J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [849]
As for Stan? He just shrugged it all off. Oh, he thought it was a ghost for sure—but that didn’t faze him in the slightest.
Then again, he could have been tied to a set of railroad tracks on some Perils of Pauline thing and just thought, Perfect, time for a quick nap before he got greased.
There were advantages to being a pothead.
As the clock struck ten down below, Gregg got up from the laptop and went to the window. Man, he’d feel better about this whole thing if he hadn’t seen that long-haired figure roaming the grounds the night before.
To hell with that: Better that he hadn’t seen the fucker outside in the hall pulling a hallucination’s trick of now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t.
From behind him on the bed, Holly said, “Are you hoping to see the Easter bunny out there?”
He glanced over at her and thought she looked great propped up against the pillows, her nose in a book. When she’d taken the thing out, he’d been surprised to see it was the Doris Kearns Goodwin about the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. He’d have figured she was more a Tori Spelling-bio kind of girl.
“Yeah, I’m all about the cotton tail,” he murmured. “And I think I’m going to go down and see if I can get the bastard’s basket.”
“Don’t bring back any marshmallow Peeps. Colored eggs, chocolate bunnies, that fake fuzzy grass—all good. The Peeps freak me out.”
“I’ll have Stan come sit with you, ’kay?”
Holly’s eyes lifted from Camelot’s backstory. “I don’t need a nanny. Especially not one who’s liable to light up a joint in the bathroom.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“I’m not alone.” She nodded to the camera in the far corner of the room. “Just turn that on.”
Gregg leaned back against the window jamb. The way her hair caught the light was really nice. Of course, the color was undoubtedly an expert dye job . . . but it was the perfect shade of blond against her skin.
“You aren’t scared, are you,” he said, wondering exactly when it was that they’d traded places on that account.
“You mean about last night?” She smiled. “Nope. I think that ‘shadow’ is Stan playing a trick on both of us as payback for jerking him around between rooms. You know how he hates moving luggage. Besides, it got me back in your bed, didn’t it. Not that you’ve done anything much about this.”
He snagged his windbreaker and went over to her. Taking her chin in hand, he looked into her eyes. “You still want me like that?”
“Always have.” Holly’s voice dropped. “I’m cursed.”
“Cursed?”
“Come on, Gregg.” When he just looked at her, she threw up her hands. “You’re a bad bet. You’re married to your job and you’d sell your soul to get ahead. You reduce everything and everyone around you to a lowest common denominator and that allows you to use them. And when they aren’t useful? You don’t remember their name.”
Jesus . . . she was smarter than he’d thought. “So why do you want to have anything to do with me?”
“Sometimes . . . I don’t really know.” Her eyes returned to the book, but they didn’t go back and forth over the lines. They just locked onto the page. “I guess it’s because I was really naive when I met you, and you gave me a shot when no one else would, and you taught me about a lot of things. And that initial crush is hanging on.”
“You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“It can be. I’ve been hoping to grow out of it . . . and then you do stuff like look after me and I get sucked in all over again.”
He stared at her, measuring her perfect features and her smooth skin and her amazing body.
Feeling tangled and strange, and like he owed her an apology, he went over to the camera on the tripod and turned it on to record. “You got your cell phone with you?”
She reached into her robe’s pocket and took out a BlackBerry. “Right here.”
“Call me if anything strange happens, ’kay?”
Holly frowned. “Are you all right?”
“Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “Just never seen you quite this . . .”
“Anxious? Yeah, I guess there’s something about this house.”
“I was going to say . . . connected, actually. It’s like you’re truly looking at me for