Tyber's breath hitched erratically.
"Ahuh?" she asked too sweetly.
"Uh-uh." He rubbed his nose up and down the edge of her throat to try to distract her. Zanita was not about to be distracted. She wanted that information!
Her tongue traced a teasing path over his sensitive earlobe, flicking around the folds. That always drove him wild. He tried to hide the shiver that raced through him. Then the tip of her tongue poked slightly at the canal. A small groan was ripped from him.
"It's working."
"No, it isn't," he panted unsteadily.
Zanita moved one of her hands around to the front of him and slid it between them.
Pausing, she looked up at him before taking this next step. She was opening up her heavy artillery and thought it only fair to warn him. Especially since he was her husband. "Last chance, Doc—spill what you've got or else."
Tyber's mouth dropped. "Excuse me?"
Zanita realized what she had actually said and turned beet red. Leave it to him to befuddle her! He knew exactly what she had meant. "I mean it, Tyber, this is your last chance!"
"I'm shivering in my boots," he rasped hoarsely.
That did it! The battle lines had been drawn.
Zanita scraped the fingernails of one hand down his hard buttock, while at the same time she scraped the nails of her other hand up his inner thigh. All the way up.
Tybers light blue eyes darkened, and for a second it almost seemed as if he had difficulty breathing. A sound suspiciously like a stifled cough came from his throat. He wheeze-snuffled, trying to recover from the exquisite, almost painful sensations. Lips firm, he fought to inhale.
"All right, pal, sing like a canary."
"Those weren't your eyes, dammit!"
"They weren't my eyes? Ewwwwww!"
That was too creepy even for a haunted inn. She pushed Tyber off of her and sat up in bed. "Whose eyes were they?"
"Well, no one's, technically."
"Yech!" Zanitas tongue fell out in a display of revulsion.
Tyber rolled over onto his back and folded his arms behind his head. By the stunned look on his gorgeous face, he was trying to figure out how he had lost that last bout. He should chalk it up to W.I.F.E. Women Initiating Force Equations.
An extremely powerful field that was never to be underestimated.
"How could my eyes be replaced?" She shuddered. "It sounds like something from Frankenstein's lab: It sees! It sees!' Bwaaaaa."
Tyber viewed her carefully from under lowered lids. "You okay, Curls?"
A pillow bounced off his head.
"Now, you yourself said it was the same picture. How are those not my eyes?"
"I said it appeared to be the same picture. Those are not your eyes because someone opened them."
"I beg your pardon? How could someone open them?"
"Whoever it was is very skilled. The finish is amazingly smooth."
"Wait a minute. Are you telling me someone altered that photo? But how? I've heard of photos being enhanced, of course—that's why photos, for the most part, aren't allowed as evidence in the courtroom anymore. We had already discussed that. But this was the original Polaroid picture, wasn't it?"
"Yes. I believe the alteration was done right on the picture. Tricky but not impossible. And whoever did it was so good that not many would have been able to figure out how it was done."
"So how is it that you know?"
He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "Learned here and there," was all he would reveal.
Zanita's eyes narrowed. "Does it have anything to do with Sean, that FBI guy you know?"
Tyber started to brush a feather, which had escaped from the pillow, off his chest—then hesitated. He picked it up and began to tickle her arm with it instead. No sense letting an opportunity to irritate pass by. He grinned sexily. "Don't you want to know how he did it?"
Zanita tried unsuccessfully to wiggle away from the irksome, interesting stimulation. The fact that he had evaded her question about Sean did not get by her. Nice evasion, Doc. "Of course I do! How?"
"With oil-based pencils, gloss spray, and a very clever little trick. Normally, the shape of the eye and the pupil can be read by examining the closed lid." He swept the tiny feather over her brow bone.
"How so?" She crossed her legs and hugged her pillow to her.
"When the eyelid is closed, the curve and shape of the eye are visible through it. The shaded line above the closed eye is identical in shape to the edge of the opened eyelid. If the eye is opened, this line becomes the eye fold. If you can locate the prominent bulge in the lid, you can easily map out the iris's dimensions as well as the pupil and its highlight. Here, see?"
Putting the feather carefully down on the bedside night table for later use, he got up off the bed and padded over to the desk. Taking out a pad and pencil, he roughly sketched a closed eye, drawing a large circle over the area of the eyeball.
"Okay, I can see how you can approximate the size and shape, but how did they get my exact eye color?" she asked, joining him.
"They didn't have to. Photos rarely capture exact eye color. Especially Polaroids; although Mark is using a Pro 100, which tends to have fairly correct color. However, all that was needed was the color tone, which anyone looking at you can see is a lovely shade of violet. What was left out was that special sparkle. That's how I knew it wasn't really your eyes."
"My special sparkle?" She liked that.
"Yep. The retoucher got the highlights all wrong, and more important, he left out a very important step in the process."
"What was that?"
"He forgot to shadow in the upper iris. It gave you a rather dazed look." He paused. "Well, more of a dazed look than you usually get from chocolate."
Zanita stuck her tongue out at him. He grinned. "But how did he actually change the photo itself, Tyber?"
"It's a complicated process. First you have to sketch what you think the natural shape of the eye is, using neutral spotting dye. On a lacquered print, it must be sprayed with a solution to make it porous for the dyes. The line above the eye fold now becomes the edge of the opened eyelid. Then you sketch in the iris over what was the closed lid, putting in the pupil and highlight by finding the catchlight—usually at eleven o'clock or one o'clock depending on where the light is coming from. Using a very fine brush, you add lashes and darken the pupil. After spraying with retouch lacquer, you can deepen or lighten the different areas using an oil-based color pencil."
He demonstrated on his sketch pad.
"Wow. This is very clever."
"Yes, it is an interesting technique. And very well done. However, this would be easily spotted if we weren't examining the image by eye. Whoever did this knew we don't have that kind of photo detection equipment with us…" He hesitated as something occurred to him. "That may have been the reason why our room was searched."
"Sounds plausible." She chewed on her lower lip as she thought it out. "But we would have discovered the alteration eventually."
"Not if the picture disappears. In fact, I'll bet you that when we go back downstairs the picture will be missing."
"We'll see. I still don't see how it looked so real."
"When you add further steps, using white oil paint, q-tips, oil, pencils and pastel, and then a final coat of smooth lacquer spray to even out the finish, what you have is—"
"A Zanita with her eyes wide open?"
"Exactly."
"The picture was left there yesterday morning when we went up to sleep so whoever did it had—"
"The whole day to work on it before putting it back where it was sure to be spotted by somebody."
"Unbelievable."
"They might, in fact, have taken an exact picture of the altered picture." He shrugged. "I'm not an expert in these things."
Zanita snorted. Who else but Tyber would figure out this stuff? The scope of his knowledge always amazed her. "Like someone else would know all this?"
He ducked his head sheepishly. "I don't know. There's a lot you can do with the right equipment."
"Tell me about it," she murmured, scanning his naked length.
He almost blushed. "Be good."
"I am." She batted her lashes at him.
He threw her a sultry look before rubbing his jaw. "I wonder who did it?"
"You don't know? I thought you had that already figured out," she teased.
"No, not yet," he responded seriously.
She hid her grin behind her hand.
"Well, it was Mark who pointed the picture out to us, to get our attention focused on it. And it's also Mark who has photography and computer imaging expertise. It has to be him."
"It's too pat. Besides, why would a man who was smart enough to figure out that alteration, be dumb enough to draw our attention to it?"
"True. Okay, let's say it wasn't Mark for the time being. In fact, let's not focus on who did it right now, but why someone did it."
"That's easy." He wrapped his arm around her neck and pulled her to him.
"So we would think the ghost did it?"
"Mmmm-hmmm." He kissed her forehead.
"So all we have to do is figure out who that person is." She stretched up and pecked his chin.
"Giving up on your ghost theory, baby?" He pecked her back.
"No. Not entirely. There's something weird here, I feel it. In fact, there might be something even more weird than a ghost…"
"What's that?" He brushed her hairline with his lips.
"Someone with a motive who wants to make this haunted inn appear more haunted."
Tyber stopped and blinked.
A slow smile etched across his face. "Good work, baby!"
"I said something?"
"Um-hmmmmm."
"What? What did I say? I gave you a clue, didn't I? I knew I—"
His lips fastened on hers in a hot taking. "Now it's my turn." With that pronouncement, he lifted her in his arms and carried her back to bed.
And even though he tortured her with his sweet lips and silken tongue, Zanita was not in the least inclined to surrender without a proper love-battle. Tyber was ecstatic.
Engaging the opposition always makes a pirate captain's day.
She had never seen anyone use a tiny feather like that!
The man ought to come with a smoke alarm attached to him, Zanita groused and mumbled to herself as they went down to the library.
"C'mon. Tell the truth. You loved it." His mouth swept her ear in a zippy little pass.
"I have nothing to say." Her lip jutted out mutinously.
"Really?" His eyebrow arched. "You had a lot to say just a little while ago."
"That does not qualify as speaking." She pierced him with her glare. "As such."
A dimple slowly grooved his cheek. "You're just ticked because I had the feather and you didn't… Mrs. Evans."
"Stop calling me Mrs. Evans; it sounds like a Bette Davis role in which she plays the other woman."
"What other woman?" he asked tongue in cheek.
"The one who…" She stopped when she realized he was baiting her.
"The one who gets teased with feathers?" he suggested huskily. "Tsk-tsk. Where was the Hayes office during all this?"
"I am not going to respond to that."
Zanita walked into the library, a mischievous Tyber trailing after her. "I bet good ol' Bette never had the 'feather flapjack." he drawled in her ear.
She stopped and gaped at him over her shoulder, horrified. "Shush! Someone will hear you." Her face pinkened at that memory. She was quite sure he had made up the "feather flapjack" although he wouldn't admit to it. "There is no such thing as a 'feather flapjack'!"
His eyes twinkled. "Seemed pretty real to me. Especially the way you screamed when I—"
Her shoe came down on his instep. "Shush!"
He chuckled. "It's okay, baby. I know the aftereffects linger for a while."
For a while? Her whole body was still shaking from what he had done to her with that damn little feather. "The next time I throw a pillow at you, I'll make sure it's polyester fill."
He blinked slowly as if ideas were coming to him. "Polyester fill? Hmmmm…"
"You're impossible!" She stormed over to the side table to get a glass of iced tea. His masculine laughter followed her the whole way. Todd approached, carrying a tray of cookies, which he placed on the table. This man was born to be an innkeeper.
Tyber sauntered over and took one, crunching on it. "You know, Todd, this morning I checked out that passageway at the top of the circular stairs."
Zanita stared at him, surprised. When had he had time to do that?
"I didn't see any spiderwebs there," he went on. He had wanted to examine them, although he'd pretty much guessed what he would find. Nothing.