Cinderella Search (12 page)

Again, he felt himself bristling. Nothing could contain it. He wanted to take on the men who had done this to her. He wanted to prove that he wasn’t necessarily the wrong kind of man. He wanted to hold her close again, kiss her until she quivered the way she had this morning. Before he could stop himself, he’d pulled her into his arms.

He dipped his head and brushed a brief kiss over her mouth. She stared at him, completely still but for a faint fluttering of her bottom lip. A soft sigh trembled out of her. “Steve …”

“You see what I’m talking about?”

“I always did,” she said. “That’s why I said it was an experiment we shouldn’t repeat.”

He stroked a thumb over the curve of her cheek. “But it seems we are.”

“Are we?”

“Aren’t we?”

She smiled. “I’m not sure.”

“I wish you wouldn’t smile at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“I can’t describe it,” he said. “It’s just the way you smile and it does something to me.”

“I’ll try not to,” she said solemnly, then smiled. Steve groaned. The need to touch her skin overcame him and he stroked his palm down her bare arm, then back up to her shoulder where he slid a finger under her sleeveless blouse. When he felt a tremor course through her, he took her mouth again.

This kiss was not brief, nor was it casual. It was tender and sweet and enormously appealing, and that disturbed her deeply. If he’d been aggressive, demanding, even masterful, she might have been able to withstand the assault on her senses, but he was giving, not taking, and she accepted his gift.

All the words she’d once believed in—destiny, fate, kismet, ran through her mind. But none of those words could possibly be real. Only, his kiss felt real. His hand, sliding through the plaits of her braid, loosening it, felt real. His mouth, soft on hers, moving over her cheek, down her throat, up to her ear, felt real.

It had to be a dream, but it wasn’t—it was real. Still she wished it wasn’t really happening to her. She didn’t believe in happy endings anymore, yet what was happening between them seemed to lead in that direction.

They’d met, they’d been attracted, and now here she was, locked in his arms for the second time in twenty-four hours and she wanted more of the gifts he offered.

“Steve,” she murmured, her palm cradling his cheek. “We shouldn’t … I think …”

“I can’t think,” he said. “I don’t want to think. I want to feel. Feel this with me, Lissa.”

She moaned and opened her mouth to him then turned to make it easier for him to unfasten the buttons down the front of her blouse. His kiss was deep, thrilling, destroying whatever vestiges of good sense she had left. It was a kiss she wanted never to end, but it did.

Even as she cried out in protest, his breath, hot and moist, spread over the tops of her breasts. She gasped, and he answered her unspoken plea, suckling a nipple through the satin of her bra. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, for either of them. He slid his hand around her back, fumbling for the clasp.

“Here,” she said, pressing the button that released the garment in the front. She put one hand under a breast, lifting it, offering it to him. For a moment, he didn’t touch it, but gazed at her, his eyes darkly luminous, glowing with passion, then he shut them as he bent and closed his mouth over her.

She raked her nails down his back, around to his chest, slid her hands up under his sweatshirt and over his ribs. He quivered at her touch, and moved to her other breast, bending her back over his arm. Her fingers found one of his hard little nubs in the hair of his chest, teased it, tugged on it, drawing forth a long, low growl of pleasure.

Her heart felt as if it would burst. Her mind swirled with sensation. Her entire body pulsed with a need that only he could fill. He ran a hand from her knee to her hip, under her skirt, his palm scraping deliciously against her skin.

She made a sound. It might have been a word. Whatever it was, she knew he’d understood it because he met the need flaring through her. He cupped her sex with his hand, sliding his fingers over the fabric of her underwear, then up, across her belly. His hand slipped under the elastic, slid through her hair, two fingers parting her folds. And she flew apart.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, buried her face against Steve’s chest and wept, so stirred was she by the force of her release.

“No, no,” she heard him saying. “Don’t … please don’t.”

“I didn’t mean … I didn’t want … That wasn’t supposed …”

“Lissa.” He lifted her face, his pale and strained, but oddly triumphant, as if he had fought to reach a high mountain peak and achieved his goal. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, either. But I did want it to. You just gave me the most valued gift a woman can ever give a man.”

She closed her eyes, felt his lips sipping at the tears that continued to pour forth. She, who hadn’t cried for years, brought to this by the touch of a man’s hand. It was terrible. She was so ashamed, so embarrassed, she wished she could disappear.

“I gave you nothing,” she choked.

His voice was a low rumble against her ear as he murmured, “You gave me your trust.”

She could have denied it. Should have denied it. She didn’t trust him. She trusted no man. What was more, she trusted herself even less. Especially after this.

“Lissa …” She resisted the pressure of his hand under her chin. “Come on. Look at me.”

She shook her head. “I want you to go away.”

“That’s not going to happen. I’m in this for the—” For the what, she wasn’t to learn, because at that moment, the dining room doors squeaked open. Rosa came through them, let out a squawk that could have been heard clear across the island, and then simply stared as Steve and Lissa untangled their bodies from each other and stood.

With the back of one hand over her mouth, Lissa stared back at Rosa, whose tray of pastries slowly tilted until cinnamon rolls bounced around her feet, raspberry Danishes splatted face-first onto the carpet, and bran muffins rolled down the stairs into the lounge.

Finally the tray itself clanged to the floor. “Melissa Ann Wilkins, I am shocked! Your father said ‘make nice,’ not ‘make love’!” Then she whirled around, bashed the doors open with one thrust of her arm and marched back through them, leaving the scent of cinnamon heavy in the air.

Cinnamon and masculine cologne and sex. “What did she mean, ‘make nice’?”

Lissa stared at Steve, unable to force so much as a single word out of her mouth. She spun away from him, bolted toward the inner office and locked the door.

After escaping out the back way in a frenzied daze, she made her way to her boat. There she threw a few things into a tote bag, called Pete, the manager, and woke him with the news that she’d left the desk unattended.

She hung up on his wheezing complaints, his threats, his accusations of laziness, locked the door of her boat and nearly flew up the ramp to the parking lot. She backed her car out in a spray of gravel that spattered against a gray Dumpster, and headed for the road. She’d be early for the first ferry, but she didn’t care.

What, oh what, had she allowed to happen to her? If she could, she’d find a way never to return to Madrona Cove. Maybe, with any kind of luck, Rosa would keep her mouth shut, but she doubted it. Rosa would just have to tell someone, in confidence of course, and that person would tell the next, and the next, and before she knew it, everyone in the Cove would be fully aware that Lissa Wilkins had been caught in a compromising position on a couch in the lounge of the Madrona Inn. With a guest!

And not just any guest, but one who should have been in his room, being kept awake by horrifying sounds, disturbed by weird events, but who had been with her.

If Rosa hadn’t interrupted them, she’d likely still be in a state of unreality, where she could pretend Steve Jackson was just a man she liked, a man she desired. A man she could very, very easily fall for.

If she hadn’t already done so.

Which meant she hadn’t changed a bit, not deep inside where it mattered. She was still a total pushover for any charming man.

She drove aboard the ferry with one eye on her rearview mirror, half convinced Steve was going to come after her and demand an explanation of Rosa’s words. She knew she was running away. Well, it wasn’t the first time she’d done that. But this time, more than any other time in her life, what she wished she could run from permanently was the disastrous state of her own emotions. She’d met the man a week ago Friday, for heaven’s sake! What was she thinking of, falling in love with him just over a week later? She argued that point with herself all the way across to Campbell River on the ferry, telling herself she was not in love. She might be in lust, but she was absolutely, positively, definitely not in love with Steve Jackson.

She repeated it like an incantation as she drove south down the Island Highway, then cut west at Parksville. She didn’t even stop at Coombs, as she usually did, to buy fresh fruit from the market, but kept on driving.

When she finally lifted her cramped, exhausted body from her car and rang her mother’s doorbell, she was sure she’d convinced herself.

But the minute she saw her mother she burst into tears. “I’m not in love with him, Mom! Honest I’m not!”

Her mother gathered her close: “Of course you’re not, angel. What a ridiculous notion. Who is he, anyway? Come on in. Tell me all about him.”

That night, Steve lay on his bed with his hands stacked behind his head, staring at faint flickers of light on the dark ceiling, thinking about Lissa. Then the noises started, soft, faint, low, but growing gradually louder. Sobbing, moaning, wailing. His hair stood on end.

Something white and filmy fluttered off to his left. Turning on the light, he saw the white lace curtains blowing in the light breeze. The air smelled clean and washed, like salt and low tide, evergreens and moss. He opened the front window wide, pushed back the fluttering curtains, and breathed deeply as he listened to the gentle lap, lap, lap of waves on the shore below and gazed up at the stars shining brightly in the inky sky.

Then, it returned, softly, the sound of sobbing followed by a squeak. His every instinct told him to continue gazing out the window, that if he didn’t turn, didn’t see, no dresser drawer would have opened. He turned, in time to see the top left one closing.

The sobbing ceased, and the silence was almost as bad.

Moments later he flinched at the sound of a maniacal laugh, high-pitched, hysterical, and definitely coming from overhead. When it faded, the quiet sobbing started again, then tapered off once more. Again he heard only the soothing sounds of the ocean on the shore.

Steve was not soothed. Maybe ghosts sobbed, maybe they opened and closed drawers, maybe they moved clothing inside closets with firmly shut doors. Maybe they laughed, loud and witchlike, then sobbed again, faint and far away. Maybe they even made thumping noises overhead.

But not damned likely.

And for sure they didn’t fall through ceilings.

One way or another, he meant to find out what the hell was going on and who was trying to scare him out of the Madrona Inn.

He did a quick search of the corridor, but could find no access to the attic, unless it was behind the locked door near the head of the stairs. The only other locked door led to his old room.

But wait a minute … his old room. Now there was a possibility. He entered the bathroom, tried the door to the adjoining quarters, shoved it open and stepped inside.

He turned on the light. There was nothing there. The bed had been stripped and the trunk stood in a corner, but little else had been done to clean up the mess. He stood under the hole and listened again, scarcely breathing. Not a sound came from the attic. But sounds had come from there.

Frowning, he returned to his room, rummaged in an outer pocket of his duffel until he found a flashlight, then moved back through the bathroom to the other room.

It should have been an easy matter to drag the highboy close to the bed, but it resisted his tugging, then finally gave way with snapping sounds and tiny sproings that sounded like springs or wires breaking. He looked behind it.

Well, well, and well again!

At least now he knew how the drawers had been opening and closing seemingly without aid. Springs and wires had indeed broken loose, springs and wires that emerged from neatly drilled holes in the wall.

What lay behind the wall where the dresser had stood? He pictured the layout in his mind. Right. That storage cupboard in the hallway. He’d check that out later. Now, though, he opened the clothes closet in this room, adjacent to the bathroom, knowing it must back onto the one next door, which occupied a similar alcove, and sure enough, there was an almost invisible slit behind and below the bar. He wouldn’t have seen it if he hadn’t left his closet open and the bedside light on. On the floor lay a slender but strong piece of metal, just long enough to reach through the crack and reposition the clothing in his closet.

“Yup!” he said. “Things are getting very, very interesting.”

Now, let’s see about the sobbing and moaning and laughing of the “ghost.”

A
FTER FINALLY MANAGING TO
shunt the dresser aside, Steve climbed on top of it and from there poked his head and shoulders through the hole, though it was a tight wiggle to get his arms and hands up, even one at a time. Impatiently, he broke away more plaster, making sure it fell on the bed. He wanted no more complaints from the elderly couple downstairs.

Shining the flashlight around, he saw old furniture stored a few yards away in the highest part of the attic; a bentwood rocking chair his mother would probably pay big bucks for, as well as an armoire for which she might even kill.

A veritable treasure trove. He wished he could investigate, but he had no time for that now.

Slowly, he sent the beam of light gliding this way and that until he’d swept the entire area with it. Besides a heavy coating of cobwebs, there was a draped black electrical cable coming out of a dangling wire between two roof trusses and disappearing off into the dimmer recesses of the attic. There were desks, tables, more chairs, old lamps and sundry unidentifiable items covered with dusty sheets.