners of her mouth. “I’m all right for now, Cleo.”

      “I’ll get a broom.” Her heart heavy, she whirled around, and headed back toward the kitchen.

      To find Ethan lingering by the sink with his back to her, staring out into the snowy February night.

      Cleo automatically lifted her fingers toward the remaining undone buttons of her dress.

      Ethan turned around, catching her.

      She froze.

      His gaze flicked in the direction of her breasts, flicked back to her face. He swallowed. “Is everything all right?”

      Cleo self-consciously dropped her hands to her sides. “She has a recurring nightmare that is very…unsettling.”

      “Ah.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Please tell her I’m sorry.”

      “I will.” Cleo backed toward the utility closet where they stored the broom. “And, um, Ethan.” Her cheeks burned. She wondered if he would want to wait for her to settle her mother back to sleep. She wondered if she had the nerve to ask him to wait. “I’m, uh, sorry, too.”

      His mouth curved up but there was no smile in his eyes or his voice. “Don’t worry about it.” He took a step in the direction that would take him to the guest stairs and his second-floor bedroom. “Good night, Cleo.”

      Good night, Cleo. Her courage didn’t show itself to ask him for something more than that. Biting her bottom lip, she just watched him head out of the kitchen.

      “Wait!” Her voice was squeakily anxious.

      Ethan halted, then slowly turned around. One dark gold eyebrow rose. “What?”

      Cleo swallowed. “Before…before…” She gave up and just gestured toward the den and the love seat that she’d never look at quite the same way again. “Back there, back then, you…” Impatient with herself, she ran a hand through her hair. “You were saying something. What was it?”

      Ethan’s expression didn’t give any of his thoughts away. Cleo supposed his kind of work made that an important trait, too. “Tomorrow, Cleo. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

      And this time when he turned toward the stairs, Cleo let Ethan go. Tomorrow.

      But when tomorrow came, Ethan Redford left the Big Sky B and B, without a word of excuse or explanation to anyone. As a matter of fact he disappeared from Montana altogether, leaving Cleo with only two imprints as a reminder of him—one of his credit card and the other of his kiss.

      One

      The thirty-year-old nightmare was older than Celeste Kincaid Monroe’s daughter Cleo, but it gripped Celeste ruthlessly all the same, dragging her instantly from sleep to terror.

      The bayou again. Moss hanging like sticky, gray spiderwebs in the trees. The scent of wet decay.

      Thunder. Once. Twice.

      Then, as always, he appeared, a dark figure carrying something even darker. Fear surged like adrenaline through Celeste’s veins. It sang in her blood, an eerie, high-pitched dirge. She dug her bare toes into the mud.

      Turn! Run!

      But escape was impossible. The tall silhouette of her brother, Jeremiah Kincaid, kept coming toward her, the water swishing around his knees. The burden in his arms didn’t seem to trouble him. He carried it to Celeste as if it were a gift.

      “No, Jeremiah,” she whispered. No, he shouldn’t be here in Louisiana. He’d never come to see her once she’d done his bidding and married Ty Monroe.

      “Look,” he said, his voice commanding her, always telling her how it was, what she must do. “Look what is yours.”

      “No.” She kept her gaze away from the limp body in his arms. It would be her sister Blanche, who had died after childbirth. It could only be Blanche, and Celeste refused to look at her. She couldn’t bear to see her sister’s vibrant fall of hair trailing through the stagnant, murky water. Just the thought made her heart stop, then disappear altogether.

      In the cavern of her chest, only pain remained, echoing over and over.

      “Look,” Jeremiah insisted.

      Fear again, with its high-pitched song. No. But then she obeyed, her gaze angling down, down, toward the dead body of—

      No! Celeste jerked up her head…

      …and jerked right out of the nightmare’s grasp.

      Lying against the soft sheets in her bedroom at Whitehorn’s Big Sky Bed & Break fast, Celeste tried to catch her breath as tears rolled down her cheeks. She wiped at them with her hands, then turned her face against the pillow. Still, the dream clutched at her.

      “Montana,” she whispered to herself, sitting up and lighting the white candle beside her bed. She’d left Louisiana with her husband after only a year, coming back to White horn and buying this house on the lake that with her sister Yvette she’d turned into the Big Sky Bed & Break fast. This was where her daughters were born and lived. Montana.

      Forget the dream. But despite the steady, bright flame of her candle, the emotions the dream always roiled up still lurked in the dark corners of the room. She shivered.

      And the past. The past lurked, too, hovering above her bed like a dark cloying canopy.

      Celeste threw off the covers. Though her clock said it was only 5:00 a.m., she wasn’t going to find any more sleep. Dressing in jeans, sweater and lambskin boots, Celeste told herself a cup of coffee would burn away any last traces of the bad dream.

      She quickly made up the bed, blew out her candle, then stepped into the hall, shutting her bedroom door firmly. Just as decisively, she shoved the memory of the dream to the back of her mind.

      She couldn’t help being a victim to her nights, but she refused to let her waking hours be tainted, too. Today she wouldn’t let the one emotion that always stayed with her after the nightmare—that one unnameable emotion—over shadow her every daytime hour.

      Celeste took the long route to the kitchen, walking through the public rooms of the B and B as if inspecting the intricate,