Her house seemed to brood in the shadows beneath the trees. Honor watched it draw closer as they drove slowly down the road. And when they pulled into Ian’s driveway, an overpowering sense of impending doom seemed to fall over her.

“Let’s get out of here.”

He turned to look at her as he switched off the ignition. “I feel it, too,” he said. He looked over at her house.

“It’s…worse.” Far worse, if she was feeling it over here. It hadn’t rained here yet, she noted vaguely. The ground looked dry.

“I’ll take you to a motel,” Ian said decisively, reaching for the ignition key. “It’s…angry. I don’t want you around here.”

Honor reached out and stopped him. She felt his muscles tense beneath her fingers, felt how he was still reluctant to be touched. Even by her. It hurt. “Are you coming with me? Or are you coming back to face it alone?”

He didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself. “Forget it.” She shoved open the door of his Jeep and climbed out.

Ian jumped out his side and came after her. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

“I’m not leaving you to face this alone.” She turned, setting her hands on her hips and glaring up at him. “I’m not sure I trust you, sometimes I don’t even think I like you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you face this alone!”

He scowled at her. It was a look that had terrified dangerous men. She never flinched. “Damn it, Honor! There’s not a damn thing you can do that I can’t do just as well. Or better.”

“Yes, there is! I can make sure you’re not alone!” She started to turn away, then paused and looked up at him again. When she spoke, her voice wobbled, betraying things she hadn’t said. Things she wouldn’t say, because she didn’t yet trust him enough. “You’ve been alone long enough.”

He swore. Violently, viciously, savagely, he swore. Then he snatched her up in his arms, lifting her feet right off the ground and holding her as close as he could without hurting her.

She hated it when he did that, hated the way it made her feel small and helpless against his larger size, but before she could say something nasty, his hold on her gentled, grew tender and cherishing. And instead of yelling at him, she ached in response, her chest growing heavy with feeling, her eyes prickling with unshed tears. She wrapped her legs around his hips, pressed her face to his warm neck and hugged him back.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Thunder growled threateningly overhead, and rain started to fall warningly. Holding her close, he carried her into the house with him.

In the kitchen, he set her on the counter, but stayed where he was between her legs, bringing her mouth to his for a kiss filled with tender savagery.

“God, what you do to me, woman,” he said huskily. “You’ve got my head as scrambled as my hormones. Honor, honey, I couldn’t…handle it if something happened to you.”

“I couldn’t handle it if something happened to you,” she answered back. “Looks like you’re stuck with me, McLaren.”

He was pressed snugly to her womanhood, and she felt his answering hardness against her. All around them shadows were gathering in the air, looming with threat, making it impossible to truly forget what they were facing. That thing was angry. Furious. And neither of them could guess what it might be capable of.

Which just added desperation to the explosive passion between them. Ian rocked his hips against her, slowly, deeply. Groaning, Honor closed her eyes and threw her head back in an ancient surrender, in a timeless invitation. Wrapping her legs around his thighs, she held him to her and pulled him closer.

He lifted his head and looked down at her, just as lightning flashed outside. “You sounded an awful lot like your father just now.” His voice was rough, like grating gravel, and his hips ground into hers once more.

She gasped, never opening her eyes, and dug her nails into his powerful shoulders. She had to force the words out. “He did most of my raising.” He’d called her his little soldier and demanded she behave like one. Bravely. Honorably.

“It shows.” His hands were at her waist, holding her to him, but now they slid slowly upward, taking her T-shirt with them. All of a sudden she felt the touch of cool air on her nipples. They puckered eagerly, just in time to receive the heated caress of his callused hands. Lightning zapped through her, rivaling the storm outside.

His next words came out roughly, brokenly. “I haven’t told you…how pretty…pretty breasts…”

She hardly heard him. She was tugging his T-shirt up, needing his skin beneath her hands as desperately as she had ever needed anything. She clawed the shirt up to his shoulders, and then his hands came to her aid, yanking the cotton over his head. Then he bent, arching his lower body away from her so that he could suck her tender, yearning nipples to ecstasy.

She left marks on his back; she was sure of it. Never had she felt so desperate, so needy, so violently hungry. Her nails raked him as she writhed, trying to bring his hips back to hers to answer the throbbing ache he was feeding with his mouth at her breast.

She felt the button on her shorts pop, heard the rip of the zipper. Then his hand was inside, gripping her buttocks as he lifted her and yanked away the shorts and her panties. Then he was back, pressed to her, denim rough against her tenderest skin. She loved it.

“Here,” he muttered. “Here.” He drew her mouth to his own nipple, and she took the invitation with wild delight, tonguing him, nipping him, sucking him, listening to his deep groans, then groaning herself as his fingers found her. Unerringly he found the delicate nub where she was most sensitive. She was so slick and so wet already that his fingers filled her easily, and she groaned again as he worked his magic. It was almost enough. Almost.

But not quite. Blindly she reached for the button of his jeans. And suddenly everything grew still.

Something in her quieted. Something in him quieted. They both looked down. He withdrew his hand from her and stepped back, just a little. Slowly she released the button. Slowly she drew the zipper down.

And released him.

He was hard, thick, ready. When she curled her hand around him, he groaned and shook from head to toe, as if barely able to restrain himself. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes…”

Guided by the same primitive instincts that always drew her to this man, she lifted her heels to the counter, opening herself as never before, opening herself as she had never imagined doing. Then, slowly, watching every incredible moment, she drew him to her and watched him take her. When he was buried deeply, she lifted her blue eyes to his face and found that he was watching her. Watching them. And the look in his eyes…

He whispered something awed. Something reverent. And she knew she would never be the same again.

“Now,” he whispered, and kissed her. His tongue plunged into her mouth in a rhythm that matched the lunging of his hips, making her feel totally and completely possessed. Totally and completely wanted. The ache grew, the power between them thrumming almost audibly.

And then everything inside her exploded in a cataclysm of pleasure so intense that it hurled her beyond thought.

 

He held her close for a long time, while their breathing slowed, and their bodies cooled and dried. Little by little she became aware that her T-shirt was bunched up under her arms. That his jeans were tangled around his legs. The realization brought a silly smile to her lips, and as she rubbed her cheek against his chest, she wondered if it would always be this way between them—quick, hot, hard.

“God, I hope so,” Ian murmured roughly.

Not minding at all that he was reading her thoughts again, she tilted her head back and smiled. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Yeah.”

And then they both felt it, something chilling, like a soundless howl of rage. Ian’s head jerked, and he seemed to be listening intently.

“What is it?” Honor asked after a moment. “Ian?”

He shook his head. “If we don’t do something, it’s going to. We’d better get in gear, honey.”

Honor nodded. She suddenly felt cold. So cold, as if an icy wind had blown out of eternity.

“Did you bring some jeans over? I’d feel better if you wore something that would give you some protection against…scrapes and things. And better shoes. Sandals aren’t very stable if you have to run.”

If she had to run? What was he expecting to happen? Upstairs, she changed quickly, feeling more nervous than she had in a long time. Her hands shook, fumbling with the buttons on her long-sleeved shirt, having trouble tying her jogging shoes.

Downstairs, she found Ian waiting, dressed in camouflage and combat boots. On his hip he wore his sheathed survival knife. He looked ready for anything.

But how did you prepare for a ghost?

“All I’m going to try to do,” he said, “is figure out what it’s up to. What it wants. I want you to stand back and keep watch for…anyone else, I guess. If the entity calls the person who shot at me, we could be in big trouble. So you keep watch and yell if you see anyone. Anyone.”

She hadn’t thought of that. Her heart slammed in her chest, and she bit her lip. “Okay.” And he had been planning to do this alone, while she huddled safely in a motel? She suddenly scowled up at him and poked him in the chest with her finger. “Damn you, Ian! You need a reality check! You’re not indestructible! How could you ever have suggested doing this without help? You would be completely exposed! Vulnerable!”

He shook his head. “No.”

No. She wanted to scream in frustration. He must have picked up on it, because he suddenly bent and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

“If you weren’t with me, I’d just keep part of my attention focused outward. I would have stayed alert. With you there, I’ll be able to concentrate harder on finding out what’s going on.”

“Thank you,” she said with dignity.

“For what?”

“For explaining.”

He amazed her then with a crooked smile that was astonishing under the circumstances, a smile that forced itself past the tension that gripped them both. “I could feel you were ready to pop your cork.”

A soft, rueful laugh escaped her. “Yeah. My temper tends to get short when I’m scared.”

“Everyone’s does.” He turned toward the door, but stopped when she touched his arm.

“Ian?”

He faced her fully, looking down at her worried face.

“What if—what if it influences me?” The thought had occurred to her while she was changing, and it kept piercing her, like a stiletto.

“It might try,” he said after a moment. “But I don’t think you’ll let it.”

She nearly gasped in her amazement. “But it did last night! And look what I tried to do to you! How can you be so sure?”

He simply looked down at her, as impassive as the damn Sphinx. “I trust you,” he said.

Oh, great! she thought as she followed him out the door. Oh, great. He trusts me.

She sure as hell didn’t trust herself anymore.

 

The rain had stopped, but thunder still growled like an angry beast at bay. The shadows beneath the Spanish moss were nearly as dark as night.

And alive, Honor thought as they approached. They were alive. Crazy as it sounded, she was convinced there was something in those dark places, something formless that was created out of shadow. Something evil.

Perhaps Ian felt it, too. He certainly picked up on her uneasiness. Pausing, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I can take you out of here,” he said quietly. “I’d be glad to do it, babe.”

“I’m not leaving you alone.” No amount of terror could make her do that. She would never be able to forgive herself for such cowardice.

He dropped his arm and took her hand. “All right.”

The butcher knife that he had knocked out of her hand the night before still lay in the dirt, already showing signs of rust. Honor shivered when she saw it. Last night, when she had picked it up, it had looked barely adequate as a defensive weapon. This evening it looked wickedly dangerous. She hated to think how badly she might have hurt Ian if she had succeeded in stabbing him just once.

It crossed her mind to pick up the knife in case she needed to protect herself, but she immediately squelched the notion. It was horrifying to realize how little she could trust herself, but it would be foolhardy to forget what had happened last night. A weapon in her hands could be dangerous to Ian.

And he trusted her. Unconsciously she shook her head.

Beneath the trees, the leaden gray light of evening became a near-dark gloom. If, Honor promised herself, if they managed to get rid of this ghost so that she could live unmolested in this house, that moss was definitely going to go. The romance of it was gone forever.

The air beneath the trees was dank and carried the cloyingly sweet scent of rotting flesh. As soon as she smelled it, Honor halted.

“It’s just a dead rat or a mouse,” Ian said.

They entered the house through the front door. Inside, the air was stale, and stench of rotting flesh was even stronger. Something must have died in the crawl space beneath the house, she thought, hoping desperately that that was all it was.

Ian had stepped inside first, blocking her view with the breadth of his shoulders, but suddenly he stepped aside. Lying in the middle of the hallway, in a line leading back to the kitchen, were open packages of meat. Chicken, beef, fish, everything that had been in her freezer.

“Well, that explains the smell,” Ian remarked.

“Do you…think the ghost did it?”

“Or the ghost’s accomplice.”

Honor started forward instinctively to clean up the mess, but Ian stopped her. “Leave it for now,” he said. “Just keep your eyes and ears open while I see if I can sense it.”

“But why would it do something like that? What’s the point?”

Ian shrugged one shoulder, looking grimmer than usual. “Maybe that’s just its way of saying we’re going to be dead meat.”

Honor’s heart skipped a couple of beats. Oh, God, what a thought!

Ian turned and threw the deadbolt on the door, locking them in securely. “You stay right here,” he said. “Keep an eye on the road in case anyone approaches.”

“Where will you be?”

“Right here. This is where I felt it last time. It seems to be attracted to the living room, for some reason.”

At least she would be able to keep an eye on him. She wouldn’t have settled for anything else.

There were no fancy preparations, nothing that the movies had led her to expect from a séance. And this was a séance, wasn’t it? What else could you call trying to talk to a ghost? But all Ian did was stand in the living room archway with his legs splayed and his hands clenched into loose fists. He didn’t even close his eyes.

Turning her attention to the window at the foot of the stairs, forcing herself to ignore the way the back of her neck kept prickling, she kept watch and waited.

 

It was almost like being locked in the closet when she was a child. Honor’s tension grew as the last of the day’s light faded away, leaving the interior of the house black, leaving the night beyond the window fathomless. She couldn’t see a darn thing. How was she supposed to keep watch?

Ian hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d turned his back to her. The tempo of his breathing remained steady and relaxed, and he was so silent and still that she would have thought he had fallen asleep, if he weren’t standing.

Either whatever she had felt when they first returned from Pensacola had evaporated, or she had become inured to it. The house seemed empty. Echoingly empty.

It seemed, she found herself thinking with sudden uneasiness, like a huge emptiness. A vast, immense emptiness. An emptiness too big for the house.

Shivering suddenly, she turned and looked into the impenetrable darkness inside the house. Something was happening.

Suddenly Ian disturbed the absolute silence by drawing a long, deep breath. “Stay back,” he whispered. “Whatever happens, stay back there.”

Oh, God! She could feel it. The emptiness was growing larger, growing colder, until the air felt like ice. Beyond Ian, she could almost see something. Something darker than the dark. Something that swallowed even the last little bit of starlight that had gotten through the clouds and into the house.

A curse escaped Ian, little more than a hiss. The darkness beyond him was swirling like thick, oily smoke, growing darker but more visible, as if it were some kind of black light.

Honor’s scalp crawled as fear filled her. As terror turned her blood to ice in her veins. Suddenly she was that little girl locked in the closet again, and she started to slip to the floor, to curl up into herself, to hide within her own arms from the forming horror.

But she caught herself. Gasping for air as if there were none left in the universe, with the hammering of her own heart a deafening drumbeat in her ears, she resisted the overwhelming urge to hide. Because Ian might need her. Bracing her back against the wall, she forced herself to stand straight and watch.

“Stay back,” Ian whispered again.

The column of swirling smoke grew until it reached from floor to ceiling. Sudden, loud raps came from the walls and ceiling of the living room, a staccato burst that seemed somehow angry. Honor suddenly glanced upward, remembering the scratching she had heard from the attic. And now she heard it again from the floor directly above, as if…as if that thing were following her thoughts.

Shuddering with a fresh chill, she dragged her eyes down and forced herself to watch Ian. He might need her, she reminded her terrified mind and heart. He might need her. But, oh, how she wished she could run, or scream.

Ian still hadn’t moved a muscle. A faint murmuring seemed to fill the air, a sense of voices that were not quite audible. The column of oily smoke began to expand, as if it meant to fill the entire room, and it seemed impossible that it made no sound save the faint murmurings and now the occasional rap on the wall. It ought to howl and roar with the fury of the storm, Honor thought. The thing she had seen as a child hadn’t been like this. It hadn’t carried with it this sense of…evil. Truly consuming evil.

It was moving toward Ian. Oh, God! Stiffening, she moved away from the wall and clenched her hands. Then a loud bang sounded behind her, and she whirled, expecting to see someone. But there was nothing. Not a thing.

Quickly she turned back to Ian and found him…swallowed up. Oh, dear God, that smoke had surrounded him, nearly obscuring him, winding and twisting like a million snakes that wanted to devour him. And still he never moved a muscle. He might have been carved from stone.

Oh, God. She had to do something! But what? If she plunged her hand into that smoke and tried to yank him out, she might infuriate that thing. It might hurt him. Or her. From what she could see now, it wasn’t actually doing anything except…surrounding him.

Stay back.

There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in her that Ian had just touched her mind. It felt like him, the warmth, the concern, the distance he couldn’t quite keep. The way he felt when they made love. Sobbing for air, she clung to the last shred of her control and waited. Outside, the wind picked up as it did every night, moaning forlornly around the corner of the house.

All of a sudden Ian gave a hoarse shout and threw himself backward, out of the coiling smoke. He stumbled once, then swung around toward Honor.

“Get out of here! Now!”

“But you—”

He grabbed the knob of the deadbolt and twisted it before flinging the door wide. Outside, the night was normal—windy, warm and damp. It seemed like another world as he hustled her through the door. Behind them, something slammed violently against something else.

“Let’s go,” he muttered, and when she stumbled on something, he simply swept her up and carried her. He didn’t walk, he trotted. His hurry worried her as much as anything he might have said.

“Ian, what happened?”

“Just wait a minute.” He trotted up the steps to his back door, fumbled with the combination lock.

“Put me down and make it easy on yourself.”

But he kept his hold on her. When he got the door open, he stepped swiftly inside and then locked it again before he set her down. “Stay right here. I’m going to check out the house.”

“Wait.” She grabbed his arm, half expecting him to throw off her touch. But he didn’t. Impatient though he was, he waited, looking down at her with enigmatic eyes. “Ian, what’s going on? No one could get in here past the locks.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Just wait a minute while I check it out.”

She stood in his kitchen, shivering with a chill that wouldn’t seem to abate, and waited impatiently while he prowled through the house. Lord, he was silent, even in those big, ugly combat boots he favored. She didn’t hear him, not once, not climbing the stairs or moving through the hall and bedroom above her head.

Finally he returned to the kitchen. “All clear,” he said as he went for the coffeemaker and started it brewing. Then, and only then, did he turn and pull her into a warm embrace. “You’re ready to burst with questions,” he remarked.

She tilted back her head and pretended to glare at him, even though she was really feeling extraordinary relief that they were out of that house, that he was safe. “Wouldn’t you be? It doesn’t take a mind reader to know that!”

He gave a short, soft laugh. “No,” he agreed. “I’m sorry I was so rough about getting you out of there, but when it realized that I’d figured out it was protecting something, it got pretty pi— You know.”

“Yeah. I know.” She was distracted suddenly by the stubble on his strong chin, chocolate-dark prickles that she had an instant, urgent desire to feel against her skin. She drew a sharp breath, embarrassed by the turn her thoughts had taken.

“It’s okay,” he said, his voice turning totally husky. “It’s okay. Adrenaline makes you…hungry. It does for most people.” Bending, he pressed his cheek to hers and let her feel that prickly stubble against her cheek.

Such an erotic, masculine texture, she thought. Then she sighed as she corralled her thoughts. “I was so scared,” she admitted. “But I’m okay now. Tell me what you learned.”

“It sounds weirder than hell,” he said, straightening. “That thing—that ghost—is evidently whatever is left of Mrs. Gilhooley.”

“Mrs. Gilhooley?” Honor repeated. “You mean the woman who used to live there? The one who was so mean to you?”

He nodded. Honor reached for a kitchen chair and pulled it out from the table. Sitting, she put her elbows on her knees and wondered if she had gone stark, raving mad. And then she knew with grim certainty that she had not. Who better to be a haunt than that nasty, evil old woman?

“I almost couldn’t figure it out,” Ian said. “It wasn’t like touching a human mind. Something is very…different. As if only parts of her personality are here.”

“The hateful parts,” Honor said, lifting her head quickly. The room immediately began swimming, and she waited a moment for the blood to reach her head again. “The vile, nasty, murdering parts of her, right?”

“Looks that way.”

“Well, what the hell is she doing in my house? Why doesn’t she just go away and burn in hell?” She was getting mad. Putting a name to the ghost had an incredible effect on her, banishing her fear and making her furious. “How dare any part of her get stuck here!”

Ian studied her for an endless moment, and then he broke into a huge, tension-breaking laugh, a laugh so unexpected that it startled her right out of her anger. It didn’t last long, but while it did, it made him look years younger, erasing all the cold distance he usually kept between himself and the rest of the world.

He should laugh more often, Honor thought. And it did her heart so much good to see it that she couldn’t even get mad at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said a few seconds later. “I wasn’t laughing at you. It was just the absurdity of the whole thing.” Leaning down, he kissed her; it was a hard and quick salute that promised more later. “It sounds crazier than a loon, doesn’t it? I felt stupid even saying it out loud.”

He poured two cups of coffee and joined Honor at the table with them. Crossing his legs loosely, he settled back in his chair and sipped coffee.

“It was her,” he said again. “Worse, it’s not what I would call rational. It’s more like distilled feeling with a blind purpose.”

“What purpose? What is she trying to do?”

He shrugged. “Protect something. I’m not sure what, but she doesn’t want something to be found. Which means, if we want to get rid of her, we’re going to have to find it.”

“How can you find something if you don’t know what it is?”

“I have a feeling we’ll know when we see it, Honor. Something tells me there’ll be no mistaking it.”

 

Sometime during the night Honor found herself standing at the window of Ian’s bedroom, looking out at the windy night. The rain had stopped, and the moon sailed on a sea of stars. The trees in her yard tossed restlessly before the wind, and the moss swayed eerily in a shadowy dance.

Abomination.

She knew now where those strange, alien words came from, and she shuddered a little as she felt the touch of that thing. Mrs. Gilhooley. She shivered again.

Demon spawn.

Honor wondered if Ian had heard those epithets from that mean old woman while he was growing up. Probably. She sounded like a broken record, the same few words, over and over again. Now, dead and buried for three years, she was still up to her despicable tricks.

Personalizing the evil over there hadn’t made it any less terrifying. She could feel the threat even here, with Ian sleeping behind her. A smile almost dispelled her uneasiness as she thought about him. Evidently good sex was an antidote for insomnia. He’d been asleep for more than an hour now.

But almost as soon as it strayed, her mind returned to the threat over there. In her house. Damn! It made her mad and sad and frustrated, all at once. Why the hell hadn’t she sensed the thing when she’d first seen the house? Useless question, considering there couldn’t be any possible answer.

And now this. Something hidden in the house. And what was keeping her awake long past fatigue was the simple terror of knowing that it was Mrs. Gilhooley in her house, and that Mrs. Gilhooley had always hated Ian, had tried just the other night to get him killed.

What if she still wanted to kill him? What if the old woman wanted Ian’s death as much as she wanted to keep her secret? What if there was no secret at all, and Ian was her real target?

“Can’t sleep?” A husky voice filled her ears as strong arms closed around her waist from behind.

Honor sighed and leaned back against Ian, enjoying the warm texture of his skin and hair from her shoulders to her hips. She rested her hands over his. “You were sure sawing wood.”

He blew a soft laugh right into her ear. “La petite mort. Such sweet death.” His arms tightened just a little. “And you’re over here worrying loud enough to wake the dead.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Come back to bed and let’s talk about it.”

The words were like a warm wind blowing into the cold places of her heart and soul. In the six brief months of her misbegotten marriage, nothing had been discussed in bed. Bed had become a place to avoid, an instrument of torture and disappointment. Now, hearing those beautiful words out of the mouth of a man she had come to care for, she realized just how badly she had needed to have someone feel that way about her.

There was, she thought, a world of difference between a man you could go to bed with to make love with, a friend you could lie on a bed with to talk to, and a man with whom you could do both. A man who wanted to hold you while you talked.

Because the cots were so narrow, they had made a pallet on the floor with the mattresses from both their beds. They snuggled up there now, him propped against the pillows, her curled on his chest.

“When this thing materialized, did you see it?” Honor asked.

“The black smoke, you mean? Yeah.”

“I was terrified when it wrapped around you. It reminded me of snakes.”

“I wasn’t exactly comfortable with it myself. It was like being touched by cold worms.”

“Yuck!” She shuddered and tightened her hold on his waist. “I was so scared. I wanted to snatch you right away from it, but I was afraid if I did anything, it might get madder and hurt one of us.”

He stroked her arm soothingly and pressed a kiss to the top of her hair.

“What made you jump back the way you did?” she asked. “What happened? You were in such a hurry to get out of there.”

“She was calling somebody,” he said flatly. “She was trying to get someone to come. I could feel it, and I figured it was the guy who shot me, so I wanted us both out of there fast.”

“Oh, no.” Her hold on him tightened even more, and unconsciously she dug her nails into him. The crease in his side was healing beautifully, but she hated to think how close it had come.

“I think,” he said quietly, “that it might be wise for you to get out of here while I try to deal with this. I know it’ll play hell with your sense of honor, but if something were to happen to you…”

He didn’t finish, and this time she didn’t really need him to. Slowly she lifted her head and looked right into his strange green eyes. Dark though the room was, they seemed to glow. “Don’t you know I feel the same way? Can’t you tell?”

He muttered something almost prayerful and touched her cheek with his fingers. “But you don’t trust me, babe. Not yet. I can feel that, too.”

Unable to deny it, she lowered her head again to rest on his chest. It was true, she thought. Partly because she had learned painfully that things were not always what they seemed, and partly because she didn’t know him that well yet. And partly because of that thing in her house. It had influenced someone to shoot Ian. It had influenced her to try to kill him. How could she be sure it wasn’t influencing him to do some horrible thing, possibly to her?

Because she couldn’t discuss what lay between them, she turned to the problem at hand. “What are we going to do?”

He stroked her hair gently, with a tenderness that seemed odd in such a hard, harsh man.

“We’re going to go over there and look for whatever it is. Short of burning down the house, there doesn’t seem to be an alternative.”

She huddled closer to him, wondering what the ghost would try to do when it realized they were searching for the very thing it was trying to conceal. She had an unhappy feeling that the thing hadn’t yet fully displayed its powers.

“We’ll go in daylight,” Ian said quietly. “It seems to gather strength in the darkness. We’ll go when the sun is bright and high, and we’ll search the damn place from bottom to top.”

She shivered again as a cold wind touched her. “Maybe I should just give up the house. I mean, it’s only money, right? I can just tell the bank I’m leaving and it’s theirs. So what if my credit rating is ruined. It’s only a credit rating—”

He squeezed her so tight that she gasped and covered her mouth in a devouring, demanding kiss. “No,” he said when he lifted his head.

“No?” That damned word again. Frustrated and scared past bearing, she hammered her fist once against his chest. In an instant she was spread-eagled beneath him, pinned so that she couldn’t move, exposed so that she couldn’t defend herself.

“Nobody,” he said softly, “nobody hits me.”

Sudden fear turned her veins to ice. Looking up into those strange, glowing eyes, she looked into the eyes of a hunter. She’d done it, she realized. She’d aroused the sleeping tiger.