Suddenly weak-kneed, she sank down on the end of the bed. Why had Hugh been so angry at her mother?
* * * *
“I’ll check on it myself,” Lucas said into the phone. A waiter had noticed there was a light on in one of the rooms in a closed wing of the hotel.
He expected to find a couple of teenagers. It wasn’t unheard of for local kids, looking for a quiet and private place to make out, to sneak into an empty room at the Sinclair House. He’d done it himself once or twice when he was in high school. The doors to the rooms were kept locked, but the lack of a key had never been any match for overactive hormones.
It did surprise him that they’d left a light on. He spotted a pale yellow glow beneath a door as soon as he entered the empty wing. Grim-faced, he stalked toward it. At least they’d saved him the trouble of guessing which room they’d chosen.
The door opened easily, and Lucas stepped inside. Whatever he’d expected to find, it was not Corrie Ballantyne huddled on the edge of the bed, shivering uncontrollably. One glance at her face told him that something extraordinary had happened to her. He approached cautiously, his footfalls barely audible on the thick carpet, and called her name.
She looked up at him, a haunted expression on her pale face. “I saw her again.”
“Adrienne?”
“Yes.” Her bleak gaze warned him he wasn’t going to like what she had to tell him. “Adrienne led me here, and I saw my mother and your father. He was yelling at her. I’m guessing she’d just told him about her sighting.”
“My father does have a temper,” Lucas admitted. “Exactly what did you see this time, Corrie?”
Color rushed into her face at his skeptical tone, but she complied with his request, filling in every detail she could dredge up.
As he listened, he sensed Corrie’s discomfort and realized she didn’t want to tell him what had happened. She was doing so only because she needed so badly to convince him it was true.
After she’d related all she’d seen, she took a deep breath. “I’d like to talk to your father.”
He didn’t reply, just held out his hand. She took it, following him into the hall and watching in strained silence as he locked the door behind them.
A futile gesture. Too little. Too late.
And as much as he hated to admit it, Corrie was probably right. They should talk to his father and ask him exactly what young Alice had claimed to have seen.
Thinking like that meant he was starting to believe Corrie’s incredible story. The realization shook Lucas. What had happened to his common sense? His grip on reality?
They left the closed wing and reentered the warmth of the connecting corridor. “I know your father isn’t able to talk,” Corrie said, “but there must be some way to communicate with him.”
“We’ve been experimenting with using a laptop computer, but even striking a key takes tremendous effort. I don’t want him trying to do too much. And I don’t want him getting upset.”
They’d reached her room. She turned to face him, her back against the door. Obviously he wasn’t going to be invited in.
“I’m not trying to cause problems, Lucas. You have to believe that. But I need to talk to him.”
He did believe her. And he could tell that Corrie was not unscathed by this. She hadn’t asked to be haunted. His concern for her was very nearly equal to his worry over what effect badgering his father might have on the older man’s health.
“We’ll talk to Pop together,” he said. Questioning his own sanity would have to wait. He had enough else to worry about right now.
Her answering smile was a trifle crooked and tremendously endearing. “Thank you.”
“I’ll let you know when we can see him. I want to talk to his doctor first.”
As he opened the door for her, his voice gentled and the sudden husky undertone had little connection to the words he actually spoke. “Just do me a favor,” he said, “and stay put for the rest of the night.”
* * * *
At midmorning the next day, Lucas escorted Corrie to his parents’ house. Hugh was waiting for them in the study, his laptop already in place on his knees, but Lucas had not yet told him the purpose of this visit.
“Pop,” he began, “there have been some strange things going on at the hotel. We need your help.”
There was a flicker of response in the older man’s eyes. That seemed a good sign, but as Lucas pulled the desk chair close to Hugh’s wheelchair and sat, he wondered just how much he really wanted to know. He was still fighting the idea that there were such things as ghosts.
“I’ve seen Adrienne again,” Corrie said. She knelt on the other side of Hugh, so that they were eye to eye. “I’m trying to figure out what she wants, Mr. Sinclair, and to do that I need to know more about the other person who saw her. The teenage girl. She was my mother.”
The look in Hugh’s eyes might have been either embarrassment or guilt.
“You didn’t want to believe her, did you?” Corrie asked.
Hugh made no attempt to answer.
Concerned, Lucas looked from his father to Corrie. How far did she want to pursue this? Pop already seemed uneasy, and the doctor had warned them that another stroke was possible. He’d advised keeping Hugh calm.
“Let me tell you what I’ve seen,” Corrie said.
“I don’t want you getting him stirred up,” Lucas warned her.
“Lucas, he knows something about this already. He’s got to be wondering what’s going on. This can only help.” She turned back to Hugh. “Why were they staying here?” she asked. “The hotel was closed, wasn’t it?”
Hugh nodded, but he made no move to touch the keyboard. He either could not or did not want to explain.
“Did they leave because of the fire danger?”
He nodded again.
“Had they planned to come back?”
A slight negative shake answered this time.
“Do you know what Adrienne tried to tell my mother?”
Another no.
“Why were you yelling at her? I saw that much. Adrienne showed me. You were in their room and furious at my mother. What had she said to you?”
Sweat stood out in beads on Hugh’s forehead. He closed his eyes. His fingers remained motionless, as if he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with the laptop.
“Corrie, that’s enough!”
“But, Lucas, I—”
Her persistence goaded him into losing his temper. Seizing her by the arm, he rushed her out of the room before she could ask anything else. In the hallway, he pinned her against the wall, his hands on her shoulders, and glared down at her.
“This is my father, Corrie. Not yours. Cut him some slack.”
“Lucas, this is important.”
He snapped at her. “When it comes down to a choice between my family and anyone else, I put my family first.”
“Anyone? Even—?”
“Even you, Corrie. The family comes before
any
woman. You want proof? My wife tried to make me choose between funneling money into the hotel we owned together and helping Pop after Kelvin’s embezzlement. I’m here, aren’t I? And she’s not.”
He raked one hand through his hair and wondered why on earth he’d mentioned Dina again. This situation was completely different. Wasn’t it?
“Dammit, Lucas. What does your ex-wife have to do with Adrienne?”
“I’d have been back months earlier if I’d known the true state of affairs at the Sinclair House. She kept that from me. Hell, I might even have been in time to prevent some of the damage Kelvin did to the hotel.”
Yet even knowing what Dina had done, he remembered that the decision to leave her had not been an easy one. When he married her he’d expected they’d be together forever. He’d believed in happily ever after, thought he’d made her part of his family.
He’d been wrong.
“I’m not even going to attempt to translate that,” Corrie muttered. “And for your information, I wasn’t about to suggest you put me ahead of your family in the first place. It was
Adrienne
I was going to name. In case you’ve forgotten, she
is
family.”
He felt lower than a drained pond, but it was too late to take back what he’d said. An apology seemed futile too.
“Not even for Adrienne,” he told her. “I won’t let Pop’s health be jeopardized by more questions. Forget about finding out what happened back in 1947 and forget about whatever it is Adrienne wants you to do for her. This is all nonsense, anyway. I shouldn’t have let myself be suckered into going along with it.”
“It isn’t nonsense, and I can’t back out now.”
“Corrie, there are no such things as ghosts.”
Sparks seemed to fly out of her eyes. Blue fire. “You have a right to your opinion, but so do I!”
“All I ask is that you leave my father alone. If you must keep looking for answers, find them somewhere else.”
“Fine!” Grabbing her coat off the hail tree as she passed it, Corrie slammed out of the house.
Lucas watched her go in growing despair, uncomfortably aware that, once again, he’d put his father’s welfare before his feelings for a woman.
This time it hurt more.
He suspected memories of this particular woman would haunt him far longer than his regrets over the end of his marriage had.
Lucas called himself every kind of a fool. He wasn’t married to Corrie Ballantyne. He hadn’t even slept with her. What did it matter if he never saw her again? Indeed, life would be much more peaceful if she’d just leave the Sinclair House and never come back.
Refusing to acknowledge the ache that thought provoked deep in his heart, he returned to the study, where Hugh was waiting for him. The older man s eyes were alert and filled with concern.
“Is she right, Pop? Do you know something?”
Hugh struck the
N
on the computer keyboard. No.
“Would you speculate about it if you could talk to me?”
Hugh struck the
Y
.
Shaking his head, unable to think of the right questions to ask, Lucas was about to abandon this frustrating, nearly one-sided conversation when Hugh began typing one letter after another, until a question that had nothing at all to do with ghosts appeared on the laptop’s small screen.
Do you love her?
“Damned if I know, Pop.” Lucas tried to smile at his father and failed. “I shouldn’t. She’s been nothing but trouble since she got here.”
Hugh waited, this time conveying the same question with his eyes.
“I could love her,” Lucas finally admitted, “if I let myself. But somehow I don’t think falling in love with Corrie Ballantyne would be a very smart thing to do.”
* * * *
Corrie was in a bad mood when she got back to her room. Rachel had already left to go skiing. The minivan that took downhill skiers to the nearest mountain made several runs each day, but Corrie saw no point in trying to track down her friend.
Her gaze fell on the bed, and she frowned. The maid had been in. So had someone else. A small, plain brown paper bag had been left on the pillow. Cautiously, Corrie picked it up and peeked inside.
She crushed it closed again at once. Rachel. Up to her old tricks.
But on second thought, the gesture made Corrie smile. She opened the bag and stared at the wisps of black lace it contained. Extracting them with exaggerated care, she examined each of the three pieces of what could only be described as a naughty nightie.
She’d seen the outfit before, in a display at the little boutique she and Rachel had shopped in, the boutique where she’d bought the dress she was planning to wear that night for New Year’s Eve.
Trust Rachel, Corrie thought wryly, to decide that lives could be improved by exchanging sensible flannel for lace. Corrie had never been much interested in fancy nightwear. Her taste ran to the practical and warm. But now that she had been given this bit of nothing, she couldn’t resist the temptation to try it on.
Hastily slipping out of her clothes, she eased into a tiny triangle that was held across the hips by narrow bands of elastic. The lacy top was gathered at the waist so that it flared over her hips in a tiny skirt. It all but bared her breasts. The third piece, so transparent it hardly qualified as a robe, hid little more.
Color crept into her cheeks as Corrie studied herself in the mirror. The peignoir was outrageously sexy, hinting at more than it actually revealed. And, impossible as it seemed to her, it made her feel . . . excited.
Would a man find it arousing? Would Lucas?
For a moment she let herself imagine his gaze moving slowly over her body, heating steadily. Yes, he’d respond to it, to her. And she wouldn’t be wearing it long.
On a low moan, Corrie’s lips parted. The woman in the mirror was a stranger, capable of— Startled by the wanton direction of her thoughts, she pivoted. Her gaze fell on the bed, and her blush deepened to crimson.
Tonight was New Year’s Eve. Did Lucas still want her to spend the evening with him? The night? She was no longer sure.
A week. She’d known him only a week and her life was in turmoil. She was scheduled to stay only three more nights at the Sinclair House. She wasn’t sure she wanted to contemplate what could happen in that length of time.
Even scarier was the temptation to extend her vacation. She wanted to help Adrienne. She also wanted more time with Lucas. She knew already that she’d regret it for the rest of her life if she didn’t see things through to some sort of conclusion.
The man had gotten under her skin. It wasn’t just lust, either. She liked him . . . most of the time.
She wanted to spend the night in his arms.
Where had that thought come from?
She had to wonder. Had it been her own idea? Or had Adrienne put the notion into her head, the way she’d engineered that kiss in the sleigh? In sudden confusion, Corrie stripped off the sensually soft pieces and stuffed them back into their plain brown wrapper.
When she was safely bundled into her comfortable, all-concealing terry-cloth bathrobe, she faced the mirror again. The same old reliable, practical Corrie Ballantyne looked back at her . . . except that there was a haunted look in her eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
A lounge called the Tavern was located at the basement level of the Sinclair House. It had been turned into the local version of a trendy nightspot for New Year’s Eve, with a singer and backup group performing and the center of the room cleared for dancing.