He set the bags down just inside the door then unexpectedly caught her by the shoulders when she passed by him. “Kris. I can’t begin to explain the attraction between us. Just know I don’t take what happened between us lightly. It was incredible. Try and rest and we’ll talk after dinner tonight.”
She set her palm to his cheek. “Thank you for that. I am very confused right now, but your honesty helps. I have to ask you something. Now that you know about my dreams, do you think like your uncle does? That I’m Anya reincarnated?”
JD sighed and kissed her palm before releasing her. He paced across her room then back. “No. I don’t think it’s possible for the mind, body, and soul of one person to be reborn again. But I do believe in the spirit world. I think spirits can be reborn into new lives, but they aren’t the same person as before. I also think spirits can communicate in many ways to living souls.”
After searching his gaze and considering his thoughts, she felt as if a heavy weight lifted from her shoulders. “Will the fact that I’m attracted to you cause your uncle pain? If he thinks I’m Anya, the woman he loved and he finds out that we, uh,—”
“Nearly made love after just meeting?” JD laughed. “No. He knows you are not Anya, but you can bet the wily old fox is up to something. He didn’t leave us each half of the opera house in hopes we’d be platonic business partners. I just never expected to want what he had in mind. Rest for now, okay?” He bent and brushed her lips with his.
“Okay,” she said softly. He closed his eyes and inhaled as if drinking in her very essence, then swung around and marched out the door. She watched him leave, admiring his backside again.
He turned abruptly and she startled. “Kris, do me a favor. Don’t venture out on your own until we sort this out, especially to the opera house. I know that sounds ridiculous, but until I understand, I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
All she could do was nod. He left. She closed her door and surveyed her room again, noting that the bed had been turned down and a fuzzy robe placed upon the soft covers. A glance at her phone showed a returning text from Aleese and that it was now two in the afternoon.
Aleese told her to rock out the weekend and invited her to New York as soon as Krisana could get away. Kris texted a smiley face and then remembered Phineas Cruz. She called him. Thankful to get his voicemail, she left a message saying that she wouldn’t need the room he’d reserved and that she’d let him know tomorrow what time she’d be available to sign the papers.
Martha appeared with an inviting tray in hand and Kris soon found herself having a tasty lunch, as she gazed out at the castle lake and grounds. Everything she’d encountered since coming to Mysteria Falls this morning had been like something out of a fairytale. It was surreal, yet fate to find the place she’d dreamed of for years and encounter a man she wanted with a passion equal to her singing. Still a lot of questions remained, and she didn’t think fairytale answers were in her future.
Jameson left Krisana and dematerialized the second he reached his room. It had been a while since he’d operated as a phantom. With all of his focus on bringing Anya back, his warrior skills felt rusty and too damn soft. But something threatened her and he wasn’t going to soft-shoe the issue. Only one person in Mysteria Falls knew of her coming. Invisible, Jameson free-flighted to Phineas Cruz’s estate and materialized inside the vampire’s lair. The orgy of sex and blood and drugs among the young vampires was nauseating. “Phineas! Where in this hell are you?”
The vampire rose naked from a pile of writhing fanged women who barely looked legal. “Come to join my Valentine’s party?” The vampire’s fangs were covered with blood, and a feral gleam lit his eyes.
“You’re the only one who knows Krisana is here. You followed her. Why?”
Phineas snapped his fingers. The room cleared out and a naked woman brought him a silk robe. She turned to leave, but Phineas grabbed her wrist. “Stay with me. I’ve need.”
The vampire sat at a black marble table, that resembled a sacrificial altar. He pushed the woman to her knees and shoved her under the table. Sucking sounds soon followed and Phineas looked up and smiled. “I was curious this morning. That’s all. With all the delectable flesh at my fingertips, you can’t seriously think I’ve an interest in your pet.”
“That explains the raven, but what about later?”
Phineas frowned and thrust his hips. “What later? I’ve been busy as you can tell. And you’re wrong. Quite a few know you’ve a visitor in town. You really can’t expect for an unattached mortal to show up and be completely ignored. I suggest you speak to Harry over at Blood Moon. I made Krisana a room reservation there this morning. With the art festival this weekend, the rooms will fill up fast. What happened to your darling anyway? You sound as if she’d been attacked and devoured. We’re far too civilized here for that to happen. Consensual is the name of the game, now.” Phineas thrust again.
Jameson left without responding and popped into the pub at the Blood Moon Bed and Breakfast. He and the werewolf owner rarely saw eye-to-eye and avoided one another if possible. Harry wanted to put Mysteria Falls on the map and continually bombarded the town council with expansion proposals, like a paranormal Disneyland for humans. Jameson used his money and power to keep Mysteria Falls as private as possible.
Harry had gone hunting. Jameson didn’t bother asking the werewolf’s mate about Krisana. She appeared to be very territorial. No point in stirring trouble up there. Jameson located Harry in the mountains behind the opera house chasing down an eighteen-point buck. Jameson materialized just before the werewolf could strike.
Harry reared up onto his hind legs, his fangs lashing out in frustration before he shifted into human form. “What in the bloody hell are you doing? Get your aristocratic ass out of my way!”
“Just as soon as I get what I want.”
“Never. You think your money and connections can run this town forever? Change is coming and your old-school life is over.”
“Stay away from Krisana or you’ll spend eternity howling from the Chasm of Torture.”
“Who?”
“She came into town today.”
Harry frowned. “And why would I be interested in your bitch? Lorena would castrate me for even looking.”
The werewolf’s denial had a ring of truth to it, which left Jameson with nothing…or right back where he started, maybe. “You can thank Phineas for the visit.”
“Sly bastard. What did he say?”
Jameson dematerialized. He’d chase this shadow later.
Feeling refreshed, Krisana descended the stairs to meet Lord Daniels in the observatory. She’d bathed and rested since eating, and hoped that she’d soon be able to make sense of everything. In the short time she’d been in Mysteria Falls, her life had been forever altered. There was no going back, and any way forward had yet to be seen. Well, except for one aspect. It wasn’t hard to figure out where her attraction to JD was going.
Now that she wasn’t under the spell of his sex appeal, she had to wonder if she’d lost all perspective of what was real and what was influenced by her dreams. Until she understood how or why she’d had dreams of Anya and James, she might need to just be friends with JD.
She also had to find out what JD stood for. Was his name James as well?
Walking into the observatory was like stepping into a rainforest on a tropical island. Lush plants and tall trees surrounded a heated pool with a cascading waterfall against one end. The enclosing glass dome let the full strength of the sun in, kept the wind and most of the cold out, and gave a full view of the sky and surrounding mountains. Once again, she’d walked into another wonderland.
She saw Lord Daniels sitting in the shadowed recesses of a brightly flowered tree. He’d exchanged his black hooded sweatshirt for a forest green one, and as she drew closer, she saw he wore sunglasses beneath his misting oxygen mask. It was fairly bright; even she had to squint against the late afternoon sun.
He motioned for her to join him.<
br />
“My apologies for abandoning you earlier. I trust you had a good lunch. Martha says that you and JD went to see the opera house. Isn’t it magnificent?”
“No need to apologize. I shouldn’t have intruded on such short notice. But I have to disagree. Magnificent doesn’t come close to describing the craftsmanship and beauty of the place. Are you feeling better?”
Lord Daniels laughed. It sounded like a dry wheeze. “Yes, for now I am.” He leaned back in his wheelchair as if relaxing. “Tell me about your life.”
“But I—”
He held up a shaky hand. “We’ll get to Anya and the opera house soon enough. First, I want to know you. I really do apologize if I made you uncomfortable earlier when I called you Anya. Sometimes the old mind doesn’t want to accept the hand life has dealt me.”
“Nothing to apologize for. I understand. I know who I am; yet, looking at the portrait made me question. I don’t know what to say about myself. I’m a classical singer, but you already know that. There isn’t really anything else to tell, because that’s all I’ve done.”
“Then tell me about that. When did you start singing? What are your favorite operas? Anything about yourself that’s uniquely you.” In response to Lord Daniels’ gentle prompts, the story of her life unfolded. She found herself telling him funny stories about her family.
“My dad always went to the extreme to make me laugh. He’d always say ‘Krissy, you take life much too seriously. Learn to laugh or you’ll never be lucky in love.’”
Krisana’s heart squeezed as she recalled her father’s words. She hadn’t taken time off since her parents’ deaths two years ago to stop, breathe, and reminisce. And maybe even to grieve.
“Wise man,” said Lord Daniels. “What would he do to make you laugh?”
“Anything. We’d be all serious, having just had a lesson from some musical master at a fancy arts center, and my father—in the process of tossing a penny into their very proper fountain—would ‘accidentally’ fall in. Or he’d trip while carrying a chocolate cream pie. I’m not sure how, but he always managed to land with his face right in the middle of it.” Oh, how she missed her parents. She let herself laugh at the memory. It felt good. “Now enough about me. Tell me about Anya and the opera house. How did you meet her?”
Lord Daniels sighed and sat back in his wheelchair. “She was a beautiful person and an amazing singer. There’s a diary of hers you can read sometime. It’s filled with her memories and hopes and dreams. It can tell you better than I about how special she was. I was a lost soul before I met Anya, a man looking for trouble in all of the right dark places. She was an angel living in Hell. I met her on April 15th, 1945. My unit was the first to enter the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. She was a prisoner there, near death herself, but had children huddled around her and was singing to them about beautiful things. In a moment’s time, I fell in love with her. You’d think after experiencing such horror, she would be the needy one. But she was the one who brought life to my spirit, love to my heart, and music to my soul. We built the opera house together. It was her dream and I embraced it as I did her, but I didn’t love it as she did. I loved her.” He laughed and had a coughing spell, but recovered quickly.
“She planned to write new endings to the legends of tragic lovers throughout history. Tristan and Isolde were the first couple for whom she wrote a happy ending. She was eloquent with words and a master at composing angelic music.”
Krisana gasped. “Come Back to Me. She wrote it?”
“Yes,” he rasped. “But she never got to publicly perform it. She died the night before its premiere—”
“How? What happened?” she asked, but she feared she already knew.
“Me,” he said harshly.
Shocked by his words and the devastating pain ravaging his voice, Krisana reached out to touch him.
Lord Daniels pulled back. “Don’t offer me comfort. It was my fault she died. I didn’t listen to her. She begged me not to go to a meeting because she had this strange feeling that something would go wrong. I told her not to worry. That I would be safe. She thought I was the one in danger and I…selfish bastard that I was…never considered she would be harmed. You see, the world was all about me then. There was a fire at the opera house. Anya died in the blaze.”
Krisana sucked in a deep breath. Even though she’d been prepared, she still felt the horror of it. When she had touched the door this morning, she’d somehow felt the fire. And the nightmares of pain and panic that had wakened her during the night for years, had to be Anya’s ghost reaching out. Tears filled Krisana’s eyes.
“And now you are back,” Lord Daniels said softly. “You’ve come back to me.”
Krisana blinked away her tears, and recoiled at the desperation in his voice. He had to have seen her movement because his hands fisted and his breathing rasped harshly.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but…I’m not Anya,” Krisana whispered.
“I know you are not her, but for me, I feel that her spirit lives within you. I hear it in your voice when you sing. I see it in your smile. I feel it in your presence. I can’t tell you how much joy that brings me at this point in my life. That’s one reason I’m giving you half of the opera house, because I know you’ll love the place as Anya did. The other two reasons are, I’d like for you to perform her opera for just me tomorrow night, on Valentine’s Day. It was when she’d planned to sing it. And the last reason was me being a romantic fool. I’d hope you and my nephew would take an interest in each other. He’s like I was at his age, only a much better musician and singer. You’re like Anya and I thought that by giving you both the opera house, you two would make Anya’s dreams come true. So I want you to think about performing Come Back to Me at the opera house tomorrow night, on Valentine’s. Let me know your answer tonight at dinner. It would mean the world to me. JD would accompany you. For years I despaired that he’d waste his talents on rock music, but he’s come along recently.”
“He did the pipe organ justice earlier. I keep forgetting to ask. What does JD stand for?”
“Jack Daniels, but don’t tell him I told you. He’ll shoot me for it.”
Krisana winced.
“Yeah,” he said. “I always thought my brother had poor judgment, God rest his soul.”
The idea of doing a private performance of a dead woman’s opera for her grieving, elderly lover seemed strange, yet it felt like fate.
Lord Daniels set several things on the table before her. One was the Come Back to Me opera score, the others were small books with fire damaged edges—Anya’s diaries. Krisana shivered, feeling as if she already knew what she’d read between the pages because of her dreams.
She picked up the opera score and slid her finger over the hand-written page. Anya had had beautiful handwriting. “I don’t see any reason why I can’t—”
“No dear. I really insist you take a little time to think about it. Read through the opera and let me know at dinner tonight. I don’t want you to feel you’ve been coerced and to really do the opera justice, you’ll have to see and feel for yourself the story Anya was trying to tell. If after going through it you don’t, then I’ll understand.”
Krisana smiled. “All right. I’ll give you my answer tonight.”
“Good. For now I’m going to rest. I feel a storm coming on. My old bones ache. You sit here and enjoy more of the observatory. If you’d like to take a swim or use the hot tub, there are guest suits in the changing rooms and Martha can get you anything else you need.”
He backed his wheelchair from the table and motored adeptly out of the observatory. She eyed the hot tub. A steamy soak was an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Chapter Five
Krisana leaned back in the bubbling water and shut her eyes against the warm sun turning the tropical observatory into a toasty oasis. It was all so perfect. She had to wonder if it was all a dream. That she’d soon wake and find herself alone in her Georgetown apartment with all of this gone, leavin
g her with no answers to her plaguing dreams…and no JD. The sense of disappointment that hit her with that musing told her just how attached she’d already become to both men and Anya’s tragic story. Performing Come Back to Me with heart wasn’t going to be a problem.
Something cut the sun from her face and she snapped her eyes open, afraid the dark shadow from earlier had returned. She found JD standing in front of her with motorcycle helmet in hand. He still wore his torn pants, black shirt, and leather jacket. He was back from his errand and looked more dangerous than ever.
“The old man says he asked you to sing tomorrow. I told him he should have waited. He’s pushing you to his agenda.”
She sat up, conscious of the way JD’s gaze dipped to the plunging V of her swimsuit. She thought the one-piece a better choice than the string bikini, but the way it pushed up her breasts was just as inviting. Rather than dip back into the steamy water or bring her arm up to cover herself, Krisana rolled her shoulders back. She wanted JD to find her irresistible. “He’s fine. If I can bring him a few moments of happiness by singing, then it’s worth it.”
“Then you’re going to do it?”
“I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t.”
JD laughed. “You don’t know how he operates. One song tomorrow, then he’ll want other people to hear Anya’s opera—a matinee for the townspeople perhaps. The next thing you know, you’ll be performing it across the country. Little by little, he will lure you to his way.”
She rolled her eyes. “We’ll see. I am not a complete pushover to another person’s whims, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
JD put his helmet on the hot tub’s ledge, went to one knee, and leaned down. His mouth was inches from hers. The heat in his gaze was steamier than the tub. “What about me? Am I a bad thing? Or can I lure you little by little to my way, too?”
Krisana grabbed his jacket lapels and pulled his mouth down to hers. He groaned, his tongue delving into her mouth as he slid his hand to the back of her neck. One second they were on fire, kissing hard, and the next he lost his balance. He fell on top of her, his hard body pressing her against her. Rather than cooling their kiss, their passion caught fire. A frenzy of searching hands and urging touches had him shedding his jacket and shirt. He lifted her from the water and set her on the tub’s edge, then slid between her legs. He still wore his jeans and boots and the medieval cross at his throat, but the rest of him was gloriously bare. Krisana couldn’t get enough of him—of kissing him or touching him. His broad shoulders, sculpted chest, and rippling abs were toned, hot, and capable. She relished exploring the silk of his hair, the scruff on his shadowed jaw, and feeling the power that rippled with his every move. JD wasn’t just handsome and sexy. He was charismatic. She could feel him deep inside her just by looking at him…or him looking at her as he was doing at that moment.
Tales From Mysteria Falls Page 4
