In the Midnight Hour

by Kimberly Raye

  The cold remedy. That’s why she was feeling the sudden urge to break into a pile of weepy tears and curl up in his arms.

  “What are you thinking?”

  She sniffled. “About my father.”

  “Tell me about him, chérie.”

  And she did. She wasn’t sure why. She rarely talked about her father with anyone, including Jenny. But Val was different. He understood. A kindred spirit.

  The cold remedy, she reminded herself. Drugs.

  She grasped on to the last explanation and told him about growing up in a traditionalist household, the strict rules forced on her, the way she’d always felt less of a person because she’d been so limited by her father’s old-fashioned view of women. She went on to tell him about her few and far-between dates in high school, nice clean-cut boys handpicked by her father, and about her engagement to Raymond.

  “I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face when the minister asked if I would take Raymond and I said no.” She closed her eyes. She could still see her father’s shocked expression. His anger. His disappointment. All carefully concealed beneath a stern expression as he’d led her to the minister’s chambers. She’d tried to explain her feelings, to make him understand, but he’d been too angry. Too set in his beliefs. And then he’d said the final words that had severed their relationship completely.

  “If you walk out of here, you’re no daughter of mine, Veronica Parrish. You’re no daughter of mine?”

  “So I walked away,” she finished. “Because I didn’t love Raymond, because my father didn’t understand that, and most of all, because he didn’t care. He wanted me to marry Raymond regardless.”

  “Marry a man you did not love?” Val muttered a few colorful phrases in French. “Non, you could not do such a thing.”

  “I know. But I’ve always wondered maybe, just maybe, if I’d made one final plea for my father’s understanding, he might have taken his words back and maybe things would have turned out differently.”

  “Maybe,” Val conceded. “And maybe not.”

  She sniffled. “Probably not. All the crying and begging I did in the first place didn’t do anything but harden his resolve and prove him right. That women are ruled by emotion and men aren’t.”

  “I could argue that one with you, chérie. I have been known to act on pure emotion a time or two.” His comment coaxed a smile from her.

  “Try three hundred and sixty-nine times—and that wasn’t emotion, Valentine Tremaine. It was hormones.” Her smiled faded. “I’m talking about the essence of who we are. My father believes that women think with their hearts, while men think with their heads.”

  “Perhaps he is right, to a certain extent. But I think the happiest person is the one who can acknowledge both. Who isn’t afraid to act on his feelings, yet keeps his head when the situation calls for it.”

  “Like the ghost of a legendary lover who offers to give love lessons, but refuses any hands-on?”

  “The generous but smart thing to do,” he said, a stern frown creasing his face.

  “Says you.” She leaned back and closed her eyes as a lengthy silence settled around them.

  “You did do the right thing,” he finally said, his words quiet, heartfelt, comforting.

  Her kindred spirit.

  Spirit being the operative word, she reminded herself, fighting against the pull she felt toward Val. Something that went deeper than just physical lust Deeper …

  Just a ghost and he wasn’t hers. He was linked to the bed.

  Her bed.

  Okay, so technically, he was hers.

  The thought pleased her a lot more than it should have.

  She stifled another yawn, fought back the strange lethargy creeping through her, and fixed her gaze on her book bag, anything to distract her from the man sitting at her bedside.

  “Why don’t you hand me my schoolbooks? If I have to be in bed, I really should make the most of my time.”

  “You need to sleep.”

  “I’ve been sleeping.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “I’m starting to feel better.” Her throat didn’t burn as fiercely and her head … the throbbing had faded to a faint tick and only when she opened her eyes really, really wide.

  With them at half-mast, she felt all right.

  “You’ve only been resting a few hours,” Val pointed out.

  “Twenty-four.” She yawned again, her eyelids inching a little closer to shut out the light glowing on the nightstand. There, that was better. Not so bright. “They haven’t made the cold that can beat this girl down. I’m like the Energizer bunny. I keep going and going and … going …” The words faded as her muscles relaxed and the warmth of the bed lulled her.

  Or maybe it was Val’s presence so close beside her, his fingertips brushing back the hair from her forehead, his deep, rumbling voice telling her about a mischievous little boy and his pet frog who wreaked havoc on five older sisters.

  Either way, her eyes closed and she fell into a deep, restful sleep.

  The best Ronnie Parrish had had in a long, long time because for the first time, she’d voiced aloud the fear that haunted her in the dead of night. The regret. And now she’d found peace.

  Ronnie opened her eyes as the first rays of sunlight crept past the drapes. A quick glance at the clock and she smiled. She felt loads better and it was still early in the morning. Plenty of time for what she had in mind.

  After showering and changing clothes, she ate a bowl of cereal and two slices of toast and drank juice, coffee, and two diet sodas. The food fed her depleted energy and the caffeine rush had her feeling fairly close to normal. Ready for a morning of research in Val’s hometown. She had just enough time to make the two-and-a-half-hour drive, do some research, and head back to Lafayette in time for lunch with Jenny, then her afternoon shift at the library.

  And if she was a little late …

  She could make up the time later. She owed Val for nursing her back to health, for listening, for caring.

  She forced the thought aside and concentrated on clearing away her breakfast dishes. She’d just turned to search for her book bag when her gaze fell to the bed.

  A sliver of light worked its way past the drapes, hitting the white sheets at just the right angle to outline a shape on the bed. A faint, iridescent shadow of a man.

  Val.

  He was gloriously nude. A perfect male specimen. A prime opportunity for her to familiarize herself with the male body.

  Sort of. He was see-through, after all, but with the light falling at such an angle, she could see every inch of him, from the glorious mane of hair on his head to his large feet tipped with long, tanned toes.

  It wasn’t Madame X’s thirst for knowledge that drew her forward, however. It was her own sudden need to touch, to run her hands across his broad chest and feel the whisper-soft hair beneath her hands, the tightening of muscles, the strength.

  She touched the shadow that was his shoulder. She didn’t feel warm flesh as she had the first night he’d appeared to her, rather a vibrating heat that prickled her skin and pulsed from her fingertips through her body, skimming nerves and stirring them to life until she fairly vibrated herself. Ached. Burned.

  As fiercely as the shadow at her fingertips.

  He didn’t open his eyes, but she knew he felt her touch. His muscles contracted, rippled, his lips parted on a gasp and her exploration grew more bold. She feathered fingertips over his hair-dusted abdomen and lower, to the cluster of silky hair surrounding the prominent shadow of his erection.

  Erection?

  Bold and beautiful, his penis jutted tall, twitching as she drew closer. So close. Heat burned her cheeks, but greater than her embarrassment was the sudden need to feel all of him.

  Her fingers trailed the length of the satin-covered steel. A gasp broke from his lips and he arched, unconsciously begging for more. Lost in the moment, in the strange sensations coursing through her, she closed her eyes and wrapped her ha
nd around him. He was so hard and hot and … alive.

  But he wasn’t.

  The realization rocked her. Her eyes flew open and she snatched her hand away. He was a ghost and she was definitely losing her mind. Leftover fever madness. She felt fine, but the fever had fried a few major brain cells.

  Her gaze stalled on him again, lingering on his face—his strong jaw, regal nose, sensuous lips that would have been a tad too large on most men, but on Val they simply added to his allure. For the first time, she noticed the faint hint of a scar near his temple, the small bump on the bridge of his nose, the three-inch-long, paper-thin scar going from just below his navel to his groin area. Imperfections. He certainly wasn’t GQ handsome, though he did have the sort of hard, muscular body any underwear model would have killed for. His appeal really had little to do with his looks. There was just something about him. A confidence that glittered in his eyes and whispered that he knew all her secrets, that he wanted to know. A magnetism that made her look when she wanted nothing more than to look away. A charisma that drew her …

  Of course he had charisma. That was probably standard issue for ghosts these days, and Ronnie wasn’t falling for him. It. A ghost.

  No way.

  What she felt for Val was pure lust. Physical. Heat of the moment. Temporary.

  Fragments of last night rushed at her, the strong hands bathing her face, the deep voice soothing her, the care and comfort that had felt so good, the understanding that had eased years of hurt.

  She cradled his cheek, felt the warmth of his energy, and whispered, “Thank you.” And then she turned away, but not before she saw the faint hint of a smile at his lips.

  She did a double take, but the expression had disappeared, leaving her to wonder if she’d just imagined it.

  Probably. Her imagination had been working overtime lately. Especially the night before last, when she’d imagined Danny’s visit, him carrying her to bed, his kiss scrambling her senses. Right.

  A hallucination brought on by the fever. She’d already proved beyond a doubt with that kiss in the lounge, a blah non-toe-curling kiss, that there were no sparks between them.

  Nada. Zip.

  She drew the drapes tight and hurried about, straightening up and checking to make sure all the burners on the stove were off and the toaster unplugged—

  Her gaze snagged on a folded newspaper stuffed next to her TV, and her stomach did a somersault She knew, even before she picked up the paper and scanned the front page, what she would see.

  A crude sketch of the Dupré Library’s notorious kissing bandit stared back at her, right above the article she’d read two nights ago with Danny hanging over her shoulder.

  He’d been real, here, and he’d kissed her, and she’d liked it. Again.

  To make matters worse, she was a wanted woman.

  Ugh.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I’m looking for Harvey Moulet.” Ronnie stood at the circulation desk of Heaven’s Gate’s only library. “The lady over at the courthouse said I’d find him here.”

  “That would be Lucy. She knows everything about everybody, including where they have their lunch and what they eat. I’m having tuna on white.” He sat behind the desk and held up a sandwich.

  She grinned, remembering Lucy’s spiel about Harvey’s eating habits. “Then you’re the man I’m looking for.”

  “And you are?”

  “Veronica Parrish. I’m a student at USL and I’m doing a little research into a family tree.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t recall any Parrishes in this area.”

  “Not my family tree. A friend of mine. He’s busy and I offered to help him out. We’ve managed to trace all the way back to a particular woman. We found a birth certificate on her which lists her mother, but no father.” She pulled out Emma’s photocopied birth certificate and showed him.

  “What about a marriage certificate? Did this—” he glanced down “—Emma get married? She might have listed her father on the marriage certificate.”

  “I checked at the archives building in Baton Rouge, but I didn’t find one.”

  “That doesn’t mean she didn’t get married. Orleans Parish was one of the first in Louisiana to keep records, but it was something done on a voluntary basis and usually among the elite. There were births and deaths and marriages that were never recorded other than in personal diaries, Bibles, and the like.”

  “So how do I find her?”

  “Let me see,” he murmured, his gaze still studying the document. “She was born in 1849.” He tugged off his glasses and looked up at her. “I’m working on a personal history of the Warren family which begins around this period. I’m doing the research, so I might as well keep an eye out for your Emma.”

  “I’d really appreciate that, because I’m really desperate to find something on her.”

  “I’m sure I’ll turn something up.” He grinned. “There isn’t a person who’s been born in the past two hundred years in Heaven’s Gate that I can’t find. My father was a historian and his grandfather before him, and they accumulated a massive collection of articles and documents and journals. Thanks to their hard work and a bit of my own, I was able to write this.” He produced a book entitled, Heaven’s Gate: The Early Years.

  She gave him an apologetic glance. “Can’t say as I’ve read it.”

  He grinned and reshelved the book. “It didn’t exactly hit the Times. Give me a few days and I’ll see what I can find out about your Emma Wilbur. So who’s your friend tracing the tree?”

  “His name is Tremaine. Va—Vince,” she finished. “His family was originally from here.”

  “The Heaven’s Gate Tremaines,” Moulet supplied, pointing at one of the numerous paintings lining the wall. A huge plantation house surrounded by enormous, moss-draped trees. “The town rose up around their place, the biggest plantation in all of southeastern Louisiana up until the Civil War. Fell to ruin after that.”

  “Is there anything left of it?”

  “Just a stretch of the prettiest country you’ve ever seen. Want to take a look? I’m knee-deep in work and I’ve got a field trip coming through here from the local elementary school in about a half hour, but I could draw you a map.”

  No. She had to be at the library in five hours and the drive would take half of that. Then there was her lunch date with Jenny.

  “That would be great.”

  They exchanged phone numbers and Harvey promised to call the minute he uncovered anything helpful. Ronnie followed the map and drove the main road out of town. She turned off about three miles out, and followed a winding dirt road a quarter of a mile, as the map specified. The original town had been built around Heaven’s Gate, but time and change had moved the hub farther west, leaving the original stretch near the outskirts.

  A few more winding turns and she stopped. She found herself surrounded by huge oak trees covered in Spanish moss, stretches of green, green grass, and a feeling of peace unlike anything she’d ever felt before.

  Beautiful. Heaven on earth. She smiled and walked around. In her mind’s eye, she visualized the house from the painting, surrounded by trees. She tried to picture Val, running here and there, but she couldn’t. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him, but he was in bed. Her bed. His bed. Their bed.

  Now where had that come from?

  She walked around, spotted a few squirrels, and then gave up. She was heading back to her car when she smelled it.

  Him.

  Her gaze darted around but she saw only trees and the shimmering fog of Louisiana heat. She sniffed, and there it was. So clear and coaxing, teasing her nostrils and drawing her forward, through a cluster of trees. A few steps and she reached a clearing, and the source of the delicious smell.

  A shimmering, sparkling river. The sharp scent of freshwater tinged with the smell of apples filled her nostrils. While apple season had come and gone, a few pieces of fruit littered the ground from some nearby trees, the smell faint but detectab
le.

  Him.

  She stood on the river bank and closed her eyes, and then it came. Crystal clear images. Val as a small boy, swinging from the trees, diving into the river, sitting on the bank with a pet frog. The vivid pictures flooded her mind, drifting so clear and easy through her head. A little boy. Then a teenager. Then a grown man stretched out on the bank, staring at a full moon overhead. Worrying and wondering. Sad.

  The last image stayed with her all the way back to Lafayette and through her monthly lunch date with Jenny, no matter how she tried to push it aside and pretend that Val had never been anything more than he was right now.

  “So tell me all about this man,” Jenny said after they’d ordered lasagna and extra breadsticks at a small Italian restaurant near campus.

  “He isn’t exactly a man.”

  Jenny stopped in mid chew. “Maybe it’s just my hearing. With two toddlers, I’m not used to all this quiet. Did you say, not exactly a man?”

  “He’s a … Well, he’s a …”

  “Don’t say it, honey. He’s a she. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve been living like a nun.”

  “Of course not. He’s definitely all he, he’s just … Well.” She drew in a deep breath. “He’s … uh, sort of different.”

  “As in, he’s not the same color as you?”

  “No.”

  “He’s not the same religion?”

  “No. He’s … not exactly real. You see, he’s the subject of my project for Guidry’s class.” Veronica knew she’d sunk to an all-time low by lying to Jenny, but how could she tell her friend, even her best friend, that her bed was haunted by the ghost of a legendary lover. Jenny would chalk that up to desperate hormones for sure, and be twice as worried.

  “But I thought …”

  “I know he sounded real when I told you about him, but I’m really getting into this project and sometimes I get a little carried away.”