me.
I have to go kill a ghost. After that, I will leave the country.
But… without me?
The pain that always held me in its grip tightened until I couldn’t breathe. Without you.
Coward, she accused, and I knew I had at last hurt her.
If I’d had a soul, it would have wept at that moment. But I had no choice. I had to leave her in order to protect her. I was a man alone. I had no hope. No promise of relief. No salvation.
I had no future.
Chapter Four
I wonder if it’s a crime to kill the undead,” Noelle said aloud, then immediately qualified that thought. “Not that Dark Ones are undead. And Gray is very much alive.” She spent a few minutes reliving the taste of him as he kissed her, the feel of him so hard and hot beneath her hands as she stroked his chest and back. “ Very alive. But an idiot nonetheless.” She shook her head and got to her feet.
Men were much more complicated creatures than she’d been led to believe. As she picked her way through the tangled and overgrown garden to the lower level, she tried to pin down just what it was about Grayson that attracted her. He was certainly sexy as hell, with that chin and those eyes and a classically handsome face. Her hands itched to touch his flesh, to stroke the long lines of his back down to his temptingbehind, to feel the hard muscles of his thighs, to sculpt the swells and curves of his chest and abdomen. But it was more than his body that had her feeling that she was caught up in a whirlpool of emotions. He held so much darkness within him, such pain, bound together in a noble belief that he was destruction to anyone allowed near him.
“He has no faith,” she told herself as she caught sight of Teresa and Raleigh filming Miles before the marble statue of a woman being wooed by a swan. “The problem is whether I can change that or not, and whether… oh, dear. That can’t be good.”
She stopped just outside the range of Raleigh’s camera, watching with a slight pucker between her brows as the ghostly Nostredame, waggling his eyebrows at Teresa, allowed himself to be interviewed by Miles.
“—said there was a treasure here at the Abbey. Is this a treasure that you left when you were amongst the living?” Miles asked the ghost.
“I left many things behind,” Nosty said with a look of smug maleness. “Both boys and girls.”
Noelle rolled her eyes as she moved to stand next to Teresa, who asked her in an undertone, “Are you all right?”
“Of course.”
“You two were going at it pretty hot and heavy,” Teresa pointed out. “I’m assuming that is the man you said kidnapped you earlier? The one you just met?”
“Yes, that’s him. Isn’t he gorgeous?”
“His appearance isn’t what was worrying me, although yes, he was pretty handsome. I’ve known you forever, Noelle, and you’ve never been the ‘jump at a man you’ve just met’ sort of girl.”
Noelle smiled to herself. “Gray is different.”
Theresa rolled her eyes. “That’s what they all say.”
“I know, but you have to trust me about this. When I say different, I mean really different.”
Teresa said nothing more but gave her a knowing look that Noelle dismissed. Her attention turned to the scene in front of her, watching the ghost with a nagging worried feeling. What was it about Nosty that had Gray so upset? Was it the mention of a treasure? No, he’d tensed up when Nosty had first mentioned the history of the house, particularly Gray’s family. Perhaps, in the interest of finding out what had happened to leave Gray vitiated, she would have to do a little investigating.
“Then who did hide the treasure in the Abbey?” Miles asked, trying manfully to keep the ghost’s attention on himself. “Was it one of your ancestors who lived here?”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know who left it. I was a visiting monk when this was an abbey, so I didn’t really live here. The family who did live here later used to talk about the treasure and how