Lover Mine(104)

"You aren't scared, are you," he said, wondering exactly when it was that they'd traded places on that account.

"You mean about last night?" She smiled. "Nope. I think that 'shadow' is Stan playing a trick on both of us as payback for jerking him around between rooms. You know how he hates moving luggage. Besides, it got me back in your bed, didn't it. Not that you've done anything much about this."

He snagged his windbreaker and went over to her. Taking her chin in hand, he looked into her eyes. "You still want me like that?"

"Always have." Holly's voice dropped. "I'm cursed."

"Cursed?"

"Come on, Gregg." When he just looked at her, she threw up her hands. "You're a bad bet. You're married to your job and you'd sell your soul to get ahead. You reduce everything and everyone around you to a lowest common denominator and that allows you to use them. And when they aren't useful? You don't remember their name."

Jesus . . . she was smarter than he'd thought. "So why do you want to have anything to do with me?"

"Sometimes . . . I don't really know." Her eyes returned to the book, but they didn't go back and forth over the lines. They just locked onto the page. "I guess it's because I was really naive when I met you, and you gave me a shot when no one else would, and you taught me about a lot of things. And that initial crush is hanging on."

"You make it sound like a bad thing."

"It can be. I've been hoping to grow out of it . . . and then you do stuff like look after me and I get sucked in all over again."

He stared at her, measuring her perfect features and her smooth skin and her amazing body.

Feeling tangled and strange, and like he owed her an apology, he went over to the camera on the tripod and turned it on to record. "You got your cell phone with you?"

She reached into her robe's pocket and took out a BlackBerry. "Right here."

"Call me if anything strange happens, 'kay?"

Holly frowned. "Are you all right?"

"Why do you ask?"

She shrugged. "Just never seen you quite this . . ."

"Anxious? Yeah, I guess there's something about this house."

"I was going to say . . . connected, actually. It's like you're truly looking at me for the first time."

"I've always looked at you."

"Not like this."

Gregg went over to the door and paused. "Can I ask you something weird? Do you . . . color your hair?"

Holly put her hand up to the blond waves. "No. I never have."

"It's really that blond?"

"You should know."

As she cocked her eyebrow, he flushed. "Well, women can get dye jobs down . . . you know."

"Well, I don't."

Gregg frowned and wondered who the hell was running his brain: he seemed to have all these odd thoughts playing over his airwaves, like maybe his station had been hijacked. Giving her a little wave, he ducked into the hall, and looked left then right while listening hard. No footsteps. No creaking. No one with a sheet pulled over his head, Casper-ing around.

Yanking his windbreaker on, he stalked over to the stairs and hated the echo of his own footsteps. The sound made him feel pursued.

He glanced behind himself. Nothing but empty corridor.

Down on the first floor, he looked at the lights that had been left on. One in the library. One in the front hall. One in the parlor.

Ducking around the corner, he paused to check out that Rathboone portrait. For some reason, he didn't think the painting was so fucking romantic and salable anymore.

Some reason, his ass. He wished he'd never called Holly over to look at the thing. Maybe it wouldn't have marked her subconscious such that she fantasized about the guy coming to her and having sex with her. Man . . . that expression on her face when she'd been talking about her dream. Not the fear part, but the sex, the resonant sex. Had she ever looked like that after he'd been with her?

Had he ever stopped to see if he'd satisfied her like that?

Satisfied her at all?

Opening the front door, he stepped out like he was on a mission, when in reality, he had nowhere to go. Well, except for away from that computer and those images . . . and that quiet room with a woman who might just have more substance than he'd always thought.

Kind of like a ghost being real.

God . . . the air was clean out here.

He walked out away from the house, and when he was about a hundred yards down the rolling grass, he paused and looked back. On the second floor, he saw the light on in his room and pictured Holly nestled against the pillows, that book in her long, thin hands.

He kept going, heading for the tree line and the brook.

Did ghosts have souls? he wondered. Or were they souls?

Did television execs have souls?