“I don’t think it’s his temper he doubts,” Chrissy said ruefully, and when Izzy looked at her still uncomprehending, she added, “Izzy, he grew up among criminals and thugs. He was only twenty-one when he went inside. He’s got no real idea how to deal with what the world regards as normal people—and he knows it.”
Glenn had been looking forward to the departure of the TV people, followed by an evening’s fun in Oban where no one knew who or what they were. Now he had to get Thursday evening over first. Not that he objected in principle to interaction with the village. But he’d caught enough manly glowers down there to be uneasy. In prison, you had to be a hard man to survive, but he didn’t want anyone here trying to test that—to the extent that he actually had Dougie and Archie practice running him out the door without actually hitting him.
Chrissy decided against any obvious attempts at selling, settling for a display in the hall that included some of Charlie’s pictures, the jewellery and Rab’s rather beautiful carved coffee table, on which she’d laid out printed cards advertising the skills and services offered, or about to be offered, at the house.
It certainly impressed the television crew, some of whom actually shelled out money on the jewellery. Fiona Marr herself seemed really taken with one of the paintings. Chrissy buttonholed her, and Glenn turned away with a half-smile. She’d have sold it before the evening was done.
He wandered back into the sitting room where they’d set up for the jazz band in one corner. The music playing now was from a CD—one of his own compositions. Jeremy Danehurst, the producer, and a couple of the techie guys were lounging around drinking wine. Glenn glanced toward the window and saw that a car had arrived. From the village. And out of it spilled three women, a man, and a child.
Glenn’s heart almost stopped. It was Izzy and her kid. He knew, because Chrissy had told him that she didn’t want to bring him up here while she was working. Surely something had changed…despite his jumping her bones.
One of the other women was the girl he’d first seen Izzy with. The other was the librarian. He’d no idea about the man who’d been driving. He was late thirties, early forties, probably, distinguished in a casual kind of way—a professional type. He looked amiable enough, although Glenn didn’t care for the proprietorial way he shepherded Izzy toward the door, not quite touching her, but definitely paying her more attention than he did the other two females.
Fuck, was this Izzy’s boyfriend? How had that escaped Dougie’s radar?
Because Dougie wasn’t one of them.
Glenn turned away, barely aware of the other car approaching from the drive. He’d no right and no reason to resent the man, who, in fact, had every cause to punch Glenn’s lights out. He made no difference to Glenn’s chances. Which didn’t stop Glenn being tormented by the memory of her yielding body in his arms, the passion of her mouth under his. She had been kissing him back—a momentary aberration that haunted him. He dreamed of her now when he was actually asleep, as well as odd flashes of the waking dream. There were actual instants when his whole being ached with hope, before reality set in. It wasn’t even that Izzy thought she was too good for him. It was that Glenn knew she was, and nothing could ever change that.
And yet if that was true, if whatever he did now made no difference to his life, to who he was, then what had been the point of prison? What was the point of Ardknocken House and the whole project?
And this was so not the time to be thinking of these things.
Not when he could hear Dougie’s cheerful greeting, “Haw, Izzy! This your wee lad?”
And the said wee lad’s feet galloping across the hall floor, his excited voice calling, “Wow! This house is huge! Look, Mum, necklaces! You should get one for your birthday.”
Drawn in spite of himself, Glenn gravitated to the doorway and leaned there, watching while Chrissy finally released Fiona to grin at Izzy and then at the spinning child in the middle of the hall. “Hello! You must be Jack. I’m Chrissy.”
“Hi Chrissy.” Jack whirled to a halt and grinned up at her. “Do you live here?”
“Yes, I do, along with some other people. Glad you came, Izzy.”
“Couldn’t not,” Izzy said. “Blazing a trail! Do you know Morag and Louise and Harry?”
“I know Morag from the library. Nice to see you here, guys. Can I get you a glass of wine? A beer?”
The librarian was talking to Jack in a stage whisper. “See that lady looking at the painting? She’s on the TV. Sorry,” she added with a quick smile at Fiona when the presenter turned graciously to be introduced.
Glenn turned back into the sitting room. Intrigued as he was to see Izzy among her group of friends, to glimpse this window onto her real life, it made him feel more than ever isolated. Like he was Jack’s age again, ignored and unloved and desperate to belong, even to the monster who was his father.
Fuck that.
Jack spilled into the room, his wildly searching gaze at once alighting on Glenn. His face split into a grin of recognition. “Hiya!” he cried, running to meet him.
“Hello,” Glenn replied, slightly stunned by the boy’s enthusiasm.
“Jack!” Izzy caught her son by one shoulder, holding him still. “Stop running, or you’ll bump into something. Or someone.”
“He’s all right,” Glenn said. He nodded toward the musical instruments in the corner. “You can play with those if you want.”
“Really?” Jack exclaimed and raced off again.
“You sure about that?” Izzy asked, raising one quizzical eyebrow.
“If they survive us, they’ll survive a small boy.”
“Wouldn’t be too sure of that,” the librarian murmured as she and the rest of Izzy’s little group joined them.
Izzy immediately introduced them. Colour had seeped into her face, betraying her discomfort, especially, perhaps, when she finished with, “This is Glenn.” Surely there was just a hint of defiance in her voice as she gave his first name and only his first name, although it wasn’t clear to Glenn exactly who she imagined she was defying.
The bloke, perhaps, Harry, who politely offered his hand. Glenn took it, looking the other man in the eye. Oh no, polite or not, Harry didn’t like him. Suspicion, even warning lurked in those mild, professionally social eyes. His smile was just a little too rigid, his handshake deliberately too firm. Stupid game to play with the man he clearly thought Glenn to be. He’d no way of knowing that, even at his worst, Glenn had never risen to such trivial challenges. But he knew several who did. One or two of them were in the house.
“Hope you don’t mind us all turning up,” Harry said when Glenn dropped his hand. “Izzy assured us everyone was invited, so we just came straight up here.”
By which, presumably, he was meant to understand that they’d all been together anyhow. The deliberate emphasis on “us” and “we” as he indicated himself and Izzy, deliberately excluding the other two women, was laughable. Did he really imagine he was warning Glenn off? If she’d wanted Glenn, nothing and no one could have kept him from her, certainly not this self-important stuffed shirt.
“Nice to see the old place again,” Harry added when Glenn didn’t speak. Of course, he was showing off to Izzy, largely. Discounting Glenn and his band of ex-cons as socially unimportant.
“You remember it before?” Glenn said.
“Oh, we all came for a neb when it first went on the market,” Morag the librarian said wryly, and a frown of annoyance flickered across Harry’s brow. “But that was ten years ago. Hats off to you for dealing with all that neglect.”
“I see they even finished the driveway,” Izzy added. “Well within the two-year schedule.” It was a deliberate joke, one he shared only with her. Subtly, her discomfort had changed. It wasn’t Glenn who bothered her now; it was Harry.
The knowledge allowed a smile to tug at his lips as he met her gaze. “Glass of wine?
” he offered. “Beer?”
“No, thanks,” Harry said. “I’m driving.”
“I’d love one,” Izzy said firmly, following Glenn across to the table where refreshments were set out. “And look, Harry, there’s lemonade for you and Jack.”
“All right, Izzy?” Jim said, depositing a fresh apple pie on the table.
“Mmm,” Izzy said appreciatively, inhaling. Jim grinned, nodded in friendly fashion to the others and shot off back to his kitchen.
One of the cameramen struck up a conversation with Louise, which managed to draw in others, and Glenn picked up some lemonade before strolling across the now busy room to the instruments. Jack was running his small fingers up and down the keyboard and frowning at the silence.
“You need to switch it on,” Glenn said, showing him the switch.
“Ah!” With delight, he switched it on and swept both hands across the keys. Glenn turned down the volume, and the boy laughed in perfect understanding. Glenn winked and put his lemonade on the side before leaving him to it.
The evening could be counted as a success. The village had hardly turned out in droves, but a few of them had come up and none of them had picked a fight. Several of the business cards vanished, several of the locals spoke to Chrissy, and even to Glenn, and Fiona Marr was both charming and gracious. The cameraman flirted with Izzy’s friend Louise and when Jack was dislodged from the keyboard, the jazz band seemed to go down well too. Which boded well for tomorrow in Oban.
In fact, as their guests, locals and TV, began to drift off again, Glenn’s spirits had lifted to the extent that he gave in to Jack’s pleading and showed him how to play an amusingly jazzed-up version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on the keyboard. And when Izzy came up to be impressed, he took the crumpled photocopy from his pocket and handed it to her.
She glanced up at him. “What’s this?”
“Copy of the letter about the ghost. In case you want to work it out.”
A faint frown flickered and faded, leaving her dark eyes bright with interest. She lifted her hand and took the paper from him. “Thanks.”
Quit when you’re ahead, Brody. He walked away.
The ghost.
With the copy of the letter in her hand, Izzy watched Glenn walk away from her to Fiona Marr and Charlie, who was carrying one of his pictures under his arm. Fiona seemed to have bought it, which softened Izzy’s feelings toward her—until the woman smiled up at Glenn with unmistakable invitation in her eyes, and a sudden surge of totally inappropriate jealousy clawed at Izzy’s stomach, forcing her to turn away.
For a man who couldn’t socialize with normal people, according to Chrissy, he wasn’t doing so badly.
Ashamed of her ill-nature, she said, “One minute, Jack, okay?”
“Two?” suggested Jack, a born negotiator.
“One.”
In the hall, Harry was talking to Jeremy the producer, with Louise and the cameraman in the background. Morag was running her hand along the carved coffee table, while its creator, Rab, watched her with a polite but not unadmiring smile. Izzy caught Morag’s eye and jerked her head toward the sitting room and Jack. Morag got it at once and nodded.
Izzy ran lightly upstairs and across the landing until she stood outside the library door. It was in darkness, but by the hall light she could see that all the television equipment had gone. Reaching up, she switched on the light and went in, smoothing out the copied letter in her hands.
She walked toward the place she’d stood when she’d imagined the ghost, and gazed all around the room before coming to rest on the bookcase in front of which she’d seen…something. Something more than the blob apparently recorded by the TV cameras. How had they done that?
Or had they?
Her fingers tightened on the paper. “Mary MacLeod,” she murmured. “Were you really Mary MacLeod? Or just sheer trickery…”
Stupid. If she’d wanted to know how they’d done it, she should have been poking around in here when the equipment was still up and running. Now she just had a room full of books, redolent with age and pleasing, musty smells.
And Jack’s minute was up. Laughing at herself, she moved toward the door. Without warning, a shiver ran down her spine, and the light flickered and went out. With a gasp, she hurled herself at the doorway and straight into a something warm and solid.
The hard body of Glenn Brody.
Eyes closing with relief, she clutched at his sweater. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d been afraid of, but all sense of fear seemed to vanish when his arm closed around her, steadying her. After an instant, she opened her eyes to find him frowning down at her. “Izzy? Are you all right?”
“Did you put the light out?” she demanded.
“Yes. I didn’t know you were in here.”
With fresh relief came full awareness of his closeness, of his arm at her back, and yet there was nothing amorous about it. She tried to laugh at herself, although it came out just a little shakily. “I just thought I’d see if she—Mary—spoke to me now the TV equipment’s gone. Only I scared myself, and then the light flickered.”
“I saw that. Just before I switched it off.” He shrugged. “It does that sometimes.”
Heat radiated from his body. Maybe it was the memory of its naked weight upon her, but her own reacted without permission. He was a big and very physical man, and right now two layers of clothing were all that separated them. Dampness between her thighs acknowledged it. She was very aware of her sensitive breasts just touching his chest, of the graze of his hip against hers. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
And then he blinked, and his arm and his gaze fell away from her. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Didn’t mean to plunge you into darkness. See you tomorrow.” And he backed off, striding—almost running—along the hall and down the stairs. Just like the first time they’d met, he seemed flustered, and just like then, she had the impression it wasn’t his normal reaction.
Following him more slowly, she felt a smile begin to play around her lips, because maybe, just maybe she did actually have an effect on him. Maybe she was different after all. Even then, she knew she shouldn’t be so damned pleased about it.
When all the visitors had finally left, and everyone else had gone to their own rooms, Glenn made himself a cup of coffee and, mug in hand, wandered the house as he sometimes did.
Perhaps inevitably, he ended up in the library doorway, where he’d last encountered Izzy. She’d been undeniably freaked—for the second time in this room. Glenn had always sneered at tales of the paranormal. He preferred to deal with hard facts and incontrovertible truths, and so he’d rubbished his own dreams, even when his mother had told him they made him special. She’d said it while she was still his mother too, before her brain had turned to mush, but Glenn hadn’t liked the dreams. He’d refused to think about them. Until he’d seen Tommy’s body in one, and the idea had come to him. Even then, the habit of ignoring or disparaging them died hard. Until he’d dreamed of Izzy. And never in his wildest fantasies were those dreams coming true.
And yet she hadn’t pushed him away tonight. She’d clutched him like a saviour when he’d startled her by putting the lights out. And it had been sweet to hold her again, hard to let her go. Worse, it tormented him with hope of her, when he knew in his heart there was none.
He walked farther into the room without switching on the light and sat cross-legged on the floor, his back against one of the tall bookcases.
“What did you see in here?” he murmured. “What is there about this place…?” Maybe it was time he let down the wall of scepticism he’d built up so deliberately. After all, the dreams might not be incontrovertible truth all the time, but they meant something. Tommy’s body had meant something. Ten years, to be precise. And if his dreams meant something, maybe so did whatever Izzy saw or heard in here. It hadn’t been a trick. He’d been there when
the crew had found the footage of Izzy and the “blob”, and their reaction had been genuine.
“Speak to me, Mary Ross,” he murmured, in sardonic imitation of the medium who’d claimed to communicate with their ghost as part of the programme. “What’s on your mind?”
He didn’t really expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. But while he just sat and absorbed the chill and the familiar, musty, peaceful atmosphere, and realized all over again how much he liked this house, the room tilted and vanished.
He was in another room altogether. A bare wooden floor, Izzy standing before him in what looked like a pale, simple nightdress, which he tore from her body in one shocking, violent motion. He seized her hands, pushing her back against a bare, stone wall, and binding them roughly to a hook above both their heads. He couldn’t see the hook. It seemed to be a familiar act he could perform without looking.
Glenn, trapped in horror, felt sick to his stomach.
He seized her nape in one hand, his cock in the other, and pushed himself inside her. Izzy, totally naked and mind-numbingly beautiful, smiled at him.
For an instant, as the rushing relief numbed him, Glenn was quite unaware of any sexual pleasure, just took in the facts that she was wet for him, that she smiled as he took her. This wasn’t rape. This was bondage play. Thank God.
But as usual, he didn’t get long to enjoy it. He thrust into her once, twice, began to lose himself in the pleasure—and found himself staring through darkness at shadowy tables and bookcases.
In frustration, Glenn threw his head back, digging it into the books behind. His rigid cock felt as if it would explode. Bondage and Izzy. There was something he hadn’t thought of before. Not that he was a stranger to it. Suzy Grant had liked him to tie her up, as part of all sorts of weird and wonderful role-play his twenty-one-year-old self had been more than happy to oblige her in. In fact, although it had never impeded his sexual performance so far as he could remember, he’d found it all quite funny.
This wasn’t funny. This was torment. He didn’t want to tie Izzy Ross up. He just wanted her to smile at him like that, like she wanted him, like she enjoyed him.
In His Wildest Dreams Page 9