by JoAnn Ross
"Someone was in here." One of them had turned on the light upon entering. She blinked against the brightness.
"Who, dear?"
"Three guesses," Miranda drawled. She shot a blistering glare Zach's way. "And the first two don't count."
Alex was still shaking. She was as white as the pillow lying on the floor by the window. Seeing her in such obvious distress made Zach want to take her in his arms, to hold her until the color returned to her cheeks, to stroke her hair until her fright was vanquished.
"Shut up, Miranda," he said equably. He picked up an afghan from the foot of the bed and draped it over Alex's trembling shoulders. Her turquoise nightshirt ended high on her thighs. Drenched with sweat as it was, it clung to her body. "Are you all right?"
"I—I—I think so." Alex's confused gaze circled the room, taking in the quartet of faces watching her with varying levels of intensity. "I thought I saw someone. Standing over my bed. And then…" She was hit with violent tremors.
Knowing he'd pay for this later, Zach dared Miranda's wrath and put his arm around her. She was as taut as a wire. He could practically feel her nerves crackling.
"And then?" he prompted with a gentleness that had Miranda grinding her teeth and Eleanor looking at him with sharp interest.
She felt so safe in his embrace. So protected. Alex knew she should move away. But she didn't. "I thought he was going to suffocate me. With that pillow."
"The one by the window?"
Alex followed his gaze to the floor below the open window, where the pillow had landed when she'd wildly knocked it out of the intruder's grasp.
"I think so." The entire experience was taking on the surrealistic sensation of a nightmare.
"Ghosts," Clara declared knowingly. She'd wrapped her ample body into a silk kimono embroidered with a fire-breathing dragon. The purple and red rollers in her hair made her look as if she were trying to pick up satellite signals from space. "Perhaps Rosa has finally made contact. Your aura, Alexandra, dear," she confided, "is very strong."
"I rather doubt that Alexandra's midnight visitor was a ghost," Eleanor murmured. She'd long ago given up on Clara's psychic abilities. Especially since her own explanation was so much simpler. It was not lost souls who'd plagued Alex in the lonely dark night, Eleanor surmised. But memories. Memories, perhaps, of a child's last night in this house. The night her mother and father had been murdered.
"Well, the answer is obvious," Miranda said scathingly. Her black silk robe billowed out behind her as she marched across the room and shut the window. "The wind made the white lace curtains billow," she said. "Which to Alex's overactive imagination must have looked like a ghost. That's all there is to it. So, now that the gothic mystery is solved, can we all go back to bed?"
"I'm sorry to have bothered you all," Alex said. She glanced at the window. She could have sworn she'd closed it earlier. "Miranda's right. The curtain makes the most sense. Or a nightmare."
"It was a ghost," Clara repeated with surprising cheer considering the circumstances.
"Good night, Mrs. Kowalski," Zach said firmly.
"But—"
"Come along, Clara." Eleanor seconded Zach's order. "Let's let Alexandra get back to sleep." She kissed Alex on the cheek, gave her a fond look and practically dragged the robust woman from the bedroom.
Miranda folded her arms. "Coming, Zach?"
He knew he should go. But he couldn't. "Go on to bed, Miranda," he instructed, knowing he was further risking her ire, but feeling an even stronger pull to ensure himself that Alex was truly all right. "I'll be along in a minute."
Miranda surprised both Zach and Alex. "Whatever you say," she said sweetly. "Good night, Alex. Sweet dreams."
Her friendly smile matched her pleasant tone. So why, Alex wondered, did she hear a threat behind those sugar-coated words?
"How are you, really?" Zach asked when they were alone.
"Fine." Her voice was frail. "I'm fine," she repeated more firmly this time. "Actually, I'm more embarrassed than frightened."
His hands were stroking her arms, soothing her lingering distress and creating another even more vital. "Do you think it was a dream?"
"What else could it have been?"
"I don't know."
Surely Miranda wouldn't have…No! Zach assured himself. His wife was admittedly a pathologically jealous woman. But even Miranda was not capable of murder.
"It was a dream," she said.
Unable to think of any other plausible solution, Zach murmured an agreement. He drew her against him and ran his hands up and down her back, soothing and stimulating her at the same time.
"You should go."
He brushed his lips against her hair, inhaling its fresh, sunshine scent. "In a minute."
She closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his chest. Alex knew she should send him back to his wife, back to the bed they shared. But she couldn't. Not yet.
"A minute," she breathed. She wrapped her arms around his waist and clung. He was wearing the jeans he'd hurriedly tugged on when awakened by Alex's screams. His chest was bare. And so, so enticing. In a warm haze of need, Alex brushed her lips over his shoulder. His chest.
"Alexandra," he moaned. Her mouth was searing his skin with every breathy kiss.
"Shh." She smiled against his warm flesh. "Just a little more."
Half-blind with need, Zach grasped a handful of fragrant hair and tilted her head back, lifting her gaze to his. "More." His lips hovered inches above hers. His voice was rough and husky.
And then he closed the distance.
A soft, yielding sigh slipped from between her lips to his. She went up on her toes, twining her arms around his neck, clinging tightly. The afghan slipped unnoticed to the floor.
Her body strained against his. Her hot, avid mouth was as urgent and impatient as his. He stroked her through the nightshirt, delighting in the sensuous movements of her body beneath the silk. Beneath his hands. He slipped his hands under the hem and discovered that her flesh, so icy just minutes ago, had warmed.
Fear disintegrated. Her earlier shock dissolved. At this suspended moment in time there was only now. Only Zach.
Through her dazed senses, she could hear him whispering to her, intimate soft words, crazy, wonderful promises.
Zach knew it was foolhardy, allowing the reins on his tautly held hunger to slip here, and now, with the house filled with people and his wife just next door.
He knew it was dangerous. Knew it was wrong. But, God help him, he was only human and she was so soft and so sweet and he'd been so terrified when he'd heard her scream, so relieved when he'd discovered she was all right, that all he could do, dammit, was feel.
Oh, yes! This was what she'd been wanting. Alex had been longing for the taste of his firm lips, dying to feel those strong bold hands against her flesh. She wanted him with a need that bordered on insanity, which is why she didn't back away, even as she knew that what she and Zach were doing was madness.
He pushed the turquoise silk up, giving his lips access to her breasts. As he breathed on the hot flesh, kissed it, licked it, a direct line of fire shot from her taut, tingling nipples to the center of her legs.
She moaned deep in her throat. Her fingers dug into his hips. If this was, indeed, madness, Alex welcomed it with open arms.
With trembling fingers she unsnapped his jeans. But when she reached for him, desperate to drive him as crazy as he was driving her, he caught her wrists.
"Alex, sweetheart." He steadied himself by drawing in deep drafts of air. "We have to stop."
She shook her head, sending her hair out in a shimmering arc. "Not yet."
His body was throbbing, reaching for the touch she was trying to bestow. Zach's head was swimming, and although he wanted nothing more than to drag her to the bed, strip off that scrap of turquoise silk and bury himself deep inside her welcoming heat, he knew that the risk would be too great.
Besides, a nagging little voice of conscience reminded him,
only moments ago she'd been terrified. What if her response had been born only out of the need to be comforted? If he went to bed with her now, wouldn't that be taking advantage of her atypical fragility?
And, first and foremost, his agonized, convoluted thought process returned as it always did to the simple fact that he couldn't offer her anything beyond the moment. And to Zach's mind, that was offering her nothing at all.
Alex was looking up at him, her heart shining in her wide, luminous eyes. Then she took a deep shuddering breath, glanced around and belatedly remembered where she was, where they were.
"Thank you."
"For what?" His voice was rough.
"For having the good sense to stop." She combed her fingers through her hair. "If your wife had walked in…"
There was no need to finish the sentence. They both knew the scene that Miranda was capable of creating would not be pretty.
As their gazes met and clung, Alex shivered.
"You're cold." Zach reached for the afghan again.
Alex wrapped her arms around herself in an unconscious gesture of self-protection. "No, not cold. Scared."
He glanced over at the window. "It's closed now. And locked."
She shook her head. "That's not what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of you."
"Me?" She couldn't have said anything that hurt more.
"Of the way you make me feel."
Zach closed his eyes and dragged his hand down over his face. "Don't feel like the Lone Ranger."
He smiled a crooked, self-deprecating smile as he trailed his fingertips down the side of her somber face, tracing the full shape of her lips before continuing along her jaw and down her throat. Then, heaving a deep sigh of regret, he dropped his hand.
"Do you think you can sleep now?"
"Yes." It was the only lie she'd ever told him. How did he think she could sleep when every pore in her body ached for his touch? Just when she thought she was going to burst into frustrated tears of unfulfillment, humor rose to rescue her. "After a cold shower."
He chuckled at that, as she'd meant him to. "At least Eleanor won't have to worry about running out of hot water with the two of us stuck together under the same roof."
He ran a hand down her hair, gave her a long look over-brimming with emotion. "Good night."
Her smile wobbled, her eyes misted. "Night."
And then he was gone.
Dammit, women slept with married men every day, Alex told herself. And husbands fooled around. Afternoon talk shows routinely discussed the advantages of open marriages, and movies and novels depicting infidelity were becoming so common it seemed that recreational adultery between consenting adults was becoming almost chic.
As she climbed back into bed and pulled the sheets over her head, Alex found herself wishing that her mother had imbued her children with less scruples.
Or that Eve Deveraux had raised a less honorable son.
Chapter Twenty-Four
"Good morning!" Clara greeted Alex the next morning.
"Morning." Alex had come downstairs in desperate need of a cup of coffee. "Good morning, Eleanor."
"Good morning, dear. How are you feeling?"
"Fine." Actually, a maniac was pounding away with a hammer inside her head, but Alex decided a polite white lie was in order. She went over to the antique sideboard and poured a cup of coffee from a silver samovar.
"I was concerned you might have another nightmare," Eleanor said.
Alex stirred in a teaspoon of sugar. "I slept like a baby." Another lie. Beside the samovar were silver bowls of fresh berries and a damask-lined basket of fresh breads and pastries. Alex plucked a blueberry muffin from the basket, put it on a plate and sat down at the table.
"Beatrice will be happy to make whatever else you'd like," Eleanor said. "Some hotcakes, perhaps? French toast? An omelet?"
"This is fine. I'm not much of a breakfast eater."
"You need to get your strength back," Eleanor reminded her.
"I also need to fit into the dress I'm making for the Chicago debut. Thanks to Inga, I've gained at least ten pounds."
"Thank goodness," Eleanor countered. "You were looking far too thin before your collapse."
Alex shrugged. "You know what they say. A woman can never be too rich or too thin."
"I knew the Duchess of Windsor," Eleanor revealed. A wicked light danced in her eyes. "And she might be right about the money, dear. But believe me, the woman looked like a corpse."
"I've always found men prefer curvaceous women," Clara declared robustly. "At least my three husbands did." Her dimpled arms reached out of today's billowy green sleeves and plucked a buttery croissant from the basket. Two bran muffins and a cinnamon roll joined the croissant on her plate.
"You know, Alex," Clara said around a mouthful of muffin, "I've been thinking about your visitor last night."
"It was a nightmare," Alex demurred. "Or a trick of moonlight."
"That's your logical mind speaking," Clara insisted. "Last night you were operating in your intuitive realm. Tell me, have you ever heard of Resurrection Mary?"
"No, but—"
"She was a beautiful young girl, captivating, with blue eyes and the palest, prettiest flaxen hair. And Lord, she loved to dance! One night she died in an automobile accident going home from a ballroom. That was nearly fifty years ago, yet there are still tales of her rising from her grave in Resurrection Cemetery to go dancing with handsome single men at that same ballroom."
"Really, Clara," Eleanor complained, "I have difficulty believing any single young man would care to dance with a fifty-year-old corpse."
"But she looks just the way she did the night she died," Clara explained. "Of course, the men do report that she seems aloof. Cold."
"I would think she'd be cold," Eleanor snorted.
Clara frowned, obviously piqued that she wasn't being taken seriously. "My point is that there have been so many reportings of Mary, a song was written about her. And there's the young maid who hanged herself in Chicago in 1915 and still haunts the Victorian house where she worked, and the young bride in St. Paul, Minnesota, and—"
"I believe you were making a point?" Eleanor interrupted.
"Well, yes." Clara nodded emphatically, starting her several chins jiggling. "I think there's a very good possibility that this house is being haunted. Perhaps by Melanie."
"Dammit, Clara—" Eleanor began.
"But you've told me she was wearing a white evening dress the night she was killed. And Alexandra's apparition was wearing white. Isn't that so?" she demanded of a bemused Alex.
"It was only a nightmare," Alex repeated weakly, wishing the entire humiliating event had never happened.
Clara folded her arms over her ample bosom. "Well, I believe an exorcism is in order."
"Alex is here to rest," Eleanor said briskly. "There will be no exorcism." She rose and placed her folded napkin on the table. "I have to go over the reports Zach brought up from L.A. yesterday. There are papers that need to be signed."
Her expression softened as she turned to Alex. "I hope you don't mind my abandoning you your first day here."
"Don't worry about me," Alex assured her. "I'll just explore the grounds."
"What a grand idea," Clara agreed robustly after Eleanor had left the dining room. "I'll give you a tour. And of course, you won't want to miss the greenhouse. In fact, you're in luck. I was planning to feed my Dionaea muscipula this afternoon. My Venus's-flytrap," she elaborated at Alex's blank look. "I've a nice fat cricket I've been saving just for this occasion."
The idea of watching a plant devour a helpless insect was not Alex's idea of a fun afternoon. "That sounds quite interesting," she lied yet again, "but I just remembered I promised Sophie Friedman some new sketches."
"It's quite fascinating to watch," Clara coaxed.
"Perhaps next time." Alex stood up, flashed the woman an apologetic smile, then escaped the room.
As the afternoon progressed, Alex experienced st
range, periodic feelings of déjà vu. It was almost as if she'd been here, in Santa Barbara, in this very house before.
But, of course, she assured herself, that was impossible. As impossible as Clara's insistence about restless spirits.
These unsettling emotions, last night's bad dream, along with her continued feeling of being drawn to Anna's nursery, were nothing more than the product of her imagination. The power of suggestion, Alex reminded herself, could be very strong.
On her third day at the house, Clara confronted Alex in the rose garden.
"There you are, Alexandra. I've been searching the entire house for you," she complained, her pink face even rosier than usual. She was out of breath; her ample chest was heaving as if she'd just run a marathon. Today's caftan was the vivid yellow, orange and crimson hue of the Joseph's Coat blossoms Alex had just been admiring.
It crossed Alex's mind that if Clara were truly clairvoyant, she would have known where she was. "Well, you found me."
"I had a vision."
"Another one?" If the elderly woman was to be believed, psychic revelations were a remarkably common occurrence.
"I was in the library, playing canasta with Eleanor, when I just happened to glance over at the fireplace. That's when I saw it."
"It?"
She leaned toward Alex, lowering her voice to a dramatic stage whisper. "There was a lighthouse in the flames."
Almost against her will, Alex was momentarily intrigued. "You can see things in fires?"
"Of course. Didn't I tell you that I am one-eighth Rom?"
"Rom?"
"Romany—Gypsy. My great-grandmother was a shuvani," Clara said haughtily. "A wise woman. When I was a girl, she taught me how to divine fortunes from the flames of the atchen'tan—the campfire."
"That's very interesting," Alex murmured politely even as she considered, not for the first time, that Clara's talents were definitely being wasted. With her vivid imagination and penchant for storytelling, she could probably clean up writing horror scripts in Hollywood.
"I haven't done it for ages. This time it was totally unconscious…." She shook her head, as if clearing her mind. "A lighthouse means danger. It was at the top of the fire in the position representing the present. But that wasn't all. At the front of the fire, into the future, I saw a monk."
