Ever Tempted (22 page)

Cole strolled out the front door. His muscles worked under his shirt as he moved, his model physique making it hard to focus on the job at hand.

For a second, scenes from that morning softened my knees.
“We’re going to have a chance to be alone in a bedroom and you’re leaving me to eat? You must really be hungry.”

He looked back, left me with a sexy grin but not thoughts.

A chandelier with long melted wax drippings hung directly above us. It reminded me of ours at the manor, but it hadn’t been updated with electricity. That would be an expensive update too, but they’d all be worth it. This place was an antique museum.

At the top of the staircase, nine rooms surrounded the railing.

By choice, I took the right side of the house to investigate, and Anna Marie, Shelby, and Kaitlyn took the left.

Pointing at the spot between us, Kaitlyn said, “We’ll meet back here in a few minutes.”

The first bedroom was just as I suspected. No electricity with heavy drapes.

I drew the drapes back to allow in more light.

The room housed nothing but the bare essentials. A bed, a nightstand with an oil lantern, a wash bowl and mirror, and a heavy wooden wardrobe. The bedding on the heavy masculine bed was covered in a layer of dust. It looked to have been white with red roses. The red had faded to pink over the years, or the dust was so thick the colors couldn’t show through. The wardrobe was empty.

The next room was possibly darker than the first.

After placing my candlestick on the heavy wardrobe, I reached for the drapes to give my candle some assistance in lighting the room, but strong warm arms circled my waist from behind.

“Alone. Just the way I like it.” Cole’s voice tickled my ear as his lips caressed my neck.

“We’re supposed to be inspecting rooms.” I leaned into him.

“There’s a perfectly good bed over there. It hasn’t seen company in a hundred years.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t mind being left alone. It’s too dusty, anyway.” I wriggled under his cool touch.

“I can’t wait to get your clothes off.” Cole’s voice was deeper. His hands slipped up my shirt, but I turned in his grip before he could fondle me.

Any minute, the twins could walk into the room.

“You’re handsy today.” I kissed his nose.

He came around rested his forehead on mine, and his hair tickled my temple.

I dipped back, growing too involved in how he felt to focus.

“We don’t have much time. I’d like to make the best of it.” His eyes were darker green in the ambience of the candle’s glow and his lips were dark red as if they’d been painted on by the finest artist.

“That’s not a very optimistic view of the situation. We’ll have plenty of time. I have faith in us and the girls.” I pulled back from him.

“Don’t deny me. It’s just us.” Cole’s cool hands were suddenly hot on my sides as his fingers grazed my bra.

I groaned.

Cole normally was not this insistent at inappropriate times, but his impatience was intriguing. And hot.

“Allie. I think we found what we need,” Kaitlyn called from the other side of the hall.

“Let’s go see if they found something to brighten your outlook.” I used the girls as an excuse to untangle myself from the increasingly demanding situation. “We’re coming.”

Across the way, Kaitlyn’s happy face fell. “We? What are you talking about?”

From the vestibule, Cole walked up the staircase and glanced back and forth between us. “There are three barns out there. It’d be the perfect place to house horses.”

I shot around to look behind me. There was no one there!

Leaving the bedroom door open, I rushed to the other side of the hallway. With my arms wrapped protectively around myself, a chill jolted me.

Cole approached me, his eyebrows meeting in concern. “Are you okay? Your face is white as parchment.”

I jerked his hand to me and held it as if it were a rope thrown over a cliff from which I had been dangling. “Fine. Let’s just get this over with and get out of here.”

“Come on inside. This is going to astonish you. It’s just like the modern day shrine a pathological killer would have in his or her room.” Anna Marie grinned as she waved her arm to greet us into the room.

On the wall across from the bed, an old wardrobe stood beside a floor to ceiling shrine to a man who looked a lot like the man in the pictures from the chest back home.

Along with various pictures of Charles Eli Kinsley from young adulthood to manhood, there were drawings Eliza had signed with EM on the bottom corners with various dates. There were also papers with only repeated words in calligraphic handwriting. Poems. And about two hundred scribbled hearts with Eliza and Charles Eli written in the middle.

“Freaky, right?” Anna Marie grinned as she pulled her long ponytail around. She fingered it as she looked over the candles based at the foot of the shrine.

“It alarms me how excited you get over the most morbid scenery,” Shelby said.

Kaitlyn stepped closer and eyed one of the documents. She jerked it down. “I think we just found gold, folks. A curse. Particularly the Jaded Lover’s Curse.”

“And who thought it would be a bad idea to visit here?” Shelby turned to Cole and waved the paper in his face.

“Hey, this doesn’t mean anything. If we can’t access the power used for the curse, then we’re screwed.” Cole sat on the bed. He patted a dust cloud into the air. “Hey, Allie. You wanna stay here a while? We can let the girls go back home and hitch a ride back.”

My cheeks heated, but he stared at the girls for their reaction.

“I don’t need mental pictures. It’s bad enough I have to hear you guys at home.” Kaitlyn held her stomach and staggered to the door in exaggerated queasiness.

“You won’t have to for long. Soon, you’ll be the proud new owners of this funeral parlor.” Cole waved the dust out of his face and fled the bed.

“You’re in an exceptionally good mood,” I said.

“I guess actually doing something instead of surrendering gives me hope.” Cole crossed to me and leaned his forehead on mine.

I tried not to think about what had just happened across the way, but it was hard when the ghost had been able to recreate all of Cole’s token gestures with pinpoint accuracy.

“Do we need to talk?” Cole leaned back with a narrowed observation.

“Everything is perfectly fine. Just stay close.” I turned to clip the conversation short, or he would press me until I spilled in front of everyone. It was too embarrassing.

“Hello?” a man’s voice called from downstairs. “Anyone here?”

I jumped.

Shelby peered over the banister and looked as though she had been slapped with a two-by-four.

I had to see what had knocked her almost unconscious. Everyone else leaned over the banister.

All the girls except Shelby let out gasps at the exact same time. Shelby was statue still.

A man with the jawline of the finest male model and the wavy black hair to match appeared at the bottom of the steps. He wore a suit and clutched papers along with what looked like a large key ring.

Storm force wind carried leaves across the floor from the front entrance.

His voice was low, soothing. “I’m so sorry, Miss Moss. I can assure you we normally keep the doors locked.”

Kaitlyn and Shelby exchanged confused glances, but it took both of them a few seconds to answer.

I’d never seen Shelby speechless.

Shelby finally found words. “It was, but the lady down there let us in.”

The guy looked around him and shrugged. “There’s no one down here but me, and as far as I know, there is only one set of keys. Are you sure there was a woman?”

“Yep, she took us on a tour.” Shelby’s expression perked back up as she flipped her long blond hair over her shoulder.

The guy looked behind him, then toward the living room and back of the house.

We walked down the stairs to meet him.

“You’d think y’all just caught sight of a celebrity,” Cole grumbled.

I squeezed his hand. “You’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met. Don’t feel threatened.”

Kaitlyn met him first and shook his hand. “An elderly lady in a black nun-type dress let us in. I’m Kaitlyn Moss. This is my sister, obviously.”

“Shelby Moss. Glad to make your acquaintance.” Shelby shook the man’s hand.

He held her hand longer than he held Kaitlyn’s and gave her a smile that would have given the sun a run for its money. “Likewise. I’m Trevor Edwards, your family’s attorney. I never come this far into the house. Now you know why. The lady you referred to was the housekeeper. She’s no longer with us.”

“Oh, did she move?” Shelby’s face livened with interest as he released her hand.

“No, she died.” Trevor’s eyebrows perked. He aimed a sexy grin at her. “There are many houses with a ghost story attached to them, but this one is the real deal. Are you sure you want to bother with these documents, Miss Moss?”

Shelby and Kaitlyn looked to a stack of papers in his outstretched hand.

Anna Marie took them. “Call her Shelby, and of course they do. I think they’re just a little shocked is all.”

Trevor kept his eyes trained on Shelby. “Since you’ve already seen the inside, would you like to see the grounds?”

I almost laughed at the way Shelby swayed.

Her jaw was slack. You’d have thought she’d just met her favorite rock star. She stared into his eyes for an almost uncomfortable length of time. “Um, uh, sure. Yeah. That’d be great.”

“Is it okay if we look over the papers and think about it before we commit?” Kaitlyn said.

“Of course. I thought you’d feel that way after the visit. My great grandfather passed the documents down to my grandfather and so on. We’ve been holding the property until someone was brave enough to tackle ownership. After your experience today, if don’t want the house, I’ll understand. It will remain unoccupied until someone comes along and dozes it down or completely remodels it with the idea of resale. Either way, it’s no trouble.” He offered Shelby a very largely muscled arm. “You ready for the tour?”

“Yeah, I think I’ve seen enough. You two go ahead,” Kaitlyn said.

Shelby took Trevor’s arm and exhaled excitedly as she squeezed it.

“I think I’m going to vomit,”
Cole thought-spoke to me and probably anyone else who could hear.
“He’d better not be a player. I’ve taken a brotherly fondness to her. I don’t want to have to tear someone apart, limb by limb.”

After they were out the door, Kaitlyn turned to us with a broad smile. “Don’t worry. Shelby’s used to attention. She’s dated guys just as attractive and dumped them without batting an eyelash when they cheated or acted in the slightest way disrespectful. I think we just witnessed another case of love at first sight. I’ve never seen her respond to a guy like that.”

Anna Marie clasped her hand and stared off with a dreamy gaze. “I literally heard wedding bells when he stepped into view. I have an uncanny way of detecting permanent bonds as soon as they are created. And as soon as Shelby and Trevor made eye contact, a bond was born. Now, one down, one to go. Now we’ve got to get you married off.”

Kaitlyn stiffened at the phrase as if Anna Marie had just suggested she join a traveling circus of freaks.

“You’re jumping the gun a little. They haven’t had a first date,” Kaitlyn said, but she grinned. “He was definitely interested, though.”

Anna Marie sighed and ushered us along. “If I have to visit every weekend, and bring a different cousin every time I show up, I’m going to get you hitched.”

“Hitched. You make me sound like a farm animal.” Kaitlyn linked arms with her. “Come on before another ghost appears in here. We’re going to have to get this place blessed or something.”

And try as I might, I couldn’t keep my almost indiscretion with the ghost who’d appeared so much like Cole out of my head long enough to get alone with Cole before we discussed it. I’d been molested by a ghost. Now I knew exactly how Cole felt. I felt like an ass for holding him accountable for all the times he’d been sexually assaulted by my sister. How did I tell him what had happened without sounding psychotic or paranoid or both?

“You and I do need to talk.” Cole’s gaze bore into mine.

“You wanna go outside?” My stomach lurched.

Please don’t be mad. Please don’t be mad.

We’d gotten along so good after we’d worked through all our Grace issues. This was the last thing we needed.

Surely he’d find a way to understand, given what had happened with him and a demon-possessed woman at a motel. And the same woman on a pond bank back when drugging someone was literally unheard of. Poisoning them, sure. Plenty of past royalty had been poisoned to death, but Grace might just have been the creator of the date rape drugging scenario.

Anna Marie and Kaitlyn looked bewildered at Cole’s change in disposition.

“You said you found what you needed? If so, I’m going out to talk to Cole in private for a few minutes.”

“I thought you’d want to see search through some more of the house?” Kaitlyn said.

“We’ll have plenty of time to comb through that room when you two sign the papers. Right now, I need to talk to my wife in private.” Cole’s gaze still didn’t leave me.

“Hey, it’s a little soon for domestic violence.” Kaitlyn stepped closer.

Cole narrowed his eyes. “Funny. We’ll be outside.”

“We’ll be in here looking for a brush and some more items we can use for the spell. It tells everything we need to recreate it.” Kaitlyn wagged her fingers bye.

“After that, we’ll go see if Shelby needs rescuing.” Anna Marie looked in the direction Shelby and Trevor had gone.

Cole pulled me by the hand, but it wasn’t as warm as usual, and it definitely felt stiffer in my grasp. Normally, his touch was soothing.

At the side of the car, Cole didn’t give me a chance to explain before he started in on me. “Why didn’t you tell me something attacked you?”

Well that was not what I expected he’d say. Which made me feel that much worse. Now all the fuss I had made over his ghost stalker was beyond juvenile. “I was going to, but it just seemed like inappropriate timing. I wanted to wait till we were alone.”