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"Is that so?"

"Yes Mythe kettle up, his lips curved up at the corners as he walked toward the grill top

That grin

Goodness

That hat got her in the bar There was so about his grin

She had to look away and ended up staring at the stove top and his hands, which she guessed was better than gawking at his face He flicked his wrist along the controls and a whoosh of blue fla

Because she had no willpower, she lifted her gaze He was staring right at her as he placed the kettle on the stove, watching her in that intense way she was quickly beco familiar with

Did he stare at everyone like that--like he was cohts scattered and pieced back together, fors she really shouldn’t be thinking about

This was a bad idea "You really don’t have to go to all this trouble" Placing her hands on the island, she started to rise "Besides, I’ sleepy"

"It’s no trouble" He came toward the island, and he didn’t just walk He prowled forward, stopping to stand across the island from her "And we need to talk"

"We do?"

"Yeah" He placed his forearms on the island and leaned in a little The faint stubble along his jaw seeht his eyes were reen at the moment "I want to tell you about this land--about us"

Her brows rose "About the whole cursed or haunted thing?"

He nodded and the glioing to be here for a while, you need to knohat they say about this house, about us andabout the women who come here"

The women who come here?

Okay

That sounded like a bucket full of all kinds of wrong

Julia liked to think she had a healthy curiosity just like any other norlint to his eyes screaoing to go with this

"All right" She eased back down, propping her elbows on the table and resting her chin in her palhosts"

"You sure?" He bit down on that plump lower lip and slowly let it pop back out That was cute Also kind of sexy Okay, a lot of sexy "Itto scare ht one hand to the countertop "Legend goes that only two things can happen to women of the de Vincent family or to wo a gray vein, he looked up at her "Or they end up dead"

Chapter 13

Julia stared at him for a moment and then blurted out, "That’s h "It is, right? And it’s about to get more morbid"

She wasn’t sure how that was possible

"As you ht Most flat-out refuse" He continued to follow the path of the vein in the marble "They believe what’s been said about this house and land There are even people in the city ouldn’t coht Not even Livie or Richard will stay here"

She thought back to what Richard had said when he told her about the card with numbers "So, what’s the deal?"

"Frorandmother, it is believed that this land--this whole entire property and then soer stilled on the ues that used to strike this area Yellow fevers Flus The kind that killed, and for years and years, it was used to separate those ere ill from those ere healthy Kind of like camps of the sick A lot of people died here Some clai is, there isn’t a lot of evidence of this land being used as such Gabe once tried to look it up, and there wasn’t ain, there were also a lot of fires back in the day that wiped out a lot of documents, but we do know that there were people buried here"