Victoria House (Haunted Hearts Series Book 2)

by Denise Moncrief

  “No, babe. There’s no one here but us. You must have been having a bad dream.” He removed her hands from his chest.

  “He whispered in my ear. I heard him.”

  Gray scooted back into a seated position, pulled his legs from under her, and reached his arms out to her. She moved into his embrace without hesitation.

  “It’s okay. You’re all right. It was just a dream.”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t you hear it? The sound of glass shattering?”

  “I didn’t hear anything.” He stroked her back. “It was probably just part of your dream.”

  She shoved him hard. “I’m not crazy. I’m not.”

  He drew her back into his arms. “I know. I never said you were. If you’re crazy, then so am I.”

  She puffed the hair out of her eyes. “You might be anyway.”

  He emitted a short quick burst of laughter. “I’m not sure I like what you’re implying.”

  “You might be crazy if you’re...” She bit her bottom lip.

  “Hanging around with you?” He smiled and caressed her cheek with his thumb. “If that’s crazy, then I’ll be crazy.”

  The warmth of his gaze drew her into the depths of his eyes, a place she loved to go.

  “I don’t understand how you can scream one minute and flirt with me the next. You are the most contradictory woman I’ve ever met.”

  She’d been hanging back, waiting for him to make the moves, but the desire to taste him was too much. She placed her hands on each side of his face and pressed her lips to his. It must have surprised him, because he didn’t respond right away. But then the kiss he returned began sweet before it built into lingering and deep. He groaned and she thought she’d explode with wanting him.

  She pushed him back an inch. “Have you gotten plenty of rest now?”

  He grinned, his mouth still so close to hers. “Yes, I believe I have.”

  “You wanna do something crazy?”

  “Like what?” His voice lowered at least an octave.

  Maybe it was crazy, but she wanted to taunt the stupid house. Show it who owned it. Demonstrate she wasn’t scared of it. She was going to live her life how she wanted and where she wanted whether the house liked it or not. She lifted one eyebrow in what she hoped was a sultry come on.

  “On Victoria’s bed.”

  “Seriously? That’s kind of sexy weird.” He stood and pulled her from the sofa. “I knew you were my kind of woman.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaned in to him.

  His mouth left a trail of kisses along her jaw line before he whispered in her ear. “You know, Halsey is expecting us to come in to work today.” His deep voice caused an earthquake inside her.

  Despite his words, she suspected his intentions were quite different.

  “The last thing I need is another reprimand in my employee file.” He made it sound so sexy to be reprimanded.

  “Uh-huh.” She nibbled on her ear.

  “Seriously, Tori. He’s going to ask me any day now what happened out at Laurel Heights and why I called the State Police into it. I’m not going to have good answers. I need to play by the rules. We should go to the office for a while.”

  His husky voice told her another story. He didn’t want to go back to Fairview any more than she did.

  “Really?” She was barely paying attention to his lame arguments. Between stating all the reasons they should go back to town, his mouth played her neck like a finely tuned instrument. Her whole body vibrated to a brand new melody, one she’d never sang before.

  She ran her fingers through his hair and moaned when his lips found just the right spot behind her ear.

  His nervous laughter was oh so sweet. “You’re not playing fair.”

  She wasn’t playing fair? It seemed to her he knew just what he was doing.

  “Do you really want to go back to town...yet?”

  His hand slid down her arm until his fingers twined with hers. “No. Not really.”

  He stepped back and then pulled her toward the stairs. She giggled once and slapped her free hand over her mouth. He glanced at her over his shoulder from two steps ahead. The grin on his face would have illuminated Razorback Stadium.

  When he reached Victoria’s room, the door was closed. She stifled a flinch when she remembered it slamming shut by itself the last time they were in the house.

  He turned toward her. “Are you sure you still want to do this?”

  She blew a stray bit of hair out of her face. “You asked me that last time. And the answer is still yes.”

  “No, I think you asked me if I still wanted to do this. And the answer is still yes.”

  “Whatever you say, dear.” She dragged dear out into sixteen or more syllables.

  He held up their twined fingers and kissed the back of her hand. “Why are we still in the hall talking?”

  She nodded toward the door. “Open it then...if you dare.”

  He grabbed the knob and held his breath. The door swung open without resistance.

  “So far so good.”

  As soon as he entered the room, he froze and she ran into him. His fingers tightened around hers before he released her hand. The temperature dropped by at least twenty degrees. An electrical vibe throbbed in the atmosphere. She looked in the same direction as he did, but couldn’t see through his suddenly tense back. His gaze seemed to be riveted on what was in front of him.

  “Gray, what’s wrong?”

  She moved around him to view what he was staring at. “Oh, my God.”

  She pressed her hand against her mouth to keep from screaming. The urge to throw up hit her in the gut. She gulped the bile back down. The surge left an acrid taste in her mouth. Her eyes watered, so she rubbed them to clear her vision.

  A blonde woman sprawled across Victoria’s bed. Her clothes twisted and matted with blood. A bright red slash oozed blood from her neck. Her glassy eyes testified to her lifeless state. Tori tilted her head sideways to study the woman. A beautiful corpse. Everyone should look that good when they were dead.

  The idea appalled her. Never had she had such a thought flit through her mind upon seeing a recently murdered victim. What was wrong with her?

  Tori’s trained mind noted the lack of blood spatter. The woman had obviously died elsewhere and had been moved into the room. Tori shook her head and blinked her eyes. This was bad. Not good at all. Someone was dead on her property, and she would have some explaining to do.

  Gray lurched forward while Tori remained planted in the same spot, unable to make her feet move. A strangled sob broke from him as he stood over the bed. He crammed his fist into his mouth. As she approached him, she spied tears on his face.

  He reached out to the woman, and Tori was immediately in motion.

  “Don’t, Gray.” She grabbed his hand only a split second before he would have touched the dead woman, perhaps compromising evidence and creating a situation where he’d have to explain his trace left on the woman’s body.

  Always wear gloves.

  She shook the thought from her head. It appeared her training was pushing toward the front of her mind, taking over where her psyche wouldn’t let her go otherwise.

  Gray’s forearm hardened like a ribbon of steel under her fingers. His muscles flexed and relaxed, but he allowed her to pull his hand away. Bursts of heavy breathing erupted from him. Sweat glistened on his forehead. His eyes seemed unfocused, staring almost blindly at the woman in front of him.

  Tori tugged at his hand, pulling him backward toward the doorway. “You shouldn’t touch her.”

  He stalled and faced her, his mouth moving, but no words forming.

  She brushed her fingers across his cheek, wiped the tears from his eyes. “Gray, who is she?”

  He croaked his answer. “Caroline.”

  ****

  Gray kept his eyes trained on the back of Tori’s head while she dragged him out of Victoria’s bedroom. The shock of finding Caroline dead had sunk deep
into his soul, numbing him through and through.

  Once they were in the hallway, Tori pulled her cell phone from her jean’s pocket and raised it to her ear. Her voice wiggled through the fog in his brain. How could he do what he needed to do if he couldn’t function?

  “Yeah, Shaw, this is Tori Downing.”

  He winced. Why was she calling Shaw Bennett? He thought she detested the man. Shouldn’t she be dialing 9-1-1 instead?

  Shaw must not have offered her a polite greeting in return. She held the phone away from her ear and glared at it. Mean, that’s what the look was. He hoped she never looked at him that way. Oh wait, she had once. Or twice. Maybe three or four times.

  She returned the phone to her ear.

  “Will you shut up for a minute?” A second lapsed. “You know Mitchell Grayson, right?” Another long pause. “Yes, I know. He’s here with me now. Look, he... No, we need your help. We’re at Victoria House on Lake Jefferson. Do you know where I’m talking about?”

  Of course Shaw knew about Victoria House. They had discussed the possibility of a joint venture when Gray had first requested permission to enter the house to do an investigation. Gray watched her face while she listened to Shaw. The man was well aware of the rumors surrounding the old Hamilton mansion. Maybe he wasn’t aware that Tori was a Hamilton.

  She finally spoke again. “Okay, thanks for the history lesson, but I know all that. I’m Alfred Hamilton’s great-granddaughter. Hold up...I’m still talking. Just listen. We just found Caroline in Victoria’s bedroom. Her throat’s been cut.”

  Their eyes met.

  She sniffed hard and glanced through the open door toward the bed where Gray’s dead wife lay. She reached over and nudged the door closed with the tip of her finger, obviously touching as little of the surface of the door as possible.

  “It’s bad. We can’t let the locals here handle it.”

  Shaw must have interrupted her with something harsh or sarcastic because her mouth twisted as if she was holding back what she really wanted to say.

  “This isn’t about me or you or what happened in Little Rock. It doesn’t matter what I said or what I did. I was wrong. You were wrong. We both were wrong. The whole freaking world was wrong. Okay? Just get over it. This isn’t about us. It’s about Gray. I’m calling you because I know you’ve worked with him in the past when there were paranormal implications. I know about Laurel Heights.”

  Gray reached for the phone. Why was she doing this? Tori and Shaw were not best friends. Never would be. From what Shaw had told him, there was a deep root of bitterness left over on both sides from their public argument. Why would she trust the man? Gray might trust him...reluctantly. But she wouldn’t.

  “Give me the phone, Tori. We can’t involve him. We have to deal with this on our own.”

  She swatted his hand away and placed hers over the mouthpiece.

  “This is bigger than we can handle by ourselves. You should know that. And we can’t ask just anybody for help.” Her ragged breathing hissed between every word.

  “Let me have the phone.” He held his hand out, hoping the stern, authoritative tone he usually used when dealing with the criminal element would intimidate her into relinquishing it to him.

  She blinked at him. Fear and worry etched lines around her mouth and eyes. She held the phone out to him, and he wrapped his fingers around the instrument. Before he spoke, he wiped one hand over his sweating brow. Why was he pouring sweat when it was freezing in the house? Obviously, the initial shock was wearing off. His mind raced with a million details of the scene. Etched into his psyche. Things he’d never forget.

  He grabbed Tori’s wrist with his free hand, dragging her toward the stairs, walking and talking at the same time. “Shaw, it’s me, Gray—”

  “I’m on my way. Don’t touch anything, and get out of that house right now. Camp out on the front porch if you have to, but don’t go back into the house, and don’t let anybody else go inside. I’m bringing Dickerson with me.”

  That was good. Dickerson would work with them even if he didn’t believe in a paranormal state.

  “It’s going to be a few hours before we get there.” Shuffling and scuffling sounded in the background of the call. “You should know I got a call from Halsey. He wanted to know why he wasn’t made aware of our investigation into that death out at Laurel Heights. I had to tell him you called us in.”

  He noticed Shaw mentioned no names. That was good. The man was thinking on his feet, and the more Gray’s synapses fired, the more his mind focused, the clearer things became. The more certain he became that there was a right way and a wrong way to handle the situation. He didn’t want any more dark clouds hovering over his past.

  This had to be done right. No more cover ups. Tori was right to call in another jurisdiction, but Gray needed to pull the sheriff into the loop. “I’ll talk to Halsey. About that and about this. Don’t cover for me.”

  From the huffing and puffing on the other end of the line, Gray was certain Shaw was in motion. Moving quickly. “I think that would be in your best interest. You don’t want to appear to be hiding anything.” He grunted from his obvious exertions. The crank of an engine sounded over the airwaves. “So why did my good friend, Victoria Downing, think you needed state help?”

  Gray descended the stairs, glanced back at Tori. She was bouncing down the steps, keeping up with his fast pace. The concerned expression on her face gave him a brief moment of comfort. In her eyes, he saw compassion and determination. They were in it together and that reflected in her attitude.

  In that moment, he was certain she’d stick by him no matter what. How did he know? Some things can’t be expressed with words. He had a deep down knowing that couldn’t be explained. He squeezed her hand to acknowledge the unspoken communication. She increased her grip on his. Perhaps that was all the reassurance she could manage to give him, but it was enough.

  The situation had put both their lives and their careers in danger. Whoever had killed Caroline intended to hurt Gray, and by association, Tori. Waking up in a house with a dead body and having no idea how it got there would not look good for either one of them. Both of them had had their share of scandal. Together they were facing a new one.

  There had been no reason to dump Caroline’s body in Tori’s house unless the killer was making a point about his relationship with Tori, trying to hurt Gray in the worst way possible by hurting both Caroline and Tori. In a sick, twisted way the action was genius, accomplishing a lot with one crime.

  He returned his attention to Shaw’s question. “I’ve been investigating a murder and I believe one of our deputies is involved. Caroline’s...death could be related to that or it might be totally unrelated. I want someone with an outside perspective to investigate her...murder.”

  Referring to death and murder in the same breath with Caroline’s name sent fresh stabs of pain straight through his heart.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Maybe Gray shouldn’t have married Caroline when he wasn’t really in love with her, and maybe he should have been more attentive to her when she needed him, but his failure as her husband didn’t mean he wouldn’t grieve her death, just like he’d grieved the death of their marriage even though he’d seen it coming. Even though he’d done nothing to stop it.

  She didn’t deserve to die like that. No one deserved to die like that.

  He pushed open the door to the front patio of Victoria House, waited until Tori cleared the opening, slammed it shut behind them, and leaned against the wood.

  Shaw had been talking, but he hadn’t caught the last six or so sentences.

  “We’ll wait here for you.” He disconnected the call; he couldn’t listen to the man any longer.

  He handed Tori the phone and she slipped it into her pocket. Their eyes met, and he held her gaze, afraid to break eye contact. As long as they kept that connection, he was assured of her continued support. He needed her as he’d never needed anyone else in his life. “Are you okay?�
�

  Her brief smile was unconvincing. “I’ll be all right as long as you’re all right.”

  “It’s going to be awhile before I’m all right again.” His voice quavered a bit.

  He hated being anything but the strong protective male. He’d vowed to protect her even if she didn’t know that’s what he was doing, but he never anticipated being the one that needed someone to protect him.

  “So Shaw is on his way?”

  He nodded. She had resorted to filler conversation. No doubt, she’d heard every bit of his end of the call. He answered her anyway. Talking was a way of grounding them to reality, even if they repeated things they already knew.

  “It’s going to be a long wait.” She nodded toward his vehicle. “Let’s get in the car. I need to sit down or I’m going to crash, and I need to move away from this house.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and shivered once.

  When they were seated, he leaned his head on the rest and closed his eyes. “I hate that happened to her.” He wasn’t ready to unload, but the sentiment came out of his mouth anyway.

  She reached over and wrapped her small hand around his. Her touch felt cool against his skin. “Doesn’t matter what kind of relationship you had with her. It’s hard to lose someone you once cared about like that. Someone you were once intimate with.”

  “We should have never married.”

  He wanted desperately to scratch the bend of his arm behind his elbow, but he didn’t want to let go of her hand. Anxiety always made him itch in the weirdest places.

  “I knew I didn’t love her.”

  “Then why did you marry her?” Her tone wasn’t accusatory, just inquisitive.

  “Getting married seemed like what normal people did.” He’d spent so much of his life in dysfunction that he had hoped doing something normal people did would help him settle into a normal life. It hadn’t worked.

  She made a noise. He wasn’t sure whether it was sarcastic or sympathetic.

  “That’s never a good reason to get married.”

  Had she gone through the same thing? Had she once been married? Not a good time to ask.