by Jenna Ryan
Food-prep areas intrigued her. She would have settled in to watch the action if she hadn’t spied Haden’s high-end printer and recalled the camera in her shoulder bag. She’d snapped at least two dozen pictures over the past several days, of structures and local vignettes Grandpa C would be impatient to see.
“Haden?” Digging out her camera, she used it to indicate the printer. “Do you mind?”
“Be my guest. Don’t matter how hard I try, I can’t figure the thing out.”
He went back to his floor plan and an increasingly heated debate with his nephew.
Not that she thought it wise to do so, but Isabella couldn’t resist taking a minute to stare at Donovan in profile. She recalled with frightening clarity the way he’d made love to her last night. A welter of sensations and feelings had exploded inside her—mind, body and, God help her, heart.
“Not ready for that one,” she decided and, shutting the thought down, shucked off her jacket.
He wouldn’t admit it, of course, but Grandpa C’s eyes were fuzzier than they’d been a decade ago. He liked his photos big and bold, so she set the size at eight by ten and made a silent note to buy Haden a new ink cartridge.
It surprised her to discover there were more than forty shots on the card. Darkwood Manor, both whole and in segments, dominated, but there were also three pictures of Katie—those brought a pang—two of George with her high-octane brandy and one heart-stopping photo of Donovan in the fog, wearing his long black coat and an enigmatic expression that had her fanning her face with one of Haden’s file folders.
The image haunted her long after she packed up the prints, so much so that she made a point of not looking at him through the dinner Haden insisted they eat in a booth barely big enough for one let alone two.
She ordered lasagna, prayed the meat wasn’t squirrel or moose and knew she’d consumed too much wine when her fingertips began to go numb.
A trip to the ladies’ room prevented her from jumping Donovan for dessert, but she knew—because she couldn’t get her mind around anything else—that she was in deep, deep trouble where Aaron Dark’s sexy descendent was concerned. Heart rules head, she reflected, exactly as Grandpa C had predicted it would.
Behind her, Lindsay banged into the washroom and stared blankly for a moment via the mirror.
“It’ll come to you,” Isabella promised.
When it did, the server slapped a palm over her bare wrist.
“I don’t think you stole the watch.” Isabella moved to the towel dispenser. “In fact, I met the man you described.”
Lindsay’s face lit up. “Where?”
“I bumped into him in a tunnel under Darkwood Manor.”
“Seriously?” She sounded horrified. “Why were you there?”
“Because I don’t believe in ghosts, I guess.”
“Not even in Aaron Dark?”
“Especially not him.”
Lindsay headed for a stall, but paused to look back. “I remembered something else, if it, you know, makes a difference. When I asked him where he got such a pretty watch, the guy told me he it belonged to a woman who came to Mystic Harbor a while ago. He said where she was going and who she was going with, she wouldn’t be needing it.”
“THAT POOR GIRL’S NEVER going to talk to me again,” Isabella stated ninety minutes later. “Every time I see her, she winds up being interrogated by you and glared at by Orry.”
“Orry’s too busy feeling sorry for himself to glare.” Donovan flicked a hand at her seat belt. “Buckle up. Fog’s thick tonight.”
“I wish I thought we’d learned something, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t. And my guess is our mystery man will be a lot more careful about being seen now that he knows we can get into the tunnel system.”
“It could have been bluster on his part, Isabella.”
“Maybe, but nothing we’ve come up with so far explains the text messages I received, the reference to Killer, the fact that Katie’s pretty much the only person who calls me Bella…”
“The snake in your bed, the gunshots, the knife or the lipstick message. Let it go for a few hours,” Donovan advised. “Keep covering the same ground, and you’ll drive yourself crazy. I promise, we’ll figure this thing out.”
Because he was right, she controlled her frustration and tested her fingertips for sensation while he navigated the slippery road. All normal. Unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed, she wiggled all her fingers. “Guess I’m not drunk.”
“Did you think you were?”
“I wanted to jump you at the restaurant. In the sheriff’s office, too, but that’s a little weird and probably has something to do with you being a fed.” Reaching over, she played with the ends of his hair. “Does that last part bruise your ego?”
“Depends on where this ends up.”
It was an opening she simply couldn’t resist.
When he cut the engine outside her cabin, fog immediately cloaked his truck. She couldn’t see the lights of the lodge or even her own front door. But she could see Donovan, and she wanted him. Wanted to feel his hands on her skin, on her breasts. Wanted him inside her.
A smile bloomed as he lifted her across the gearshift so she could straddle his lap.
She let her lips brush his while her hips moved against him. “Seems I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, Black. If we say the hard place is behind me, then I’m liking the rock.”
And tangling her fingers in his hair, she set her mouth on his.
HE DIDN’T LOVE HER; IT wasn’t possible. He’d guarded his heart for too many years to let love happen.
It was lust, he told himself, a hormonal backlash born of self-denial. And one helluva hot woman.
The night had come and gone in a sexual blur. He should have left hours ago. But already the first traces of dawn were stealing through the layers of mist that clung to the rocks and trees, and here he was, half dressed and not entirely sure where his keys had landed.
He sat on the sofa with his bare feet propped on a low table, drank coffee he’d foolishly brewed and stared at the moody black outline of Darkwood Manor perched so high on the ridge that it escaped the encroaching ocean fog.
Locals insisted that Aaron’s virulent presence attracted only the bitter forces of nature. Black fog might stick, but the gentler autumn version didn’t have a chance.
Setting his head on the sofa back, Donovan turned his mind to Isabella’s situation.
An old suit and bullets. Rattraps and more bullets. Ghostly warnings and knives. An arrow in the front door, an attempted abduction, a note written in red lipstick. Two text messages from a missing cousin whose boyfriend’s name was Killer. A mystery man in the passageway under the manor. Orry hiding inside the ballroom yesterday. Darlene sneaking into the sheriff’s office through the back door.
Darlene worked for Gordie Tallahassee. Gordie was a Realtor. Robert Drake was a developer. Drake was staying at George’s lodge. George needed money.
Isabella’s ex had purchased Darkwood, then died in a car crash and left the manor to her. The manor had inside-outside dimensions that Haden swore, and he agreed, didn’t add up.
Sleep-deprived and buzzed on sex, Donovan’s brain would have imploded if he’d let it. But he’d been trained to compartmentalize, so he did. Shoved everything he had into boxes and jammed tight lids on them.
Most of them anyway. No box could hope to contain his feelings for Isabella.
The cell phone on his waistband vibrated. At five minutes shy of 6:00 a.m., it couldn’t be good news.
He regarded the screen, then picked up.
More than the words on the other end registered, but he kept his muscles loose and his expression neutral while he absorbed the information.
He knew she was behind him. He’d felt her come into the room. He could smell her hair and skin. That tropical rain-forest scent had been driving him out of his mind since he’d met her.
When the call ended, she leaned over and ran her hands dow
n his chest. Her hair grazing his cheeks kindled the still-simmering embers from last night.
“You might as well tell me the bad news, Donovan, because I know that wasn’t Haden you were swearing at.”
“I was swearing at the information, not the person.”
She pressed her cheek to his temple. “And the reason was?”
“I had a friend check out the text messages you received from your cousin. Local cell towers can give the general direction of outgoing calls.” Because face-to-face was better, he stood, took her by the arms and held her gaze with his. “They were local, Isabella. Both messages originated in Mystic Harbor.”
WALKING AHEAD OF HER, Donovan gestured at the manor floor. “Point your light down. This hallway’s more treacherous than the ballroom.”
A wire snagged her jeans. “I noticed. Any ball bearings or rusty traps?”
“Not so far.”
“That’s a plus. The big kitchen’s to your left.” She ducked under an enormous cobweb. “Look, I know you’re thinking that Katie and Killer are doing something together, but you’re wrong.”
“What I’m thinking is that someone’s gone to a great deal of trouble to frighten you. That suggests a large payoff to me.”
“As in I sell the manor, and the person who brought that about reaps the benefits?”
“Yes.”
“In whose fantasy world does abduction fall under the heading ‘scare tactic’? There’s also the little matter of bullets, as in the ones that were fired at you and Orry on the ridge, and again at you and me in the tunnel under the manor. The knife’s borderline if someone skilled threw it, but a poisonous snake in the bed of a phobic person is just plain—”
“Cruel.”
When he reached back to touch her cheek, her vexation melted into a sigh. “Katie wouldn’t be part of anything this sick. Even Killer couldn’t talk her into it.”
“Fair enough.” He ran the outline of a double doorway with his flashlight. “But what about Killer alone, or, more specifically, without Katie’s cooperation?”
Isabella started to answer, then closed her mouth and looked away.
“Not sure, huh?”
She squeezed past a packing crate. “Pretty sure I don’t like you in your cop hat right now.”
A small grin crossed his lips. “In that case, I might as well go for broke and ask about your cousin’s relationship with your ex.”
“Katie and David?” Too stunned to be annoyed, Isabella stared at him. “You think there was something between them?”
“I’m wondering if Katie might have liked him more than she let on.”
“Donovan, the only thing Katie liked about David was his car. He had a 1960s cherry-red Corvette Stingray. I don’t mean to make her sound callous, but she probably mourned the loss of the car more than she did David.”
“So she wouldn’t be feeling hostile toward you.”
“To what end? David’s dead.”
“He left Darkwood Manor to you, Isabella. Whatever you choose to do with the house, the several hundred acres of land it sits on is worth a considerable amount of money.”
She made a flat hand motion. “Forget it. First of all, I repeat, Katie couldn’t stand David. Second, David was a one-woman man. Quirky, yes, but not the sharing kind. He wouldn’t have gotten involved with another woman while we were dating, and he definitely wouldn’t have done it with someone who was already in a relationship.”
Donovan’s smile widened slightly. “Put your dagger down—that’s not where I was going. Jealousy,” he said at her mistrustful glare. “I want to know if you think Katie could have been jealous of your relationship with David Gimbel.”
“Jealous enough to do all this? Answer’s no, Black, in uppercase letters.”
But a tiny niggle of doubt crept in to irritate her. Squashing it, she took a deep breath and fought for patience.
“I accept that questions are part of your everyday life, but you’re way off track with this. Yes, Katie and I occasionally wanted the same guy—back in high school and college where everything sex-related came down to steamy looks, ripped bodies and adolescent fantasies, but those days are long gone, like my tolerance for this conversation.”
He leaned a shoulder on the wall. “So now wouldn’t be a good time for me to tell you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?”
Patience lost the battle to exasperation. Kicking a chunk of fallen plaster aside, Isabella strode up to him, batted his flashlight arm aside and grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands. “You haven’t begun to see angry yet, pal.”
Yanking his mouth onto hers, she gave him a kiss that rocked her as deeply as she hoped it rocked him.
She ended it by pulling away and letting her eyes glitter. “Slag my cousin’s character again, and you’ll see Irish lightning bolts courtesy of Jimmy the Hammer Corrigan, aka Grandpa C, who taught me how to swing a mean right at any adversary I can see coming.”
“As opposed to the ones who use chloroform and attack from the rear.” Donovan’s eyes glittered now, which lightened her mood considerably. As was the case with misery, it appeared edgy also liked company. It might have been intriguing to watch the fireworks unfold. Unfortunately, the shadowy halls of Darkwood Manor weren’t conducive to romance.
Could be with time and effort, Isabella acknowledged, but for the moment a murky, vaguely malevolent atmosphere prevailed.
She made herself release his shirt, then felt her stomach seize as a creak that read like a screech emanated from the room ahead.
“It’s a torture chamber around here. I’m picturing Aaron Dark on a tear with a butcher knife.”
Donovan took her hand. “Aaron didn’t dismember his wife.”
And ghosts shouldn’t make ancient floorboards groan, but that didn’t make her feel any better.
The gloom thickened the deeper they ventured into the manor. Their flashlights sliced a path through the heart of it but did little to reveal what lurked on either side.
A second creak reached them when they entered the kitchen. “That wasn’t the floor.”
“I think there’s a door beside that big stone fireplace to our right. I remember it from the first day, when I was too worried about Katie’s disappearance to be scared. There’s also a window on the back wall, but it’s shuttered and stuck.” She touched his arm before he could move. “I heard a footstep.”
“Stay behind me,” Donovan instructed. “Shine your light in the opposite direction.”
Isabella’s heart sounded like thunder in her ears. She turned a circle in Donovan’s wake, certain the eyes she felt watching her would reveal themselves in her beam.
“Forget being thrown from a cliff. If I’d been Sybil Dark and forced to live here with a madman, I’d have jumped.”
“Maybe she did.”
“You’re such a comfort, Black.”
Charred fragments of wood from the hearth littered the floor. One of them resembled the clawlike bones of a human hand.
Lovely thought, she reflected and stepped over it. “Are we anywhere near the window?”
“More than near. I’ve got the latch, but you’re right—it’s jammed.”
Something brushed Isabella’s leg. She snapped her light down, then around in a quick half circle.
There was nothing except dirt and bits of wood.
A moment later, she caught a movement in her peripheral vision. She knew it wasn’t Donovan because he was heading for the pantry.
The glow at the rim of her beam revealed a section of counter inset with a wide farm sink. Through the layered shadows, she made out a tail as something leaped from counter to neighboring hearth.
When she swung her flashlight across, two yellow eyes appeared. They stared at her, unblinking.
It took several seconds for the silhouette of an enormous black cat to emerge from the inky backdrop.
Relief chased by curiosity shivered through her. “Was it you I saw in that hidden room a few days ago?” She hel
d out a hand to let the animal sniff her. “I bet you know all the ins and outs of this house, don’t you? If you could talk, we’d be set.”
As if it understood, the cat meowed and jumped from the hearth. Isabella noticed a tag dangling from its collar and wondered if it had a name. Or more telling, an owner.
As long shots went, the prospect seemed far-fetched, but Aunt Mara’s gray Persian followed her everywhere, so it might be worth a shot.
Calling to Donovan, she followed the feline into a narrow hallway that crooked toward an even narrower stairwell. One set of stairs went up, the other down. Both looked intimidating in the dark.
She had no idea which way the cat had gone, but because this was an area of the house she hadn’t yet explored, she played her light in all directions.
She didn’t realize her palms had gone damp until the sensation of being watched made her stomach quiver. To some extent, the feeling was omnipresent; however, at times it became a tangible thing, like an icy finger trailing up and down her spine.
Her heart thudded as panic tap-danced inside. Before it could take root, she backed away from the stairwells and carefully down the hall.
All this for a cat that probably had nothing to do with anything and simply liked to wander around old buildings hunting for mice.
Her heels created the only true sound in the corridor. Imagination did the rest, right down to the heavy breathing that had to be her own.
Or not.
“Isabella…”
The man’s voice was a mere echo in the shadowy air.
“Crap,” she swore in a clenched undertone. She continued walking backward, her eyes sweeping the darkness.
“Are you frightened?” he whispered. “Are you ready to submit? Or will you follow the tragic path of your predecessor?”
She found her voice and enough resentment to slap back. “I don’t have a predecessor who relates to this house.” Unless he was referring to Katie. “I also don’t believe in ghosts, so whoever you are, you won’t get what you want this way.”
His eerie little laugh had the effect of nails on a blackboard. She’d returned Donovan’s backup gun to him. Why had she done that? She groped for the doorway behind her.