Alex stared across the dark, shadowy room, her heart hammering, unable to move. She was paralyzed. And for the briefest instant, she saw him on the opposite side of the room, but not as he had appeared in the portrait downstairs. He was clad in a loose and partially open white shirt, in snug breeches and soft boots, his dark hair swept back carelessly in a queue. They stared at one another. He was unsmiling, his eyes dark and intense and very hot.
Alex blinked; he was gone. She was absolutely alone.
She was breathless, sweating, terrified. She licked her lips, wanting to speak, afraid to utter even a sound. She wanted to call him back. If he had indeed been there. Yet she was sane enough to be positive that she had imagined him now, stimulated by her reaction to his portrait. Surely she had not just seen a ghost.
But the hairs stood up on the back of her neck.
And Alex felt a soft, warm puff of air at her nape, and she jumped away from the open door. It had been a draft of air, of course. Of course.
But she hugged herself, glancing around in a 360-degree circle. “What do you want?” she whispered in what was practically a croak. Sweat poured down her body, between her breasts.
There was no answer, but then, she hadn’t expected one—and she didn’t want one. Did she?
And instead of leaving, she entered the room, shutting the door behind her. Alex glanced cautiously around. The bedroom was paneled in pine, the floors oak planking covered with a faded red Oriental carpet. The massive four-poster bed loomed in front of her. A crude pine chest stood beside it, serving as a night table. A single chair and a writing table stood in one corner of the room, both dark oak and far more crudely designed than the furniture in the other rooms. Was everything here early American? Had he lived amongst these things? Sat at that desk and worked there? Slept in that bed? Why hadn’t this room been refurbished and updated like the other ones?
The room was heavy with shadow. Pale, opaque drapes had been left partially open, and sunlight filtered through the thick oak tree outside and through the dirty panes of the window. Alex leaned against the door she had closed. She swallowed and stared at the bed. At his bed. Then she quickly looked away.
But from the corner of her eyes she saw a blur of movement. Alex jerked, her gaze shooting back to the four-poster, certain she had seen something—or someone—moving, but there was nothing and no one there now.
Goose bumps covered her entire body. She wanted to leave, yet she also wanted to stay. But she was so afraid. “Are you haunting this house?” she whispered. “Are you haunting me?”
He refused to answer her. If he was even present.
Alex swallowed. Her mind warred with Itself. One voice shouted at her that she was in trouble, fooling with ghosts, with the paranormal, and that there was a ghost in the room. And that the ghost might not be a particularly nice or friendly spirit just because she had decided that he was a hero and the kind of man she had always dreamed about. The ghost might be a real nineteenth-century bastard. In fact, he might even be pissed as all hell because he was dead way before his time, or because she was disturbing him. That voice told her to leave as quickly as possible.
But she was also a romantic. Alex had come to Blackwell House on an impulse. And being a romantic, deep in her heart she believed in all the foolishness she read in her romance novels. Had she been drawn here by some weird kind of fate? On order to meet Blackwell’s ghost?
She knew she should leave. Logic and fear told her that. But she was strangely reluctant to do so. She watched dust motes dancing in the air. Dust motes—but where was the draft coming from? Alex had no answer. She was afraid of the answer.
The rug.
The thought came from nowhere. But it loomed in her mind, loud and crystal-clear. A voice inside her head.The rug.And suddenly she looked down at the threadbare Persian rug she stood upon. Her heart, beating wildly, soared. She had not a single doubt that the carpet was at least two hundred years old. That he had trod upon it a thousand times. Kneeling, she ripped a strip from one edge. She had not thought of taking a keepsake before, but now she was oddly jubilant.
It was definitely time to go. Alex rushed to the door, gripping the knob. But something made her pause. Helplessly, compelled, she glanced back at the room one more time, almost afraid of what she would see—but she saw nothing and no one, just the massive bed. And the thought struck her out of the blue. Potent and powerful and terrible.What would happen if she lay down there?
Waiting for him?
Images flashed in her head. Of a man and a woman, passionately entwined.
Alex began to shake. The woman had red hair, but it was not her, it wasn’t, and she was merely fantasizing, and why was she so afraid? Yet the bed, where he had slept a thousand times, was the single object in his room with the most powerful connection to him.
Alex realized how flushed and hot she was. She pushed her bangs out of her eyes, still staring at the four-poster, aware that she was almost in a trance. She knew she had to leave. That the situation was somehow dire. Even though the room, and the drapes, were absolutely still and absolutely silent. Even though the dust motes had ceased to dance and float. She knew that he was present.
Alex hadn’t realized that she had somehow walked forward toward the bed, and that she stood within a handspan of it. Her mind screaming in protest, her heart beating with alarming strength, she watched her hand lift and reach out. She touched the royal blue quilt.
And the moment she felt the soft silk, she came to her senses. Crying out, she stepped back from the bed as if burned, a single pace, and then she began to backpedal, hard and fast, furiously. And her spine and buttocks slammed into something hard and warm and, dammit, alive and male. Alex screamed, jumping.
As she turned to face the intruder, she saw Blackwell, she did, with his hot black eyes and his open shirt—but when she blinked she realized she saw nothing but the scarred wood of the door and the tarnished brass knob. Alex began to shake violently.
She had bumped into a man—she was certain of it.
This time Alex did not hesitate. She ran from the room.
“Are you all right, dear?”
Alex jumped, her hand on the front door, genuinely startled.
She faced the little lady reluctantly, out of breath and terrified. “I’m fine,” she lied. She could not smile.
