Phantom Lover

by Rebecca York

  It was tempting to simply drift, wrapped in his comfort and care. But finally she roused herself. “Tell me who you are,” she said.

  As before, he didn’t speak.

  She had been feeling calm and protected, but suddenly a flare of anger overtook her.

  “Are you Troy? Answer me, damn you! What kind of games are you playing with me?” As she spoke, she angled her head up, trying to see him in the blackness. But she was just as frustrated as she had been in the bedroom. Without the flashlight, the tunnel was like the inside of a whale’s belly.

  He took advantage of her upturned face and open lips. Instead of speaking, he brought his mouth down on hers in a kiss that took her by surprise.

  There was a charged moment when she tried to tell him what she thought of his evasive maneuvers. But he didn’t give her the opportunity. Instead he took her by storm, his lips demanding, insisting, commanding as his hands clamped over her shoulders, holding her to him.

  She might have tried to pull away, except that below the surface of his assault, she sensed a need that tugged at her with a desperation that made her heart turn over.

  Without giving herself time to consider the wisdom of her actions, she allowed her lips to soften against his. It was only the barest signal of surrender, but he reacted immediately.

  The kiss changed from a ravishment to a meeting of two equal forces. On a sigh, she gave herself over to it, experimenting with the sensations he was generating within her, rubbing her mouth back and forth against his, then taking his lower lip between her teeth the way he’d done in the bedroom, staking a claim on his flesh.

  It was then that she heard a deep, throaty sound well in him. The sound was the first he had made since he’d come to her in the bedroom, one part of her mind realized. That thought fled as he took back dominance of the kiss, angling his head, moving his lips against hers, sipping from her, inciting her, then soothing with masterful control.

  She heard wind roaring in her ears, a cyclone brewing. Somehow he was the only safe refuge. She felt fire sweep her up, fire that came from him and kindled a roar of heat in her belly.

  The kiss tasted of dark needs and the wild heather clinging to the cliffs.

  When he silently asked her to open her mouth, she did his bidding, then shivered as his tongue swept along the sensitive tissue of her lips.

  She felt his hunger, felt her own hunger leap up to match his. He pressed her back so that she was trapped between the rock wall and the solid barrier of his body.

  The cold stone might have chilled her if the heat of his body hadn’t seeped into her flesh and bone. It was like being caught in the blast from an open furnace. And she might burn to a cinder if she wasn’t careful. That thought brought back a measure of sanity.

  It took a tremendous act of will, but she managed to raise her hands, pushing gently against his chest. “Don’t. We have to talk. You were in my room. Then you came here—and saved me from that pit.”

  In the dark, the air stirred, and she thought he had nodded again. But he didn’t volunteer any words of agreement.

  The silence made her boil with frustration and she grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Dammit, I don’t even know if you’re Troy! I think you must be Troy. But it’s been so long.” The wistful sound of her own voice made her stop and drag in a calming breath. Slowly, deliberately, she let it ease out again. “Every time I try to have a conversation with you, you kiss me. What’s wrong with you? Have you lost the ability to talk?”

  Her heart thumped in her chest as she waited for an answer, half afraid that it was actually true—that somehow he’d been struck mute.

  “I can speak to you,” he said, sounding surprised and relieved, as though he’d just discovered that he possessed the ability.

  “Thank God!” she breathed. “Helen is worried about you. She said she got e-mails from you that sounded strange.”

  “She got e-mails from me?”

  “Yes!” Her hands tightened on his arms. “Troy, what happened to you? What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer the question. Instead he said very clearly and distinctly, “I didn’t send her any e-mails. She’s lying.”

  Chapter Four

  “Helen is lying? About what?” she demanded, her fingers digging into the tense muscles of Troy’s arms. If it was Troy. She didn’t even know the answer to that question yet. Not for sure.

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as though the topic made him uncomfortable.

  “Please. You can’t just come out with a statement like that. You have to tell me what you mean.”

  When he remained silent, she struggled to contain her frustration and she heard the strident note in her own voice when she said, “Helen sent me to find out what’s wrong at Ravencrest. What’s wrong with you!”

  “She sent you?” he asked, surprise gathering in his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Helen wouldn’t do that. She…” He didn’t finish the sentence, simply let it trail off, as though he had forgotten what he intended to say. Or thought better of giving any more away.

  She had gone beyond frustration to simmering anger. “Troy, I was sleeping in my bed when you came waltzing into my room in the middle of the night and started kissing me. You can’t do that, then act like we have nothing to talk about.”

  “Why not?” he asked slowly, as though social conventions were a deep mystery.

  She needed to see the expression on his face. Was he having fun with her? But the darkness made it impossible to judge his intent.

  When the silence stretched, she got back to basics. “Are you Troy London?” she asked.

  “I…don’t know.”

  The answer and the tentative way he spoke were so unexpected that it sent a sizzle along her nerve endings. “What do you mean, you don’t know? How can you not know who you are?”

  “Do you want me to lie?”

  “Certainly not.”

  It sounded as if he was claiming he had amnesia. She didn’t know much about the condition, but she remembered when a friend’s mother had had no memory of a bad car accident.

  She sighed. “Do you remember what happened to you? I mean, do you know why you’ve lost your memory?”

  “No,” he murmured, sounding so lost and alone that her heart squeezed.

  In the darkness she reached for his hand. Without speaking, she folded her slender fingers around his larger ones. Almost at once he shifted his grip so that he was holding on to her, the pressure increasing as they stood in the blackness of the tunnel.

  She remembered him as strong and vital. A man of action. A man without fear. She remembered the time they’d been walking on the ranch and a rattlesnake had slithered out from behind a rock and he’d beaten it to death with a stick while she’d gasped at him to be careful. There were other memories that were just as strong. Tender memories. Like the way he’d gathered a bouquet of wildflowers from the hills around the ranch and set them in a pretty blue-and-white pitcher in her room. He’d been tough and masculine, yet he hadn’t been afraid to show her his sensitive side.

  Now…

  Now it was hard to believe this was the same man.

  Of course, he could be putting on an elaborate charade, although she didn’t think so. Something was badly wrong, but she couldn’t say what. Not without more information, which he wouldn’t or couldn’t give her.

  Her mind spun with questions. Had he fallen from the cliffs? Had a stroke? Or had he been drugged?

  And then there was his preference for the darkness. Why wouldn’t he let her see him? Fear shot through her as a ready explanation leaped into her mind. He had been in an accident—and his face was scarred, which was why he was staying hidden.

  She reached up with her free hand to touch him, and he stepped quickly back as though he could see perfectly well in the dark and knew what she was thinking. The sudden withdrawal gave credence to her speculation.

  “You were hurt,” she said.

&
nbsp; “Yes.”

  “It’s all right. I mean, if you don’t like the way you look, it’s not going to…offend me. Is that it? Is that what’s wrong?”

  “Stop trying to come up with explanations,” he said with more force than he’d exhibited thus far in all their interactions. “You’re not doing either one of us any good.”

  She might have protested. Instead she gave him the space he was demanding. He had come to her. That was a start. “All right,” she said simply.

  In the darkness she heard him suck in a deep, sighing breath and then let it out in a rush. Again he reached for her, but this time his hand only rested lightly on her arm. “You should leave this place. If you stay here you’re going to get into trouble.”

  Her reaction was swift and sharp. “I came here to find out what happened to you—and to make sure Dinah is all right. Don’t you care about her?”

  The hand on her arm clenched then opened. “Dinah,” he said softly. “I forgot about Dinah.”

  “How could you forget about your own daughter?”

  “Is she?”

  Lord, what was that supposed to mean? Was he saying the child wasn’t his, or that he wasn’t Troy London?

  She dragged a hand through her hair, sweeping it back from her face. Suddenly she felt as if she were an actor who’d been shoved onstage in a play for which she’d missed the rehearsals and lost the script. Now she was in the middle of the action and she had no idea what was expected of her. And in the back of her mind, she couldn’t let go of the feeling that Helen London had orchestrated the whole thing.

  She canceled that thought as unfair. Helen had warned her that something bad was going on at Ravencrest. It was Bree’s job to figure out what it was.

  Still, the whole situation was overwhelming. She certainly couldn’t answer Troy’s question about Dinah. She didn’t know how to deal with him. Yet she couldn’t simply turn around and go back to her room. Not now.

  “Do you know who I am?” she finally asked.

  This time he answered more quickly. “I heard you say you were Bonnie Brennan. Bree. I like that better.”

  “You were listening when I arrived?”

  “I listen in on what’s happening here.” He stroked his hand up and down her arm. “You were talking to Nola.”

  “Yes.”

  So he’d been hiding, eavesdropping on her conversation in the hall. She wasn’t going to press him on that. Instead, now that they were communicating a little better, she went back to his earlier bombshell. “Why did you say Helen was lying?”

  “Because she…wouldn’t call anyone for help. She’s too independent.”

  That was a good description of Helen—under ordinary circumstances. But not in this case. Bree sighed. “She’s stuck halfway around the world and she’s worried about you. So you’re wrong.”

  “You’re Helen’s friend,” he said, sounding as if he wasn’t quite sure.

  “Yes, I’m her friend from college. I was Bonnie Brennan back then. I changed my name to Bree.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t like the woman I realized I was,” she answered, unwilling to give any more away even as she fought off disappointment.

  Didn’t he remember her from the summer of her sophomore year, when they had been so close? At least she’d thought they were. It had been the most memorable time of her life, the most compelling relationship in her entire existence. It hurt to think that it had meant far less to him. Yet tonight there had been a breathtaking intensity between them. That must mean something, surely. Maybe even though he didn’t remember her on a conscious level, he’d been drawn back to her.

  He interrupted her thoughts with another pronouncement. “It’s dangerous here. You have to go back.”

  “Back to Maryland?”

  “Back to your room.”

  The firm, decisive delivery chilled her. He’d been holding her hand. He broke the contact, stepping away from her, leaving her standing in the dark.

  “Troy!”

  “Stay there. Don’t move.” His voice was sharp, commanding, urgent, and she froze.

  One of his hands clamped on her shoulder, leading her around a sharp corner. “Look!”

  In the next moment fire flared only a few yards in front of her face, the sudden light so unexpected after the total darkness that she couldn’t focus. Dimly she saw a burning faggot of straw or sticks fly through the air, arching upward before it began to fall—not at her feet, but far, far below.

  With a shock of amazement she realized she’d been so caught up in the conversation with Troy that she’d forgotten about the gaping pit.

  The brand crashed onto the rocks, sending sparks flaring upward toward her.

  She blinked, probing the darkness—and knew that in the moments when she’d been blinded, he’d slipped away.

  “Troy?”

  He didn’t answer and she felt a shiver slither over her skin. He’d mesmerized her, made her forget about the dangerous drop-off.

  Then, when he’d thrown the burning brand, she hadn’t even seen him at all. She was still grappling with that when his voice drifted toward her, this time from far away.

  “Go back,” he said again. And then he was gone.

  “Troy,” she called, knowing even as she said his name that she was absolutely alone. “Troy,” she said again, despairingly, softly. “Don’t run away from me. Let me help you.”

  Even as she called out to him, she knew he wasn’t going to answer. He had left her here, left her with light. And she knew she should use the opportunity to go back down the tunnel.

  But she could also see that there was a short path that led along the rim of the pit and around a corner to some other section of the underground passage—a section that was hidden from view.

  He’d slipped away. He hadn’t brushed past her. So the only way he could have gone was in the other direction.

  The old Bonnie Brennan whispered that she would be a fool to follow him. He obviously knew his way around here, and she didn’t. The new persona she’d worked so hard to create shouted that she had no other options.

  It was clear Troy had sought her out because he was in trouble. Yet, at the same time, he didn’t want to—or couldn’t—give her any information.

  What if he’d changed his mind about trusting her and this was her only chance to get some answers from him?

  For a long moment she stood with her lower lip between her teeth, torn between safety and urgency. Yet deep down she silently acknowledged that one reason she’d come here was to test herself. To find out if she’d really changed from the timid woman of the past. To prove she wasn’t her old wimpy self, she took a step forward and then another, hugging the rock wall, staying as far as she could from the pit. Although it was only six or eight feet to the other side, the journey seemed endless. She breathed a little sigh as she came out onto a wider space again.

  But she could take only half a dozen steps forward before she came up against a rockfall that totally blocked her forward progress.

  “Troy?” she called out once more, hoping against hope that he would answer. He remained silent.

  It seemed impossible for him to have gotten past that pile of loose boulders. So was he here somewhere, hiding?

  As she stared at the dead-end tunnel, she saw the light from below flicker and she knew that the brand in the chasm wasn’t going to burn much longer. If it went out while she was still over here, getting back along the narrow path would be all the more dangerous.

  Quickly she retraced her steps, surprised that the light flared more brightly as she crossed the rocky passage. In her imagination, she couldn’t help picturing Troy down there, holding up the torch for her. Was that where he’d gone? Down some flight of steps she couldn’t see?

  She had just stepped back onto the other side when the flame blazed up, then suddenly choked out.

  In reaction, she felt her throat close and pressed her hand against the rock. After taking a moment to get her bearin
gs, she eased around the corner and started back up the tunnel, keeping one hand on the rock.

  At first she moved slowly down the passageway. But she picked up speed as she put distance between herself and the chasm, until she was almost running when she felt the surface under her feet change.

  She was back in the part of the tunnel that led directly to her bedroom closet, and as she peered ahead of her, she saw the bedroom light that she’d left burning.

  Relief surged through her as she stepped back into the closet. When her gaze flicked to the window, she saw gray morning light filtering around the edges of the curtain.

  Turning on all the lights, she threw the closet door wide and made sure she understood how to operate the hidden entrance to the tunnel. Then she closed off the passage and stepped back into the bedroom. To her relief, she found a lock on the closet door.

  Her lips set in a firm line, she transferred her suitcase to a shelf in the large bathroom and hung her few good clothes on the hook on the back of the door. Then she locked the closet, intending to keep it locked for the rest of her stay here.

  She supposed someone could still come into the bedroom through the tunnel—if they wanted to break down the door. But they could also break down the entrance to the hall, for that matter. She glanced at the door, feeling suddenly as if someone were on the other side, listening to her every move.

  Her jaw clenched and she thought about marching across the room and flinging the door open.

  But she’d already had two confrontations this morning. And she was pretty sure she couldn’t handle another one.

  MOMENTS BEFORE Bree stepped back into the room, a hand quietly twisted the knob on the hall side of the bedroom door—and found it locked.

  Now the person in the hall stood listening to the sound of footsteps moving quickly around inside the bedroom. What the hell was she so busy doing in there anyway?

  She’d arrived looking worn out, and for a long time there had been no signs of life inside the room. Now she was definitely awake. Was she an early riser, or was it the time change from the east coast?