In the Midnight Hour Read Free Page A

Did whatever she felt like doing.
    Smiling, she placed the half-eaten slice of pizza back in the box and stretched out on the bed. Her T-shirt rode her hips. Soft cotton cushioned the backs of her bare legs. Yes, independence had its good points. This was her apartment, her bed—in all its bold, outrageous glory—and she was going to sleep like a rock tonight.
    Her gaze went to the pizza box and the same sense of unease she’d felt earlier came crawling back through her. Just a draft, she told herself.
    She heard the soft buzzing sound again, like a faint whispering. Whispering? More like a fly or a gnat. She slapped at the air, then gathered up the pizza box and refrigerated the leftover slices. Out of sight, out of mind, she told herself. She checked the double deadbolts on her apartment door, flicked off the lights, and climbed into bed, ready to relax and watch a little TV. But she couldn’t seem to get comfortable. The pillow wasn’t right. The sheet twisted this way, her leg felt uncomfortable that way, and every time her gaze strayed to the spot just to her left where the pizza box had been sitting, a shiver worked its way through her.
    Even watching the latest video from a group of bare-chested hunks didn’t take her mind off the pizza box episode.
    Correction—it wasn’t an episode. Just one of those things easily explained if she’d been a physicist or rocket scientist instead of an accounting major.
    Finally, unable to relax, much less sleep, she flicked off the television, turned on the nightstand lamp, and retrieved her book bag. She would write out her paper topic right now. Homework never failed to put her to sleep. In a half hour she’d have her topic ready to hand in, and she’d be sound asleep. One hour max.
    “Take that, Guidry,” she said, smiling to herself as she finished penning her brilliant idea. She was busy jotting down some extra thoughts—better to have too much information when Guidry called for topics than too little—when her eyes started to droop.
    Her fingers went limp, the pen sliding from her grasp as she snuggled back into the pillow. Ahh … This was much better than being hunched over her desk. Mmm … Her first night in her new bed. She smiled as her eyes drifted shut.
    The bed was so soft, so warm, so … ticklish?
    She forced one eye open to stare at her bare arm. There was nothing there, yet she felt a soft whisper across her skin, a feather-light stroke as soft and understated as the glide of silk over smooth marble.
    Her skin prickled, goosebumps danced along her arm, and Ronnie had the sudden and inexplicable feeling that she wasn’t alone. The same feeling She’d had with the pizza box earlier. As if something, or someone, were there with her, beside her, touching the box, touching her …
    Geez, she was sleep deprived.
    She pulled the sheet up over her bare legs to her waist. The textbook She’d been perusing for possible topics was open, facedown on her chest, the weight oddly soothing.
    Her eyes closed again. The softness of the mattress lulled her body into complete relaxation and her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm for the next fifteen minutes. Until her cuckoo clock struck midnight and the loud noise launched an all-out offensive against General Sandman.
    She had to get up, she thought, vaguely aware of the textbook weighing down her chest, her notes scattered next to her. She had to at least put away her things and set her alarm. Packing lunch and picking out clothes could wait until morning. But there wouldn’t be a morning if she didn’t set the blasted alarm.
    She knew that, yet for some reason it didn’t hold any urgency. Her entire life centered around a carefully planned schedule—the only way she had time for school and two jobs—but at that moment, nothing seemed as important as keeping her eyes closed and relaxing in the hazy bliss that surrounded her.
    The last cuckoo grated on her nerves, then the room fell into blessed