The Curse of a Single Red Rose (Haunted Hearts Series Book 7) (14 page)

He kept his gaze fixed on her face. His lower jaw twitched in time with every beat of her heart.

She straightened in her seat, prepared to stand her ground on the subject. “I want to know what’s behind that wall.” Celia’s bones had told her to look behind the wall. The answers she sought were hidden in the secret place.

His stare broke, and he burst into hard laughter. When he could get a word between gushes of mirth, he finally managed to express what was making him so amused. “You told me I couldn’t tear into that wall. Remember?”

Oh yeah, she remembered the conversation quite well. “You know, a girl can change her mind.” She just had. Did he have any clue how close she’d just come to leaving?

She rose from her chair and circled the table, standing in front of him. She pinched a bit of air between her thumb and pointer finger. “Don’t you think we could make just a little, bitty hole? Just big enough to peek through to the other side?”

He made several noises of disbelief. A huff and a puff or two. “Why are being so unpredictable? I thought you liked things done a certain way, neat and planned out.”

She smiled up into his eyes. “You like me like this way. Don’t you?”

He swallowed hard. “Yeah. Just like that.” The knuckles of his hand traced down her cheek from her ear to her lips.

Any budding regrets she had about her decision to stay evaporated like mist on a sunny morning. Her heart stalled, just for a few beats. Then it regained its rhythm until her blood zoomed through her veins.

She had to tell him the real reason she wanted to know what was behind the wall. She’d seen the bones of Celia Madsen, and once Celia’s spirit had whispered her desire into Elsa’s heart, Elsa had been left with only two choices. Run away and forget or stay and expose the truth. There would be no middle ground. Did she dare drag Collin into the unknown with her? He seemed to want to go.

His mouth hovered close to hers. “Then, let’s do it.”

Suddenly, visions of the two of them together invaded her mind. Visions of touching and kissing and…“Do what?” she whispered.

He smiled as if he’d read the thoughts that had just rushed through her head.

“Go make a little, bitty hole in the wall.” His words didn’t match the look in his eyes.

“Maybe later. After we…um…eat.”

The smile that played around the corners of his mouth melted her. She had been talking about one thing, and her mind had been weighing the pros and cons of another, but her body had been warming to the possibility of getting physical with Collin. She swayed toward him, and a kiss was only a heartbeat away.

Then she caught a glimpse of the trash bin. Lying under the crawfish peelings was a fresh single stem red rose. She backed away from him and pointed at the flower. “What’s that?”

He didn’t even glance toward the trash. The sigh that exited his mouth seemed to come from deep in his soul.

Before he could respond, she hit him with another question. “You weren’t going to tell me about it, were you?”

“Elsa—”

“Where did you find it?” She raised her hand, palm toward him. “Never mind. You don’t owe me an explanation.” She moved back another step. “I’m tired. I’m going home.”

He rushed around her and stood in the arch between the living room and the kitchen. “Please, don’t leave. I know I should have told you—”

“Yes, you should have.”

“I didn’t want to—” A loud
bang
interrupted whatever he was about to say. “That stupid cat.”

He marched toward the front door, Elsa had to quickstep to get to him before he opened the door.

“Wait.” She grabbed his elbow and jerked.

He spun on his heel. “What?”

She pushed down her fear and sucked up some courage. “What if that wasn’t the cat?” She dared to hold his gaze. “Where did you find it? The rose, I mean.”

He stared over her shoulder. “It was on the coffee table. I found that one about an hour ago.”

“That one?”

He rubbed his eyes as if her interrogation wearied him, and it probably did.

“You mean there’s been more than one?”

“Three.”

The heat rose up her neck and crawled around her ears. “He’s left three roses, and you didn’t think that was important enough to tell me? Do you think it might have been a good idea to warn me he was watching me?” Then the truth hit her. She paused and licked her dry lips, the same lips he had almost kissed a moment earlier. “He’s not harassing me. The flower in the restaurant… The waitress misunderstood. The rose wasn’t meant for me. It was meant for you. Another one was left in your truck. Now, he’s left you three more. He’s harassing you. Not me. Why you?”

She cringed. Did she sound jealous? How twisted did that seem?

Collin placed one hand on each shoulder. “Elsa, please…”

“Don’t touch me.”

His hands shot up, and he rubbed the back of his head furiously. “I should have told you what was going on days ago.”

“Yes, you should have.” She stopped before she could get a good rant humming again and reorganized her many questions to ask the one she wanted answered the most. “What should you have told me days ago?”

He placed a hand on her shoulder and then let it slide down her arm until his fingers laced with hers. “Come sit down.”

“Is it so bad I need to sit down?” She wanted to jerk her hand free, but couldn’t. It was like their flesh was glued together.

He shook his head. “It’s not bad. I don’t think. It’s just…I should tell you some things.”

She let him pull her over to the sofa. “What things? You’re scaring me.”

He paused before sitting next to her. “Would you feel better if you went to get your stun gun before we talked?”

She blinked at him. What was that about? “Do I need it?” She searched his eyes to determine how dangerous he thought he was.

She had been right to avoid falling in love with him. A pain erupted in her heart. She pressed her free hand against her chest and concentrated on taking her next breath. Everything had changed in a moment. Changed because of a damn flower. She hadn’t listened to her doubts about him. Maybe she should have.

He released her hand and rubbed his chin. A fine growth of beard glistened on the contours of his well-defined jaw. She longed to rub her fingers over the razor stubble, just for the pleasure of feeling the raw sensuality of the friction on her fingertips. She sucked back the misplaced moment of desire and focused on the repentant expression that formed on his face.

Contriteness. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? Maybe what he had to say wasn’t so bad after all.

“You know I worked on the renovation project at Wakefield Manor.”

She nodded. He hadn’t told her much about it. Well, except that he’d seen a ghost in the cemetery.

“You know you had the feeling that Les back in the 1960s is the same Les that you’ve met.”

Her stomach muscles tightened. “Yeah, but we both laughed at that because there’s no way that’s the same man.” She smiled and forced herself to relax a little, willing her heart rate to slow.

“Strange things happen in the plantation house up there. Every fifteen or twenty years, someone will show up and claim to be Les Wakefield. The bank will turn over the Wakefield family trust to the man and then he will disappear. Later the sheriff down there will discover the man wasn’t really Les Wakefield. It’s weird that an imposter could fool the bank manager so many times. It’s almost like some sort of spell is put on them.”

The sheriff had told her the same thing.

“Or a curse.” Elsa let the words slip from her mouth. That evening she knew more about the Wakefield curse than she had that morning when she left Collin for the day.

“Or a curse… The cop that came to see me in the hospital…Nick Moreau…he’s been investigating the Wakefield claims to the trust. He told me that when the latest imposter came around he acted as if he was in a trance. Like something had overtaken him.”

Earlier that day, Elsa would have laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion. “Like a spirit.”

“Oh, now, don’t you be making light of the spirits. You’ve seen one with your own eyes you should be remembering.”

When he got worked up, Collin always mangled sentence structure in an accent that was a bit more Irish than usual. After listening to his mother speak, she understood why Collin’s speech hadn’t thoroughly Americanized despite the fact he’d been in the country most of his life.

“When they first suspected the guy was a fake, they found our Les in South Carolina. They believed our Les was the legitimate heir. His DNA profile matched the man he was named after, the one who’s buried in the Wakefield family cemetery, the same cemetery where I saw the spirit.”

She wished he wouldn’t call the man
our Les
. “But now they are starting to wonder if he really is the heir? Why?”

He hadn’t exactly defined who
they
were, but she guessed he meant the people in charge of making sure the rightful heir received the inheritance.

Collin leaned forward, excitement shining in his eyes. “Because of the way he acted after he came to Louisiana. He came face to face with the imposter, and he’s acted weird ever since. Like something is wrong with him. You can’t deny he’s acted odd toward you, can you?”

No, she couldn’t.

“Didn’t his DNA prove he was the heir?”

“No, Elsa. It
matched
. Exactly. The dead guy and the living guy…their DNA matched…perfectly. Like they’re the same guy.”

She smirked. “That’s not possible, is it?”

“It’s not supposed to be.”

“That’s…that’s…just creepy.” Elsa shifted closer to Collin. They were talking about things that shouldn’t be.

Collin continued his story. “Since I was in the hotel all the time, Moreau asked me to search for any evidence that he might have missed that would link the murder to Les.”

“You’re not going to find anything linking a fifty-year-old murder to our Les.” She wanted to bite her tongue off for calling him
our Les
.

“Not that murder.”

“What murder are you talking about then?”

“The woman they found in the hotel about a year ago. He was hoping he’d missed something when they did their investigation, or maybe Les would say or do something that would give himself away.” He shook his head as if in disbelief. “Moreau didn’t want me to tell you what I was up to.”

Why hadn’t Les told her there had been a dead woman in the hotel recently? More and more it seemed the man had something to hide. “Why didn’t Moreau want you to tell me?”

“He didn’t know how well you knew Les. He didn’t want you to warn Les he was being watched, and he didn’t want to accuse the man of anything until he had solid evidence against him.”

Anger slow boiled inside her, bubbling around the edges of her patience. “The man might be a murderer. I should have been told about this. I could have been…I could still be in danger. Didn’t anyone think it was a good idea to warn me about him?” Her heart pounded harder. “No one ever told me there was a murder in the hotel. And I don’t think it was in the news, was it?” If she had heard anything about a murder, she’d have been all over that, trying to find out the details before she agreed to the job. “Every time I leave…every time I go out alone…I could have been more alert. This isn’t right.”

“I don’t think you’re his target.”

His blunt statement sucked the heat right out of her anger.

Of course, Collin had been the recipient of the roses.

“It doesn’t matter which of us was the intended target. You should have said something.” Her whispered rebuke floated across the narrow gap between them. “Why did you let me leave every day knowing that you might be in danger?”

“If he’s really a threat, you’d be better off away from me.”

His assertion seemed to suck the energy out of him.

“Do you really think there’s a chance he might hurt you?”

“The person who gave me the rose also ran into me in a car and left me there not knowing if I was alive or dead.”

“And Moreau’s decided the driver wasn’t Thoreau?”

He shook his head. “At first, I didn’t tell you anything because Moreau didn’t want me to, and then I didn’t tell you because…”

“Why?”

He smiled. “It’s kind of… I don’t know. You might think my reason is lame.”

“Try me.”

“I didn’t want you to toss my butt off the job. I was afraid I’d never see you again.”

Her heart rate kicked into overdrive. Could her pulse get any faster without exploding her circulatory system?

“I told Moreau it was time to tell you about his suspicions about Les.”

“Does he really think Les had something to do with that woman’s death?”

“I don’t think the cop is sure about anything that has to do with Les Wakefield. He asked me to look around the hotel to see if I could find any evidence that Les had been there before. I couldn’t find anything. But now…I want to know what’s behind that wall.”