Ghost Horse

by Patricia Rosemoor

  “Thank you both,” I said again, as the couple headed off across the lot.

  “Husband?” Damian asked, sounding piqued. “What’s going on?”

  “Their assumption,” I assured him. “They helped me after a car almost hit me.”

  His expression changed instantly. “Are you hurt? Should you be on your feet? Let me help you into the car, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m fine,” I protested, though I didn’t fight him when he put an arm across my back to help me to the car. “The horse isn’t.”

  “Horse?”

  I held out the bag. “I bought it for Nissa. B-but I can’t give it to her n-now.” My voice caught in a sob as the reality of what had almost happened to me hit home.

  “You’re trembling.”

  Damian drew me against his chest and held me lightly while I tried to pull myself together. My emotions spun out of control, and for a moment I clung to him as if he were my lifeline.

  “Thank goodness you’re all right,” he murmured, his hand stroking the length of my spine.

  As Damian soothed me, my nerves steadied, if not the trembling, which now had a very different source. My knees felt weak and my pulse felt strong. My heart was beating so rapidly I could feel its constant thump. Could he? Did he know how attracted I was to him?

  His hand distracted me from the near collision. Each of his long fingers left a trail of exquisite sensation rippling along my spine. The ripples spread outward as if in concentric circles until my entire body was enveloped by his energy. I wasn’t the only one affected. His features went taut, his gaze narrowing on my face, my mouth.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he murmured, making me wonder where he had been.

  My lips parted and my tongue darted out, an indication of my sudden nerves. Then his mouth closed over mine, and he stole away what breath I had left. My mind left me, and all that was left was sensation. The inviting wet warmth of his mouth…the scintillating sharpness of his teeth…the turgid thrust of his tongue.

  I tried losing myself in that kiss, but in my mind I once again saw the brightness of those lights coming at me, and I jerked away from him and stepped back.

  We stood inches apart, breathing hard. For a moment I saw something in his expression that surprised me. But before I could define it, the moment was over.

  “I apologize,” he murmured.

  “No need.”

  “I took advantage—”

  “We shared a moment, that’s all. Now it’s over!” I said sharply.

  Damian pulled back as if I’d struck him. I almost apologized…but I didn’t. Too many unanswered questions lay between us. Now there was another. He’d told me he meant to leave the car in the lot, but he’d changed his mind. Why? I refused to draw conclusions, but the car that had come at me had been a dark sedan….

  I didn’t want to believe Damian was so duplicitous that he tried to run me over one minute and then kissed me the next. But how could I be sure?

  I shook my head. First I’d considered Jack Larson to be the culprit…now Damian. I wasn’t thinking clearly at all. That much was obvious.

  “Nissa is waiting,” I said.

  “What about this?” He held up the bag.

  I indicated a nearby trash can. “I don’t want Nissa to see it. She’ll want to know what happened.”

  Damian nodded and threw the bag in the wire container. By the time he got back to the car, I was already in the passenger seat.

  “We should stop at the police station on the way home.”

  “Why?”

  “To make out a report.”

  “Which would make sense if I could actually describe the car or the driver. Or if I was hurt, which I’m not.”

  “Well, I’m going to call it in. Probably the driver was drunk.”

  I didn’t want to protest too much lest Damian’s suspicions were aroused. So I sat frozen while he placed the call on his cell. I was too freaked to listen to what he was saying. I only hoped this call wouldn’t be my undoing, that I wouldn’t be found out and sent packing.

  “Okay, thanks, Sam,” Damian said, then snapped his cell closed. “He’s going to send a patrol car around looking for the reckless driver.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief as we started off.

  It only took a few minutes to get to the house on the hill, but enough time for me to play that near miss over and over in my mind a dozen times.

  When Damian left the car to fetch Nissa, I watched him walk to the house, wondering if he was simply what he seemed to be—a concerned father, a hardworking horseman, a decent human being…or something far darker.

  Damian had come to my rescue twice now, and both times he could have been responsible.

  That morning I’d tried to believe I’d imagined hands at my back, but now it seemed certain they’d been as real as the speeding car. Someone had shoved me. Someone had tried to run me over. The same someone?

  Were both incidents merely warnings?

  Or had someone really meant to kill me?

  Surely Jack Larson hadn’t been inside the Graylord house at dawn. Who then did that leave?

  Damian Graylord?

  If so, then what might he have done to Dawn?

  “YOU HAVE TO COME into my room to talk,” Nissa whispered as we entered the house.

  I couldn’t ignore Nissa’s hopeful, excited expression. I was certain that this was an evening on which she would be well served to have her mother to talk to…but all she had was me in the way of another female. I looked back to see if Damian had noticed Nissa’s exhilaration, but he hadn’t followed us into the house. I looked through the open doorway and saw him walking off toward the barns.

  “All right,” I said, closing the door. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  I wanted to clean up first, make certain there were no telltale signs of my hitting the pavement. I didn’t want Nissa questioning me. No need to upset her further.

  Nissa had been calm and collected in the car when answering her father’s myriad questions about the party. I hadn’t known if he normally would have been so interested or if it had been his way of avoiding me, but either way I’d been relieved to have time to collect myself.

  That time obviously was at an end.

  It only took a few minutes to change into jeans and a T-shirt. It took a few more for me to steady myself when all I could think about was Damian and that kiss. I glanced out the window. The yard outside the barn was lit but, try as I might, I couldn’t spot Damian or anyone else.

  Not wanting to stall any longer, I closed my mind against what had happened between us earlier and went to Nissa’s room. The door was open a crack. Nissa was humming to herself. I smiled and knocked. The next moment, Nissa was grabbing my hand and dragging me inside.

  “Whoa,” I said, laughing. “You must have had a good time tonight.”

  “The best.” Looking as if she were about to burst, Nissa closed her door and moved away from it. “There’s this boy…”

  “Ah, one of those.”

  “His name is Kyle Warren and he’s really cute. You won’t tell Dad, right?”

  “That all depends on what exactly you and Kyle did.”

  Nissa seemed puzzled for a second. And then horror-struck. “Not tha-a-at.”

  “What, then?”

  Relieved, I listened attentively as she told me about her evening. How Kyle had told her he was glad to see her again. How he said he was happy she was coming back to school. How they danced together. Twice. I commented in all the right places and drew her out further. A happy Nissa was a more attractive Nissa. Tonight she was blooming before my eyes.

  Then she grimaced as if she were steeling herself. “Kyle, um, well, he kissed me…” she said in not much more than a whisper.

  “O-o-oh. Your first kiss?”

  “With Kyle. Sammy Crane kissed me in the third grade, but that doesn’t count ’cause it was kid stuff. It lasted like maybe one second.”

  Ironically
Nissa and I both had been kissed tonight. And from the way I’d felt in Damian’s arms, everything before him had been kid stuff, too.

  “This kiss lasted longer,” she went on. “I almost counted to five. I just don’t know if I did it right.” Sighing, she plopped down next to me on the bed.

  Uh-oh, this conversation could quickly become questionable territory. I didn’t want anything I said to come back to bite me later. Heaven forbid I get into something with her that Damian wouldn’t like. Yet, I couldn’t simply abandon her.

  “Kissing comes naturally, Nissa. I’m sure you did just fine.” I didn’t want to know the details. “But that’s all you did, right? Just kiss?”

  “I told you that was all.”

  “Because boys your age can be very precocious.”

  “I’m precocious, too. Dad gave me the birds-and-bees talk, okay? I’m not into all that.”

  “Good. You’re too young.”

  Now I was doubly uncomfortable. Counseling Nissa on sex wasn’t part of my job description, and I didn’t think Damian would appreciate my taking on the task. I didn’t have enough experience to be an expert in the subject, anyway. Thankfully, I quickly realized Nissa really wasn’t into all that. She’d simply wanted someone she could tell about her exciting evening—her first real kiss—and I was touched that she’d turned to me.

  “Chloe, how do you know when a guy really likes you?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I guess there’s something about the way he looks at you.”

  Like the way Damian looked at me….

  “Kyle’s got the coolest blue eyes. They go all squinty when he talks to me.”

  “Well, then…”

  “He tried to carry my books once last fall.”

  Hmm, sounded like a long-term crush on Kyle’s part. “Did you let him?”

  “I punched him and told him I could do it myself. Was that wrong?”

  I bit the inside of my lip so I wouldn’t laugh. Nissa might be thirteen, but I was getting the picture she was a very young thirteen—at least in comparison to sexually wiser city girls—when it came to boys.

  “Perhaps you weren’t ready to let Kyle carry your books. Maybe you won’t ever want him to, but maybe next time you’ll tell him no and thank him rather than punch him.”

  “Next time I think I’ll let him.”

  We grinned at each other in understanding.

  “You really are cool, Chloe. The only other person I could talk to like this was Dawn.”

  “She gave you good advice?”

  “She told me to know my own mind, to figure out what I wanted out of life and to go after it.”

  That sounded exactly like Dawn.

  “I guess that’s why she eloped,” Nissa went on. “I just wish I could still see her sometimes.”

  “Me, too, honey.”

  Nissa gave me a curious expression. “But you didn’t know her.”

  Quickly, I covered. “I meant I wished that for you.”

  “Oh.”

  Figuring this was my cue to leave, I got to my feet, saying, “It’s getting late. Nearly eleven.” And despite her excitement, Nissa seemed to be suppressing a yawn. “Time to get ready for bed.”

  “Okay.” She gave me a quick hug. “Night.”

  I hugged her in return and headed for the door, trying not to show how stiff my aching muscles felt. “Sweet dreams.”

  Undoubtedly her dreams would be sweet tonight. I wasn’t so sure about my own. I had a lot on my mind, starting with the car incident.

  I took a long, hot shower to soothe my aching body. Two falls in one day had left me sore and bruised. But at the same time, I couldn’t put Damian and that kiss we’d shared out of my mind. I might have been thinking of him as a suspect, but I desired him, as well.

  The needles of water pinging against my back made me think of his hand running up my spine. The sensation was nearly the same. I turned, and the water hit my breasts. My nipples tightened into hard points. My flesh betrayed me and, letting my eye flutter closed, I imagined for a moment what it might be like to be joined with Damian here in the shower. On the bed. Anywhere….

  I tried to shake myself free of the disturbing sensations, to no avail. They followed me out of the shower and into my bed. Thinking about the attacks on me, I chose to leave the bedside lamp burning low. If someone made it past my locked door, I at least wanted to be able to see the threat. Outside my windows, the sky was dark. I stared out into the night as if it could give me answers.

  Tomorrow, I thought. I needed sleep. I needed a clear head. But sleep wouldn’t come. I tossed and turned for what seemed like hours; though, according to the bedside clock, mere minutes passed.

  Using meditation techniques, I relaxed my body…relaxed my mind…took myself to another place….

  I walk through the dark on a path I’ve traveled before. It feels familiar, yet not. Trees loom over me like giants, leaves rustling, whispering warnings.

  “Go back, go back!”

  “Someone knows…”

  “You’ll never escape alive.”

  Fear drives me. Not fear for myself, but fear that I’ll never find the truth, never find Dawn.

  “Ci-Ci,” the wind whispers.

  Only Dawn calls me Ci-Ci. I think I hear her voice through the trees. I run faster. Searching. Always searching. Never really finding.

  “Dawn, where are you? I need to know.”

  “I’m here. Go back.”

  “Where? Why?”

  Danger….

  The word whistles through me, leaving a trail of raised flesh along my spine. I turn and turn and look for the danger but see nothing. Finally I gasp, out of breath, and stop just for a moment.

  That’s when the fog parts and he steps out of the mists.

  Damian….

  THE WATCHER STOOD opposite the house, opposite her room, gaze glued to her lit bedroom windows. Willing her to leave was doing no good. It was obvious she wouldn’t go. She had nine lives, that one, with seven left.

  Not that the attempts had been meant to kill her…not yet. They’d been meant to scare her into going. The watcher didn’t want to kill anyone.

  Not even that damn horse.

  Ghost horse…the words seemed to whisper through the air…that’s what she’d been telling people.

  Not that it was believable. Not any more than Chloe Morgan being exactly what she said she was. Oh, she might be a teacher, all right, but she had her own agenda for being here, one that had to do with Dawn Reed.

  But why? What was the connection?

  If only she would just go away. Stop poking her nose where it didn’t belong. If she didn’t, there would be no choice.

  Don’t make me kill you….

  Chapter Ten

  I was hearing noises again, though this time not from the attic. As I waited for Nissa to come from her room to have breakfast with me, I stopped in front of the dining room fireplace and listened. The sounds seemed to be whispering downward from the other side of the wall.

  Stairs? Surely not.

  My pulse drummed hard. Too many weird things went on, both in and out of this house. Too many involving me. I felt the need to solve some mystery—even a small one—so that I could justify my very presence at Graylord Pastures.

  More sounds, closer now….

  The noise couldn’t be coming from the back staircase accessible through the kitchen. They were too far away. Since there was a door leading out of the dining room to the back of the house, I opened it to see. Nope. No stairs. And now no noise, either.

  So what had I heard?

  I studied what appeared to be a mudroom behind the parlor. Barn coats hung from hooks, and calf-high rubber boots and shoes lined up neatly along a rubber tray. The room had three other doors. I checked each of them. One led to the outside, another to a butler’s pantry, a third to a storage area filled with cleaning tools and household staples from boxed food to paper goods.

  No stairs.

&nb
sp; How peculiar.

  As I headed back to the dining room, something odd struck me. The wall to my left seemed longer than that of the storage room. I went back to check by pacing off the length from the inside, then pacing off the length on the mudroom side. Sure enough, there was a three-foot or so difference.

  Returning to the dining room, I carefully studied the wall. Was there a hollow behind it that had something to do with the way the fireplace had been built? I wondered. They seemed to be equally deep.

  Curious now, I crossed the hall to the library and that fireplace. Indeed it seemed as if the wall in the hallway leading to the vestibule contained empty space…almost as if the house had secret passages.

  “Can I help you with something, miss?”

  Nearly jumping out of my skin, I turned to meet Mrs. Avery’s disapproval with a shaky smile.

  “No, thank you. I was just passing time waiting for Nissa to get herself downstairs for breakfast.”

  As if on cue, footsteps clunked down the nearby staircase. I noted how different, how immediate, this sounded compared to what I’d heard a few minutes before. Totally different from the muffled sounds in the dining room.

  Focusing on Mrs. Avery, I said, “There she is now.”

  “Which has nothing to do with your being in the library,” the housekeeper said, her expression sour.

  I couldn’t help myself. I was tired of being browbeaten when I’d done nothing wrong. “Before you tell me the library is off-limits, Damian has said otherwise.”

  Mrs. Avery sniffed and walked straight-spined to the kitchen. And I couldn’t help but smile at my small victory as I watched her go.

  “Morning, Chloe,” Nissa said, grinning when she saw me.

  The girl’s smile warmed me inside and made me put out of mind the old harridan of a housekeeper.

  What I couldn’t forget were the mysterious noises bothering me with increasing frequency. There was so much going on that I couldn’t explain. Noises…horses that didn’t exist…hands that shoved and cars that threatened….

  So after eating, as we strolled to the gazebo for our morning session—even though it was Saturday, we were going to work for a few hours—I casually asked, “How many staircases does the house have?”