Haunting Ellie (37 page)

None of that matters!

Alex raged inside Jon’s body, and Jon could feel every tormented movement and thought. Jon’s heart beat rapidly. The pain intensified, shooting through his chest and down his arms. The locket slipped from his fingers to the floor as he clutched his chest.

Elizabeth dropped the box and grabbed Jon’s arms. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

“I don’t know if I can stand.”

“You’ve got to. Please, Jon.”

He tried to move, but Alexander’s anger took away all his strength. “I can’t, Ellie.”

Elizabeth grabbed Jon’s arms and pulled, budging him only an inch in the chair. “You’re hurting him, Alex!” she yelled. She shook Jon’s shoulders
, hoping Alex would listen to her. “Stop it. Please, Alex. I don’t know what’s going on, but if you don’t stop, you’re going to kill him.”

Tears flooded her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “He’s your great-grandson, Alex. Please. Don’t hurt him.”

Jon felt the rage slowly subside, and somehow he found enough strength to push up from the chair. “Let’s get out of here, Ellie.”

Elizabeth swept the locket into the box. She held it with one hand and Jon with the other, leading him carefully down the stairs and back into the street. He thought they’d never reach the hotel, thought he’d die before they got inside, and the moment he crossed the threshold, he felt Alex
tear out of his body. His fingers and toes numbed. His legs cramped, but he made it to the sofa before he collapsed.

He had no idea how much time elapsed before he opened his eyes. Elizabeth knelt before him with her head resting in his lap. She seemed to sense him stirring and looked up. Damn, but she had the prettiest smile he’d ever seen. “I could sure use a beer if you’ve got one.”

Her smile deepened. “Don’t move.”

As if he could
! He felt like he’d been on a ten-day drinking binge and run over by a semi as he lay passed out in the street.

His strength was just barely returning when Elizabeth
popped open the tab and set the can on the table in front of him, but it didn’t take more than a moment to realize he needed her a hell of a lot more than he needed the beer. He wrapped one big hand around the back of her neck, weaving his fingers through her hair, and pulled her close. His mouth covered hers with every spare ounce of power and passion in his body. Everything drained from him when Alex inhabited his insides, but now that Alex was out, his power was coming back tenfold.

Again his heart beat rapidly against his ribs, but it wasn’t pain he experienced this time, it was longing and desire, and he wanted to lift Elizabeth into his arms and carry her back to his bed.

She seemed to sense his need and drew away, taking his fingers and pulling him with her from the sofa. “Do you think you can make it up the stairs?” she whispered.

“Upstairs, downstairs, doesn’t really matter,” he teased, and felt another surge of power flow through his veins. He swept her up in his arms and didn’t give her time to protest. Instead, he covered her mouth with his lips and took the stairs two at a
time. He pushed through the bedroom door and closed it behind them. “Is that door going to keep Alex out?” he asked, as he laid Elizabeth down on the bed.

“Alex goes where he wants when he wants. But he took Amanda’s box and said he wanted to be alone. I don’t think he’ll bother us, not for a good long time.”

Jon smiled slowly and lowered his body over hers. “Mind if
I
bother you for a good long time?”

Elizabeth shook her head as her fingers wove through his hair. “You’re no bother, Jon. No bother at all.”

Alex s
tood outside the bedroom door and listened, trying to recapture a memory. He had lain with Amanda behind closed doors once, and he’d loved her. Oh, how he’d loved her. She had skin softer than rose petals and as pearly white as freshly skimmed cream. She tasted sweeter than molasses, and... and he’d gotten her with child and left her. God knows what she’d suffered.

Amanda had deserved so much more. She’d wanted a house full of children, she’d told him, as they’d lain together beneath covers of pink satin and white lace. Twelve children, she’d said, and begun ticking off names she’d already picked. Thomas would be first, of course, since that was her mother’s maiden name. Each child would be pampered and spoiled, and she didn’t care a fig if Alexander had other ideas on how to raise their children. At the time Alex figured if that’s what Amanda wanted, spoiling them sounded like a right nice idea.

But he’d never even had the chance to hold his son, let alone spoil him.

Amanda must have hated him for leaving her.

He floated down the stairwell, leaving his great-grandson and Elizabeth alone. They didn’t deserve prying eyes or listening ears—not from him, not from anyone.

He sat on the chesterfield and twiddled his thumbs, thinking about the old man who’d visited Jon in the hotel all those years ago.
Thomas... his child.
Alex wished he had talked to the man, wished he had touched him. He’d been so near to his son, yet so far away.

A tear trickled slowly down his cheek.

Life hadn’t been fair.

Not to Amanda.

Not to Thomas.

Not to Alex.

He wiped the tear away and roamed aimlessly around the empty room. He swept Amanda’s heart-shaped box from the table and carried it to the foot of the steps, sat down, and took off the cover. She’d worn pink ribbons in her hair the day they’d met, and he touched them now, wishing he could feel their smoothness. Instead, he tried to remember how they’d felt, how Amanda’s hair had felt, all soft and shiny and blond. He brought the ribbon to his nose and pretended he could smell the sweet fragrance she’d always worn. But he couldn’t feel. Couldn’t smell.

Couldn’t do a damn thing but want her!

He crushed the ribbon in his fist and closed his eyes. Don’t hate me, Amanda. Please, don’t hate me, he prayed silently.

Opening his eyes, he dropped the ribbon into the
box and thumbed through the rest of the contents, taking out the golden locket, the one he’d given to her the night before he died, and he looked inside it once more. “Alex loves Amanda,” it read. The sentiment hadn’t faded with age, not from the locket, not from his heart.

The box fell from his lap. His concentration centered on the past, not on the present, and his power to hold something solid in anything but his fingers had diminished. After he wiped away another tear, he leaned over and picked up the box, wanting to keep Amanda’s belongings clean and safe for as long as possible. They were the only things he had to remember her by,
the only things but his memories, and the pictures Elizabeth had given him.

He dropped a pearl-studded hat pin into the box and watched it slide to the edge. It seemed an odd thing to happen when he knew he was holding it level. Suddenly he realized the bottom of the box had shifted and one side was higher than the other. He plucked at the insides, using all his concentration to finally pull the fabric-coated bottom out of the box.

Wedged inside was a piece of paper, and Alex thought his hands would shake plumb off his arms in his nervousness to pull it out. He placed the box on the table and carefully unfolded the sheet of pink stationery. It was Amanda’s writing. He’d know the dainty swirls anywhere. He sucked in a deep breath before reading.

My dearest Alexander,

It’s been so long since you went away, but I see
your face every waking and sleeping moment

The people in town have said so many horrible things about you, but I don’t believe a word. Luke has tried to convince me it’s true, but I refuse to listen to anything he says. I don’t know why I married him. I did it so suddenly while grieving for you that I did not think of the consequences. Now I realize the wagging tongues of the people in town would have been easier to accept than the presence of a man I loathe.

We have a son now. No, not Luke’s child, but yours, my dearest. He is happy and chubby and looks just as I imagine you must have looked as an infant. I’ve named him Thomas, as I told you I would. I hope you will see him one day. I know you will love him just as I do.

Luke knows the truth, of course. I told him before our marriage, and he knows no other child will be his because I will not allow him to touch me. I have given him a home and money and power. He does not need me, too. That, my dearest, was for you and you alone.

You’re in my heart, the place where you’ll always be. I’ve locked your memory away, for I fear Luke would try to steal it from me if he could.

I know whatever took you away from me was beyond your control. You loved me. That sweet thought and our son are what keep me alive and happy.

Someday you’ll come back for me. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, yet I know you’ll return. And I’ll give you my love all over again.

Amanda

Alex swooped from the stairs to the top of the ceiling. He caught hold of a brass rung on the chandelier and swung carefree and happy like a circus performer, then shot up the stairwell and stood once again before Elizabeth’s door.

He put his hand up to knock. Thunder and tarnation! They were having their own kind of fun, and once upon a time he’d known how to be polite and leave people alone. There was time enough to tell them his news.

Amanda had never stopped loving him.

If he had to stay on earth another hundred years, so be it.

Amanda had never stopped loving him.

Her letter was enough to sustain him through anything and everything. He clasped the piece of pink stationery to his heart and floated up to his attic room, to his window, and to thoughts of the woman he loved.

oOo

Jon leaned against the kitchen counter and watched Elizabeth expertly crack eggs with her left hand while sautéing onions and bell peppers with her right. And to think he’d once told her he was incredibly talented with his hands. Hers, he decided, could do many things at once, too. Wonderful things, the least of which was fix him a breakfast fit for a king. He much preferred the
extraordinary things she’d done to him in her bedroom, in his bedroom, in his studio. Lord knows what they could do for each other when he took her back to Schoolmarm Gulch in the spring and made love to her in a blanket of flowers.

“Penny for your thoughts?” she said, tilting her
head toward him as she blew a wisp of hair from her cheek.

“Mind if I offer my thoughts instead?” Alex interrupted, appearing literally out of nowhere. He sat on the counter next to Jon with his arms folded across his chest and grinned, first at Jon, then at Elizabeth. “It appears you don’t mind, so here’s the plan for today.”

Alex jumped down and circled the room, his hands folded behind his back. “First off, I want out of here. One hundred years is long enough.”

“We’re trying to think of a way,” Elizabeth said.

“You’ve been upstairs making love,” Alex fired back, “and I’ve spent years moping around feeling sorry for myself. That’s over now.” He stopped next to Elizabeth and leaned over the skillet. He pretended to inhale. “I want to smell food again. I have the feeling God might make that an option in heaven.”

He climbed back on the counter again. “While you two were indisposed last night, I found a letter from Amanda stuck in the bottom of that jewelry box
we brought back from Dalton House. She said she loved me. Said she’d never stop, and said she knew I’d come back for her someday. Well, I aim to do what she wants.”

“So, what’s your plan?” Jon asked.

Alex shrugged. “That’s your assignment. Figure something out, and the sooner you do it, the better. You have to prove my innocence, and I need revenge.”

“Why don’t we concentrate on the innocence
part?” Elizabeth asked. “I told you before, revenge won’t get you anything.”

“I beg to differ with you,” Alex snapped back. “Luke Winchester took away my life, he hurt Amanda, he hurt my son. Luke Winchester’s no longer around to suffer for what he did, but Matt Winchester is, and from him I’ll seek revenge.”

Jon laughed and eased some of the tension in the room. “Thank God I’m not a Winchester any longer.”

“I’m mighty happy about that myself,” Alex said. He draped an arm around Jon’s shoulders, and Jon jumped at the instant shock of a thousand needles prickling his skin.