Shadows At Sunset - Anne Stuart [34]
“When there’s snow in L.A.,” she said grimly. “I was wondering if I had a bathrobe.”
“I’ll control myself and not leap on you. You’re wearing more than you wear on the beach. Just find me a sheet and I won’t bother you again.”
“Promises, promises,” she muttered, pushing past him and starting down the hall in the direction of his bedroom. Roofus immediately bounded after her, and Coltrane allowed himself a fond moment of speculation. Maybe she’d make the bed and then lie down on it for him. It had been known to happen that easily.
But not with someone like Jilly Meyer. He was going to have to work for her, and he had nothing in particular to gain from it. If he had any sense he’d look for sex on the side, away from this decaying household. But he liked living dangerously. And God, he loved the thought of those long legs wrapped around him and all that hair beneath them.
She’d disappeared through a door he hadn’t noticed before, and a moment later came out with a pile of sheets and towels on her arms. “I only have one bed, Jilly,” he said in his most reasonable tone of voice when she thrust the load into his arms.
“Everything in this place is falling apart. Some of those bed linens date back to the forties and fifties—you’ll be lucky if they don’t shred in your hands.”
“What do you use on your bed?”
“Three hundred count Egyptian cotton, and I’m not sharing,” she snapped. “You can go buy your own if these won’t do. Not that I expect you’ll be staying very long, but you’ll probably need new sheets when you get back into your apartment.”
He simply smiled at her, not bothering to correct her. By the time he was ready to leave he’d be going far away, and he wasn’t going to bother with transporting bed linens.
“Come on, Roofus,” she said, snapping her fingers. The dog looked up at him longingly, then swung his huge head back toward Jilly, clearly torn.
“He’s having a hard time choosing between us,” Coltrane murmured, resisting the impulse to suggest the obvious solution.
“Traitor,” Jilly said darkly. “Roofus!”
In the end she won, and who could blame the dog? He suspected that all Jilly had to do was snap her fingers and he’d trot after her, as well, if it meant he could sleep with her.
He half expected her to slam the door behind her, but she closed it quietly, and there was no sound of locks clicking. Maybe the locks didn’t work. Or maybe she wasn’t sure she wanted to keep him out.
His room looked murkier than ever. He had a hell of a time wrapping a flat sheet around the thin mattress—Jilly was right. Most of them were so fragile they simply ripped in his hands. By the time he’d managed to cover the mattress he’d stripped to his shorts and stretched out on the thin, hard surface. No pillow, but he could do without. He’d slept in worse places in his life. Besides, he kind of liked the decaying grandeur of La Casa de Sombras. The House of Shadows.
He stretched out on his back, tucking his hands beneath his head. There was that faint, teasing scent on the air, overriding the mildew and mustiness. The warm breeze blowing through the French doors must have carried it in, though he’d been aware of it on a number of occasions. So few people smoked nowadays that the scent of tobacco was unmistakable. None of the Meyers smoked, at least not openly, and the odd scent of tobacco wasn’t the lingering odor that clung to clothes. It was fresh, quite pleasant, actually. Different from the cigarette tobacco people used nowadays. Not cigar smoke, certainly a far cry from the acrid sweetness of marijuana. It had to be something very old, still lingering from the house’s heyday in the thirties and forties, when everyone smoked.
Odd, but the smoke smelled fresh, as if someone were in the room.
“Ghosts,” he muttered out loud, just to hear the sound of his voice in the stillness. He waited, half expecting an answer from the darkness. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but he never ruled out any possibility.
“Well,” he said lazily into the darkness, “if you’re still haunting this place then you