Relative Strangers (9 page)

Corrie nodded. She felt herself warming toward him again and decided she must be six kinds of fool. He was all wrong for her. But when she opened her mouth, it was to issue an invitation. “I need to know why she’s haunting me. Will you help me discover the reason?”

Something that looked like speculation danced in the depths of Lucas’s eyes, but it vanished before Corrie could analyze it. After contemplating her for a moment longer, he appeared to come to a decision.

“All right. Let me make some phone calls. I’ll find out what resources are available. We may be able to start running down leads as early as tomorrow.”

His words sounded like a dismissal, but they felt like an invitation. The man was wreaking havoc on her emotions. Her own confusion about just what it was she wanted from him made her decide this might be a good time for a strategic retreat.

As she stood, intending to leave, a slight movement near the file cabinet caught her eye. She froze, doing a classic double take. Adrienne stood there, her eyes fixed on Lucas.

“Lucas?” Corrie whispered.

“What now, Corrie?” Lucas’s question was tinged with impatience.

Mutely, she pointed toward the oak file cabinet, but even as he glanced that way, Adrienne began to fade. A second later, she’d vanished into thin air.

“Damn,” Corrie muttered. “You didn’t see a thing, did you?”

“What am I supposed to have seen?”

“Adrienne. She was here, but now she’s gone again.”

“Did she try to . . . communicate with you?” He sounded as if he were strangling on the question.

“No. She just gave me that smug smile of hers. She’s apparently pleased to have found us here together.”

“Great. Like we need another matchmaker!”

Their eyes met. Renewed heat seared through Corrie, and she recognized an answering conflagration in Lucas’s gaze before she forced herself to look away.

“Eventually they’ll catch on to the fact that we aren’t interested in each other.” She all but choked on the lie and could feel guilty color creep up her throat and into her face as she walked toward the door. Her hand was on the knob when Lucas’s low-voiced command stopped her.

“Wait.”

“Why? There’s nothing left to say.”

“Yes, there is.”

Corrie didn’t think he’d moved, but she felt as if he’d come closer, as if he were surrounding her. She didn’t dare turn around or release her grip on the doorknob.

“There’s something you should know,” he said. “I owe you that much. And an apology.”

“For what?”

“For looking for excuses to dislike and distrust you. The truth, Corrie, is that from the minute I saw you at the party I felt . . . drawn to you.”

Unable to stop herself, Corrie glanced over her shoulder at him. He was right where she’d left him, behind his desk.

“Our eyes met across a crowded room,” he went on, “and I felt an instant attraction. That’s just about as corny as you can get, and as irritating.”

Part of her wanted to believe what he was saying, the attraction part, not the irritation, but the rational side of her brain resisted. “Why irritating?” she asked.

“Let’s just say you remind me of someone.” He was toying with another pencil.

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.” She was a hairbreadth away from confessing that she’d felt the same pull . . . and the same resistance.

“Fine. Her name is Dina. I used to be married to her.” The pencil snapped in two.

If the atmosphere between them had been awkward and strained before, discomfort now took on a new dimension. Corrie’s first thought was that he was still in love with his ex-wife. Her second was that he hated her guts.

“You are entirely too easy to read.” He sounded disgruntled. “Let’s set the record straight. My marriage was a mistake, and I make it a practice not to repeat my mistakes.”

“So you gave up on women?”

“No. I gave up on marriage.”

Corrie released her death grip on the doorknob and turned to face him fully. “I’ve told you before that I’m not looking for a husband. I meant that. You’re perfectly safe from me.”

His sudden grin rocked her. “Does that mean you want—?”

“All I want is to find out why I see Adrienne when no one else does.”

A decided twinkle came into Lucas’s eyes. For a moment Corrie thought he was going to come out from behind the desk and try to kiss her again. Instead, to her secret disappointment, he stayed put.

“That’s that, then,” he said. “I’m glad we understand each other.”

“Right.” This time she managed to leave the office before either of them said anything more.

He understood her? She really doubted it. And she certainly didn’t have a clue as to what was going on in his mind. He blew hot and cold. One moment he said he was attracted to her. The next he implied he’d sworn off impulsive relationships for good. Then he twinkled at her! Was that supposed to mean he’d consider a vacation fling as long as she didn’t expect him to marry her?

Muttering under her breath about charming, know-it-all men and throwing in a few choice words about meddling matchmakers for good measure, Corrie went to retrieve her unread novel from the chair in the lobby.

Of course he was charming. It was his
job
to be charming. She’d do well to remember that!

* * * *

Inside his office, Lucas sat staring at the door for a long time after Corrie left. What was it about the woman that fascinated him so? And what on earth had possessed him to mention Dina?

Why he continued to be physically attracted to Corrie was a mystery to him. She certainly wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And she wasn’t the easiest to get along with, not by a long shot. Prickly about summed it up.

And yet he felt this constant urge to touch her. He hadn’t wanted to let go of her hand earlier, even though hanging on to it would have been faintly ridiculous.

Expressing his anger at Kelvin had seemed preferable to hauling Corrie into his arms and kissing her senseless. He’d probably sounded like a damned fool, ranting on like that. No better than Kelvin himself.

Corrie Ballantyne was turning him into an emotional basket case. This had to stop.

It would stop when they settled this ghost business, he decided, reaching for a sheet of paper. He intended to make notes on what he knew to date. There had to be a logical explanation. The most likely one, unfortunately, was that the woman he was so powerfully drawn to was seeing things that weren’t there.

That fact alone ought to stop him from thinking of ways to get her into his bed. He didn’t have time for this nonsense. He had work to do. A hotel to run.

Ghosts! Preposterous! He crumpled the still-blank page and tossed it into the wastepaper basket.

He could admit he’d had moments when he’d felt very close to his ancestors here in this office, relishing the long tradition behind him at the Sinclair House. Dina had once accused him of ancestor worship. But to actually see one of them? Communicate with her? To all intents and purposes relive a bit of another person’s life? That was the stuff of fantasy.

Not real. Impossible.

Was it also fantasy, he wondered, to think he and Corrie were likely to become lovers during what remained of her vacation? It seemed more likely that, at most, they were going to work together on a . . . research project.

Agitated, Lucas ran his fingers through his hair and turned to look at the corner by the file cabinet. How did one prove or disprove the existence of ghosts? It seemed to him that you believed or you didn’t.

And he didn’t.

Definitely didn’t.

“Okay, Grandma,” he challenged. “Here’s your chance to convince the skeptic. If you exist, show yourself now.”

When Lucas realized he was half expecting something to materialize out of thin air, he cursed fluently and stalked out of the office.

* * * *

Early the following morning, Corrie awoke to find herself sitting bolt upright in bed.

“Jonathan Mead is a bastard,” she said aloud.

As soon as she opened her eyes, her dream began to fade. By the time she was fully awake, it was gone entirely.

Except for that one thought. “Jonathan Mead is a bastard?” she repeated. “Who the heck is Jonathan Mead?” And where had that thought come from in the first place?

Corrie assumed Jonathan was one of Adrienne’s relations. The Mead family had owned the other hotel, but she could only remember Joyce mentioning Horatio, Adrienne’s brother, and his grandson Erastus, who in turn was Stanley Kelvin’s grandfather. No Jonathan.

Whoever he was, he’d apparently done some particularly mean and rotten thing, hence Adrienne’s unflattering opinion that he was a bastard, a black-hearted scoundrel, the scum of the earth, a blot on humanity.

It had definitely been Adrienne’s voice in Corrie’s head. The more she thought about that, as she got up and dressed, the more certain she became that she had just received a direct message from the beyond.

How melodramatic that sounded, but it was true. What was in Adrienne’s mind had somehow beamed down and touched her own.

The very idea made Corrie shiver. This supernatural link with a woman who’d been dead for a hundred years was getting way too weird. For just a moment she considered changing her mind. She could still take Lucas up on his offer to pay her way at another, similarly luxurious hotel.

The impulse to run didn’t last. She knew she couldn’t go. She was kept there by her sense of obligation to Adrienne, by her desire to understand why she had been singled out to have an occult experience at the Sinclair House . . . and by the need to sort out her decidedly mixed feelings toward Lucas Sinclair.

CHAPTER SIX

A snowmobile might have been more appropriate to use to check conditions on the cross-country ski trails after all the sleet they’d had the night before. Or snowshoes. Or skis. Instead Lucas chose the means of winter transportation Sinclairs had preferred for generations.

This particular horse-drawn sleigh, a Portland cutter, had been manufactured about eighty years earlier and refurbished just before the Second World War. It had been carefully cared for since then, even after the family stopped keeping its own horses. They stored the sleigh in a neighbor’s barn, and when Lucas got the urge to take it out, Joshua brought it over and supplied the horse too. He was enjoying a visit with Hugh while Lucas went for a drive.

The previous day’s bad weather had given way to sunshine and a gentle breeze. Lucas had been out for well over an hour and was heading back to the hotel when he caught sight of Corrie returning from town with her friend Rachel. There was no mistaking the two women, one in glaring chartreuse, the other in hot pink. The hotel laundry had apparently been able to get the bloodstains out of Corrie’s parka. He had to smile when he saw she was also wearing those earmuffs she prized so highly. Her light brown hair puffed out at both front and back, looking soft and touchable.

He told himself he ought to keep going. He had work waiting for him, responsibilities. Instead he changed direction. Corrie and Rachel had just reached the stretch of sidewalk that bordered hotel land when he pulled up beside them.

The jingle of bells on the horse’s harness caught Corrie’s attention first. Then she stopped short, almost dropping her packages as she recognized him. She was carrying one of the heavy-duty shopping bags the local boutique gave out, with smaller bags bearing logos from other shops piled inside.

“Can I offer you a lift?” he asked, noticing that Corrie’s cheeks were nearly the same color as her parka, flushed by exercise, and the crisp, cool air . . . and maybe by the fact that she hadn’t been expecting to run into him.

“Doesn’t look like there’s room for three,” Rachel said, but she had a conspiratorial smile on her face.

She was right. The cutter had only one double seat, upholstered in red mohair, behind the goosenecked dashboard.

Corrie said nothing, but she reached out tentative fingers to stoke the mare’s satiny nose.

“Her name’s Lavinia,” Lucas told her. Nearly white, she looked striking hitched to the gleaming black-and-gold sleigh. She was also an agreeable creature who liked people. “Here, Corrie. Give her this.” From a pocket of his down jacket, he produced the apple he’d meant to feed Lavinia as a treat after the ride. He realized his mistake at once. The memory of an apple-flavored kiss was almost as vivid as the real thing. He cleared his throat and soldiered on.

“Hold your hand flat so she can lip it off without nipping your fingers.”

He doubted she had missed the sudden huskiness in his voice, and she gave him an odd look as she accepted the piece of fruit and followed his instructions. “Did you make those phone calls?” she asked when the apple had disappeared.

“Some of them. It
is
Saturday.” To his relief, he sounded normal again.

He felt anything but.

After a restless night, filled with thoughts of Corrie, he’d decided to humor her, telling himself it was only good business to pretend the guest was always right, even if he didn’t believe this ghost nonsense for a minute. The truth was that their joint quest would oblige him to spend time with this woman to whom he was so powerfully attracted. Not an altogether bad thing.

“Come for a short ride,” he suggested. “I can bring you up to date on my progress.”

“It does look like fun.” She hesitated, but he could tell she was tempted.

“Go, already,” Rachel urged. “Pretend you’re in a remake of
Doctor Zhivago.
”
She gave Lucas a wink and Corrie a gentle shove, relieving her of her shopping bag in the process.

Lucas held out one hand to help her up onto the high seat. “I haven’t asked a woman to go for a sleigh ride with me since I was a teenager,” he confessed.

Their eyes met over gloved fingers. He saw the flash of panic in hers but had hauled her up next to him before she could change her mind. He wondered if he imagined the look of relief when he released his grip on her to take the reins in both hands. He didn’t think so. He knew already that she was not indifferent to him.