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"Well?"

He threw up his arhost story crazy?

Crazy

The word ricocheted in his head He was definitely crazy In lust Who the hell had said it, Carter or Cliff? Did itand short of it Every ti new about her, he only wantedinto her eyes he could see the honesty, the fear, and most of all, the terrible wariness As if any closeness was an enormous risk Well, it was She was…different And he did have a guard up against her, it just wasn’t doing hi more than to lie back down beside her, feel the cool silk of her flesh, watch those eyes open, vulnerable if only for a second She was truly the most sensuous and incredible lover he’d ever known, andwith her made him just want so ed because of a ridiculous chance ht

A bizarre incident at that, because she was the ghost catcher, he was the rational man, and she had been convinced that there had been a real person out on the balcony, and he sure as hell hadn’t found evidence of anyone when he had searched When they’d opened Melody House to the public, they’d had alarms installed in the main house and the stables Nuts It was all siet worse He simply would not accept the kind of sensationalism the media would try to put on this latest event He could not accept that some kind of doorway to the dead had allowed her to find the skull

But then, she had said that research had led her to it Pray God she reain the way she had looked, digging frantically, and then producing the skull An iht of that before last night But what the hell did either of the? It was sex in the twenty-first century Most adults indulged on a whim now and then He’d had his own share of too-casual relationships Could be it was just another Temptation and hormones and human instinct

Except that it wasn’t

"Matt?"

"I’ll be in ruffly Shirley looked at him, puzzled He couldn’t explain

Darcy woke at a quarter of eight, realized that Matt was gone, and tried to reflect on both the wonder and idiocy of the night gone by But thinking about it merely made her head hurt

Granted, she didn’t have much of what could be called a social life, and as far as a sex life went, it certainly had been nonexistent for a very long tie years had made her feel somewhat punch-drunk, and since she was afraid of the outcome of any involvement, it had see faations, who understood what it was like to be different She had never i physical attraction to a man, and she had not envisioned that she could feel such an eht that last night had been a seriouswith it, of course, was the knowledge that she was going to get hurt, because she didn’t seem able to put the relationship in any kind of perspective She felt a tre that could go on…and on A, when he had truly been such a jerk when they hadthose who knew hiht to his life, and his true character She hadn’t felt this way since…well,pushed so much that could be incredible between a man and a woman to the back burners of her existence, and also ht had created a fantasy, a new excite that she well knew could never really be Her bed now contained the simple, subtle scent of the man within it, memories of war in its brief intensity

She started to rise, then decided to screw the notion She didn’t have to be anywhere--other than exactly where she was The day ht make more sense if she just had a little sleep

She would close her eyes for a few et, at the least, just a bitinto a far deeper sleep than she had iined, she knehen the dream state came, when the actions and emotions of the past slipped into her, almost as if she slipped into the skin of another And she knew instantly, on that distant plane, that she had now encoun tered two people First, a ain And that what trauma had taken place between them had reached a heated pinnacle here, in this room, where she slept She could see herself, below, at the door, though she couldn’tfroo had entered her mind as completely as they had, at one ti up at the house, he knew that it was empty, except for her And so he stepped inside, quietly closing the door behind him

He knew the house Knew those who usually peopled it, surrounded it, called it home, or laid a claim to the place And he knehere they all were Just as he are that she would have coht to do so

She didn’t have the right

She had no rights

And what she h hiht to bar his entry As he had known He didn’t care if she had heard the door close She would knoas there soon enough He stood in the foyer, staring up the stairs, hands rapping idly against his pockets He felt the bulge in the one Ah, yes, the item he had stuffed in it earlier A strip of leather from the stables He pulled it frohtened it until the leather was taut…

Easy to do He was a strong er even than he appeared

No…

A protest echoed in his head A protest against hiritted his teeth, and the whole of his body was as taut as the strip of leather between his hands

Slowly…

He forced hiain…

"Darcy! Darcy! Are you all right dear?"

Jostled fro on her door sounded like thunder, and she rued the interruption with a deep disun to see so ht, she could see these ih, she would have the answers

"Darcy!"

"Penny, I’m fine Just overslept, that’s all!" she called out