J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [808]
Xhex forced herself to focus and . . . Jesus, it did help. Meeting that evergreen stare did help. “You’ll feel it.”
“Excuse me?”
Xhex cleared her throat. “If I’m . . . pregnant, you’ll feel it.”
“How.”
“When you . . . there’ll be a pattern. Inside. It won’t . . .” She took a shallow breath, drawing on the tales she’d heard from her father’s people. “The walls won’t be smooth.”
Doc Jane didn’t even blink. “Got it. You ready?”
No. “Yes.”
Xhex was in a cold sweat by the time it was over and that rib she’d broken was screaming from her sawing gulps of air.
“Tell me,” she said hoarsely.
TWENTY-THREE
“I’m telling you . . . Eliahu is alive. Eliahu Rathboone . . . he’s alive.”
Standing in his room at the Rathboone mansion, Gregg Winn stared out the window at some of South Carolina’s signature Spanish moss. In the moonlight, the shit was creepy as a shadow thrown by no discernible object . . . or body.
“Gregg, did you hear me?”
After rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he looked over his shoulder at his nubile young narrator. Holly Fleet was just inside the door, her long blond hair pulled straight back from her makeup-less face, her eyes not nearly as wide or captivating without the false lashes or the sparkly-sparkly stuff she wore on camera. But the pink silk robe did nothing, absolutely nothing to hide her banging body.
And she was practically vibrating, her inner tuning fork struck by one hell of a ringer.
“You are aware,” Gregg drawled, “that the SOB died over one hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Then his ghost is really here.”
“Ghosts don’t exist.” Gregg turned back to the view. “You of all people should know that.”
“This one does.”
“And you woke me up at one a.m. to tell me this?”
Not a good move on her part. They’d all gotten next to no sleep the night before, and he’d spent the day pushing and shoving on the phone to L.A. He’d hit the pillow an hour ago, not expecting to crash—but fortunately his body had had different plans.
Either that or his brain was telling him to give it up because shit was not going well. That butler was refusing to budge on the permission thing; both of Gregg’s reapproaches had been shut down, the one at breakfast politely declined, the one at dinner flat-out ignored.
Meanwhile they had some great footage that he’d already sent in. Thanks to the evocative shots captured on the sly, the brass had given him the go-ahead to switch the special’s location—but they were pressuring him for a presell cut they could broadcast ASAP.
Which couldn’t happen until the butler relented.
“Hello?” Holly snapped. “Are you listening to me?”
“What.”
“I want to go.”
He frowned, thinking she didn’t have the brains to be frightened by anything short of an eighteen-wheeler with her name on the front grille. “Go where?”
“Back to L.A.”
He nearly recoiled. “L.A.? Are you kidding—Okay, so not going to happen. Unless you want to get on Orbitz and ship yourself back like a piece of luggage. We have a job to do here.”
Which given the hair across that butler’s ass included a lot of doctoring and begging. The latter being Holly’s milieu. And actually . . . if she was scared, that worked to an advantage. She could leverage fear with the guy. Men normally responded well to that kind of thing—especially proper gentleman types who surely channeled chivalry through every one of their dry, spindly bones.
“I really . . .” Holly pulled the silk lapels closer to her neck . . . so that the front of the robe stretched tight against her hard nipples. “I’m freaking out.”
Hmm. If this was a ploy to get him into bed . . . he wasn’t that tired. “Come here.”
He held out his arms, and as she came forward and put her body against his, he smiled as he stared over her head. God, she smelled good. Not that flowery shit she usually wore, but something darker. Nice.
“Baby, you know you’ve got to stay with us. I need you to work your magic.”
Outside, the