Reclaiming His Bride (DiCarlo Brides book 3) (The DiCarlo Brides)

by Tullis, Heather

  “Not hungry anymore?” Jonquil asked. “You haven’t eaten much.”

  “It’s cold.” The thought that she could have made a mistake with Blake made her a little nauseated. She was suddenly tired.

  Jonquil jumped up and grabbed the plate. “I’ll reheat this.”

  “And now there’s the baby,” Sage said.

  “Baby?” Rosemary’s eyes bulged. “You’re pregnant? How come Sage knows and you didn’t tell me? Does everyone but me know?”

  Jonquil’s and Delphi’s reactions were similar, if quieter.

  “No, of course not.” Lana glared at Sage, though she doubted it held much heat. “I didn’t tell her anything. She figured it out by herself. As usual.”

  “I can’t help it if I know things.” Sage shrugged it off. Though she’d never admitted to her ability before, rumors abounded.

  “Then why didn’t you know about her and Blake getting married?” Delphi asked.

  She looked uncomfortable as the center of attention. “I see the now and the future—not the past. And it’s not like I can tell my gift where to look. I can’t control it.” She glanced around at all of the people watching her. “Baby, remember? Surely that’s more interesting than I am.”

  Rosemary eyed her, but went with the change of subject. “So if you split, how did the baby come to be? You know, generally speaking,” Rosemary asked, then added drily, “Pretty sure I understand the mechanics.”

  Lana felt her face heat. “The gala. I was sad, missing Dad and hating him at the same time; missing mom and wondering why she stayed; wishing they were there for me. I was jealous of you guys for having your moms here. I took a couple glasses of champagne to my office, figuring I might just crash on my sofa for the night, and not wanting to face anyone. Blake found me. I wanted someone to comfort me—it had been quite a crazy night already if you recall. He was happy to comply, and I all but fell into his arms.” Lana picked at her fingernails. “I’m not proud of it, but I don’t entirely regret it, either.” How could she regret the child growing inside her?

  “So now what are you going to do?” Rosemary asked. “You’re having his baby. That means he’s not going to leave your life, ever. Unless you don’t want your kid.”

  Lana shot her gaze to Rosemary. “Don’t want it? What kind of mother would that make me? Of course I want it. Maybe even more because it’s his.” Tears poured down her cheeks. “I can’t figure out what to do. I love him, but I don’t know if I can trust that he won’t turn into Dad, or something worse once he’s sure of me.”

  “If you love him, really love him, it’s worth taking the risk, isn’t it?” Delphi asked, standing up and carrying her plate to the kitchen. “You never know how long you have, and wasted time is just a waste. Grab it while you can. And if he cheats on you, take him for every penny he has.” She dumped what was left on her plate in the garbage and put the plate in the open dishwasher. “I’m out. I need to check on plans for tomorrow’s wedding.”

  Lana watched her go and considered Delphi’s words. Was she right? Was it worth taking the risk? Could she stand to be hurt like that again? And what had happened in Delphi’s past that had her speaking so firmly on the subject?

  Lana rubbed her eyes and tried to focus on the computer screen. She had to get this report done and pass it off to Blake. She should have finished it the previous day, but there had been a hundred interruptions. All week.

  Between preparing for Cami and Vince’s wedding, the latest ghost sightings to calm and trying to bolster everyone’s morale, she had her hands full. “Yeah, Dad, I’m the one who’s going to bind everyone together. That’s me, the glue.” She muttered this under her breath as she double-checked the numbers one last time.

  Glad to have it done, she hit save, then emailed it to Blake. Good enough.

  She stretched, exhausted, though she slept a full eight hours the previous night. Could she get away with closing her door and grabbing a nap on the sofa?

  A knock on her open office door told her that, no, she wouldn’t be allowed to take that nap. She looked up to see Vanessa, head of housekeeping. “Hi, what can I do for you?”

  “Sorry to bother you, but there was an incident in the halls.” Vanessa’s voice was a little tentative and softer than usual.

  Lana’s mind zoomed immediately to injuries. “Is everyone okay?”

  “Yes, I mean, no one was hurt or anything.” She came in and took the seat across from Lana. “One of my maids was in the hall when something flew through the air toward her. I didn’t see it. I mean, she just told me about it, but she said it looked kind of like a tomahawk, and it was headed right for her head.” Her face pinched a little as if afraid she would be laughed at.

  “What?” That went perfectly with the story of the Mexican miner who came home from a trip to find his family murdered and burned in their home. The wife, at least, was supposed to have been killed by a tomahawk. It wasn’t known if the vandals who had stolen their gold and murdered the family had really been Indians or just white men who wanted to shunt the blame elsewhere, but this incident in combination with the legend, gave Lana cold chills.

  “You’ll have to ask her. I could hardly understand what she was saying; she was a little hysterical.” Vanessa wrung her hands.

  “Have you contacted Joel?” Lana asked as she stood.

  “Oh, no,” Vanessa looked surprised. “I hadn’t even thought about that. I… totally forgot.”

  “Okay, I’ll take care of it. Is the maid in your office?” Lana tapped her radio button and said his name.

  “Yeah. She’s there.”

  Lana followed the head housekeeper’s lead as she asked Joel to meet them in housekeeping. He agreed as they approached the office. Lana didn’t bother to tell the woman that Joel was coming, as she had her own radio, and heard the whole conversation. This was the last thing they needed to have happen on top of their other problems.

  The cute little blond was sitting in Vanessa’s desk chair, her feet on the seat, curled into herself. She held a wash cloth to her face—apparently she was using it in lieu of a handkerchief. Lana took a folding chair from its resting place against the wall, extended it and sat across from the girl. “Hi, what’s your name?”

  “Joan.” The girl sniffed. “You’re Lantana, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Lana thought she probably ought to require everyone to call her Ms. DiCarlo, but with Cami around it would be confusing. And even though the other sisters didn’t carry their father’s last name, they were occasionally also called by the family name. This was much less confusing. “Joan, is there anything you need? I’m not going to ask you what happened until Mr. Watts gets here so you don’t have to say it all over again.”

  “I’m fine.” She sniffled again and dabbed at her tears.

  “I’m here.” Joel came into the room. “Sorry it took me an extra minute.”

  Lana glanced over at him, thinking he’d been pretty fast. “No problem. I’ll let you lead off.”

  He walked over to the girl. “I’m Joel. I’m head of security.”

  “Joan.” She sniffed a couple of times, but seemed to be reassured by the giant of a man.

  “All right, Joan, tell me what happened.” He folded his enormous former Navy SEAL body down in a crouch so he wouldn’t loom over the maid.

  “Well, I was coming out of 243. I needed more linens because the bed in there takes special King sheets that match the columbine pictures on the wall. Anyway, as I walked down the hall I saw something coming at me. I think it was a tomahawk. It just seemed to materialize out of thin air and shot right at me. I screamed and ducked. Then I stayed there for a minute, but when I didn’t hear anything else, I looked around and there wasn’t anyone around. The tomahawk didn’t land on the ground behind me, it was just gone.”

  Joel cocked his head. “It disappeared?”

  “Poof.” Joan gave a half-hysterical laugh. “Like it was my imagination to begin with. But I know it wasn’t. It was going
to hit me.” She buried her face in the washcloth again and sobbed.

  When Joel shot Lana a slightly frantic look, she moved in and wrapped an arm around Joan. She wondered why he freaked out; Joel regularly calmed and reassured Sage during her struggles that fall, so it wasn’t that he didn’t know what to do.

  “I’m sorry this happened to you, it must be very distressing,” Joel said. “Can you think back… is there anything else you remember, anyone you saw, anything you heard or smelled, or, I don’t know, anything else at all?”

  Joan sucked in a shuddering breath. “I think there might have been a sound, like a thump. It was soft and kind of up above me maybe.” She gestured like she was touching something above her head. “I was screaming after that, so I don’t think I would have heard anything, even if there was a sound.”

  “Good. Anything else?” Joel asked.

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, then shook her head. “No. That’s it.” She wiped at her face and grabbed another tissue to blow her nose.

  “It’s okay.” Lana brushed the hair back from the maid’s face. “Joel’s going to go check out the hall, and then he’s going to watch the video to see what happened and we’ll get to the bottom of this. All right?”

  “All right.” But Lana could tell Joan wasn’t yet. She was just saying that because she thought that was what everyone expected.

  Lana met Joel’s gaze. He nodded and headed out. She knew he would do his job and be thorough about it. It was the only way he knew to be.

  Another ten minutes passed before Lana felt like Joan was steady enough to send home for the day. She didn’t know if the girl would return, but after the other problems housekeeping had with keeping employees, she felt bad for Vanessa.

  The head of housekeeping followed Lana into the hall. “Do you think Joel will figure out what happened?”

  “If anyone can, he will. Hopefully soon. This was just freaky.” Lana rubbed her arms even though it was plenty warm in the hall. “I’ll go check with him now.”

  “Let me know what you find,” Vanessa said before heading back to her office.

  “Yeah. Sure thing.” Lana felt a headache forming behind her eyes. She headed straight for Joel’s office. He ought to be back there by now. Or within a few minutes.

  Joel was in his office, so Lana took the seat across from him as he played with his computer. “Still looking for the footage?”

  “Yeah. Whoever’s doing this has been erasing the video, looping it, blocking it, or something. It looked clear to me this time, so we’ll see if we got lucky.”

  A minute later he started nodding, then swore. “Well it shows her, it shows the tomahawk, but it goes off-screen and disappears.” He clicked a few more keys. After several minutes he shook his head. “None of the other cameras caught anything useful.” He ran his hand over his shiny pate and slumped back in his chair.

  “Nothing we can learn from the video, then?” Lana knew she was grasping at straws, but all of this left her feeling helpless.

  “Maybe. I’ll study it some more, but it looks pretty much like Joan described. I’ll have to go back again and see what I can find.” Joel clicked through a few more screens, moving faster than Lana could follow. “There has to be a clue. No one is as good as this fake ghost has been so far.”

  “No one?”

  “Well, besides me, of course.” He grinned cockily. “Don’t worry, we’ll catch them.”

  Blake had been on the phone with corporate when Vanessa had taken Lana out of the office, but as soon as he hung up the phone, he stepped out to speak to the office manager. “Where did Lana and Vanessa go?”

  “To housekeeping, I think. It sounded like there was another incident.” Gina had become increasingly nervous over time with the growing rumors in the hotel and she looked more than a little anxious.

  “Great. Thanks.” Blake headed straight for housekeeping, Vanessa still comforting the crying maid. “What’s going on?”

  “Mr. Watts is checking the hall outside 243,” Vanessa said. “Miss DiCarlo was going to meet him in his office. I think.”

  Grim determination filled him as he nodded, then headed toward that hall. It was empty, so he turned around and made a bee-line to the security office. He found Joel sitting at his desk, rubbing his knee with one hand and clicking his mouse. Lana sat in the chair beside him, watching the monitor with him.

  “I heard there’s a problem, care to fill me in?” Blake asked.

  Joel gave him the quick overview. “I checked out the hall but didn’t see anything on first inspection. I thought I’d check the cameras and hopefully it’ll show us more so I have something to go on.” He shifted the monitor and gestured for Blake to come around the desk so he could see it easier. Blake leaned against Lana’s chair, setting a hand on her shoulder.

  The video feed was empty for several seconds and then the maid came out of a room down the hall. There was a slight shadow movement on the right-hand wall, and then the tomahawk slid into view and out again. The maid’s mouth opened in a silent scream before she hit the ground, covering her head with her hands. After a moment she got up and stumbled her way back toward the housekeeping office. No one else entered the frame until Joel came to check.

  “Don’t you have a better view than this?” Blake asked.

  “I’ve already checked the other cameras in the adjoining halls. There’s nothing on them. Someone has been covering their tracks carefully. This is one of the extra cameras we added a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, the angle isn’t right to catch whoever is responsible.” He backed the recording to before the maid came out again, then paused it, pointing to the shadow on the wall. “See that?”

  “Yeah. Since ghosts don’t have shadows, that’s definitely not one.”

  “And it’s in the wrong place to have been a tomahawk-wielding spook,” Joel agreed. “It’s definitely human. “That’s room 244,” he said, pointing to a fuzzy door number. “Let’s go take a more thorough look at that hall.”

  “I’m heading back to my office,” Lana said. “Blake can give me a blow-by-blow when you finish investigating.”

  Blake helped her up, holding her hand. He studied her for a moment. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Headache. I’ll be fine in a little while.” When he touched her cheek, she leaned into his palm, as if soaking in the comfort he offered.

  Warmed by the change in her attitude, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Rest and take something for it. I’ll be in when we finish here.” The headache must have been a doozy or she wouldn’t have walked away from checking it out herself.

  The three of them rose and exited the room. Joel locked up tight behind him. “I don’t know how they’re getting into the system to take out those cameras, but at least the new ones are working.”

  “It didn’t help much. It’s barely better than nothing,” Blake said, discouraged.

  “I know. I’ll have to see what else I can figure out.” Joel’s brows turned down in a V and his forehead furrowed with irritation.

  They poked around the hall for several minutes without any luck. Finally Joel found a divot in the wall behind a potted plant, like there had been something attached to the wall in that spot, but he couldn’t find any sign of what it had been.

  He grabbed Blake by the shoulders and shifted him back so he stood just under the extra camera. “Turn to the angle the shot was from and see if this is in your line of sight.”

  Blake tried to remember the image he’d seen and shook his head. “Nope, the plant is out of the shot. I didn’t see it in the recording.”

  “Right.” Joel played with the foliage in the tall grass-like plant. “Some of these blades are broken, and they’re fresh breaks.” He pointed one out to Blake.

  Blake nodded and returned to the spot under the camera. “The tomahawk came from,” he turned, “up there.” He pointed at the light fixture in the middle of the hall, noticing a few white flecks on the floor beneath it. Determined to see w
hat was going on, he pulled out his cell phone, dialing the front desk. “Yes, Kristi, I’m in the hall by room 244, are any of these rooms empty right now?” When Kristi verified that 245 was unoccupied, he thanked her and hung up.

  “You have a master key, right?” Blake asked Joel and pointed to the room. “Let’s get a chair and see what’s going on up there.”

  Joel opened the door and they retrieved a chair from the room. Joel stood on it and gave the light fixture a little nudge upward. It went into the ceiling, revealing a metal contraption attached to the ceiling joist beside it. “Yeah, here we go. It’s a remote that will pull the light fixture up, and there’s a scrape up here, like something got dragged. And some fishing line.” He pulled out his phone and took a couple of photos. “Time to call the sheriff’s office. We’ve officially got something to report.” He stepped off of the chair. “This is definitely not a ghost.”

  Blake nodded and pulled out his phone again. The sooner they found the culprit behind this, the better.

  Snow had been falling all day and Lana looked out the window, wondering if they were clearing the roads enough that she would be able to get home. Vince’s truck had four-wheel drive and snow tires; if she couldn’t get down the snowy streets, he could. She made a mental note to find out what time Cami was leaving and coordinate her departure.

  She turned back to her monitor with a sigh. It had already been a long day and there were a few hours to go, but she was having trouble focusing on her reports.

  There was a knock on her open door and she looked up to see Blake entering the office, wearing his heavy winter coat. He grabbed her pea coat and came around her desk. “You’ve been sitting down too long. Time for a walk.”

  “I have a lot to do, and it’s snowing out there,” she protested. The previous day’s ghostly activity had taken a lot of scrambling for them to cover and she was behind on her paperwork.

  “Yes. Perfect for what I have in mind.” He gave her hand a little tug, mischief on his face.