Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) (25 page)

Her face twisted in a faint grimace. "I used to think Papa's incessant talk about ghosts was influencing my dreams. But then,
things
started appearing on my windowsill. Things like... feathers. And pebbles. Of course," she added quickly, "those were easy to explain away, because the sash had been open on those nights, and I figured a bird or a squirrel had left them inside. I didn't immediately link them with my dreams of him."

"Him?"

"Nahele." She darted Rafe an anxious, mildly embarrassed look. "I know it sounds absurd. But I've exhausted all reasonable explanations for the acorns and the eggshells."

"So." Rafe carefully modulated his response. "You think some two-hundred-year-old dead Indian left them behind?"

Her cheeks reddened. "What else am I to think?" she asked plaintively. "I've questioned all the staff, as circumspectly as I was able, of course; I've nailed my windows shut; I've even taken to locking my door at night."

"Have you told Max any of this?"

"Papa?" She looked aghast. "Absolutely not. He'd have me drinking protection potions and stringing garlic around my neck.

"Besides, Papa's not very good with confidences. He'd blurt my tale to Benson, or Celestia or, God forbid, to Brady Buckholtz, and I'd have an army of gawkers and newspapermen camped out beneath my window.

"I was hoping..." She fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot. "I was hoping you'd come clean and tell me your otter had sneaked in and had left the acorns and eggshells behind."

She gazed at him so beseechingly that he was indeed tempted to concoct a tale about a secret passageway that only wily, bubble-stalking otters could navigate. Then whose story would be more absurd?

"Do you want to know what I think?" he asked after a judicious moment of silence.

She nodded, her eyes so wide and misty again that he forgot himself. He reached to cup her cheek. She trembled, but she didn't bolt. This time, like a ghost of the old Silver, she stood her ground. Glad to see it, he traced the pad of his thumb along the damp hollow that cradled her lashes. Beneath her tears, her skin felt like velvet.

"Silver." He didn't have to pretend; the huskiness in his voice came naturally now. "Sweetheart, I don't think you're being haunted."

"Y-you don't?"

"No," he said softly. Damn, why wasn't he agreeing with her? Why wasn't he blowing her fears out of proportion like any self-respecting ne'er-do-well would do? Then he wouldn't have had any trouble convincing her not to sleep alone.

But some dormant nobility possessed him, and he couldn't whisper the lie. He knew he'd be sorry. He knew he was a fool. Nevertheless, he told her exactly what she didn't want to hear.

"I think you're feeling guilty. You know Max loves Cellie, and she loves him. You hired me to break up their romance, not because Cellie's a gold digger, but because you can't bear to see Max married to anyone but your mother."

She winced, wrenching free of his hand. "That's not true!"

Rafe sighed. He hadn't really expected her to agree. Still, after spending ten minutes alone with the giggling, kiss-throwing couple, a person would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind—or bitterly resentful—not to realize that Max and his fiancée were genuinely besotted with each other.

Hell, Rafe hadn't even believed love was a real, viable reason for marriage until he'd listened to Max prattle so eagerly about his wedding plans. Or until he'd watched the old man's chubby face turn dark with menace as he'd vowed to thrash any husband who wasn't head over heels in love with his daughter.

Call him a sucker, Rafe reasoned, but he liked Max. And damn him if he didn't like Cellie too. No one was more uncomfortable than he when he watched Silver snub her. And whenever he saw Max observe the same thing, and the old man's face puckered with secret hurt, he wanted to grab Silver by the shoulders and shake her. Cellie was the kind of woman Rafe might actually have prayed for in a mother—except, of course, that she could be eerily accurate at exposing truths.

A particularly hair-raising incident flitted through his memory, a carriage ride he'd shared with Cellie two days after the engagement party. At that time, he'd been concerned for gullible old Max, and he'd been prepared to expose Cellie as a fraud. But when he'd even thought about sliding across the seat and putting his arm around her shoulders, she'd given his knee a motherly pat and fixed him with those discerning gray eyes.

"
There's a ghost that haunts you, dear boy. A ghost named Jedidiah,
"
she had said with such earnestness that his toes had curled, his heart had raced, and his eyes had grown a good deal wider. "
Love never talked to a child the way he talked to you. Jedidiah might have preached the gospel, but he forgot that God forgives. You mustn't blame yourself for your parents' sins. You're a good boy. And Silver needs you. She just doesn't know how much yet."

Looking back on that carriage ride, Rafe still wasn't sure how Cellie knew about Jedidiah. But there had to be a logical explanation. Just like there had to be a logical explanation for Silver's ghost.

"That's preposterous," Silver meanwhile insisted, her eyes briny with accusation. "Celestia has nothing to do with my nightmares. There are
bird eggs
materializing in my locked and bolted bedroom. And they appear only when I dream about
him."

Rafe arched an eyebrow. "So you've convinced yourself you're not really dreaming, is that it?"

"Y-yes." Her bravado blew out like a candle the moment her anxiety crept back in. "He frightens me. I mean, I know he's only leaving acorns and seed pods and such, but..." She clasped her hands so hard that her knuckles actually whitened. "He's so threatening."

Rafe's brow furrowed. Nightmare or not, he didn't like the sound of that. "Threatening? In what way?" he asked more gently.

"He's always beside himself, yelling, and gnashing his teeth. He stomps his feet and thrusts dead animals and... and uprooted plants at me."

"Does he say anything you can understand?"

She began to quake, and her hand flew to her mouth. "He yells. He yells something about... raping the Mother."

Jesus.
Rafe's gut clenched so hard that he felt like a fist had plowed through it. "Silver, don't." Her tears were spilling uncontrollably now, and he pulled her into his arms. "It's all right, honey. It was just a nightmare."

She whimpered. He could feel her softness shrinking from his embrace, as if she feared his comfort, so he hushed her and stroked her back, cupping her head against the steady cadence of his heart.

An unfamiliar chivalry had seized him. Tenderness, protectiveness, and strength all melted through him in one golden, satisfying glow. For once, he behaved by instinct rather than design, and the realization shook him. He wasn't a selfless man. He wasn't any hero. And yet, for perhaps the first time in his life, he wasn't playacting for a woman, either.

Silver shivered against the warmth of Rafe's length, letting the sweet solace of his thrumming heart soothe the ragged endings of her nerves. She hadn't meant to let him hold her; she hadn't meant to rest her cheek against the crisp, tawny hairs that blanketed his chest, or let her fingers slide beneath sagging linen placards to touch firm, vital flesh. Never in a million lifetimes would she have thought she could feel safe with Raphael Jones. Never would she have dreamed she might trust him to cradle her waist, or comb his fingers through her hair... or kiss her temple.

Her pulse did a dizzying little dance as his lips, petal-soft with persuasion, drifted lower. Warm, moist breaths skimmed her cheek and tickled her earlobe before she felt the nuzzling caress of mouth and tongue in the tender hollow of her throat. Her heart leaped hard enough to burst the fortress of her ribs, and when she moaned a weak protest, he kneaded the base of her skull, coaxing her head higher.

"Silver." His voice was velvet, shimmering over her senses, a golden thread of reason in the dazed, white numbness of her brain. "Let me kiss you."

She couldn't think how to stop him, much less why she should. Her arms, more rubber than sinew, bowed as he pulled her closer, and when she might have protested the intimacy of her breasts, pressed so deliciously flat against the hardness of his chest, his tongue tasted hers. It was a heady sensation. If she'd had one shred of common sense left, she would have backed from his arms.

But his palm spanned her buttocks, tucking her hips against his, and she was imprisoned in a wondrous cage of seductive pressures and shivery pleasures.

His lips coaxed and teased. The sweetness of brandy slid over her tongue. She wasn't sure where the taste of him ended and the scent of him began; he was citrus and pine, sandalwood and leather, and the faint, alluring pungence of tobacco. Her vague uneasiness splintered, scattering like smoke on the wind.

When his thumb stroked her throat, when his feathery kisses rained down on her eyes, nose, and jaw, she felt the restless rise of longing. It seemed right and natural somehow for her hand to creep to his hair, to revel in the thick, burnished waves that slid through her fingers before she pulled his head lower, guiding his mouth back to hers.

"Silver."

His kiss was hungrier this time. Entranced, she sank deeper into the web of sensation that he spun. His lips slanted across hers; his tongue pushed and plundered. She trembled as heat pooled in her belly. She gasped as his fingers slyly brushed her nipple and his maleness grew more prominent against her femininity.

"Rafe," she warned uneasily.

His head rose, and his hands stilled instantly. She could hear the ragged sawing of his breaths, the fevered tempo of his heart. She didn't know what she regretted more, the cool gust of reason that shivered up her spine, or the glittering disappointment that blazed through her limbs.

"I... we... please." She knew she wasn't making sense. She wanted more, so much more, and when she gathered the courage to meet his heavy-lidded stare, she knew she could have it. All of it. But she was afraid.

"I have to go," she whispered lamely.

"Silver."

She trembled, faltering in midturn. Nothing held her but the smoky softness of his voice. She liked to think she heard concern in its timbre. But she didn't dare trust her senses. Not after the way he'd made them betray her.

"Since you're afraid of intruders, I could accompany you to your bedroom and—"

"No!"

He grew very still.

"I was merely going to suggest," he continued with resolute calmness, "that I would inspect your door and windows to make sure they're secure."

Tears threatened to rob her vision. "That won't be necessary."

"Silver."

The gentleness of his voice stopped her again in midflight.

"You have nothing to fear from me."

She ventured a glance over her shoulder. He hadn't moved. He hadn't even pushed back the hair her questing fingers had spilled across his brow.

"Can I really believe that?"

"Yes."

She fought down a sob. She wanted to trust him. She wanted nothing more than to lull herself into that warm sense of security she'd felt so strongly in his arms.

"Th-thank you. Good night."

She hurried for the stairs, half afraid he'd lied, half afraid he'd follow. When he didn't, she was mortified to feel more deflated than relieved. God help her. She was falling under the spell of the very same Romeo whom she'd hired, with open eyes, to woo Celestia!

Pausing before her yawning, dimly lit chamber, she touched shaking fingers to her lips. She was almost tempted to call Rafe, to beg him to hold her safely through the night and trust him to keep his word.

Instead, she forced her feet across the threshold and closed the door behind her. Ghosts she could handle, she told herself weakly. They melted into the bright, sunny dawn of a Colorado morn. But Raphael Jones?

Her heart somersaulted, and her skin tingled in a frightfully exquisite shiver.

She worried his kisses would haunt her night and day.

Chapter 9

After her humiliation in the parlor, Silver spent the next few days avoiding Rafe. She couldn't bear the notion that she'd be fair game for his wit. After all, it was bad enough that she
thought
she was being haunted. Why had she admitted it to a wiseacre like Rafe?