Heart of Gold (8 page)

“Oh, I’m full of surprises,” Shane said with a wry, weary grin that made him look devilishly handsome. “Not all of them are unpleasant.”

Faith said nothing but rubbed her pendant absently between her thumb and forefinger as she looked down at the floor. He was full of surprises all right, just like Pandora’s box. And like the girl in the story, Faith knew an irresistible urge to open the box. Not smart, Faith, she told herself.

“You realize now you have no choice but to delay the opening of the inn.”

“I know. I’ll call everyone and tell them the plumbing isn’t ready. Nothing puts people off quite like the thought of malfunctioning commodes.”

Shane chuckled, ignoring the throbbing it set off in his head. He was surprised Faith had any sense of humor left. She’d been threatened and bullied and run ragged over the last couple of days, yet she seemed to have a reservoir of inner strength to call on when she needed it. There was a hell of a lot more to the former Mrs. William Gerrard than met the eye. And what met the eye held a lot more appeal than it should have.

“Faith,” he began, fighting the urge to touch her again. He was beginning to have trouble concentrating on anything other than the delicate shape of her mouth and the memory of how sweet she had tasted. He had to apologize now, just get it over with and get away from her. “I was out of line last night. I had no right to accuse you of anything. I’ve seen the worst side of people for so long, I guess I’ve just come to expect it. I’m sorry.”

“First a compliment, now an apology.” Faith shook her head. “Really, Mr. Callan, you’re making me giddy,” she said, teasing lights sparkling in her dark eyes as she fanned herself with her hand.

“Is the apology accepted?”

She nodded but didn’t look at him. Was he apologizing only for his belief in her culpability or for the kiss as well?

Overhead the sound began. Ker-thump … ker-thump … ker-thump …

Shane tensed. Faith smiled. “It’s Captain Dugan.”

He stared at her as if she’d suddenly begun speaking Portuguese. “Who?”

“The man who built the place.”

“He’s dead.” His statement held all the finality of the fact.

Faith rolled her eyes. “I know that. It’s his ghost. Ask anyone in Anastasia. They’ll all tell you the same thing. This house is haunted.”

“Californians,” Shane grumbled, scowling darkly.

“Skeptic,” Faith countered. A man like Shane Callan wouldn’t believe in anything that couldn’t be admitted as evidence in a court of law. She suddenly found the trait oddly endearing and decided she was losing her marbles. “Of course it’s Captain Dugan. He had a peg leg. The other ghosts here don’t make any racket at all.”

Shane’s brows lifted. No one had warned him he would be guarding a crazy woman. “Other ghosts?”

Faith’s look was one of feminine wisdom and mystery. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Mr. Callan?”

Not the kind that haunted houses, he thought. He knew well the ghosts that haunted one’s soul were all too real, but dead sea captains with peg legs were a whole different thing.

He frowned at Faith as he rose from the piano bench, his head swimming as he did so. He ignored the dizziness as he had all day. It was nothing more than fatigue.

Easing his gun from its holster, he said dryly, “I believe in justice, football, and Smith and Wesson. Go to your room, lock your door, and stay put.”

Faith shook her head as she watched him leave. Of all the cops in the world she had to get stuck with Dirty Harry. And darn it, she had a terrible feeling she was falling for him.

FOUR

“T
HE STRESS IS
making you irrational,” Faith muttered to herself as she paced the width of her bedroom. “That’s the only logical explanation. You’re not really falling for Shane Callan.”

Her entire body seemed to reject the statement she’d just made. An ominous sense of certainty descended on her.

She had to admit the physical attraction had been there from the beginning, from the minute she’d opened the front door and looked up into his silver eyes, from the instant she’d first heard his sexy bedroom voice. She hadn’t been able to deny it even when he had all but accused her of treason.

Lust. There wasn’t anything rational or logical about it.

But this was more than mere lust.

Faith’s slim shoulders rose and fell with her sigh of defeat. She couldn’t have picked a more difficult man if she had held auditions for the part. Shane was jaded, sardonic, a loner … he was battered and tired and alone. Just the memory of him sitting at the piano, pouring out feelings he would never have revealed otherwise, brought a pang to Faith’s heart. There were no two ways about it—the darn man needed love.

“But I don’t have to be the one to give it to him,” she declared with a shake of her head, half wishing he’d never apologized to her for suspecting she was in on the DataTech conspiracy.

At least before his apology his suspicion had been an effective barrier between them. Now that wall was gone. Now Faith knew there was a lot more to Shane than what pleasingly met the eye. Now she was in real peril.

She had a wealth of love inside her, stored up from years of being married to a man who had looked on her as nothing more than an asset. But she knew she would have to be a fool to try to give those feelings to a man like Shane.

Shane Callan was a dangerous stranger, there because it was his job to protect her. Their lives would run on the same track only until the DataScam trial. In a matter of weeks Shane would be gone to fight someone else’s battles. To become involved with him would only be asking to have her heart broken.

No, Faith announced inwardly, she wouldn’t make that mistake. She had settled there to rebuild her life, not to tear it apart all over again.

A knock at her door jolted her from her brooding. Alaina stuck her head in the room. “I just got in and saw your light. Is something going on?”

Faith rolled her eyes. “Rambo is upstairs trying to hunt down Captain Dugan.”

Alaina’s wry smile tilted up one side of her lush mouth as she came in and closed the door behind her. “I don’t suppose it did you any good to explain to him about the captain?”

“A complete waste of good breath. The man has a head harder than granite.” And the rest of him wasn’t exactly Play-Doh, either. The thought sneaked into her conscious mind from her memory, bringing a telltale flush to her cheeks.

“He’s not the type to believe in things he can’t point a gun at,” Alaina said.

Like love and romance. Faith cursed her brain for letting thoughts like that form and surface. She resumed her pacing, hoping the movement, coupled with the dim light in the room, would keep Alaina from reading too much in her expression. Her friend had an uncomfortably sharp eye when it came to reading people.

“Well.” Alaina shrugged, sticking her hands in the pockets of her red cashmere cardigan. “He’ll find out for himself that there’s nothing up there worth arresting. He can’t very well slap handcuffs on an apparition. How’s Lindy? Still itching?”

Faith smiled in appreciation for the change of subject. Her whole body relaxed visibly as she leaned against the carved cherry foot post of her canopied bed. “She’s much better tonight. This might be the world’s easiest case of chicken pox, which means I have something to be grateful for after all. How was the movie?”

It was Alaina’s turn to roll her eyes. “Let me give you a piece of sound advice,” she said, prowling the small bedroom as if it were a courtroom and Faith a juror who needed to hear a convincing argument. Her elegant hands moved in harmony to emphasize her words. “Never go to the movies with a film critic. Our dear friend Jayne, whom I find to be perfectly pleasant in most respects, is a fanatic. She takes her vocation much too seriously.”

“She didn’t like the movie?”

“Roget’s Thesaurus
doesn’t hold as many synonyms for the word bad,” Alaina said dryly.

As if summoned, a head of rich auburn waves poked into the room. “Is there something exciting going on?”

On cue a thud sounded overhead. Alaina grinned and motioned her inside. “You’ll love this. Callan is upstairs playing ghostbusters.”

“Bad casting,” Jayne said, making a face as she slipped into the room and shut the door behind her. “I have serious doubts about Faith’s Mr. Callan playing comedy. He doesn’t seem particularly fun loving. My guess is he’s a Capricorn.”

“He’s not
my
Mr. Callan.” Faith protested so quickly the words seemed to tumble over each other on their way out of her mouth. She looked on in horror as her friends exchanged a significant glance. “I mean, he’s here because of me, but I don’t
want
him. I mean, I don’t want him
here
. Not that I’d want him
anywhere.”

She groaned under her breath and knocked her forehead against the bedpost. She’d just managed to make it fairly obvious that she was attracted to the man. She jumped as Jayne’s hand settled gently on her shoulder.

“Honey, if you’d ever care to translate that into understandable English, I’d be more than willing to listen.” Jayne shot a questioning look at Alaina, who physically backed away from the topic.

“Don’t look at me for advice on this. I’m a lawyer. I’m the last person you want to talk to about romance, unless it concerns community property.”

“No,” Faith said dejectedly. “Shane Callan is the last person I want to talk to about romance. The man wears a gun strapped to his ankle, for heaven’s sake! I saw it when he was tying his shoe. A gun! That’s not the kind of thing that fits readily into my lifestyle. That’s something that should be in a movie!”

“It was,” Jayne said earnestly. She poked her hands into the patch pockets of her wildly flowered dress. “Didn’t you see
Deadly Justice?”

“No.”

“Just as well. The script sucked swamp water.”

Faith shook her head, both to clear it and to get her thoughts back on track. Jayne was infamous for losing the thread of a conversation. In another few sentences she could have them discussing metaphysics.

“I can’t afford to be attracted to a man like Shane Callan,” Faith announced, as if saying it aloud could steel her resolve.

An authoritative knock sounded at the door. Without waiting for an invitation, the object of her dismay stepped inside the bedroom, his expression that of a thwarted hunter. He directed his ferocious frown at Faith.

“I told you to lock the door.”

“It doesn’t have a lock,” Faith said, shrugging, as she pushed herself away from her bed. She knew his sense of caution was for her own safety, but she hated the idea of having to be a virtual prisoner in her own home. Dryly she said, “I was about to push the dresser in front of it when Jayne and Alaina came in.”

“We’re not armed, honey, and we’re only slightly dangerous,” Jayne assured him with a wink.

Shane scowled at her and holstered his pistol, wincing at the pressure the wide leather strap exerted against his aching shoulder. It felt like a branding iron burning into his sensitive flesh. He managed to ignore both the pain and his blurring vision. “After that phone call I’d think you’d be taking this business seriously.”

“We are, Mr. Callan,” Alaina said, stepping forward to defend her friends. “We’re just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”

Suddenly feeling weak, he let the subject drop as he leaned back against the door. Once again his gaze fell on Faith, who stood beside her bed. Desire stirred through the haze of pain. Desire to stretch out with her on cool crisp sheets and feel her small soft hands on his fevered skin. Her eyes widened slightly as she took in his predatory expression.

“You didn’t find anything, did you?” she blurted out, crossing her arms to keep her hands from fidgeting.

Don’t let him see he makes you nervous, she thought, then groaned inwardly. Lord, Faith, he’s a man, not a charging rhinoceros. Besides, she was fairly certain he wouldn’t have come running had she announced she was having hopelessly romantic notions about him. At the moment his mind was occupied with things other than the mysteries of biological attraction.

Shane took in the feminine decor of the room in a narrow-eyed glance, not answering. He hated to admit defeat. He had followed thumping noises all over the upstairs of the main house and not gotten so much as a glimpse of the cause. Every time he’d thought he’d cornered the culprit, the thump had sounded three rooms away.

It irked the hell out of him. If only he weren’t so damned tired. If only he could clear the fuzz out of his brain, he was sure he could have figured out what was going on up there. At the moment he didn’t believe he could figure out two plus two.

“No.” The word was the next best thing to a growl. “I didn’t find anything, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything up there.”

Faith nearly chuckled at the disgruntled scowl that tugged down his straight black brows and the corners of his mouth. She gave him a smug smile, unable to resist. “I told you so.”

“I’m not about to swallow that ghost story,” he declared. He started to lift his left hand to wag a finger at her, but the pain in his shoulder stopped him. He gritted his teeth against it as it rocketed through his chest and arm, and he leaned back against the door again to steady himself.

“We have a friend who is a psychic investigator who could no doubt explain it to you better than I,” Faith said, trying to imagine Shane Callan and Bryan Hennessy embroiled in a debate over paranormal phenomena. “But he’s working in Britain right now, and the best I can do is tell you in plain English—this house is haunted.”

Jayne plopped down cross-legged on the pink-and-cream-colored quilt that covered Faith’s bed, her voluminous skirt billowing around her. “You should talk to Mr. Fitz about it. He’s full of ghost stories about this place.”

Shane scowled harder at mention of the irascible old caretaker. “Ghost stories aren’t the only thing he’s full of, nor are they what I want to hear.”

“I can’t offer another explanation,” Faith said.

“You’ve been through the whole house. Your men have been watching it constantly. No one could have gotten in.”

“Unless they had help from inside.”

Alaina shook her head as his cool gray gaze settled on her. “We’ve had this conversation before.”

He turned to Jayne, who started in surprise at his suspicion. “Don’t look at me, honey! I don’t even like violence in film. I’m a firm believer in the transcendental rise of man above his baser physical nature.”

Shane opened his mouth to comment, but Faith cut him off with a friendly warning. “Shane, please, stop accusing my friends.”

“It’s my job,” he said, exasperated by her overabundance of blind trust.

“Well, you’re very good at it. The only person who’s managed to escape your jaundiced eye is Lindy.”

Shane did a better job of ignoring her sarcasm than he did of ignoring the way her crossed arms lifted her breasts. The womanly mounds plumped together beneath the fabric of her sweatshirt, the outline of hard nipples clearly indicating she wore no bra. Business, Shane, he told himself. Strictly business.

“What about secret passages? Have you found any as you’ve been working on the house?”

The man was remarkable. “Who do we look like, Charlie’s Angels?” Faith asked. “I’m opening the place as an inn, not a spook house.”

“You’re the one going on about ghosts,” Shane grumbled. He rubbed at the incessant pounding in his right temple. Damn, but his head was feeling fuzzy. He barely heard Faith’s next words through the thick, cotton-wool fog that enveloped his brain.

“We have them.” She shrugged, knowing she probably wouldn’t have been able to convince Shane had Captain Dugan materialized at her side that very moment, peg leg and all. “What can I say?”

Shane pushed himself away from the door, his legs feeling as thick and heavy as tree trunks. The puzzle would have to wait until morning to be solved. He couldn’t think anymore. Damned if he was going to be able to move. He had to find a place to sit down for a couple of minutes.

Faith’s heart lurched as she realized how pale he looked. His face had gone as white as the apparitions he refused to believe in. Alarm streaked through her as he took another step and dropped like a rock at her feet.

“We’ve got to get him to the hospital. Jayne, go call the ambulance.”

“No. No ambulance. We can’t attract the attention. The whole case will be shot to hell.”

“Damn your case!”

Shane could hear the conversation going on above him. He recognized the voices as those of agent Del Matthews and Faith Kincaid. Del sounded unflappable. Faith sounded frantic. They both sounded far away.

He tried to rouse the strength to stand, but his body was nothing more than dead weight, oblivious to the commands of his considerable will. He couldn’t even muster the energy to offer an opinion on the situation. It took every scrap of power he had to concentrate, to keep from slipping over the edge into the black void of unconsciousness.

“I can handle this, Ms. Kincaid. I was a medic in ’Nam. It’s not as serious as it looks.”

“He’ll need medication—”

“It’ll be taken care of ma’am.”

Shane forced his eyes open a slit and caught the look Alaina Montgomery shot at Del. “Lord, they’re worse than the damn Boy Scouts—always prepared.”

Suddenly Mr. Fitz loomed overhead like a giant billy goat, scratching at his snaggled whiskers, an unholy light in his eyes. The smell of fish hung around him like an acrid cloud. “Lord, ladies, what did ye do to the rascal? Did he have it comin’?”

“Mr. Fitz, please stand back,” Matthews asked, exasperated. The towheaded agent leaned over Shane with a penlight, checking his pupils for response.