J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [968]
She didn’t want him to see her nervous like this.
Because it turned out, in addition to a phobia about medical crap, there was another little glitch in her hardwiring: The idea of standing up in front of a ton of people and being the focus of attention during their mating made her want to vomit. Guess it shouldn’t have been a total surprise, though. After all, in her job as an assassin, the whole point was to remain unseen. And she’d long been an introvert by both circumstance and character.
Pushing herself back to the pillows, she leaned against the headboard, crossed her feet at the ankles, and grabbed the remote. The little black Sony number discharged its duties with admirable flair, the thing firing up the flat-screen and switching the channels until they flicked by quick as the beat of her heart.
It wasn’t just the fact that there were going to be so many witnesses to her and John’s ceremony. It was because getting hitched made her think of the way things should have been if she’d had a normal life. On nights like this, most females were getting dressed in gowns made just for the occasion and being strewn with family jewels. They were looking forward to being presented to their intended by their proud fathers, and their mothers were supposed to be sniffling now as well as when the vows were exchanged.
Xhex, on the other hand, was walking down the aisle by herself. Wearing leathers and a muscle shirt, because that was all she’d ever owned for clothes.
As the TV stations flipped before her eyes, the distance between herself and “normal” seemed as great a divide as that of history itself: There would be no recasting of the past, no editing the peaks and valleys of her story. Everything from her mixed blood, to the kindly mated couple who had raised a nightmare, to everything that had happened to her since she’d left that cottage . . . all of it was written in the cold stone of the past.
Never to be changed.
At least she knew that the wonderful male and female who had tried to raise her as their own had finally had a babe of their bloodline, a son who had grown up strong and mated well and given them a next generation.
All that had made the leaving of them so much easier.
But everything else in her life, save for John, had not had a happy resolution. God, maybe that was the cause of her nerves as well. This mating stuff with John was such a revelation, almost too good to be true—
She frowned and jacked upright. Then rubbed her eyes.
She couldn’t be seeing what was on the screen correctly.
It wasn’t possible . . . was it?
Scrambling for the right button on the remote, she turned up the volume. “. . . Rathboone’s ghost haunting the halls of his Civil War mansion. What secrets await our Paranormal Investigators team as they seek to uncover . . .”
The narrator’s voice faded from hearing as the camera drew closer and closer upon a portrait of a male with dark hair and eyes that were haunted.
Murhder.
She’d know that face anywhere.
Leaping up, she rushed at the TV—but like that was going to help?
The camera panned back to show a beautiful parlor and then shots of the grounds of a white plantation house. They were talking about some kind of live special . . . during which they were going to try to flush out the ghost of a Civil War abolitionist who so many maintained still roamed the halls and the grounds of where he’d once lived.
Tuning in to the commentary again, she desperately tried to catch where the mansion was located. Maybe she could . . .
Just outside Charleston, South Carolina. That’s where it was.
Stepping back, she hit the bed with her calves and sat down. Her first thought was to flash there and see for herself whether it was her former lover or a real live ghost or just some talented television producers making a lot of noise.
But logic overrode the impulse. The last time she’d set her eyes on Murhder, he’d made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her. Besides, just