* * *
It was almost two A.M. when Sweeney stirred slightly in her sleep, a frown puckering her brow. A barely audible whimper sounded in her throat, a quiet protest from her subconscious. A few moments later she slipped out of bed, her movements so calm the covers were scarcely disturbed; one second she had been lying beneath them, the next she wasn’t. She stood beside the bed for some time, her head cocked as if she were listening to something. Then she sighed, and walked silently through the dark apartment to her studio.
She had stood the canvas with two shoes painted on it against the right wall, where it was out of the way but she could still look at it. The shoes had puzzled her. Why had she painted shoes? After her initial relief that she hadn’t done another portrait of death, she had gotten more uneasy as the day had gone on. The shoes weren’t finished; they needed more work. Knowing that had made her dread the night, for the first time in her life.
Now she went straight to the shoe canvas and placed it on an easel. Her expression was smooth and blank as she selected her tubes of paint and began to work. Her brushstrokes were fast and precise, the narrow, tapered bristles adding detail.
She didn’t work for long, no more than an hour. Suddenly she shuddered, her entire body drooping as if overwhelmed with fatigue. She capped the tubes of paint and dropped the brush in a jar of turpentine, and silently returned to bed.
* * *
She slept late again, until almost eight, but knew as soon as she woke that she had done it again. She was cold, the heat from the electric blanket somehow not transferring to her flesh, even though she knew it should. When she had gone to bed the night before, the bed had been toasty warm, such a delicious sensation she had almost purred as she crawled between the sheets. It would still be toasty warm, she knew, to anyone else, but she couldn’t feel it.
Not being an idiot who couldn’t face reality, she hurriedly dressed and went into the living room, where she had left the pad with Richard’s number on it. As she picked up the cordless phone and punched numbers, she noticed that her hands were colorless except for her fingernails, which had an interesting bluish tint to them.
Richard answered the phone himself, and something tense inside her relaxed a little at the sound of that deep, calm voice. “This is Sweeney,” she said, trying to sound cheerful, but at that moment a violent shiver seized her and her voice shook. “It happened again.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Just like that, she marveled as he hung up. No questions, no “I’m tied up right now, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She needed him, and he was dropping everything else to be there with her. The sheer wonder of it made her chest feel tight, as if she were catching a cold. Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them back, determined not to be such a sissy again.
She went into the kitchen. The coffee was made and already cold. She poured a cup and put it in the microwave to heat, waiting impatiently for the ding. Chills raced down her spine, roughened her skin. She felt her muscles tensing with another shudder.
She gulped down the first cup of coffee and heated another one. She had to hold it with both hands to keep the coffee from sloshing out, but still she was shaking so hard she risked scalding herself.
The attacks were getting worse, she realized; she was getting colder, faster. Maybe she should move the coffeemaker into the bedroom, put it right there on the nightstand so she wouldn’t even have to get out of bed. Not that the coffee seemed to be helping much; nothing helped, except for Richard.
Just the thought of him caused a small spurt of warmth deep inside. That’s the ticket, she thought. Just think of Richard. She had thought about him incessantly the day before, constantly replaying those remarkably carnal moments in his arms. The fact that they hadn’t had sex was a tribute to his self-control, not hers, and she was still astounded at herself, astounded at the heat that had poured through her, the blind physical drive for fulfillment. She had never experienced that before, and now that she had, she was no longer so certain of her ability to keep their relationship platonic.
She snorted into the cup of coffee. Who was she kidding? They hadn’t consummated their relationship, but it was far from platonic. All these years she had felt so smug about her imperviousness to sexual temptation, but with one look Richard could get inside her defenses and have her insides jumping around. Face it, she thought. With Richard, she was a pushover.
Shivering, she looked at the clock. How much longer would he be? He should be here any time.
Her shoulders were hunched against the cold, but abruptly she straightened, her eyes going wide. She shot out of the kitchen chair and raced for the bathroom. Hastily she rinsed her mouth with mouth-wash, then grabbed a comb and attacked her hair, which stood out from her head like a bush. Her efforts only made it wilder. She threw down the comb, squirted a dab of something that was supposed to control the frizzies into her hand, and rubbed it over the worst spots. Makeup? Should she put on lipstick? She stared at herself in the mirror, wondering what shade looked best on blue lips. Perfume, maybe. Damn it, she didn’t have any.
“Oh, I’ve got it bad,” she whispered. Here she stood, shivering so hard she was beginning to hurt, worrying about makeup and perfume. In horror, she realized she was prettying up.
The doorbell rang. Hurriedly she wiped her hands and ran to the door. Her teeth were chattering as she jerked it open. “I’ve lost my mind,” she told him grimly, walking into his arms. “I’m freezing to death, and I was worrying about lipstick. Then I opened the door without checking first. This is all your fault.”
“I know,” he murmured, lifting her off her feet and stepping inside. He hugged her tight, helping her brace against the shudders that wracked her. She buried her face against his neck, seeking to breathe in his warmth, and her nose was so cold he jumped. An exuberant curl tickled his lips as he turned and locked the door.
“It isn’t as bad today. I c-c-called you as soon as I got up.” Since she’d lost control of her teeth in the middle of the sentence and they’d done their castanet imitation again, her statement wasn’t as believable as it could have been.
“Good.” He carried her to the couch. “Where’s the blanket?”
“On the ch-chair in my bedroom.”
He set her down. “I’ll get it.”
He was back in seconds, guiding her to lie down on the couch and lying down beside her, then gathering her full length against him and covering them both with the blanket. Then he sat up again and shucked his lightweight crewneck off over his head, carelessly dropping it to the floor; then he lay down beside her and tucked her hands between them, warming them on his torso.
His skin felt hot against her cold fingers. He put his hands on her back and pressed them against her spine, and she shuddered with relief as his heat began sinking into her. “It’s already easing,” she said against his throat, feeling her tight muscles slowly relax as a sense of profound well-being spread through her. She breathed in slowly, deeply, filling her lungs with the scent of him. He smelled warm and musky, undeniably male. The aroma of testosterone, she thought, and smiled to herself.
“Better?” he asked. His voice was low, deeper than usual. The bass notes reverberated under her ear.
“Mmm. This wasn’t bad at all.”
“Because you didn’t wait.” His lips brushed her ear, moved over her temple. His hand slowly stroked down her back, urging her even closer. Their legs tangled, and one hard-muscled thigh slid between hers.
Her breath caught as she felt his erection. “I can’t keep calling you over to get me warm,” she murmured. “This is too tempting.”
“You’re telling me,” he said ruefully. She felt his lips curve against her temple as he smiled, then he pressed another kiss there. He smoothed her curls back, gently traced a fingertip around the sworl of her ear. “I couldn’t take a repeat of yesterday. If I’d had to take your clothes off today, I’d be fucking you right now.”
His voice was low and intimate,
impossibly tender. The graphic promise invoked a breathtaking image, making her loins clench with almost unbearable anticipation. She couldn’t protest, not when she wanted nothing more than for him to do exactly what he had said. She slipped her hand around his bare back, feeling the strength of the muscles there and the way they tightened under her touch. “I want you to,” she whispered, unable to pretend, as if he didn’t know exactly how she reacted to him. He had known from the first, before she was willing to admit it to herself.
His entire body flexed and surged, pressing her hard into the couch. His thigh wedged higher between her legs. A ragged breath shuddered out of him. “I feel like a teenager making out on the living room couch. I’d forgotten how damn frustrating it is.”
Sweeney brushed her lips over the underside of his jaw. She was inexperienced, but not naive or ignorant. There were several ways they could satisfy each other, without actually having sex, and the temptation was strong to suggest one or more, or all. She didn’t. Not only did she doubt her willpower would stand the test, but to do so seemed like cheating—getting off on a technicality, so to speak. It would be delicious, and wonderfully satisfying, and wrong. Until his divorce was final, it was wrong.
Maybe most women wouldn’t feel that way, but then they hadn’t grown up with her parents as examples.
She didn’t dare even kiss him, though she hungered for his taste. She could feel the tension humming through his big body, feel her own flesh throbbing in response. It would take so little to push them both over the edge that she was afraid to move.
But there was pleasure in just lying there with him, his arms around her, feeling his chest expand with each breath, hearing his heart beating. There was animal comfort in sharing his heat. Above all, there was a sense of belonging that she had never before known, the startling realization that she was not alone in the world, that somehow she had become part of a couple.
It was a heady sensation, to know that he cared for her, that she was important to him. Sweeney couldn’t remember ever being important to anyone before. She didn’t know how this sense of connection had formed so fast, or how she had so quickly come to trust and rely on him, but it had and she did.
“What did you paint this time?” he asked, after ten minutes had passed without a return of the chill. She was warm and drowsy, almost in a daze.
“I don’t know,” she said, a little surprised. “I didn’t even go in the studio. I have an electric blanket on my bed, and when I woke up cold anyway, I just assumed I had been sleepwalking again. What if I called you for nothing?”
“I would rather you call me whenever you have the least chill, than let things get as bad as they were yesterday morning. You worried the hell out of me.”
“I worried the hell out of myself,” she said wryly, and listened to his laughter rumble in his chest. It was nice, the way his voice was so deep. The hair on his chest was rough under her cheek, and that was nice, too. Everything about him was so damn masculine she could barely control herself.
“Are you warm?”
“Toasty.”
“Then we need to get up.”
“Why? I’m so comfortable.”
“Because I’m not a saint. Come on, let’s see what you painted.”
She wanted to groan and moan at the loss of his body heat, but for his sake she decided to be gracious about it. “Oh, all right.”
He grabbed his sweater from the floor and tugged her to her feet, then headed toward the studio. Sweeney detoured into the kitchen and nuked another cup of coffee. Richard declined her offer of coffee and leaned against the cabinets with his ankles crossed while he pulled the sweater on over his head. She didn’t think she’d ever had a man in her kitchen before, and she sneaked a couple of admiring glances at him. As the sweater settled in place, she stifled a sigh of regret. It was a damn shame to cover a chest that looked like his.
“Come on, quit stalling,” he said, and until then she hadn’t realized she was. Yesterday she had painted shoes; who knew what she had painted last night, if indeed she had done anything.
With his hand resting comfortably on the small of her back, they went into the studio. Sweeney looked around and saw that the shoe canvas wasn’t leaning against the wall where she had left it. “Looks like I worked on shoes again last night,” she said, relaxing inside. She didn’t like walking in her sleep and doing paintings that she didn’t remember doing, but she could have picked subjects a lot more upsetting than shoes.
An easel had been moved, positioned so the canvas was facing the north wall of windows.
Together they went over to study the canvas. Sweeney studied the details she had added during the night, clinically examining the brushstrokes. The details were so fine, the lines so soft, that the painting looked like a portion of a photograph. It wasn’t her usual technique, but the work was still undoubtedly hers. She had added another shoe to the painting, a high heel that matched the other one. Last night’s shoe was still being worn; she had completed a woman’s foot to the ankle. And she had painted a woman’s bare foot and part of that leg, up to the knee, lying close to the empty shoe. All in all there was nothing horrible about the painting, not in what she had done so far, but still she felt her stomach knot in dread, and she shivered.
“Great,” she muttered. “I added some body parts.” Despite her flippancy, her voice was tight.
Richard felt her shiver and gathered her close, hugging her to him. His expression was grim as he stared at the painting.
“It’s going to be like the hot dog vendor, isn’t it?
She’s dead. She’s lying down; she’s lost one shoe. Or if she isn’t dead now, she will be soon, and it feels as if it’s my fault.” Sweeney tried to pull away, but Richard turned her to him and held her tighter, cradling the back of her head in one big hand and pressing her face into his chest.
“It isn’t your fault and you know it.”
Her voice muffled, she said, “Logically I do, but emotionally—” She waved a hand. “You know how emotions are.”
“Yeah, they’re unruly as hell.” He kissed the top of her head.
“I wonder what would happen if I destroyed the canvas.”
“Nothing. Whether or not you paint the scene will have no effect on this person. Get that straight, sweetie. Whatever . . . vibes, or whatever the hell they are, that you’re picking up, you’re the one being affected, not the other way around.”
“I wish I could be sure of that.”
“You can, because you painted Elijah Stokes after he was dead, not before.”
Startled, she jerked her head back to stare at him. “How do you know?”
“I talked to his son David. Mr. Stokes died late in the afternoon. You didn’t do the painting until that night.”
She mulled that over, feeling relieved but as if there were some questions she should ask, if only she could think what they were. Sighing, she slid her arms around his waist and was comforted by the feel of his body. He was so solid and strong. Had she held him before? She had touched him and stroked her hand up his back, but she didn’t know if she had actually put her arms around him before now. Her conscience twinged. She had been taking and taking, while he had been doing all the giving, but even strong people needed to be held. She had always considered herself strong, and look how much she had needed him.
He leaned back a little so he could peer down at her face. “Feel better about it?”
“Relieved. Still worried.” She managed a smile, pushing away her uneasy feelings. “And hungry. Have you had breakfast?”
“A long time ago, but I could eat again. Would you like to go out for breakfast? It’ll be our first date.”
“Wow, a date. I don’t know if we should do that.” She grinned at him, thinking of all the things they had done—and the things they had yet to do.
His answering grin was both amused and rueful. “My day will come, sweetie. When I finally get you flat on your back, just remember that I have a lot of built-up f
rustration that will have to be worked off.”
“You say the sweetest things,” she purred, and laughed because she had never done this kind of love play before, never teased a man and felt his desire for her like a tidal wave about to break over her head. It was heady, and exciting, and . . . and wonderful.
He turned her to the door and urged her on with a small push. “Put on some shoes—and a bra, while you’re at it. That little jiggle is hell on my self-control.”
She did more than put on shoes and a bra. She exchanged her gray sweatshirt for a blue sweater and did the mascara-and-lipstick thing. She frowned at her hair, blew a curl out of her eyes, and decided to leave it alone. Grabbing her purse, she went out into the living room, where Richard sat reading one of the books on ghosts.
“I’ve been researching ghosts since all this started,” she said. “I keep hoping I’ll find some explanation of what caused me to start seeing them, but so far all the books are just about the ghosts themselves. Some spirits leave immediately; some hang around for a little while; some never leave at all.”
“So why would any of them hang around?” He stood up and walked with her to the door.
“There are all sorts of theories. Maybe there are loose ends to be tied up, maybe they’re just confused and don’t cooperate—who knows? One book said that only unhappy spirits become ghosts, so technically the ones who stay just a little longer aren’t really ghosts, they’re just on a layover.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” he murmured.
Sweeney locked the door behind them, and they walked to the elevator. She noticed Richard looking around him, studying the building for signs of decay. The apartments weren’t luxurious, or even upscale, but everything was usually in good repair. If the elevator malfunctioned, the tenants didn’t have to wait weeks for it to be repaired. Lightbulbs were replaced and the plumbing was maintained. The building was old, but the tenants, herself included, generally considered themselves lucky