the kitchen door. “Hello?”
No one answered.
“It’s getting dark,” Shelly noted uneasily.
“Yeah.”
“Wish we could make like a fat man’s pants and split,” Shelly whispered.
No kidding. “Where’s Lariana?”
“She said she was taking a few hours off. I assumed she was having a late lunch,” Shelly said.
“Wouldn’t that be in the kitchen?”
They both looked around. No Lariana.
Thump.
“Come on,” Breanne said.
“W-where are we going?”
“I’m tired of being scared. We’re going to find out what that noise is.”
“But it’s nearly dark.”
Was dark. Breanne tugged down the nearly obscenely short skirt, snatched the lantern, and then, on second thought, took a large butcher knife out of its block, handing it to Shelly before grabbing another one for herself. “Don’t worry, we’re going to be fine.”
“Then why are we carrying butcher knives?”
“Just in case.” She tugged Shelly out of the kitchen. The hallway was dark except for the lantern’s glow, and she went still to listen. “What’s down that way?” she asked, pointing with the knife past the dining room.
“A sauna, gym, Jacuzzi, and a small, indoor pool.”
More thumps.
“Oh, God,” Shelly said, swallowing hard.
“Come on.” They tiptoed toward the area, their knives out in front of them.
The thumps got louder.
“Could you really use that knife if you had to?” Shelly whispered.
Breanne thought about the spider she wouldn’t have been able to kill. “Yes,” she lied. “You?”
Shelly’s knife was shaking so badly it was in danger of falling out of her hand, so she brought up her other hand to help support it. “Sure.” She gulped. “No sweat.”
They turned a corner and came to an open workout area, two of the walls lined in mirrors, the room filled with first-class gym equipment. There was a full-screen TV on one wall with an opened DVD case of Friends: Season One on the floor, and Shelly sighed in relief when the light from the lantern fell on it. “Oh, it’s just Patrick.”
“You sure?”
“He loves Friends. It’s how he learned American slang. He must be around here trying to get that TV running on battery or something. Patrick?” she called out.
There was no response but the odd banging, which had become . . . steady. Rhythmic. “Oh, God,” Breanne said and stopped, sagging in relief against a mirror. She couldn’t believe it.
“What?” Shelly whispered.
Someone cried out, a woman.
“Lariana,” Shelly said, and ran for the sauna.
“Shelly, wait!” Breanne took off after her, catching her just before the door. “I don’t think you want to—”
As they stood there, the door to the sauna opened and Lariana appeared in the doorway holding a flashlight, wearing only a towel and a cat-in-cream smile. At the sight of Breanne and Shelly, one carefully waxed brow shot straight up. Cool as ever, she shut the sauna door behind her.
“Ohmigod, Lariana.” Shelly put her hand to her heart and nearly nicked her own chin with the knife. “You’re not dead.”
“Do I look dead?”
Breanne took in Lariana’s dewy skin, the I’ve-just-been-screwed satisfaction swimming in her eyes. “Nope, you sure don’t.” Carefully, she relieved the still-shocked Shelly of her knife. “Sorry,” she told Lariana for the both of them. “Overactive imagination.”
Shelly blinked. “What were you—”
“I told you I was taking a few hours for myself.” Lariana strutted past them. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get into the shower.”
“Sure.” Breanne didn’t open the closed sauna door and peek, but she wanted to. She’d recognized those thunks. Lariana hadn’t been in there by herself—she was sure of it.
“We heard you cry out,” Shelly said, baffled. “We heard . . .” She trailed off when Lariana turned back.
“You’re just spooked,” Lariana said as she began to rein in her long, dark hair, piling it up on her head for her shower.
“You should be spooked, too,” Shelly said. “And you shouldn’t be alone.”
For one beat, Lariana’s eyes skittered back to the sauna. Then she smiled. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.” She vanished into the shower room.
Breanne watched her go, not missing the new love bite on the back of her neck.
“She thinks she’s invincible,” Shelly said. “But—”
“She wasn’t alone.” Breanne gestured to the sauna door.
“Oh?” Shelly’s eyes swiveled to the same door as well. “Oh.”
Breanne transferred both knives to one hand and opened the sauna door.
Patrick jerked to a stand, hands holding his towel—the only thing he wore. “Uh, cheers, mates.” Then he caught sight of the knives in her hand. “Christ Jesus, what’s happened now?”
“We heard a strong noise,” Breanne said. “We came to investigate.”
“Oh, that’d be us—Me. I mean me.” Beet red, he smiled shakily and swiped his arm over his forehead. “No worries, then.”
Breanne had never seen a man blush so hard that his face looked like a tomato. But the rest of his long, lean form . . . She’d imagined him like a stick, skinny and scrawny, but the opposite proved to be true. He was thin, but tough and ropey with strength. And quite attractive. In a very naked sort of way.
Shelly was trying not to stare and not having any success with it. “Um . . . yeah. We were just . . . Oh, Patrick.” Closing her eyes, she covered her equally red cheeks. “You were . . .”
“Shh!” He glanced frantically around the workout room, relaxing only when he saw no one but them. “She’d kill me if she knew you saw me, no doubt about that.” The shower came on, and he relaxed a bit more, hitching up his slipping towel. “Fuck me, but the woman’s got eyes in the back of her head. I’m going to be screwed.”
“You already were,” Breanne said, and shocked Shelly into a horrified laugh.
“I’m sorry.” Shelly once again clapped her hand over her mouth. “That wasn’t funny.”
Patrick moved past them and toward the showers where Lariana had vanished. That door was locked. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, raising his hand to knock.
He lost his towel.
Shelly gasped but kept her eyes wide open.
Breanne tipped her head upward while Patrick swore and fumbled for the fallen towel, giving Shelly more of an eyeful, if her second and more audible gasp meant anything.
Still swearing, Patrick wrapped the thing back in place and knocked frantically. “Uh, darling? Open up.”
Breanne was trying to look anywhere but at the flustered fix-it man, and while she did, her gaze caught on the doorway of the workout room and the man who’d appeared there, holding a flashlight.
Cooper.
He took in both her and the situation with one sweeping glance, and though he didn’t so much as blink, she knew he grasped it all: the humiliated Patrick, the shocked Shelly, the unseen Lariana . . . and herself. He eyed the knives in her hand and arched a brow, but didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to—his expression said it all.
“We heard a noise,” she said, feeling a little like Lucille Ball.
Patrick whipped around, and with a groan at the sight of Cooper, thunked his head on the door. Unfortunately, at the same moment Lariana opened it and he went stumbling in.
Lariana looked down at the man now sprawled at her feet, then up at the crowd watching. “You idiot,” she said, and they all knew she meant Patrick.
“Aye,” he agreed, still prone.
Lariana sighed, hunkered down, and patted his bare ass. “But you’re my idiot, I suppose.”
Patrick lifted his head and stared at her. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
A slow smile replaced his worried frown. “You going to shut the door, darling, and give us some privacy?”
“Oh, yes,” she purred, and did just that.
“That’s so romantic,” Shelly said with a sigh, and grinned at Breanne. “Isn’t that just the most romantic thing ever?”
“You need to get out more,” Breanne said.
“Yeah. So I’ve heard.” Shelly turned to Cooper. “Is there anything I can get for you?”
“No, I’m good,” he said. He looked at Breanne.
Breanne found she couldn’t tear her gaze away, much as she tried.
“Well, then,” Shelly said into the awkward silence. “I’m going back to the kitchen.” She took the lantern Breanne offered and vanished, leaving Breanne and Cooper alone. Unless one counted Lariana and Patrick in the shower room, which Breanne didn’t because she imagined they were very, very occupied.
In the dim room—lit only by his flashlight now—Cooper just stood there, calm as can be, confident in his own skin and sexy as hell, apparently not feeling the need to speak.
Breanne looked around her at the shadows of the exercise equipment, at the smooth, clean floor, anywhere but at him, wondering how long it would be before one of them cracked. Correction—before she cracked.
Finally she ran out of things to look at, so she looked at Cooper again. Honestly, she could have looked at him all day long, with those jeans, faded to white in all the stress spots and worn like an old friend. His shirt was snug to his broad shoulders, untucked, and, she suspected, draped over the gun at his hip.
Which reminded her.
Dead body.
Unknown murderer.
Then, as if fate thought this whole thing funny as hell, his flashlight flickered and went out, leaving them in complete darkness.
Seventeen
Cheer up—I’m sure the worst is yet to come.
—Breanne Mooreland’s journal entry
Breanne’s heart clenched and she let out an inadvertent whimper, but before she could really get behind a healthy panic, a hand settled on her shoulder.
She nearly swallowed her tongue, and with a terrified squeak, brought up the knives.
“Whoa, there,” Cooper said softly, as if talking to a spooked horse. “Just me, remember?”
Right. Just him. The only man in her entire life that had—in less than twenty-four hours—made her feel precious, sexy, smart—
“What’s up with the knives?”
“Oh, these?” She forced a laugh. “I thought I’d whip up some stir-fry—”
“It’s going to be okay, Bree. You know that, right?”
See, now that should have rankled. The way he’d shortened her name was pompous, and yet . . . nice. No one had ever called her Bree before. No one had ever thought to.
But damn it, she was independent, fiercely so; she didn’t need him. “How, exactly, will it be okay? I’m in a house with a dead body, and probably also the person who made him dead.” She tightened her grip on the knives. “God, I hate this. I so really, really hate this.”
She heard a click, and then there was a small beam of light. Cooper held up another flashlight.
She did enjoy a prepared man, but that usually applied to having a condom in his wallet, not being a flashlight carrier. “Were you an Eagle Scout or something?”
He laughed, a sound that scraped low in her belly. “Or something.”
“A MacGyver type.”
“A troublemaker,” he admitted, leading the way to the door. “Come on, let’s get to a warm room.”
“Tell me about this troublemaking.”
“You don’t want to hear this now,” he said, towing her along.
She had to run in the teetering heels to keep up with him, and tugged on the silly short skirt with the hand still holding the knives. “Yes, I do want to hear this now.” She needed the distraction. This flashlight was smaller than the other, the beam of light small and narrow. Insubstantial, in her humble opinion.
“What are you doing back there?” he asked, pulling her up beside him.
Concentrating on not freaking out.
An arm slipped around her waist, and he snugged her to his side. “You hanging in?”
That was debatable. The pictures on the walls of the hallway seemed haunted, the eyes of the people in them following her. “I’d be better if you talked to me.”
He glanced down at her. After a moment he said, “I was a rotten kid. I spent more time in the principal’s office than class, and at home . . . don’t even ask.”
“Your parents had their hands full?”
“Just my dad, and yeah, he had his hands full. His answer for me and my brother’s antics was his belt.”
She looked up at his profile, but in the dark she couldn’t see his expression. “Did it work?”
“Only momentarily. We were seriously rotten to the core. My brother and I still laugh that we ended up capturing the bad guys instead of being them.”
It’d been one thing to resist him when he was merely a hot body and an unbelievable kisser. But now, with the picture of him as a kid with no mother to soften his father, she wanted to hug him. That, coupled with the knowledge that he’d grown up with a rebel heart . . .
No! She wasn’t even going to go there. “We left Lariana and Patrick in the dark.”
“I think that’s where they want to be.”
They were now back in the main hallway, between the foyer and the great room. “You ever been in any of those rooms just outside the cellar?” she asked.
“The servants’ quarters?”
“Yeah, I heard someone down there right before I found Edward.”
“Who?”
“I thought it was Shelly, but then she came running from upstairs, so it couldn’t have been.”
He studied her for a beat. “You didn’t mention that before.”
“I heard humming.”
“You’re hearing a lot of things,” he said.
“I know.” She rubbed her temples. “God. It gets dark at four o’clock here, and I hate the dark! I’m losing it completely, I can feel it.”
“You’re not losing anything. Let’s go look.”
She didn’t exactly want to, but he had the light and the warmth, so she followed him, trying not to hyperventilate at the thought of what lay ahead.