All Through the Night by Shannon McKenna, Lori Foster, Suzanne Forster, Thea Devine Page A

true. She wanted to believe . But there was little in her romantic past that would allow her to. She’d had so few good experiences with men… until now, she realized.
“Kerry, are you there? Do you want to play the game? If you don’t, just say ‘Go to sleep’ and I’ll turn myself off.”
Kerry whirled. It was the game guide. “No, wait! Don’t go to sleep, don’t!”
She dashed back to her chair and sat down. The Winter Lovers had given her an idea. Please let this work , she thought. Please please, please .
The man staring back at her from the screen had Jean’s features—the same dark eyes and hair and mouth—but he wasn’t anyone she knew. Certainly he wasn’t the man who’d materialized in her house last night. He had the blank stare of a computer simulation. He didn’t look like he ever had been or could be human.
She began to speak to the monitor, but she wasn’t talking to him.
“Jean, I know what it is now! I know how to make you shudder. You have to come back. Please, Jean, come back. I can free you this time, I’m sure of it.”
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Chapter Six
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Kerry lay in bed, frowning at the fire ring of burning candles and wondering what kind of stupid you had to be to believe in fairy tales. She’d even arranged the candles in threes as he had. But he wasn’t coming back. She had to stop waiting, wishing, hurting so badly she could die with every second that passed, every second he didn’t show up. She had to stop.
She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. Jean, please. If you exist, don’t let it end like this. Find a way to come back. Find a way .
“Stop this, Kerry,” she told herself, “just stop.”
She didn’t understand why she couldn’t let go of this fantasy and put it out of her mind. She wasn’t in love with him. You couldn’t be in love with someone who existed only in video games and dreams, no matter how lonely you were. But she knew what it was like to be held prisoner against your will, and maybe that was why it had seemed imperative to help him. There had to be some reason she and Jean had been brought together, something for her to learn from the way he’d come into her life… even if it was all a dream.
If she could free him, then perhaps she could find a way to free herself.
She closed her eyes and envisioned the cloudlike images that had hypnotized her, hoping they might help put her to sleep. Still, it seemed like hours before she finally did drift off… and only moments before a vaguely familiar noise woke her. The beeping was soft and intermittent, but she’d heard it before. She lay there, dozing, her mind searching for connections, and suddenly she was awake, aware. It was the video game. She’d heard the same sound the first time she played the game. There was a feedback loop keyed into the player’s responses. If your heart rate went up, it beeped.
Her heart rate had just gone up.
She sat up and scanned the dark room, wondering what was going on. Her eyes were slow to adjust, but as far as she could tell the whole house was dark. The computer couldn’t be on, but she could still hear the noise.
She slipped out of bed and put on her heavy chenille robe. She wasn’t wearing her usual layers of flannel. She’d hoped the panties and tank top she wore last might somehow magically encourage him to come back. What kind of stupid? That kind of stupid. Sadly, there wasn’t anything she hadn’t tried, including bargaining with the angels for their help.
Her phone! If it wasn’t the computer, then it had to be her cordless phone, she realized. It made a beeping sound when it ran out of batteries. She’d probably left it off its cradle.
The moonlight was so bright she didn’t need her flashlight to get around. Silvery rays lit her way into the living room, where she began to search for the phone. She usually left it on the catalogs by the rocking chair, but the beep didn’t sound as if it were coming from that direction. Where the