by Leslie Kelly
Not even hesitating—much less asking—I stood, grabbed his plate, walked over to the pot and refilled it. “I found some paperwork today that showed how he got controlling interest in this hotel. There were some copies of correspondence he exchanged with his partner while he was sitting in a jail cell in Pittsburgh.”
“Oh?” He was interested. I could see it in his eyes as he accepted the plate and started eating again.
“Zangara needed money to hire a high-priced attorney. Apparently he wanted to mortgage his share, to just borrow money against his interest in Seaton House, but he couldn’t find any takers. So he turned to his partner, Robert Stubbs, asking for a loan. But Stubbs refused. He forced him to sell out altogether at a rock-bottom price.”
Simon shrugged. “I told you my mother couldn’t stand the man and my uncle Roger never had a good thing to say about him, either.”
Reaching for his glass of water, he sipped from it, then murmured, “I guess being able to hire a better lawyer didn’t make much difference to Zangara.”
“No, it didn’t. The newspaper accounts say the jury was out thirty-seven minutes. After he heard the guilty verdict, Zangara had the only emotional outburst anyone ever witnessed. He lashed out at everyone, especially Stubbs, who he blamed for taking advantage of him and leaving his wife and son homeless. He swore revenge, you know—a curse upon your house, I’ll haunt you to your dying day, all that stuff.” Laughing, I added, “Maybe it was Zangara who locked the door on me yesterday.”
Simon’s good mood evaporated so quickly, I almost wondered if I’d imagined it. Where an easy, casual, charming man had been sitting across the table a moment ago, there was now a rigid, tight-jawed stranger who’d stopped eating halfway through his second helping.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous.” He rose from his chair, grabbing his plate off the table and taking it over to the sink.
He dumped out a plateful of food. Grandma Rosalita would be making the sign of the cross and whispering the rosary.
“Superstitious nonsense,” he added.
I was about to agree—to tell him I’d been joking, that of course I didn’t believe in ghosts, despite my rather vivid imagination. But before I could do it, Simon had muttered a thank-you for lunch, then stalked out of the kitchen without another word.
Leaving me very curious about what, exactly, had set the man off.
SINCE SIMON AND I had been alone in the house for a few days, walking down the front steps and seeing a woman bent over, washing the tile floor in the foyer came as something of a shock. It was late afternoon and I’d spent the past several hours alone, going through more cartons as well as the drawers of old pieces of furniture in the attic. I’d ventured farther back in the room but still hadn’t explored more than a third of it. There was just so much to see, so many fascinating side trips that had nothing to do with Zangara and everything to do with the price of a new-fangled dishwasher in 1952 or the guest comment cards of 1961.
I wondered how on earth I was going to get through everything in the time I had left. As much as I’d like to stay, I really was going to have to get back to Chicago—and school—soon. I was still thinking about that when I came down the stairs and saw the heavyset, middle-aged woman on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor.
Apparently hearing me, she looked up. The startled, frightened expression on her face was almost comical. She jerked so hard her hand slid out from under her and she nearly went face-first into her bucket.
“Are you all right?” I asked, rushing over to help her, trying to avoid slipping on any wet tile.
The woman nodded, watching me warily as she shimmied backward, then rose to her feet. “Who’re you?”
Introducing myself, I watched the expressions of fear ease a little on the woman’s face. She looked around, her gaze resting on the closed door to Simon’s office, then whispered, “Do you mean to tell me you’re staying here? Sleeping here at night?”
I nodded. “Yes.” Figuring the house’s reputation had the woman on edge, I added, “And believe it or not, I haven’t seen a single ghost.”
“Ghosts,” the woman said with a scoffing laugh. “It’s not the dead you have to be worrying about.” Her milky gray eyes shifted toward the door again. “It’s the living.”
She meant Simon. I knew it and I immediately stiffened. “If you’re referring to my host, he’s been perfectly charming and amiable.”
A bit of a stretch, but the woman had ticked me off.
“Huh,” she grunted, skepticism dripping off her. “You’re fooling yourself. You shouldn’t be here.”
“If you’re so concerned, what are you doing here?”
Shrugging, the woman bent to her pail again, dumping her rag into it and then straightened, rubbing her back as if it pained her. “Good pay. I come up once a week to tidy up.” She jerked her head toward Simon’s office door. “He stays in there the whole time, leastwise I think he does. I wouldn’t be able to do a lick of work if he was watching me with those cold, sinister eyes of his.”
I wanted to slap her. I also wanted to laugh. Because Simon’s eyes were heated and intense, nowhere near cold and certainly not sinister. “You obviously don’t know him very well.”
“I’ve been cleaning this place and bringing him fresh groceries every week since he showed up. I guess I know him as well as you do,” the woman replied as she opened the front door and walked out on the porch. I followed.
“The whole town knows all about him,” the woman said as she tossed the dirty water from the bucket over the rail onto the lawn.
I wasn’t sure the soap suds would do much for the flower beds but I was fuming too much to pay attention. “I don’t think any of you know him at all. Not a single person has called or come up here all week. He could have fallen over dead and no one would even know.”
“Which is exactly the way he wants it.”
She did have a point there, but I wasn’t going to admit it.
“You listen well, miss. If I was you, I’d get out of here right away.” The woman looked around, rising on tiptoe to try to peer past me into the shadowy recesses of the house. I knew she was trying to make sure Simon wasn’t around to overhear. I also knew I was about to hear something new about my host. “He’s a killer.”
Uh, yeah, I’d definitely been right. And I damn sure didn’t like it. So I, uh, sort of went Lottie on her. Yelled a little, told her to take her mop and ride it back down to wherever she came from. Or shove it somewhere. I don’t remember exactly all I said.
I only remember one thing. That when the woman was gone, scurrying away to her station wagon and tearing out of the parking lot with a rattle and a belch of smoke, I realized Simon was standing right inside the doorway.
He’d obviously heard every word.
“I don’t need you to defend me,” he said, his voice soft, his tone even. Impossible to gauge.
“She’s an idiot.”
He didn’t budge. “I repeat, you don’t have to defend me.”
“Well, you’re sure not doing a very good job of it.” Transferring my anger onto him, I strode back into the house. “Sitting up here, all locked away and glaring, you’re just feeding the imaginations of narrow-minded people like her.”
“You think I care?”
No. I supposed he didn’t. But it bothered me that people thought so poorly of him.
This man might be moody and temperamental. He might even have an aura of danger and mystery.
But a killer? Ridiculous.
One thing was sure. Until Simon joined the land of the living—let himself come to life—he wasn’t going to make any effort to change people’s minds. He hadn’t been lying—he just did not care. He was like a man emotionally dead, completely and utterly alone and adrift from the rest of the world.
I wasn’t going to stand for that any longer. Whatever had happened, I would help Simon Lebeaux get past it, open himself up again and let go of the bottled anger and coldness he tried so hard to
hide behind.
I was running out of time to let him slowly come to rely on me as a friend while secretly lusting for my hot bod, so it was definitely time to step up the pace. There was only one way to do it. Frankly, I couldn’t think of a better way to bring a man’s emotions to life than by awakening his libido.
It was for his own good. I intended to seduce the man out of his darkness if it was the last thing I ever did.
8
Simon
SIMON DIDN’T KNOW exactly when he realized Lottie was trying to seduce him, but by the time they finished dinner, he had no doubt that was the case. His first hint had been her feet coming down the stairs for dinner.
She’d been wearing those hot, sexy black boots with high heels and silver chains draped over the foot. They had obviously dried out and now fit snug and tight against her calves. What the hell was it about high-legged boots that instantly made a man think of sweaty sex and sin? But it was true. For a long moment after she’d come down, he’d been unable to picture anything but Lottie Santori, wearing nothing but those boots, lying open and waiting for him on his bed.
Yeah. The fuck-me boots had been clue number one. He’d been imagining all kinds of things as he listened to the sharp heels click on the kitchen tile as she buzzed around playing housekeeper, trying to act like nothing was out of the ordinary as they ate. Somehow, the way she sashayed around in her skin-tight jeans—her sweet, curvy ass swaying with every step—didn’t make him feel very much like eating anything except her.
He told himself that wasn’t what had inspired him to shave this afternoon.
He suspected he was lying.
Because all day long he’d been mentally hearing her begging him, over and over, to taste her. A beautiful woman with the most amazing body he’d ever seen had begged him to suck her nipples and he’d walked away. No wonder he hadn’t been able to think of anything else all day but how badly he wanted to kiss every inch of her.
Dinner made it a lot more obvious. She was no longer sitting back and letting things happen spontaneously, like grateful kisses, or sultry encounters beneath stormy skies.
No.
The way she leaned over the table to refill his glass or pass the salt, causing her hot pink blouse to gap away from her chest, revealing plumped up, mouthwatering cleavage, cinched the certainty in his mind. He was being seduced. Lottie had stopped playing the earnest student slowly working her way into his life and gone right for his weak spot. His cock.
Not that it was weak. Hell, no. He’d had to keep his chair pulled closely in to the table throughout dinner just so she wouldn’t see the bulge in his lap.
Whatever her game, she’d definitely scored the first point. Because he was going to have a hard time getting up after dinner without her noticing her success.
So do it. Take her. Have done with it.
It was tempting. Especially now that, having spent a few days living under the same roof with her, he no longer had any doubts that he could trust the woman. She hadn’t tried to murder him in his bed…in fact, her biggest crime was that she was a pain in the ass about trying to take care of him.
Sweet. Nurturing. He wouldn’t have expected it of the brash young woman but he knew it was true. She came from a world very different from his own. And from the things she’d said about her family, he knew they had helped create the person she’d become. She was full of life and laughter and happiness.
Everything he was not.
God, he wanted her so much he thought about doing away with the pretenses, grabbing her arm and pulling her across the table onto his lap. Screw the dishes, screw the hour, he’d do her on the kitchen floor, he was that desperate.
Funny, it wasn’t his own self-disgust that stopped him from doing it. It was the realization that he owed her more. She deserved to know whom she was having sex with. Especially after she’d so vehemently defended him against the foolish, gossipy old cleaning lady this afternoon.
What, he wondered, would she say if he told her the woman was right? That he was a killer?
Not a murderer. No. But a killer nonetheless.
He might have been trying to save his own life by fighting back after he’d been sliced in the face and shot in the chest by a couple of scumbags bent on robbery.
But he’d ended that night alive. And the woman had ended it dead.
He was a killer. No matter what Lottie Santori thought.
“I need to get back to work,” he said, pushing back from the table before finishing the last of his dinner, which she’d once again skillfully prepared.
“What?” She blinked, eyeing him with disbelief. “Good grief, Simon, it’s seven o’clock. You’ve worked all day. Can’t you even enjoy a decent meal?”
“Thank you,” he muttered, meaning it. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble. But I appreciate it.”
“Don’t you walk out on me,” she snapped. “Is stalking off your answer for everything?”
“I’m not stalking off.” I’m such a liar.
She leapt up from her chair and shoved her own plate at him. “You know what? It’s my turn to walk out in a huff. Appreciate this, buddy. You can wash the damn dishes, I’m going for a walk.”
And out of the room she went, heading out the back door, her righteous indignation wrapped around her like a gauzy scarf.
Huh. This was the sweet, nurturing young woman he’d been imagining? Simon couldn’t prevent a smile as he carried the dirty dishes to the sink and began rinsing them. He liked the angry, feisty Lottie. He liked the sexy, sultry Lottie. He liked the nurturing, caring Lottie.
He liked everything about her. And that was just bad news. The last thing he needed was to get himself tied in knots over a woman now, when he was finally starting to come out of his long, dark tunnel.
But he didn’t want her to leave. Not only because he’d miss her, but also because with her in the house, it had almost begun to seem normal. He’d had no more headaches, noticed no more strange smells. There’d been a few odd moments—her getting locked in the attic, for instance. But for the most part things were going well for the first time in months. All because of her.
He’d grown accustomed to having her here. And he already dreaded the moment when she’d leave.
As Simon finished the dishes, something made him peer harder out the window over the sink. A movement. Something metallic had caught and reflected the light on the back porch. Leaning close and peering out into the darkness, he tried to determine what it had been.
It took a moment but he finally figured it out. “What the hell?” he muttered when he realized the glint he’d seen had been the reflection off the metal struts on an old buggy that Uncle Roger kept on display on the back lawn. The thing had been there for years and tourists who stayed at the hotel often liked to get their picture taken in it. His uncle even said he would occasionally lend it out to the town below when they wanted to hitch a horse to it for a parade or some local carnival.
Practically a fixture at the hotel, there was absolutely no reason to be startled by the buggy…except he had been. It took a split second to realize why.
It was moving.
Despite blocks at the base of the four wheels that prevented it from going anywhere, the thing was in motion. If it rolled a few more feet, it would hit the gentle slope in the backyard and cruise right down to the edge of it.
The lawn ended at the cliffs.
A sudden, horrific thought leapt into his mind and Simon’s heart thudded in his chest. Dropping the plate he’d been drying, he barely heard it shatter on the floor. He ran for the back door, bursting outside.
The evening was cold and damp. The entire month had been soggy and the ground was mucky and slick. He skidded and slipped as he ran down the steps onto the wet lawn, but he didn’t slow down.
“Lottie!” he yelled, as he headed for the buggy, without looking around for her. There wasn’t time.
She didn’t respond. For all he knew, she was safely around the front
of the house, praying to the automotive gods to get her car running so she could get out of here. Away from a moody bastard like him.
But he couldn’t be certain of that.
When he reached the carriage, he grabbed a hitching bar across the back, trying to stop it with sheer brute force. His feet could find no stable ground, however, and the thing pulled him to his knees, dragging him behind it as it hit the slope.
“Simon?” He heard the voice from somewhere ahead of him. Ahead of the wagon. Near the cliffs.
“Shit,” he muttered, letting go of the buggy, knowing it was pointless. He was on his feet, sprinting around it as the old conveyance picked up speed. With his heart pounding in his chest, he yelled with every step. “Lottie, get out of the way. Get the hell away from the cliffs!”
He finally saw her, standing near a large, man-size boulder that Uncle Roger used to tell guests was the do-not-cross line for the back lawn. Just beyond it, the yard fell away in a jagged panorama of rock and clay.
“What’s the matter with you?” She obviously didn’t see the dark wagon rolling in her direction.
He didn’t stop to explain. Instead, he merely charged her, sweeping her to the side and tackling her to the ground right behind the boulder, knowing it was less than five feet from the edge. But it was enormous and there was no way the carriage would have any impact on it, even if it hit the rock head on.
He hoped.
Fortunately, the theory wasn’t put to the test. Because about five seconds after he and Lottie had hit the ground—rolling over on the wet grass, both of them scraping themselves on the rocks and old dead tree limbs—the antique buggy went rolling past. Moving fast, having picked up speed as it rolled downhill, it missed the boulder by mere inches.
Shaking, rattling, it reached the edge of the lawn and barreled straight on, exactly where Lottie had been standing.
And went right over the cliff.
“ARE YOU SURE you’re all right?” Simon asked as he and Lottie sat in front of the fireplace in his office a short time later. She was curled up under a blanket on the sofa, shivering, though he knew she wasn’t cold.