Chapter Nine
Laney
Lucas bolted out of bed so fast, it was like Laney had proposed to him.
“Shit,” he said, yanking on his jeans. “Shit. It’s happening.”
“What’s…oh.” Her postcoital comment had been an offhand remark, a casual observation. She’d forgotten Lucas might’ve seen it as evidence of something more serious and supernatural.
“It’s just like maybe there’s a dead bug in the lights,” Laney said, but he just shot her a look and tossed her dress at her. She tried again. “It’s an old building, Lucas.”
It wasn’t that worrisome of a smell. More like the subtle scent in your home when a lamp had overheated and you had to sniff around to figure out which one. Something hot and on its way to being overcooked. Laney stood by her burned bug theory.
He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. Then he put back on his shirt. His fingers trembled slightly. “I’ve got to check it out.” He cast a glance towards the door. “Wait here.”
He turned and strode away, and she jumped out of bed after him, grabbing the dress to pull it on. “Lucas—”
A shaky hand on the knob, he looked back to catch her sliding the sundress over her naked body. He paused, his eyes flicking downward, his gaze a caress on her full breasts, hips, and legs. Good. He wasn’t that far gone.
She let the dress cover her curves, but put a hand on her hip and lowered her eyelashes. “Are you sure you don’t want to…”
His eyes met hers and he frowned. “I need to make sure it’s safe.” He turned the knob, but then held out his hand. “Come with me.”
She sighed in sexual frustration, but followed him out of the room, grabbing her bag along the way. She peeked at the time on her phone. It was only a few minutes past ten.
The lights on the second floor illuminated an empty hallway. The smell was there, at times—it played peekaboo with Laney’s nostrils. Somewhere an insect was burning millimeter by millimeter, and it was too bad, because Laney wanted to smoosh it in her rage for distracting her lover.
And what a lover he’d been. No doubt Lucas Moore was usually a considerate man when he made love, but there was a fierceness in him tonight, a gnawing hunger for her growing with every thrust, and she’d thrilled at it. He’d gripped her hips tightly as she’d rode him, and the friction between their bodies had made her come quick and hard, like a match striking.
It was all a woman wanted: a kind man who was a demon in bed.
“Where’d you say everyone was?” he asked, looking around the second floor.
She sighed again. “Tucker’s downstairs playing with his toys. And Adele and Mina are upstairs trying to talk to dead people.”
There came a shuffling over their heads. Both of them slowly looked up.
“Someone’s up on the third floor, all right.” Lucas’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“I’ll go check it out,” she said, eager to ease his anxiety and get him back to bed. Her muscles still pulsed with the memory of him, the shape he’d made inside her.
“No.” He shook his head and swallowed again. “I won’t let you go alone.”
Laney’s skin grew warm and tingly. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but damn it if she didn’t feel charmed that this firefighter wanted to protect her from some imaginary thing. She’d seen his hands shake and the way his face looked when he’d told his story. He believed this. He was scared to go on the third floor. Yet he was doing it anyway so she didn’t have to go alone.
They walked to the staircase on the opposite end of the hall, then crept up it, Laney in the rear.
Halfway up, Lucas called, “Adele, are you up there?”
Silence.
“Maybe Mina’s put her in a trance,” Laney whispered, though she wasn’t completely sure why the older woman wasn’t answering them back either.
Exhaling hard, his steps quickened up the second flight and Laney rushed to keep up. But when he hit the landing, he stopped short.
“What?” she said, stepping up beside him.
Adele stood in the middle of the third floor hallway, facing them. Her skirts swished around her like she’d just turned around. A short ways behind, Mina was leaning her palms flat against the wall, her head down and hidden behind her dark hair. A large bag lay between them.
Seeing them, Adele put her finger to her mouth. A smile played on her lips. Slowly, she glided closer to where they’d paused at the top of the stairs.
“Hello,” she whispered. She put one hand on each of their arms and squeezed. “I’m glad you’re here.” Adele’s eyes drifted to Laney’s neck, which she was almost embarrassed to realize probably had a hickey from Lucas’s mouth. Laney tugged over a strap of her sundress.
“Are you okay?” Lucas asked. His gaze darted all around: Adele, the hall, Mina, the ceiling, the hall. He hadn’t budged from where he’d paused by the steps. The threshold stood just a foot and a half away, but his eyes considered it as if it were an invisible force field.
“Of course, Lucas,” Adele said pleasantly. “Mina’s just trying to make contact with my husband. It takes a great deal of focus and, of course, silence is helpful.”
As she stopped talking, a soft whispering rose from Mina’s direction. It was too low and fast for Laney to catch any specific words, almost like a chant.
Adele turned to Lucas, grabbing his right hand with both of her own and pressing it between them. “I’m sorry if it is hard for you to be up here, dear. All these memories—I know.”
Lucas’s chest rose as he took a deep breath, but he moved not a step closer to the hallway.
“Thank you, Adele,” he said tightly.
The widow squeezed his hand so tight his fingertips drained of blood. “We were so lucky it didn’t take you too, you know,” she told him. “I know it wanted to; that’s why you have that…” She nodded to his bicep, in the place Laney remembered that strange hand-shaped burn was.
His lips parted, but no sound came out.
A deep moan came from Mina, and a shudder coursed through the young woman’s body. She was really putting on a good show.
Adele’s eyes held the firefighter’s. “He knew it was going to take you, and that’s why he saved you, my Bill. He was a good man. He couldn’t let a child be hurt, and he must have known it was coming for you.”
A shadow crossed Lucas’s face, and it was different than the fear that had tightened his features earlier. This was like regret—or confirmation of an ugly secret only he knew. Laney didn’t like it.
Static buzzed from the floor.
They all started, then Laney laughed. She recognized it as one of the walkie talkies Tucker had insisted they use to communicate between floors of the house.
“Guys!” Tucker’s voice was excited over the speaker. “Guys! You’ve got to come down here and see this.”
Laney guessed that the kid was freaking out about some two-point temperature difference between the lobby and the library—something she might be able to mention as an afterthought in the article. Obviously the real story was up here with the grieving widow, the scene of the supposed haunting, and the psychic making silly noises.
She glanced at Lucas. He’d pulled away from Adele, and he looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.
An inky feeling of guilt spilled into Laney’s stomach. She shouldn’t have asked him here—not to the third floor, and maybe not to the inn. Still, she needed this paycheck more than she needed to bed this noble, troubled man a second time, as much as her body desired it. Plus, as Mina let out another moan and dramatic shudder, Laney could almost see the click rates on her piece skyrocketing. She dug her cell out of the bag she hadn’t left behind in the room.
“She won’t mind if I take photos of her, right?” Laney asked Adele, turning on the phone’s camera and aiming it toward Mina.
“I suppose not,” Adele said.
As she walked into the hall, Laney called over her shoulder to Lucas. “Go see what Tucker’s found. But if it’s something good, tell him to text it to me so I can use it in the article.”