Haunted

  “There’s no future here,” she said, somewhat primly.

  “Does everything have to have a future?”

  She shrugged. “No, maybe not. Could you move? You’re on my nightgown.”

  “Going somewhere?”

  She nodded firmly. “Back to the Lee Room.”

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  She was startled, staring at him. He shifted, producing her gown. Then he rose, found the black knit boxers and a terry robe, and looked back at her. She stared at him, shimmied back into the gown.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Do you mind?”

  “I—no.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “I’m not sure if this should be…a habit,” she said.

  He smiled. “Never thought of it as a habit.”

  “You’re incredibly exasperating,” she told him.

  But he paused then, in front of the balcony doors, and again, his thumb and forefinger touched her chin.

  “May I come with you to the Lee Room, if you find it so important to sleep there? We will, however, lock the balcony doors. I don’t feel like entertaining any tricksters in the middle of the night.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t come. Maybe I make great bait for the trickster,” she said.

  Something hardened in his jaw. “You’re not bait, and whatever the hell you do, don’t go thinking that way.” He turned, drawing her with him. Inside, he locked the balcony doors.

  “You left your balcony doors open,” she pointed out.

  He shrugged. “No one has ever disturbed anything in my room. I simply don’t want anyone in here. With us.”

  She was amazed to realize that just the sound of his voice made her shiver again. Thrill throughout.

  Then he walked toward her. “Trust me, no one will disturb us tonight.”

  “But—”

  She was drawn back into his arms. “Darcy, let it go, please. Give us this. Let it be normal. Not normal. Incredible. But still…let tonight be. Just be…normal.”

  And then…

  The feel of his lips.

  And then everything that was raw and real and somehow still magic started all over again, and yet, this time, a thought crept into the blindness of passion.

  If only…

  If only this could be a reality…

  If only she really were…

  Normal.

  7

  The day was a surprise, Penny thought, sipping her coffee and staring over the rim at Clint and Carter.

  But then, all days were a bit different now, and she loved it. Darcy Tremayne had changed everything at Melody House. This, however, was amusing.

  “How on earth do you think that she found that skull when no one else ever could?” Clint said, shaking his head as he added jam to his English muffin. “Creepy, huh? She must be for real.”

  Carter shrugged. “It’s been out there for a long time. Maybe it’s just that no one else ever really looked for it.” Carter scratched his bearded chin. “Luck, maybe. Pure luck.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, gentlemen!” Penny protested. “She’s the real thing.”

  “Oh, come on, Penny. No one really has extrasensory perception,” Carter argued.

  “She sure has a lot else,” Clint murmured.

  Carter offered a dry laugh. “But I think she’s off-limits to us.”

  “He definitely has a thing for her,” Clint agreed.

  “Who?” Penny said.

  They both stared at her as if she were totally blind.

  “Matt,” they said in unison.

  “Oh,” Penny said, settling back.

  “And she’s a redhead,” Clint said, as if that made it all beyond comprehension.

  “Tall,” Carter said.

  “Really built,” Clint said.

  “Regal.”

  “Really, really, built!” Carter repeated.

  Penny leaned closer to the table. “Well, boys, I do think that you’re both out of luck. Because I think that she may have a bit of a thing for Matt.”

  “But it’s ridiculous,” Carter said.

  “Absolutely,” Clint agreed.

  “Why?” Penny demanded.

  “Because she believes in ghosts,” Clint explained, smiling broadly. “Matt is like old Stone Mountain. He’ll never accept the idea that she might be psychic. Now me, I’m charming—and I have an open mind.”

  “Hell, the whole thing can’t be real—can it?” Carter said, frowning. But then he forgot the main question. “Matt’s still in lust, my friend,” he advised Clint. “Lust can last a long time.”

  “Yeah, it had to be lust with Lavinia.”

  “Hey, we were all in lust when she first showed up.”

  “Lavinia,” Penny intervened, “was a bitch.”

  “Ah, but she had us all fooled,” Clint teased.

  “Me? Never,” Penny assured him. “She didn’t have what it took to hold on to Matt.”

  “Well, sleeping around never did make a marriage work real well,” Clint drawled sardonically.

  “I don’t think he cared by then,” Penny said.

  “Still, kind of uncanny—two redheads,” Clint said.

  “One a bitch—and one a psychic,” Carter said amused. “Clint, surely, this field still has to be open to us.”

  “Matt will never really get involved with her,” Clint agreed. “I, on the other hand, would not care in the least if such a woman communed with the ancients on a daily basis. I’d just thank heaven above that she was mine.”

  “Clint Stone, that was a lovely thought, and quite surprising from you,” Penny applauded him.

  “Yeah, and it’s bullshit. You just think she’s hot,” Carter said.

  “Hey!” Clint argued.

  “Well, let’s face it. She may be smooth, intelligent, cool, and lovely, but Matt is in lust. She’s really not his type,” Carter said.

  “Really?”

  They were all startled by the voice that spoke from the kitchen doorway. Penny actually jumped up, nearly knocking her chair over. She hadn’t looked out yet, but it was nine in the morning and Matt was usually long gone by then.

  Carter had the grace to flush. He shrugged. “She’s a psychic,” he said again, as if that explained his take on everything.

  Penny, anxious to defuse a possible situation, broke in quickly. “Matt! I thought you’d left for the office long ago. I’ve never seen you home so late in the morning.”

  Clint looked down at his muffin. “Darcy does resemble Lavinia,” he murmured.

  “Not in any way, shape, or form,” Matt said.

  “Coffee?” Penny offered brightly.

  “No, I’m late. I’m going in.”

  “Any word yet on the skull?” Carter asked.

  “I’ll find out when I get to the station.”

  “We all know that it belongs to our poor, decapitated miss of eons past,” Carter said.

  “Most probably,” Matt agreed. “It’s still a human skull, and there are laws regarding human remains.”

  “Of course,” Carter said, looking at Matt. Then he shivered. “Scary, huh? Maybe Darcy knows things about all of us that we would just as soon no one knew.”

  Matt turned around and walked out.

  “That is scary,” Clint murmured.

  “Oh, come on, why?” Penny tsked.

  “Because it’s quite true, we all have skeletons in our closets,” Clint told her.

  Shirley Jamison was, just like clockwork, at the front desk when Matt walked into the sheriff’s station. She smiled at him, apparently not at all curious as to why he was late. Apparently, everyone had known that he’d worked late hours the night before.

  “Hey!” She was a slim, attractive woman of about thirty-five, and truly pleasant. She loved her job, her husband, her two perfect little children. She’d been born in Stoneyville, and never had the least temptation to move elsewhere. Her husband, Ray, was a building contractor, and just as pleasant as Shirley
. Matt used to wonder if there was something artificial about their constant cheer, but oddly enough they seemed to be a genuinely happy couple.

  “Good morning.”

  “I heard you were here until the wee hours,” she said. “I didn’t expect you in so soon, but I was actually about to call you at home. Digger called.”

  Digger was actually Darrell Jordy, an exceptional osteoanthropologist who worked at the Smithsonian museum in D.C.

  “And?” Digger was a busy guy. He was given bones to study by police agencies across the country, not to mention the FBI. Matt had never expected him to get to the skull the first thing when he had walked in that morning.

  She shrugged. “Just what you thought. The skull carbon dated at about a hundred and fifty years. He said he already told you it once belonged to a young woman, between fifteen and twenty-five years of age. Seems she fits right in with the old story about the jealous older sister who hacked up her younger sibling.”

  He shrugged. “Glad to hear it.”

  “They’ve already called from the newspaper, too. They want to know when you’re planning to see that the head gets buried with the body.”

  “Exactly who called?”

  “Max Aubry.”

  “Great.”

  Aubry would sensationalize the whole thing. Granted, they were a small town. And thankfully, in the local paper, small events were often given headlines. He still dreaded the kind of attention the skull was going to receive.

  “Oh, come on, Matt! It is a great story. Sad, but now with an ending.”

  “Aubry will play up the ghost bit, then hone in on Darcy and Harrison Investigations.”

  “Well?”

  He threw up his arms. Was the whole place ghost story crazy?

  Crazy.

  The word ricocheted in his head. He was definitely crazy. In lust. Who the hell had said it, Carter or Cliff? Did it matter? He wished that was the long and short of it. Every time he learned something new about her, he only wanted more. There was so much about her that was an enigma, but then looking into her eyes he could see the honesty, the fear, and most of all, the terrible wariness. As if any closeness was an enormous risk. Well, it was. She was…different. And he did have a guard up against her, it just wasn’t doing him much good. The second he had risen, he had wanted nothing more than to lie back down beside her, feel the cool silk of her flesh, watch those eyes open, vulnerable if only for a second. She was truly the most sensuous and incredible lover he’d ever known, and maybe that had been half to do with him, because being with her made him just want so much more, and to be so much more himself. His world had changed because of a ridiculous chance meeting in the night.

  A bizarre incident at that, because she was the ghost catcher, he was the rational man, and she had been convinced that there had been a real person out on the balcony, and he sure as hell hadn’t found evidence of anyone when he had searched. When they’d opened Melody House to the public, they’d had alarms installed in the main house and the stables. Nuts. It was all simply nuts, and getting worse. And it was going to get worse. He simply would not accept the kind of sensationalism the media would try to put on this latest event. He could not accept that some kind of doorway to the dead had allowed her to find the skull.

  But then, she had said that research had led her to it. Pray God she remembered that when talking to the papers. But he could see again the way she had looked, digging frantically, and then producing the skull. An image that had chilled him…

  He should have thought of that before last night. But what the hell did either of them think that they were doing? It was sex in the twenty-first century. Most adults indulged on a whim now and then. He’d had his own share of too-casual relationships. Could be it was just another. Temptation and hormones and human instinct.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  “Matt?”

  “I’ll be in my office,” he said, a bit too gruffly. Shirley looked at him, puzzled. He couldn’t explain.

  Darcy woke at a quarter of eight, realized that Matt was gone, and tried to reflect on both the wonder and idiocy of the night gone by. But thinking about it merely made her head hurt.

  Granted, she didn’t have much of what could be called a social life, and as far as a sex life went, it certainly had been nonexistent for a very long time. That had been mainly her choice. But her college years had made her feel somewhat punch-drunk, and since she was afraid of the outcome of any involvement, it had seemed prudent to be a very private person. She had a loving family and good friends at Harrison Investigations, who understood what it was like to be different. She had never imagined such an overwhelming physical attraction to a man, and she had not envisioned that she could feel such an emotional pull to someone like Matt Stone.

  The thought that last night had been a serious mistake came only this morning, when Darcy awoke. And along with it, of course, was the knowledge that she was going to get hurt, because she didn’t seem able to put the relationship in any kind of perspective. She felt a tremendous aching for what happened with Matt to be something that could go on…and on. Amazing, when he had truly been such a jerk when they had met, how living in a man’s house, knowing those who knew him well, could give so much insight to his life, and his true character. She hadn’t felt this way since…well, maybe forever. And it was so foolish. She felt elated, having pushed so much that could be incredible between a man and a woman to the back burners of her existence, and also miserable, because a simple night had created a fantasy, a new excitement, and it was something that she well knew could never really be. Her bed now contained the simple, subtle scent of the man within it, memories of warmth and fire, passion and a closeness that remained staggering in its brief intensity.

  She started to rise, then decided to screw the notion. She didn’t have to be anywhere—other than exactly where she was. The day might look a little better and everything might make more sense if she just had a little sleep.

  She would close her eyes for a few minutes more, and maybe get, at the least, just a bit more rest.

  Yet even in a subconscious state, falling into a far deeper sleep than she had imagined, she knew when the dream state came, when the actions and emotions of the past slipped into her, almost as if she slipped into the skin of another. And she knew instantly, on that distant plane, that she had now encountered two people. First, a man, then a woman, and now a man again. And that what trauma had taken place between them had reached a heated pinnacle here, in this room, where she slept. She could see herself, below, at the door, though she couldn’t make out face or form, because she was seeing from his eyes, as if the memories of long ago had entered her mind as completely as they had, at one time, touched his reality.

  Staring up at the house, he knew that it was empty, except for her. And so he stepped inside, quietly closing the door behind him.

  He knew the house. Knew those who usually peopled it, surrounded it, called it home, or laid a claim to the place. And he knew where they all were. Just as he was aware that she would have come here, thinking she had the right to do so.

  She didn’t have the right.

  She had no rights.

  And what she might have imagined had come to her through him!

  There was nothing that night to bar his entry. As he had known. He didn’t care if she had heard the door close. She would know he was there soon enough. He stood in the foyer, staring up the stairs, hands rapping idly against his pockets. He felt the bulge in the one. Ah, yes, the item he had stuffed in it earlier. A strip of leather from the stables. He pulled it from his pocket, stretched it out between his hands, tightened it until the leather was taut…

  Easy to do. He was a strong man. Actually, quite strong.

  Stronger even than he appeared.

  No…

  A protest echoed in his head. A protest against himself.

  He gritted his teeth, and the whole of his body was as taut as the strip of leather between his hands.

&nbsp
; Slowly…

  He forced himself to relax.

  And he looked to the stairs again….

  “Darcy! Darcy! Are you all right dear?”

  Jostled from the dream, Darcy winced, bolting up. The rapping on her door sounded like thunder, and she rued the interruption with a deep dismay. She’d begun to see so much so clearly. And if only, she thought, she could see these images through, she would have the answers.

  “Darcy!”

  “Penny, I’m fine. Just overslept, that’s all!” she called out.

  “Thank God! I thought that maybe the ghost of the Lee Room had…well, never mind. I don’t mind telling you that it makes me quite nervous, you sleeping in there alone at night!”

  Darcy stared blankly at the door, wondering if Penny would feel better if she realized that she hadn’t actually been sleeping in there alone last night.

  “I—I’m fine,” she repeated.

  “Want me to bring you up a tray?” Penny asked.

  “No, no, I’ll be right down, thanks.”

  “Darcy?” Penny persisted beyond the door.

  “Yes?”

  “I just had to tell you. You were so right—and so ingenuous! The skull you found was the poor younger sister. You’re incredible! Well, we assume it must be her, of course, I mean, I think that’s the only story we have about a young girl of that age. We have some other female ghosts, of course, but they all have their heads. You’re amazing!”

  “Thanks, Penny.”

  “We’ll get her buried—well, we’ll get her head buried with her body!—and she’ll be able to rest in peace, or something like that, right?”

  “Something like that, yes,” Darcy called.

  “Well, I’ll be down in my office if you need me. I’ll leave fresh coffee in the kitchen for whenever you want it.”

  “Thanks, Penny.”

  She heard the housekeeper walk away as she closed her eyes. She opened them again. She wasn’t going to be able to fall back asleep, and it wouldn’t matter anyway, she didn’t think. She had lost the slender cord of just exactly whatever it was that she could sometimes hold.

  Darcy looked around the room and held still.

  The presence was there, but…