Irish Sex Fairy

Chapter Two

She never felt more alone than in the middle of the night, when the world was dark and quiet and still, everyone else asleep in their beds.

“Oh, Keara.” A heavy sigh came from the other end of the phone line. “What are you doing up again?”

Keara swallowed and sank down onto her couch. “I just had an idea for what we can do for Monica’s birthday next weekend,” she told her friend Paige.

“What! Why are you calling me about that in the middle of the night? You had another nightmare, didn’t you?”

“No. I haven’t had one for a couple of weeks,” Keara lied. “You know me, I just get thinking about things and I…I can’t get back to sleep.”

“Maybe you need to go back to that shrink…what was his name?”

“I don’t need a shrink,” Keara snapped. “I told you that before.”

“Then why haven’t you gone back to work?”

Keara pressed her lips together. She’d tried to go back to work. She hadn’t even told Paige about that embarrassing incident. She’d really flip out if she knew about that. She’d be picking her up and driving her to the psychiatrist herself. Which. She. Did. Not. Need.

Keara’s throat clogged and her chest tightened. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“Keara…”

“’Night, Paige.”

She clicked the phone off and dropped it to the butter-colored upholstery beside her. She tipped her head back and blinked at the ceiling, eyes stinging. Damn.

She could call Monica.

But no. Monica had gone away to San Diego for the weekend with the new guy she’d been seeing. And she couldn’t call Essie. With her new baby, she might be awake in the middle of the night. But if she was asleep and Keara called and woke her up—again—she’d kill her. She’d made that mistake once before. Besides, if her friends all talked about how she kept phoning in the middle of the night, she’d never hear the end of it.

She padded on bare feet out to the kitchen of her condo in the Los Angeles high-rise. She ran some cold water, then held the cool glass to her sweaty forehead. Her eyes fell on the bottle of pills sitting on the counter. She could take those and sleep. She picked up the container.

There was no shame in using medication, the psychiatrist had told her. And yet, she really didn’t want to take drugs to solve her problems. Hell, she didn’t even understand what her problems were. God! She clutched the bottle in her hand and closed her eyes. She was fine. Totally fine. Tell that to her body, though, which betrayed her time and time again, with a speeding heart, tight and trembling muscles and a stomach constricted with nausea. And she’d been doing so well. No dreams, no flashbacks for a couple of weeks. What had triggered that nightmare tonight?

A noise alerted her ears. A scrape against the glass doors leading out onto her balcony. She lived on the third floor of the building, which wasn’t likely to be a target for a break-in, but recently she’d found herself wishing she lived in the penthouse, twenty stories above.

It was nothing. Wind or something.

Then she heard it again.

Her heart, which had been slowing its beat, picked up speed, blood surging through her veins. She stepped out of the kitchen and focused on the curtains drawn over the sliding glass doors—not opaque enough to completely blot out the city lights, nor the shadow moving on the balcony.

Her stomach lurched. Oh dear God. There was someone on her balcony. Her living room shifted around her and adrenaline flashed through her body. She lifted a hand to her throat. Stared at the window. She had to be imagining it. Nobody could climb up three stories. Nobody would climb up three stories.

But another scraping noise outside the window, like someone was working at the lock, had her reaching for the telephone. Crap, she’d left it on the couch. She scurried over and grabbed it off the sofa, then fled to her bedroom on trembling legs. She shut the door and leaned against it. Fingers shaking so hard she couldn’t hit the right buttons, she finally managed to punch in 9-1-1.

“Nine one one, what is your emergency?”

“Someone’s breaking into my condo!” she hissed into the phone, fingers gripping it so tightly they hurt. “Please, send the police, quickly!”

The operator asked her questions and kept her on the line while she leaned against the door, shaking inside and out.

“The police will be there soon,” the voice on the phone assured her. “Stay calm, ma’am.”

Calm. Calm? Shivering in her sleep shorts and tank top, Keara kept the phone pressed to her ear. She moved silently to the far side of the armoire, slid down onto the floor where she couldn’t be seen from the door. She dropped the phone to the gray Berber carpet beside her, bent her knees, wrapped her arms around them.

The marble floor of the bank lobby was cold and hard beneath her bottom as she slid her shaking arms around bent knees and hugged them …

No! She wasn’t in the bank. She was at home in her apartment. She focused on her bedroom. The bed skirt was crooked. She’d tucked it up under the mattress on one corner when she was making the bed. She’d have to fix that. Hell, what was she thinking?

With knees pressed to chest, her heart thumped painfully and her lungs expanded and contracted against them with every shallow breath. In. Out. In. Out.

Please, please let them get here quickly. She laid her forehead on her knees, shoulders hunched up around her ears. And waited.

She pictured someone on the balcony trying to get in, her ears attuned to the sound of breaking glass or the familiar scrape of the door opening.

The security buzzer sent her nerves on another blastoff. The police. Please let it be the police.

She scrabbled for the phone. The operator was still there. “Is that the police?” she demanded.

“Yes, that’s the police. They’re at the entrance to your building.”

“Thank God, thank God.” It seemed like an hour since she’d called them. She climbed to her feet on unsteady legs and stumbled to the security system, but as she went to buzz them in, she paused. How did she know it was the police? What if it was someone else trying to get in?

She knew in her head that was crazy, but…she pressed the intercom button. “Who is it?”

“LAPD.”

She hit the button and let them in. Moments later they pounded on her door.

She peered through the security peephole on her door and saw two uniformed officers. Fingers still shaking, she unlocked the door and let them in.

“Someone’s on the balcony!”

The female officer stayed close to Keara while the male officer walked straight to the doors and yanked the curtain aside. He peered outside, then flicked open the lock of the door and slid it open.

Keara gasped and tensed. He didn’t even have his gun drawn. Who knew what kind of nutjob could be out there?

He stepped out onto the balcony, turned his head from side to side, walked to the railing and looked over. Then he turned back into the condo.

“There’s nothing here,” he said.

Keara blinked at him. “Yes there is.” She looked down at the phone she was still holding. Was the 9-1-1 operator still there? She shook her head, dropped the phone. Whatever. “There was someone out there.”

“No, ma’am, there’s nothing. Come look for yourself.”

She followed him hesitantly out onto her balcony and peered around. The dark wind whipped her hair around her head, and she shivered.

He was right. There was nobody out there.

She peered over the railing, holding the cold metal tightly with both hands, and stared at the ground three stories below.

“What if he’s on the balcony underneath?” She turned to the officers. They exchanged a glance. Keara pressed her lips together. “Well, he could be. He could have dropped down to the balcony on the next floor.”

“I don’t think so,” the male officer said. “That would be pretty tricky.”

“I’m telling you, there was someone on my balcony!” Keara pressed her fingers to her mouth. God. She sounded hysterical.

“Come back inside,” the female officer said, her voice gentle. She put a hand on Keara’s back as she stepped inside, then slid the door closed.

“Why would someone climb up three stories to break in?” the male officer asked. “Unless it’s you they were after. Is someone stalking you?”

Keara shook her head. “No. Of course not. My life is boring.”

“Not that boring,” he replied. “Weren’t you just involved in a hostage taking a few weeks ago?”

Her stomach tightened. They’d checked her out. They knew about the robbery. They probably knew she’d been seeing a shrink. No wonder they thought she was nuts.

She answered a few more questions but she led such a vanilla life there was no reason for what happened. Which only made her feel even more stupid.

“It’s pretty windy tonight,” the woman officer said. “Maybe something blew around on your balcony.”

“Yeah.” Keara sucked in a long, restoring breath. “That must be it.” She’d been nervous because of the bad dream she’d had. Maybe her nerves and imagination were hypersensitive. Okay, that wasn’t a maybe, it was a definite, oh hell yeah. Plus she still felt shaky from that weird episode she’d had the other day. The doctor said it was a panic attack, but Keara wasn’t convinced of that. It had felt too physical—spinning head, dizziness, nausea—it was more likely low blood sugar or something, but whatever it was, she still felt the effects and it didn’t take much for her to get all agitated.

The police thought she was crazy. Cheeks burning, she locked the door behind them, but when she turned back to her empty apartment, fear wrapped around her in such a ferocious grip she couldn’t move.

She couldn’t stay there alone.

She had to stay there alone.

She’d already annoyed Paige, Monica was away and Essie had a new baby. So Keara sat up all night watching television with every light in the condo on, and a heavy trunk in front of the balcony door.

All she wanted was to get better. She didn’t want to be like this—the nervous tightness in her stomach, the feeling of impending doom. What was wrong with her?

She had to think. What could she do? Her friends weren’t an option for her right now. She had no family—her parents had died almost eight years ago. No siblings. The only family she had was Great-aunt Maeve in Kilkenny.

Crazy Maeve. Seventy years old, never married, she owned a sex shop in the quaint tourist town just north of Santa Barbara. Keara used to spend part of her summer vacations there with her great-aunt. She liked Maeve, although as a teenager she’d been embarrassed by Maeve’s brilliant red hair, eccentric dress, and oh yeah, most of all about the way she earned her living. But everyone in the town loved Maeve.

Maeve had called her, after the incident at the bank, to make sure she was okay. Keara had reassured her aunt that she was fine. Promised to keep in touch. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Maeve had said.

Well, maybe there was.

Maybe she just needed to get away for a bit. A little vacation. Lord knew she never used all her vacation time, workaholic that she was. Maybe that was the problem.

So as the sky lightened and the sound of morning traffic on the streets began to build, she picked up the phone and dialed her aunt’s number.